September 2024 Podcast: The rise and fall of live service games, and our pure joy: Lollipop Chainsaw is back!

Lollipop Chainsaw is back! Lollipop Chainsaw is back! FINALLY! 

We're very excited about the imminent re-release of the game with the cheerleader, her mini-skirt, and all them zombies to slay. But we're also very interested to see if the discourse behind this game has changed in any way, because it was once a very controversial title indeed. 

Elsewhere on the podcast we also discuss the inglorious fate of Concord and the seemingly inevitable decline of live service games. The market is demonstrating that it has firmly met its saturation point and it is almost certainly a case of diminishing returns for anyone that tries to do another one now.

And of course, we talk through all the games releasing for the rest of September. There's A LOT.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Music.

(00:06):
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Digitally Uploaded podcast,
the companion podcast to digitallydownloaded.net.
We do not have an Alan today, so I shall be hosting. I'm Matt.
You're probably aware of me if you have been following this podcast for any time whatsoever.
We also have two of our favorites with us this week. Hello, Harvard.

(00:30):
Hello. Glad to be a favorite. Yes, you are indeed a favorite.
What have you been playing over the last couple of weeks?
I've been playing a lot of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games.
I didn't think that would ever come out on the Switch online thing,
so I've been really enjoying that.
Oh, that's the original one, right? Yeah, the original Game Boy,
GBA one, that was Trimsoft.

(00:52):
And it has all the Pokemon, so it has just too much stuff to do.
Yeah, it's a pretty big game. Surprisingly big. Enormous. If you want to try
and finish the whole thing, it's at least 100 hours, I think.
Yeah, it's a big game. Which Pokemon did you get to start as?
I got Squirtle. Oh. Yeah. You're a Squirtle person.

(01:13):
Because they do that little psychological thing. Yeah, yeah, it's funny.
And I don't know how much your answers correlate to who you get,
but it's always fun to just be psychoanalyzed before you start a game.
Yeah, I wish more games did that, like their little character creation by answering some questions.
What other Dragon Quest? Dragon Quest III does that too from the earlier games,

(01:34):
and it's pretty good fun.
We also have Trent. Hello, Trent. Hello.
What have you been playing over the last couple of weeks?
I have been playing... I played the demo for the Nintendo novel thing.
Oh, the Smiling and the Detective Case? Yeah. I only got like halfway through it.

(01:57):
I didn't play the other two chapters yet. Yeah, it's been a very busy two weeks.
You should definitely make sure you play through the rest of that,
though. It's a very good game. I'm pretty sure I pre-ordered it,
but apparently I did it, so.
You'll have to buy it. It's a brand new game in the Famicom Detective Cop series
that hasn't been around for ages.

(02:19):
Yeah, no, it's an all new game. It took, what, 30 years or whatever to make it or something.
That's so cool. Yeah, it's good. It's good. I'm glad that they gave it another
run and based on the response that's been getting it seems to have paid off So good on them.
Congratulations for making a good game and stuff Okay, so we'll come back.

(02:40):
We'll have a bit of music and then we'll be talking about the.
Music.

(05:45):
We are back, and we are recording this podcast a little bit into the month of
September, but what's coming for the rest of the month is going to keep people pretty busy anyway.
So jumping right into it, on September 9, we have Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine
2, which I have already reviewed on digitallydownloaded.net.

(06:07):
It is a good game.
If you're into your action, then you're going to get plenty of that from this one.
It's usually actiony and
yeah it does it does the warhammer 40 000 thing too so it's all very grim dark
and violent and stuff so if you did enjoy the original space marine then you've
probably been looking forward to this and it doesn't disappoint then we have on september 10 we have.

(06:35):
Persona 3 reload episode aegis
the answer coming out so that is the
additional story that was i
guess missing from the original release of persona 3 reload
that is now being fixed and you'll
be able to play through all of that which i know a lot of
people were looking excuse me i know a lot of people were

(06:56):
looking forward to that and we'll no
doubt get plenty of hours out of this dlc if
you want to call it that release if you're
a fan of yars rising which was an old classic
game from atari that's getting a remaster via
way forward technologies that comes out on
september 10 as well and is a 2d action adventure game which is way forward's

(07:23):
specialty and i'm sure that it will have good graphics because that is what
they do and will be otherwise a pretty Pretty faithful remake of what Yars Rising was, I guess.
I never played it. I don't know if you guys have, but I do not know anything about Yars Rising.
So if I do play this, I'll be going in pretty fresh.

(07:44):
On September 10, we have Uno.
Uno Legacy Edition. I don't know what is in this. That isn't already available
via the Uno apps on every other platform.
But there you go. if you like uno then you've got a legacy edition to look forward
to on a september 10 who doesn't like you know everybody likes you know but

(08:05):
whether you want to buy an actual game of it i don't know
where you can just find that game where you have a version of it on every console
it's like yeah and the the tetris and the uno yeah it is a bit like that i don't
know it's a little bit like i I guess, Monopoly.
It's not the world's greatest board game that you can get on the Switch, board or card game.

(08:29):
But there is something familiar about it, I guess. So, yeah. They should do Skipbo.
I've never played Skipbo, I don't think.
It's the one where you go 1 to, like, 12 in a pile.
Right. No, never played it.
On september 10 as well we're still on september 10 there's a lot of stuff coming
out on this specific day we've got rugrats adventures in gameland i did not

(08:51):
know that rugrats was still a thing but apparently it is and if you're a fan
of it then you've got a game to look forward to,
don't know anything about it again i think the one rugrats game i ever played was
like an n64 board game i want
to say they made and it was pretty
terrible hope i've never what's

(09:11):
the gritty rugrats theory that everyone's dead or something
it's just like all in like the parents hallucination everything
has one of those theories just don't just don't don't don't give don't feel
that fire i have no idea i think that's one of those things i played like one
i've watched like one episode of it as well i just missed the missed the wave of it.

(09:36):
On september 10 as well we've got the shiren the
wanderer dlc plus pack one coming out
if you did play the recent shiren the
wanderer then you're probably looking forward to this
because it will be a whole lot more content
it does have a new playable character which
is cool and it will

(09:57):
be quite an interesting spin on that apparently this character is
not able to deal damage with regular attacks but can act
at twice the normal speed cannot equip weapons so that'll be an interesting
twist on the roguelike formula i heard the game title as like ed sheeran like
some sort of ed sheeran like uh yeah and and i'm like why is he collecting swords

(10:21):
and like weapons and stuff,
that would be a great game,
yeah i'll play that.
Moving on i guess on september 11
we have crossy road castle coming out on switch
i think that's already out on arcade apple arcade the crossy road guy is still

(10:43):
the australian team or have has that moved around hands no i believe they're
still the aussie guys oh nice still plug it along still making money from their
weird little invention crossy road's great it's a great a great twist on Frogger.
I've never played Crossing Road Castle, I don't think.
But I'm sure it'll be fun. It's got decent reviews on the Apple Arcade version.

(11:07):
There you go. You'll be able to play that on September 11. We have Lollipop
Chainsaw Repop coming out on September 12, which will be interesting.
I'm very much looking forward to it.
I am a huge fan of the original Lollipop Chainsaw, and it's one of those games
that's actually fairly difficult to play now because it never got a release
on Steam, and it was only on, what, PlayStation 3 and Xbox,

(11:33):
whatever the equivalent was at the time.
And it didn't get
a release on digital platforms there so and i
think even the physical game didn't work on the xbox
like the newer xboxes that would
i i have no idea but that would
make sense because you did ask me to check like ages ago and i'm pretty sure

(11:53):
it didn't work yeah okay there you go so it has been a very difficult game to
play and this will be obviously a chance to play it i must admit i am a little
bit concerned about it because i know that they've stripped a lot of the music
license out of it so this is an all-new soundtrack to go with it.
And that is a pity because it did have a lot it had

(12:13):
a licensed soundtrack that made really good use of the licenses they had to
create a lot of character and personality in the game i'm not sure if it'll
be the same experience without that but who cares i guess it's still lollipop
chain so So I'm looking forward to giving it a go. That comes out on everything.
You'll be able to play it on Switch and PlayStation and Xbox and whatever.

(12:35):
So definitely, if you've missed out previously on it, make sure that you give it a go now.
September 12th. Also on September 12th, we have Celestia Chain of Fire,
which is a visual novel that PQB is localizing.
I mention it because I have already reviewed it as well on digidownloaded.net.

(12:56):
So you can check that out. I got a chance to do an early review of that. It is a good game.
It is an otome, so an independent one too.
So it doesn't have quite the same production values of the ultimate developed
visual novel, but it is still a very high quality one.

(13:16):
So definitely worth your while if you are a fan of the genre at all.
Moving on. for some reason we have the Jackbox Naughty Pack coming out on September 12th,
So for people who don't know, I guess, I'd be surprised if there aren't that
many people who haven't played a Jackbox game at some point.

(13:37):
That's a long-running series of party games designed usually for quite large groups of people.
I would imagine that the Naughty Pack is not.
It's more adult-themed bunch of party games.
There's three of them in it. And I guess it was inevitable that they're doing

(13:58):
adults only. Jackbox at some stage.
Who knows how that's going to turn out. We will find out, I guess.
On September 12, we have a game which is intriguing me. It's called 10 Second Ghost.
Now, in 10 Second Ghost, you play as a bomb that explodes within 10 seconds.

(14:19):
You need to reach the target door before explosion.
So it'll be a little puzzle game, I think, and you'll need to play very quickly.
I would imagine that given you only have 10 seconds, the levels will be short
and sharp, and you need to be very quick thinking to get through it.
But if you look at the little art style, it's a charming looking little game, I think.

(14:40):
It reminds me of those old school Flash Shockwave games that you'd play for 30 minutes.
We don't really have a place for those anymore, so I'm really glad that it's coming out.
Yeah, it does, doesn't it? So I'm looking up screenshots now.
And yeah, it's a single screen mini platformer, a little bit like,
what's the Mario and Donkey Kong one?

(15:01):
Mario versus Donkey Kong? Yeah, Mario versus Donkey Kong. It's like Mario versus
Donkey Kong, but with the super strict time limit added to it.
So yeah, let's see how that turns out, but that could be fun.
That comes out what time? September 12th.
We have, for fighting game fans, we've got something big coming on September 12. We've got Marvel vs.
Capcom Fighting Collection Arcade Classics, which is seven games all in one

(15:26):
pack. It's by the same developer that did the excellent Street Fighter collection
that was on Switch a couple of years back now.
I'm glad that we finally cleared the licensing issues.
Yeah, that one would have been a big licensing thing to deal with because,
like I said, seven games. I wonder if it's now because all the properties that
used to be divested from not Marvel have now just been recollected together.

(15:50):
Yeah, it probably makes it a bit easier. And Disney money. Disney money makes the world go round.
I think the other thing is that the developers and publishers realized that
there was money to make in these retro things.
So splashing out a bit of cash to do a collection is probably not such a bad
idea. whereas I think before they thought that there's probably not a huge market for the stuff.

(16:13):
It's really cheaper to make and put together than make a brand new one.
Yeah, and we've got a couple of developers now that really specialize in doing
a good job with this stuff.
So it's easy just to bomb them out some work, I guess.
Gives you a game to fill the release schedule with. So this one has obviously
online features so you can play online.

(16:33):
Mine it's got a museum music player all the bits and pieces that you would expect from a decently,
produced a retro collection on september
12 again so not quite through halfway
through the month yet and still already a lot of games to play we have caravan
sandwich which is an interesting looking game that i've been keeping an eye

(16:55):
on it is a science fiction style post-apocalyptic world world,
I think is probably the best way to put it.
But this one is not violent like a lot of those other ones.
There's no death, no combat, no timer. It's just one of those explore the world kind of deals.
Well, this looks good. Yeah. Yeah, it does look good.

(17:18):
It reminds me a little bit of Sable. You know, that game that's the first apocalyptic
one. You're just kind of like wandering around.
But this one's a bit more, the environments are a bit more like realistic, I guess.
Yeah, I can see that. I mean, it's got decent production values, is the thing.
A lot of these games that do the no violence thing don't.

(17:40):
Yeah, I guess we'll see how it turns out. Could go either way.
Could be definitely boring, but I'm hoping not.
Scrolling through there is a game called Metro Questa Osaka coming out on September 12 this is a.

(18:01):
Extremely niche sequel to an
extremely niche game that was released
on Switch I want to say before Christmas last year
maybe the year before time gets away from me either way it's got a real retro
retro vibe to it it is it is an interesting one though if you're if you do have

(18:22):
a tolerance for extremely retro style games then it was actually pretty decent
so the fact that there's a sequel,
is interesting hopefully they add on to what
they did with the first one this there's also looks like wizard proof for the
nes yeah a little bit like that like i'm talking really really retro style came
this thing and it's got difficulty to match so you need to have a high tolerance

(18:45):
they may get specifically for people that do want to play those old school wizardry style,
rpgs and things what else have we got scrolling through let's try and get off september 12th,
because apparently everything comes out on september 12th we've got a test drive
unlimited solar crown coming out on september 12th people like that but like

(19:08):
their racing games that one will be fine.
The meta score or so reviews already out for it apparently, or maybe it's just
coming out on a new platform.
Trying to figure it out uh the reviews are not great it's got an average of
66 on metacritic but it seems like it's just a decent racing game but it's from

(19:28):
a fairly high profile brand i guess in,
test drive i don't know i don't know how much else to add to that not really a racing game fan.
On september 12th now this one's a bit of a pity i'm only mentioning it i'm
not going to suggest just that people buy it, I guess, because it is a pity.
But there's a game coming out. I don't know if people who are listening to the

(19:51):
podcast know, but there's a company that's been releasing these things called
Egg Classics on the Switch for a good year or so now.
And basically what they're doing is they're taking old games from the PC Engine
games, so PC-98 and stuff, and releasing them onto the Switch console.

(20:12):
Basically unedited, which...
Means that they're in Japanese, which makes them difficult to play.
Some of them are easier than others because those games were quite simple.
So if it wasn't too narrative-driven, you're able to figure your way through it.
But why I mention this is on September 12, there's Dragon Slayer The Legends of Heroes coming out.

(20:32):
Now, that was the first Legend of Heroes game to have the kind of turn-based
combat and structure that we know from Trails of Cold Steel and whatnot now,
it would have been really interesting to play if they had have localized it, but they didn't.
So just warning you, if you're a Legend of the Hero fan and you see that on

(20:53):
the Switch store, just make sure you can read Japanese, I guess, before you download it.
But it's not like the start of the Trails series, right? It's the start of the
Legend of the Hero series, of which Trails is a side thing?
Yes. well Trails is kind of the center of it these days.
Trails of Cold Steel, I guess the four-game trilogy kind of sets.

(21:17):
I mean, they're the ones that most people would recommend people play first
if they're getting into it for the first time now.
But it does have various different branches and storylines, and we've talked
about it in the podcast in the past.
It's a very long-running, convoluted series.
And this one has never actually been released in English before. It is not.

(21:38):
It still continues to not be released in English. it's it's
not directly related to trials of cold steel but in the same way
it doesn't have it the same universe i believe so it would have been good to
play but we won't be able to unless you can speak english or japanese for people
that have a weird taste in stuff funko fusion comes

(22:01):
out on september 13 that is the video
game that has very high
levels of production values they've got a five-time bafta award winner on the
team making the game and they've certainly been pushing it as a big deal but
you've got to be a fan of fungo to enjoy this and i am not Other people are.

(22:28):
I am not. So at best I don't talk about that too much more.
That comes out on September 13th anyway. It's a high profile game.
It might be one of those Lego movie situations where somehow the license is
worked with well and it becomes amazing.
I guess so. Yes, but they're ugly.

(22:50):
My problem with Funko is that the whole point of the property,
the vision of the product, I guess, is to homogenize everything in society so
that you can stick any character, any person.
Oh, yeah. It's just capitalism and specific objects.
Yeah, onto the one thing. So, it's great for the company making them because

(23:12):
they can just get any license and cheaply shove it onto the same figure and
then sell bucket loads of them to fans of that property.
But how that – I mean, I don't know how that's going to translate into a video
game that's worth playing when it's just – the whole point of Funko is to – It's okay.
They can release a Funko AI if that fails.

(23:35):
I don't know what to say about that, Drew. i don't know where to go from there
yeah so i just don't know i don't know how funko,
translates into video games worth playing when the
whole point of funko is to be as boring and bland and generic as possible we'll
see i might be wrong it might be the best game of all time if so good on them

(23:57):
moving on okay so this is interesting i did not know about this until i I just read it right now,
but I'm actually quite interested.
There's a game coming on September 16 called Get In The Car,
Loser, which is, to read off the description,
a lesbian road trip RPG by the co-creator of Lady Killer In A Bind about fighting

(24:22):
for love and justice in the face of indifference,
inspired by choice-driven visual novels and a battle system influenced...
I've got to find the rest of the description, and a battle system influenced
by classic and modern JRPGs.
That intrigues me because Lady Killer in a Bard was very good.

(24:45):
This looks good, but also it's been out for like three years.
I think we're getting a Switch port. That's why.
Yes, it has been out for three years. There are a smattering of reviews. Not many.
Very few reviews on the game on PC. They are positive overall.
In fact, I think there's only one. there was one review

(25:06):
of the game from pc by rpg rp gamer
and they liked it so it's
coming out on switch now but yeah lady killer in a bind was good fun so and
it's all retro we all fake retro if we want to call that style yeah i didn't

(25:26):
even know existed i really didn't so maybe i'll pick
it up from the switch on september 17 we've got the plucky squire coming out this is one of.
Devolver's higher profile works and it does look good this is the one where
you jump into and out of a book to solve puzzles and things so you inhabit the

(25:48):
real world as such and then you can jump into a book to make progress and then
jump back out when you need to solve a puzzle or
whatever and it just looks very whimsical and charming
i did see i mean it's been talked about
for a while now it's been developing for
ages and they've done various preview runs of it and what i've seen i've been

(26:10):
very impressed by so that should be a good one unfortunately devolver games
have had a weird hit and miss recently in terms of actually selling any copies i think that's a
problem the entire industry indie industry has where
it's a bit of a crap shoot whether your game actually gets any kind of any kind

(26:31):
of momentum in the market but yeah this
one looks like it has a decent chance so we'll see if
you like your train sims then train sim world 5 is coming out on september 17th
feels like this has become an annual thing i feel like we're talking about at
train sim world every year in and then they do a bunch of dlc and ends up being very expensive.

(26:54):
It's a hobby in itself and we start all over again next
year train sims 6 exactly i don't know why they're doing that if they're going
to be so aggressive with the dlcs they may as well just stick with a more infrequent
rate of new genuine sequels and whatever but it has become a very expensive
hobby in its own right if you like your train sims but they are good games so they actually,

(27:17):
back it up with something and as much as i hate myself i'll probably give this one a go as well,
i do like trained sims okay so a classic point and click comes back on september
19 we've got broken sword shadow of the templars reforged.
And that is a very good point-and-click series.

(27:39):
This one is upscaled to full 4K, so you can enjoy the pretty incredible art
style in a very modern look.
There's also an upscaled audio, and quality of the voice acting,
apparently, is also improved.
I don't remember the voice acting of the original Broken Sword Shadow of the
Templars, but it's been improved.

(28:01):
I do remember it being a very good game, and Broken Sword in general is very
good. So I am looking forward to that.
I don't know if you guys have played Broken Sword at any point.
I played one of the remakes, I think.
This is, I think, the second remake it had. Is it?
There was a director's cut that came out in 2009, which would have been about

(28:23):
10 years after the original came out. Oh, really?
I'll take your word for it. I can't remember how I played it.
I just played it for a bit. I remember some of the puzzles.
There are a lot of puzzles. Yeah, I love you giving up, because I was like,
I like the story, but now they need me to figure out how to get out of this
hotel room with a rope and a candle. I just want to know what happens next.

(28:44):
Yeah, it is that kind of old school point and click adventure vibe in that you've
got to combine items and follow a logic path that doesn't really make sense.
And MacGyver together things that couldn't be MacGyvered together.
And it's just that kind of thing. You know, those games have their audience.
I'm glad that they do still come out with some of them because people love that kind of thing.

(29:08):
It's a very specific style of tastes, I think. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Oh, yeah. So it's an Nintendo DS version of the game. Yeah, I played that version.
I was building everything.
Yeah, I believe that maybe it was. Yeah, I think it was the Wii one I played.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was the Wii one I played. So that would have been the
remake, the first remake.

(29:31):
If you like your Souls-likes, then there is one coming out on September 19, Inotria.
I think I've said that right. Inotria, the last song.
Now, I actually played this at Tokyo Game Show last year in an early state.
This one is a very Italian-themed Souls-like.

(29:52):
So we're talking about Italian cities and rapiers and jewelists and all that
kind of Italian folklore style.
Which is an interesting, one of the unique-ish features, I guess,
of it is that it has some kind of mask system where you can put on masquerade masks. That's cool.

(30:13):
Yeah, it's got a nice visual vibe to it too. I liked a lot of it.
I just didn't like how it played, but it has had a year, I guess,
work on feedback from players and whatever.
So I will definitely be giving it a go. I'm not sure I expect it to be the best Souls-like out there,
but the unique theme of
it should help it stand out anyway it's kind

(30:35):
of crazy that souls likes have taken the saturation
of the open world game from like 10 years ago where you could just play open
world games and finish one and the next one would be released by the time you
finish it i feel like we hit those souls games like you've got a non-souls likes
just play just souls likes a full year yeah it seems like they've kind of cracked
the code in terms of what makes a decent in Soulslike.

(30:58):
Obviously, not every Soulslike is of the quality of, well, Elden Ring now is
kind of the one that people hold up.
But they've figured out how to make one that is decent enough, I guess, that...
Things can help them stand out and because of that now because
developers know how to make these things they're just doing that

(31:19):
because they're popular i'm still waiting for an indie elden ring
style game which is basically elden ring but fun there's a lot of those what's
that what's the new zealand one called ashen i think uh yes that's probably
what i would recommend for that indie souls like i don't know if you call it
fun but any sort of like i liked it well i mean if you You didn't like Elden Ring.

(31:41):
The chances of you liking any kind of Souls-like is pretty limited. Let's be honest here.
That game is brilliant. It wouldn't let me level up.
And then the YouTubers told me to go into the end of the game to level up when
I was at the beginning of the game.
Yes, Trent. We know you went down the wrong path and then got stuck and gave up.

(32:03):
It takes a lot more work to really get into it, I think, than what you've done so far.
But once you do get into it it's it's
great but yeah it's obviously not for
everybody and i would not imagine that
any of these indie ones coming out will convert anybody that's non-existing
fans there's just a lot of existing fans to appeal to so another rail train

(32:29):
sim comes out on in september on september 19 right near the other one right
near train sim world we've got but Japanese Rail Sim,
Hakone Town of Natural Beauty and Hot Springs,
which is cool because one of the things I've always been asking for with Train
Sim World is to give me some Japanese train routes.

(32:51):
I think licensing becomes an issue because they're private companies that run
those train routes, and I imagine that being Japanese, they come at a premium.
So this one obviously fills that niche if it's a decent enough game i have the
train trip to hakane from i would imagine it's from tokyo and it's pretty good

(33:14):
train ride so yeah cool i would definitely be playing that.
Moving on. A lot of stuff to skip past. I'm trying to narrow this down to the higher profile games.
On September 24, we have Disney Epic Mickey Rebrushed coming out, which is cool.

(33:34):
I never thought we'd get a remaster of that, given that the developer went barely up.
But I did enjoy the original Disney Epic Mickey way back when we...
I feel like I had the original, but I never played it.
Or I played a bit of it. I don't know. know
i pre-ordered the new one i'm gonna play it it's gonna be great is
it a new game or is it a remake or a rebrush i guess it's a rebrush it's it's

(33:59):
a remaster but you have to remember the original game was we game so it had
it's not that old right it's like well it was more it had pointer controls and
stuff there are kids who grew up after we wish you're out of high school now,
it is old yeah technology wise it
doesn't it won't look old if you just chuck it onto the switch i

(34:19):
feel like everything that came out in like the ps3 and 360
era afterwards still looks pretty good
yeah i'm pretty sure it's not i mean
they won't have done much to the graphics i
would think it'll just probably just higher res and
new ui but what they'll
need to do with it is get the pointer controls

(34:40):
out and make it playable using more traditional control systems which would
be be good because i was never a huge fan of pointer controls for more traditional
style video games it was fun for we bowling and some of the quirky stuff that
we did but it wasn't great for,

(35:01):
platformers and frankly rpgs and stuff so yeah if they can just do that with
the remaster then i'll definitely be looking forward to that because it was the first time.
I don't know if people remember, but with Disney Epic Mickey,
they actually got the rights to Oswald back.
Oswald being the very original Disney character before Mickey.

(35:27):
And for people that don't know the story back then, Walt Disney created Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit.
And thanks to licensing and whatever, realized that he couldn't use Oswald again.
End so when and that was how he then
decided he was going to create mickey with steamboat willy
and the rest is history after that but oswald kind

(35:47):
of languished in obscurity after that never been used again so getting the license
back for that character was a really big deal and that was a that was a huge
thing about epic mickey so yeah it's good there's a bit of disney history in
that game too which is cool also some of the very rare mickey content that we'll
be getting in 2020 like post-2010.

(36:08):
Sorry, what was that? Some of the very rare Mickey content that we'll still
get. Because Disney's not using Mickey for anything really anymore, right?
Yeah, it's a bit hard to use Mickey for stuff now.
Have we talked about this on the podcast before? I think we have.
I feel like we have, that I think that Disney can't do anything with it because
if they were to do a new Mickey movie or whatever and it upset fans,

(36:31):
then it would do a lot of damage to the brand.
Like they need to be super conservative with these old characters now because
there's just no way that they can possibly appease everybody.
So yeah a lot of them are just kind of in holding patterns in terms of the property
you see them when you go to Disneyland but you're not going to see a movie with them anymore.

(36:53):
So we've got some more dlc that's worth looking forward to on september
24 we've got warhammer 40k rogue
trader void shadows coming out now if
you haven't played rogue trader yet then do
so it's my favorite warhammer 40k game in a long time possibly ever it's isometric

(37:15):
rpg by the developers that did the pathfinder games and that's a very talented
development studio if If you haven't played one of their games before, you need to.
And this one was a very good take on the Warhammer 40k license.
So more of that is good. Apparently it adds another 15 hours of fresh gameplay,
which is pretty impressive given that the Road Trader itself was like 100 and

(37:39):
something hours long as it was.
They make very big games because Pathfinder were also, both Pathfinder games
were also well and truly over 100 hours.
We're talking battle escape 3 size games there so another 15 hours is certainly good,
if you've got the time okay on

(37:59):
september 26 we've got earth defense force world
brothers 2 coming out which is pretty cool since earth
defense force 6 only came out
a few weeks ago at time of recording so two
earth defense force games in about two months is a
pretty neat thing this is the blocky one this is
the cute characters and really random dress-ups that you can play with all it's

(38:24):
kind of the lego the legofication of earth defense force which is just a great
mix of things it's just the original
one was a lot of fun it was joyful it was just yeah it was great so.
I'm very much looking forward to this there'll be a hundred characters that
you can unlock and stuff of characters yeah 100

(38:45):
missions to edf moving on
good grief that's a lot of stuff coming out i feel like this entire podcast
is just be running through the through the games coming out okay so on september
26th we've also got worms armageddon anniversary edition coming out on switch
this was It was previewed in the recent Nintendo Partner Direct,

(39:10):
and it made me very happy indeed.
Worms Armageddon was the one that came out during the N64 era,
and it was a multiplayer obsession.
If you had an N64, you absolutely had to have Worms Armageddon because it was great.
And I'm looking forward to being able to play that online as it was with my

(39:31):
brothers and mates because it's been a long time since I've played Wormzombie again.
September 26 we have the
legend of zelda echoes of wisdom which came out and i thought
for some reason i thought that was ages away but nope
it's only a couple of weeks away that's the one where you
get to play as zelda and i'm so looking forward to

(39:52):
the discourse with this one it's going to be fun people are going to be complaining
out of their minds that zelda's not wielding a sword because for reasons that
will be the discourse around this game it already has been the case but putting
that aside it does look like it's going to be a lot of fun i hope they push
it more that they're not pushing it a lot but i just don't want to be one of those like,

(40:15):
princess peach showtime situations where like everyone who played
it was like this is a great game but the push didn't feel as big as the
other like main series titles well i mean it's not
going to get the same push that tears of the kingdom of course
not for the month of like the monthly
the nintendo release push you know yeah i mean it is the big release for nintendo
this month and given it is september it's probably going to be one of their

(40:38):
big christmas i don't know what's coming for the rest of the year for them but
it's going to be one of their big christmas items so and all the fans are talking
about throwing beds so it's got the internet discourse done.
Yeah i'm sure it'll i'm sure it'll be a fairly high
profile game because it just has the name Zelda and it
is the first time that you get to play as the princess

(40:59):
in her own adventure which is
why again I am a little bit worried that it'll be soured by the discourse but
we'll wait and see we also have a Nippon Ichi game coming out in September which
is just great because there weren't enough games already Reynatus wait no that's
not is that Nippon Ichi yes it is,

(41:20):
Ray Natas looks very good so I'm very much looking forward to this,
really know how to describe it briefly it looks like one of their super niche rpgs,
in the best possible way if you think back to
the likes of monarch and lost dimension and

(41:41):
some of the really quirky stuff that nippon ichi
publishes this one is one of those
it's set in modern era japan it's set in shibuya because of course let's go
world's end with you crossover as well so game of the year right there does
it oh there you go it looks really good looks great i can't wait for it i know

(42:02):
i'm sounding a bit flat on that but only because i've got so many games to play as it is
this one is really high on my list of things i want to play so that comes out on september 27.
On exactly the same day and on a very different note if you
like your footballs then ea sports is coming out is this
the first one since they lost the fifa license i feel

(42:23):
like i feel like they've made the ea football club before
you might be right i've lost track to
be honest i can't remember if you know
ea sports you know fifa 24 was
the last one or 23 was yeah i
think we definitely joked that we were just going to keep calling it fifa no
one was going to change their behavior at all oh everybody's still going to

(42:45):
call it fifa and they know that too which is why they're probably comfortable
with it yeah fifa is fifa i'm sure it'll be fine this one has a 5v5 rush.
I will say if there is one thing that potentially opens
up now for ea now that they're free of the fifa
license perhaps they can be a bit more creative with gameplay modes and things

(43:09):
again i don't know the terms of the relationship with fifa but fifa is an infamously
not yeah one would I would imagine that FIFA really wanted their image carefully
maintained in those games.
Yeah, they're an infamously not chill organization.
So I would imagine that the licensing came with some fairly heavy restrictions,
where now that EA is free of that, and they're just licensing players and teams

(43:34):
and leagues separately,
then there is potentially the opportunity there that they might find some kind of new creativity.
If so, maybe this five versus five rush could be a fun arcade take on that.
And who knows? I may dip back in this month or this year.
Okay. So two other quirky games.

(43:57):
I had no idea where on the horizon, but again, I'm going to have to find the time for this month.
On September 27, we have Looney Tunes Wacky World of Sports.
Sounds great yeah i know right is it just the looney hoops characters playing
sports yeah yeah it sounds great so for sports basketball soccer golf and tennis
with looney tunes characters,

(44:19):
if they do this right and it's like fun multiplayer thing to play like in the
vein of soccer smash and whatever this could be great i really hope so i i've
it's been rare that literally a title pitches the game perfectly but this is
one of those moments yeah oh this is so So good.
It's been interesting since we've had a great kind of Looney Tunes game as well.

(44:40):
And I just perked up when I saw that because this one has the potential to be that great comeback.
The visual style looks like spot on as well. Does it? Yeah, it's really good.
It's like the original characters, almost 2D-ish.
And then on like nicely animated. Oh, this looks great. Yeah, this looks great.

(45:01):
It has that kind of canon falling to tennis. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,
like an NBA Jam style thing for the basketball.
Like old school NBA Jam. Yeah, this could be awesome. This is the thing.
It's so hard to track all these games to get released now.
Yeah, that comes out of the system. It's being made for the Nickelodeon cart races, guys.
Well, I mean. Which is fine, but yeah. It's not like they don't have any talent.

(45:26):
Like Nickelodeon cart racing was okay.
It wasn't Mario Kart by any means, but it was okay.
It was playable so if they
do something interesting to this anyway i'll be playing it i will
let you all know with a review on digitally downloaded.net okay so
the other one that caught my attention again had no idea that
was this was coming out but this could be just the coolest thing

(45:48):
ever space invaders deck commander the board game
now as a board game fan and as
a super hardcore space invaders fan sorry they made the space invaders board
game a video game there is a space invaders board game video game this looks
so cool what this looks so cool so freaking cool oh yeah this is this is like

(46:13):
everything that i want in a video game.
Wow okay so that will be my month go on check it out if you get listening on
the podcast go do a google search for this thing and you'll see again as a hardcore
board game fan and as a hardcore Space Invaders fan,
that's just ticking all the boxes for me.

(46:34):
You've really gone full circle. Space Invaders started as a game,
became a board game and now it's back to a video game.
Yeah, I never played the board game. Actually, I did not even know there was
a board game to be honest.
So the video game adaptation of the board game, I can now see the board game
as well. That looks like a great board game.
Anyway, that's coming out on September 30 and I'm just more and more excited about that.

(46:59):
We also have a Bullet Hell collection coming out on September 30.
Three great shoot-'em-ups by an independent developer.
Don't know much about that, but I know there's some shoot-'em-up fans that listen
to this podcast. So that's coming out. You can look forward to that at the end of the month.
We have the Double Dragon collection coming out on September 30,

(47:21):
which is... The latest one already out.
Super Double Dragon, Double Dragon Advance, Double Dragon 2,
Double Dragon 3, and Double Dragon 4.
So all of the old Double Dragons. I did not actually know that collection was on the cards.
Oh, you know what? Double Dragons Arc System Works, right? I don't know why I thought it was Konami.

(47:44):
Double Dragon is Konami. Oh, is it? Old school Double Dragon,
yeah. Or is it Capcom? I thought it was Arc System Works.
No, Arc System Works is the River City Ransom.
Old Double Dragon is Capcom, I think. Oh.

(48:04):
I'm now Google searching. Okay, so you're confused now.
No, you're right. I'm wrong. It was Arc System Works. I did not know that.
Why did I think it was Capcom?
No, the original one was Technos Japan.
Distributed by Taito. And then I think it got sucked up into the Kuniro-kun games.

(48:28):
Okay, so I'm just talking crap and had no idea. But, okay.
I mean, it's obviously a legendary beat-em-up franchise, and being able to play
them all in one collection is a good thing.
There's an interesting-looking Detective Noir game called HAUMA.

(48:49):
H-A-U-M-A. if you want to google search
it it looks good i like
my noir and this one
looks like it's doing a decent job of that so it's got a comic
book style to it in fact i'm pretty
sure it's just an animated comic book now that i'm looking
at more of these screenshots probably just a switch version has some pretty

(49:11):
average reviews yes i see this it is just the switch version and it does not
look like people enjoy this one that much i take it back don't go and buy it
until you've read my review or something because it might be bad.
And that brings us to the end of the month. Yes.

(49:32):
That's a lot. There's a lot coming out in the start of October as well,
but let's not talk about that because it'll just go on and on.
All right. So what are you playing this coming month, Harvard of all of those
games that were announced?
I am surprised. I feel like we're hitting very high remake saturation.
I feel like that list was like 60% remakes from the last three releases.

(49:54):
And I'm excited about all of it. but for new games, I think Caravan Savage will be the larger car.
Yes, that did look good. That does look good. I like the idea of just driving
around unhurried. It's kind of vibing out.
We do have a review of that coming. Lindsay is looking after it for digitally downloaded.
And yeah, she was pretty enthusiastic about it leading up to release.

(50:17):
So I'm looking forward to her thoughts on it.
It does look good. Looks very good. What about you, Trent?
I'm going to play a game not in that list. i'm gonna
play a game which came out yesterday the game
of the year this year astrobot yes we
did record this podcast too late to add astrobot
to our little list of september releases it is a september release it is good

(50:41):
i'm playing it um it's really good i haven't had a chance to actually do my
review yet but it is it is very good it is fun and and excellent everyone's
giving it 10 10 out of 10 except IGN,
so all the internet's going over IGN for giving it a 9.
That would be about right. That's pretty cool. It is the Sony thing.
You can't give a Sony game a score that's not 10 out of 10 without attracting

(51:04):
the fans, which is why I'm always hesitant to review them.
I take my time and review it when people don't care about the reviews anymore.
I'm probably not going to give it 10 out of 10 myself. I think it's excellent.
The VR game was way better than the current demo playground,
which everyone's loving.
I think it's excellent. The only thing that bothers me a little bit about it

(51:27):
is it's just a little bit too on-the-nose advertising for Sony now.
Like, it's trying so hard to make Sony a cultural thing with the way that all
the collectibles and all the stuff in it, it's like you're right on PlayStation.
Control. It's losing its original identity, which was really good for the VR version.

(51:48):
But the best way to think about it is like, weirdly enough, you know,
the McDonaldland, you probably don't know.
Way back on the Game Boy, McDonald's, as in the fast food restaurant,
McDonald's released McDonaldland as a platformer on the Game Boy.
And you play as Ronald McDonald and you go around collecting McDonald's stuff

(52:08):
in a very Game Boy style platformer. Now, Astro Bot is much better than that,
but it does feel very similar in that it feels almost cynical.
It's such a walking advertisement and effort to make, like, Sony as a concept this...
This kind of cool cultural thing and I don't know, that bothers me when I see that in games.

(52:35):
That's not to take away from the fact that it's a very hugely entertaining platformer
and the design, the level design and everything about it is excellent.
Like it's just a really well-made game.
It's just a little bit on the nose for me. But anyway, you can look forward
to my review and yelling at me about that soon enough.
As for me i i

(52:58):
can't get past the space invaders board game
to be honest that's that's just
cool i'm so much looking forward to playing that but other than that like harvard
said it has been the month of remakes and remasters and stuff but i must admit
the fact that lollipop chainsaw is almost impossible to play legitimately without

(53:20):
this remaster makes me keen to get my hands on
the remaster, so I can play that again. So that's my game for this month.
I wonder if we'll talk about it next time I get it. Cause I remember that game
being good was where like the first critical arguments that set teaching at
a fart from the incident.
Yes. We may talk about that in the next section. So we'll come back after some music.

(53:41):
That was a lot of long section and we'll talk about stuff.
Music.

(56:00):
Welcome back. So as we were talking about in the last section,
we have a remake of Remastered, whatever you want to call it, I don't care.
We have a new release of Lollipop Chainsaw coming out. It's imminent.
It hasn't come out at time of recording.
By the time this podcast comes out, it will be very close, if not just out.
And it's going to be interesting to see how the conversation about the game has shifted.

(56:26):
So that's what we're going to talk about today. day people who
were around the internet back then or
at least were tapped into the video game
discourse may remember that lollipop chainsaw was perhaps a what's the best
way to characterize it controversial release yeah i think people really pigeonholed
it because it was seen as just like the the dumb fan service game that like

(56:49):
had things that hashtag gamers would enjoy in 2014 and like Like people,
oh, I actually remember people really fixated on the fact that there was an
achievement for doing something private, kind of what it was now. Yeah, yeah.
We'll get to that. It was controversial. There was a discourse around it.

(57:09):
I think that's the point.
There was definitely a lot of conversation around it, which was perhaps disproportionate
to what else was coming out at the time. It grabbed a lot of attention.
And it did sell well, too. That was the other thing that was probably noteworthy about it.
I don't know why I assumed it didn't sell well. Yeah, I think we all assumed it wouldn't sell well.
I mean, Goichi Suda was the developer, and he was, at that point in time,

(57:35):
famous for making games that people loved, but basically you didn't pay for or buy or play.
He was a bit of a critical darling without being much of a commercial success.
The games he'd really been noteworthy for before that were things like No More Heroes.
Which was after the first two no more heroes games yeah
yeah so there was two no more heroes games and they were they were

(57:57):
well received without being particularly well selling games
and then he before that he was like really quirky stuff
flower sun and rain and contact if you
remember that dsrpg and what was
his other one silver case and things like that
so like yeah he was doing like visual novels
and things that were it's weird because all the nintendo games they were

(58:18):
really big in the discourse in the nintendo community
it's surprising that they didn't really sell that well well
that was the thing though once again they were always well received without
necessarily being big sellers this one came out and it was lollipop chain sorry
i mean it came out and it was a very big seller as well as being fairly well

(58:38):
critically received but not without caveats.
So the less controversial, I guess, caveat today would be the fact that it is very short. Yeah.
I think it's probably a better thing for today's context. Well, yes.
But even, I mean, back then, there wasn't quite the same expectation that games

(58:59):
would be live services and last forever.
But at the same time, the fact that it was four hours or so did still rub some people the wrong way.
There was the discourse about it being a full-price game, and then you only
got four hours to play for it, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So there was that. But the bigger elephant in the room, which is what we've
been cycling around to, is the fact that you play as a cheerleader in a very skimpy skirt,

(59:26):
and that created a lot of conversations and debate and discourse.
And it was an interesting one because there was that trophy, which I'm getting to.
But, yeah, it was an interesting one because there were some people that read
it very straight, like it was just fan service and they dismissed it on that basis.

(59:50):
But the reality was, and it was pretty obvious, it wasn't being subtle about
it by any means, it was very much kind of subverting that.
In that, yeah, she was a cheerleader in a skimpy costume, but she was the one
with the agency and she was the empowered character. She was a Buffy-like figure, Juliet, is her name.

(01:00:13):
She was a Buffy-like figure and it had that same kind of subversive humour about
it. It was really undermining the whole idea about fan service.
So when you went and got the trophy, it was actually making fun of you.
So the trophy was for trying to look up Juliet's skirt by tilting the camera.
And if you did that, then she kind of glares at you and she covers her skirt

(01:00:35):
up and then you get the trophy saying you're a pervert, basically.
And that was a kind of example of the way the game was really making fun of
fan service rather than indulging it.
Being genuinely mad and they couldn't platinum the game because they didn't want that trophy. Yeah.
And it was just really interesting and or surreal, I guess, to be part of that

(01:00:58):
conversation way back then.
And I distinctly remember participating in conversations with games journalists,
where they were blowing up at the game and then blew up at me for suggesting
that it wasn't a fanservice game.
It was an anti- fanservice game in a lot of ways.
The other thing that a lot of people forget, it was written by James Gunn,

(01:01:21):
who went on to do the Suicide Squad film. He's the director of the Suicide Squad.
The good one, not the bad one.
And he's that kind of artist and filmmaker, and he definitely thinks about things
in a very satirical, subversive way.

(01:01:43):
And you can see that in the script as well in the way that the game's written
the characters are written and just the way it's all designed so even now if
you put written by james gunn on the game it would be an advertising like pool
well it's weird that they haven't really possibly he's,
distanced himself from it because yeah maybe he doesn't want to yeah i mean

(01:02:03):
he's got his he's got his cards and everything kind of wasn't really a big thing
when it first came out that was written by him. Like, I vaguely remember.
No, because he wasn't famous back then.
So, I mean, James Gunn, before Lollipop Chainsaw, I don't know if people really
followed his career, but James Gunn started out as a writer for Troma Films.

(01:02:25):
Troma Films being kind of Z-grade exploitation films. They're probably most
famous for Toxic Avenger.
And, yeah, that's where he got his start. I think he wrote Romeo and Juliet
or something was one of his first projects.
So he got his start in that area and then moved into Lollipop Chainsaw briefly

(01:02:48):
before getting into the more mainstream side of Hollywood.
So he's probably distanced himself a little bit from Hollywood.
Done before DC, now that he's kind of the creative lead, I think, for DC.
So that might be why they're not making much of a deal of him being the writer
of Lollipop Chainsaw with his remaster.
And that would be, you know, he didn't have that.

(01:03:11):
Yeah, he didn't. He certainly, his profile was certainly not as high as Goichi
Suda when the original Lollipop Chainsaw came out. So, yeah.
I lost my train of thought. What was I saying? uh yeah it's just going to be
interesting to see whether how the discourse has changed with this new release

(01:03:32):
firstly whether it actually attracts anywhere near the same level of,
discourse or gets and gets a new round of it and then whether it actually does,
show that the the the conversation has shifted a bit i feel like it will be
just a new round like What was the argument which was coming back a few months ago?

(01:03:53):
Was it short games, was it? Or it was something really ridiculous from 20 years
ago, and it's like, oh, this is back again.
I didn't notice, but short games. I'm a big fan of short games. Make more short games.
I think short games might be the more controversial side of the new round of
Lollipop Chainsaw Discourse, if it happens.

(01:04:14):
They have to acknowledge it costs, right? The reason for it is the other game,
I guess, that was around at the time of Lollipop Chainsaw was Bayonetta.
And originally Bayonetta was hit by pretty much the same conversation points as Lollipop Chainsaw.
It was all very fan service-y and it was all very exploitative and so on and so forth.

(01:04:36):
But I think at some stage, most people realize that that's not what Bayonetta is about.
And I think by the time Bayonetta 3 came out, which is the most recent one,
there was a more nuanced discussion about sexuality and how it's presented in
games and how that could be treated as different compared to exploitation.

(01:04:58):
And I feel like there's a better understanding that it is possible for characters
to be sexy or whatever without it being pandering fan service.
Us so i think i want
to say that perhaps people will get it this time around with
lollipop chain store i i'd
actually be quite interested to see what does happen because we also

(01:05:21):
didn't have the stellar blade conversation like was it this year last year where
the notes on that conversation i get i mean stellar blade takes explanation
in a different direction definitely but it it's It's interesting to see the
kind of attitude people have towards content like this, writing like this,
and character design like this.
Just to take a game that came out in 2013 and just chuck it back and see what

(01:05:44):
people think of it now would be interesting.
Yeah, Stellar Blade is another caveat, I guess.
Was interesting because the conversation around
that was more the it was
i'm trying to find a way of saying this without certain people blowing up at
me if they discover the podcast it was

(01:06:06):
controversial because it didn't because the
censorship debate i guess is the oh yeah yeah
you know it was controversial because the developers
added an extra half inch of clothing into
one of the costumes or something and that made people
freak out because all of a sudden something that was
very fan servicey was marginally less fan servicey and they thought that that

(01:06:31):
was pandering to the wokes as such so that was a really toxic debate and conversation
and we did see that a little bit in the lead up to this thing there were people
that were talking about oh,
his lollipop chains were going to be censored this time around or whatever.
That thankfully silenced up a bit when the developers confirmed that it wasn't

(01:06:55):
censored in any way, shape or form.
So hopefully we won't have a repeat of the Stellar Blade conversation.
But the fact that that Stellar Blade conversation happened, I think has soured
people on the other side of things, on fan service all over again.
So yeah that could be

(01:07:16):
an interesting spanner in the wrench because on one hand I would like to think
that the industry and the audience has evolved and changed a bit because when
Blood of Cold Chainsaw came out there weren't really many female games at all
there was Bayonetta like you said there was.

(01:07:37):
Portal probably is the only other one well I mean there was Tomb Raider yeah
but Tomb Raider has the same kind of
Well, that was kind of the thing, I think, where, again, where games like Bayonetta
and Lollipop Chainsaw caught people was because Tomb Raider was very much about...

(01:07:58):
Exploitation. Yeah, it was exploitation, you know, especially earlier Tomb Raider games,
they just had big boobed women because that was hot and you can put that on
a cover and sell copies and, you know, that was what it was.
So when they started to do that with some nuance like they did with Lollipop

(01:08:19):
Chainsaw and Bayonetta, it caught some people by surprise.
And I think things have moved along significantly since then now.
I feel like the discourse will be, Lollipop Chainsaw is woke.
That will be the headlines.
If that was the headline, no one would have thought that through to any extent.
It would have just been like, they latched onto one tiny little detail,

(01:08:42):
and it will just be a whole wasted conversation.
I don't know if it'll go that far, but I think that would be...
True to what lollipop chainsaw is than exploitation because
i mean for people who have played lollipop chainsaw then you know what you talk
what i'm talking about but you know the game is really quite famous for making

(01:09:06):
fun of the male role in these kinds of stories so at the start of the game,
juliet's boyfriend gets bitten by a zombie to save him from becoming a zombie himself,
she cuts his head off and then carries him
around on a belt for the rest of the game and this
guy is just sleazy stupid moron in

(01:09:28):
every way like he they really goes to town on his characterization as that and
you know meanwhile juliet's multilingual she's smart she's obviously the one
doing all the fighting and the saving and nick's literally useless because because he's just a head.
So, yeah, if anything, the game is woke.

(01:09:52):
Whether certain elements of the community decide to make an issue of that will
remain to be seen, but I think that's a better interpretation of what this game
is than the suggestion that it's some kind of sleazy fan service game.
And it's crazy that it's 10 years old now as well.
It is. It is.

(01:10:15):
From like two generations ago. A couple of generations, yeah.
The thing that's interesting, and I'm not sure if it's coming out this month,
I didn't see it on the list when we were reading it out, but it is coming out
very soon as well, is the remake of Shadows of the Damned. Oh, is that right?
Which is also a Gorinchi Suda game from the same era.

(01:10:36):
I think it came out about the same time as Lollipop Chainsaw,
maybe a little bit later.
A year before, yeah. later yeah so that one
was interesting because that one was very grindhouse
in its style and attitude and design
and all that and it was a descent into hell and
it was it was very very grindhouse like
old school grindhouse and that meant it was also very exploitative in its depiction

(01:11:02):
of women and stuff like that like that was the aesthetic that it shows and it
ran with than it was a little bit less on-the-nose satire than Lollipop Chainsaw.
So it'll be interesting to see how people reinterpret that one as well.
Oh, it's scheduled for October.
It's October, is it? Yeah. Okay, so it's coming out very soon as well.

(01:11:23):
I think it's also, maybe this is also just because I'm getting older,
but I think the understanding of exploitation of the genre has kind of become
a bit more intellectual.
Intellectual like people will not i don't
mean like exploiting as an action but
like exploitation as a film genre or as an aesthetic technique has

(01:11:44):
become a bit more respected with the understanding that filmmakers do this or
like writers do this for purposes that aren't just pandering to audience-based
desires but like it can be done as a creative choice it's a weird one I think, I mean,
another example of this is kind of the old school,

(01:12:06):
like actual pornography of yesteryear,
things like Debbie Dunst, Dallas and Deep Throat and stuff like that.
Those films have largely been reinterpreted.
Them today and these days they're seen as that's like the the aesthetic and
the of those films is is treated very differently to the way that they were

(01:12:28):
talked about back in the day,
and it is interesting to me how things like exploitation and grindhouse and
laxploitation is another example of the these things that were very very criticized
when they were new by the cultural critics a couple of generations of cultural
critics later get reassessed,
and people find different merits and features in them.

(01:12:50):
They see their own aesthetic language through the kinds of styles and techniques they use.
Yeah, exactly. And some of the themes of these films start to become the thing
that people analyze more closely than the surface level aesthetic.
I wonder if that was what the original like
Obchainz or N20 well was trying to do with that

(01:13:13):
idea of exploitation of women but also violence in video games
it was oh it definitely was playing with that
aesthetic and making fun of it and be more aware of
it and maybe just didn't hit at the right time because the conversation that
it was had was not the same level of conversation that I
think the game design wanted players to have it definitely
was and it was very elevated about it a good

(01:13:34):
comparison point I think is if you
were to go and pick up a game called what was it called a
school girl zombie hunter the the
surface level narrative of that game is actually very similar
to lollipop chainsaw there's a bunch of zombies and stuff and you play
as in that case a bunch of girls and you
go around the school just like in lollipop chainsaw and and

(01:13:56):
shoot all the zombies and save the world essentially
but that one is much
more you know out and out exploitation and does
so without the same sense of humor or satire
or cultural critique that lollipop chainsaw does and the difference in playing
those games is massive now back when those games were both released they were

(01:14:20):
treated as very similar by some people i'm i'm it is generally going to it is
genuinely going to be interesting to see if Lollipop Chainsaw gets that reassessment,
or whether it's too new for it, because it was only a decade ago.
Whereas when we're talking about film and Reinhaus being.
Music.

(01:17:58):
Back okay so for the last section of the podcast this week
we're going to be talking about something that is it is
something we've talked about on the podcast before um i
feel like we do it semi regularly but it
just continues to become a topic that
we need to talk about and it's concord
so for people who somehow missed

(01:18:21):
all the news concord got released uh
it's a it was a very high profile well i
don't want to say high profile given what happened but it had a
lot of heritage behind it because it was sony published
wasn't it it was yeah they really really pushed it as like the the ps5 um computer
was it just like the thing that everyone was going to jump to yeah exactly so

(01:18:45):
it was a sony published live service game that was going to be a you know a big deal,
It had decent reviews, positive reviews, actually, like pretty much all the
critics that played it liked it. I'm just going to check quickly.
I don't know if Metacritic even still has it, given what happened, but...

(01:19:07):
Well, actually, the reviews were not that positive. I was just looking at the Wikipedia article.
I was just skimming down to their critical response. As you were saying,
everyone liked it. I'm like, no.
Well, I remember there being a lot of people that did like it.
So maybe it was one of those kind of more hit and miss things.
But there were definitely people that enjoyed it.
Because I didn't play it myself, but I was on the discourse.

(01:19:28):
And there were a lot of people on Twitter saying, hey, this is a good game.
Why is it not doing very well? And it did do very badly almost immediately.
At least so as soon as it was released it made whatever splash
it was going to make but within days it was down to
like 70 people playing it at once which is not great for a live service game
in fact that's generally a bad sign and then days later really it was pulled

(01:19:54):
i think everybody got their their refunds yeah there they had to refund everybody
because it was just it was that short a
time that there was just no no way to to enjoy it so that is a pretty catastrophic
disaster i played a game that was also a disaster in that way babylon what was
it oh yeah it's about that game.

(01:20:16):
Babylon's fall babylon yeah anyway that was
the square enix one so also live service game published by a
very big publisher that one had platinum games as the developer which
was a very high develop you know he's a very high profile developer had no
reason that it should have failed and it was fun the time
that i played it i played it with a matt who
people may remember from the podcast he's not around

(01:20:38):
so much anymore but matt and i played it a lot and it was it was fun but it
died within a year and within weeks of its being released was down to one or
two people online at once so concord was heading that way very quickly and rather
than let it die slowly They just killed it very quickly.
And since then, there's been questions about why, which is what we're here to talk about now.

(01:21:04):
It just comes down to the simple fact that nobody wants
a new live service game i think that's so true i
think if you have a design structure and model
that requires you to be basically playing only one game then anyone who's going
to play a live service game already has a live service game they're playing
right now so how are you going to get them to switch to whatever news thing

(01:21:24):
they're going to do yeah they've already sunk as much time and money into the
one they already played yeah exactly and we're talking about games that have
developed as live service games that
have huge communities and, you know, Fortnite's and League of Legends and whatever,
that have professional players.
And just as a hobby, it's the one thing that people play.

(01:21:48):
To attract people over to something else, you need to offer them everything
that that existing live service game did, but better.
And no live service game can launch with that. You know, that takes ages to build up to.
So there's a simple problem there for anybody creating a live service game I
want to call it now I really do, I want to call it now and say that Valorant

(01:22:10):
is probably one of the last live service games that will do well,
because I think the conversations can happen in boardroom now is no longer what
it was like 10 years ago being like look at how much money,
look at how much money World of Warcraft is making look at how much money like
Evil Mind is making or whatever,
it's going to be how do you stop your game from not being in Concord,
and it's going to make it much harder to get a live service game off the ground

(01:22:35):
because people know how it'll fail.
It's, yeah, it is all games. I mean, Helldivers 2, people remember that being,
that was the game that people couldn't stop talking about earlier in the year,
right? Even earlier in the year.
It has just crashed in terms of the number of people playing it concurrently.
It's much better than Concord was. It's got what?

(01:22:59):
I'm looking at it now. It's currently got 18,000 people playing online,
which sounds good, right?
But when this thing was really riding high, and it was the new live service
game that was going to change everything and people couldn't stop talking about
it, it had 458,000 people playing concurrently.
So from 458,000 down to 18,000 is a pretty big drop over the course of a couple of months.

(01:23:25):
And that is a good one. No, that is one that was, that was very well respected and loved.
That's what's so disheartening to me because it's almost
to the point where the quality of the game doesn't matter anymore it's
like how much community can you get
to keep it afloat because regardless of how good
your game is if no one's playing it if it's multiplayer and live service

(01:23:48):
like all your development efforts have been wasted basically because
no one's there to play it with so all this ecosystem
environment you made is just worthless yeah and there
was a great article i read to that point that pointed
out that once you release a live service game you are
then in a perpetual state of scrambling to keep up with players demands yeah

(01:24:08):
i read that about fortnight because i think fortnight there was a phrase that
was thrown around it's like perpetual crunch basically like because the game
is constantly releasing you're constantly in release crunch yeah and any change
you make to the game gets absolutely hammered by some section of the.
Community so if you rebalance something you're going
to piss some people off and if you

(01:24:30):
don't rebalance something you know you piss some other people off
so you just get into this perpetual state of it becomes
very toxic very quickly that you can't
make everybody happy and the people
who are unhappy they just let you know we're talking about the video game industry
here people who are unhappy and not quiet about it and i remember hell divers
2 actually being one of the better examples of handling that community because

(01:24:53):
they would they would openly be hostile to their community if they thought they
were being unreasonable and really respected that yes and no.
So you say that these are you know
the one of the better ones are handling it their current review score the
the most recent reviews is at 37 so

(01:25:15):
mostly negative yeah so that what
we're were talking about you know the the inevitable process is
that your community gets does get increasingly toxic and
you see that with other ones like fortnite and and
and league of legends these games are the kind of the popular ones and they're
the ones that have the professional leagues and the players and they do everything

(01:25:36):
they can to create this positive vibe about them those games are intensely toxic
to play absolutely i am actually communities and these things are terrible,
which is exactly like that it's like the mentality
is like people have been playing for 10 years and it's a ridiculously hard
game it gets more and more complicated with every patch because they
need to appease the the long-term players so it's impossible

(01:25:59):
to learn and everyone's super mean to you and i
played two games and i deleted it and i was so sad because i love that game
it's so well made it's so like strategically interesting but i also don't want
to spend an hour with the nine worst people i'll ever speak to in my week you
know it's like Like the community breaks what is otherwise a fantastically designed
game. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

(01:26:20):
And this is the big problem with these live service games. That's.
You're releasing a new one and you've got to compete with some massive incumbents.
And the massive incumbents have communities that are in perpetual death spirals.
You know, there's just no way out.
I just don't see any of this being sustainable for the long term.

(01:26:42):
It's also interesting. A lot of these games probably would have been approved quite some time ago.
So games take a while to develop. So are we going to start seeing less?
Or are we just going to see more and more but they're just going to come out
and fail because they're set to die?
I think we're going to start seeing less. That's my gut feeling.

(01:27:04):
I feel like the industry is moving.
You know, earlier in the podcast, we were talking about how like every.
I mean, the Souls formula has become very repeatable.
So a lot of developers are now creating Souls games.
To me, that makes sense as a kind of post-live service
thing to move on to something like that because that can be
live service souls no no no i'm not

(01:27:25):
saying live service but what i'm saying is that you know
that's a that's a genre where it's single player yet
also very popular sells well and i
feel like the industry is going to
starting to shift away from this idea of you
know perpetual online constant multiplayer to
more traditional experiences like that i

(01:27:48):
mean the other one is you look at ubisoft ubisoft
is generally a pretty good gauge on
on where the mainstream is moving because they are
kind of the mainstream developer of stuff their skull and bones was it skull
and bones live service games just crashed and burned on launch they still maintain

(01:28:08):
their existing ones like what's that's medieval fighty one for honor for honor
they're Yeah, yeah, they still maintain For Honor.
They still maintain Tom Clancy's Rainbow Siege or whatever it's called.
They still maintain their live service games, but then they go and do Avatar
and Star Wars were both open world games again.

(01:28:32):
So they're kind of doubling down on their big projects being those things again. Yeah.
Feeling that live service is on its way out and they're looking for the industry
as a whole is looking for where the next selling points will be it'll be interesting
to see how sony catches up because they've done a lot of restructuring with

(01:28:53):
a lot of their development studios and then they've.
Basically had this flop and their best-selling
game oh i don't know it's gonna be the best selling games but basically
the best like rated you know game
has been astrobot a single player game it compared
to like all these other like multiplayer experiments they've

(01:29:14):
done and they've done it like most of
their studios like tokyo jungle or whatever the game
tokyo jungle that's a game you know i
mean like they've like basically like that studio which
makes astrobot is essentially eventually like not as big as
it once was and well i
mean sony's in a bit of a transition period

(01:29:34):
they did do the the live service thing because i mean
hell divers is published by playstation and then concord as
well but you know in the background they've
got insomniac working on what i imagine is spider-man
3 and they've got naughty dog working on whatever naughty
dog's doing next and that'll be another single player game
it won't be the pressure to do a multiplayer

(01:29:55):
player live service thing so it's really just i think this their cycles meant
that they experimented with live service now but that didn't mean that they
were pulling back on what they traditionally do well so i i don't think sony's
so much a problem i think microsoft has got issues because.

(01:30:17):
Weren't, I mean, they just shut down studios at random these days.
But yeah, I'm not sure Microsoft's got a great read on the market at the best of times.
So they've probably got some live service things in the works that they would now be questioning.
I wonder if we'll see like kind of almost a reverse Fortnite situation because

(01:30:37):
the Fortnite started as a survival game that you could play alone or you could play with friends.
And then PUBG came out and just absolutely exploded. and then Epic Games was like, can we PUBG this?
I wonder if there's current things being designed as live service games,
where midway through the conversation, they go, well, we have this world and
we have this engine, we have these systems, they're pretty interesting,

(01:30:58):
but can we also get some single player into this in case the live service doesn't
pan out? Yeah, that's an interesting idea.
Well, I think it's interesting that Concord hasn't been switched to free-to-play game first.
Why haven't they tried that? Or are they going to try that? That would be interesting.
I think there's a separate risk attached with that for the early adopters who,

(01:31:23):
I guess, see that change in there or what they perceive the community to be.
It reminds me of... What community? Well, that's true.
But what the hype drums it up to be versus what the reality is,
I think it's always pretty difficult.
I remember Overwatch having a similar situation where it was a premium price
to buy it and then a further premium price to play it.

(01:31:45):
They were so lucky in that, I guess they had really good character designs,
they had really good, for the time, quite unique game mechanics.
People did start talking about it, and once it became the conversation point,
that's when people started playing it.
If they don't get that hype, then they don't really have any steam.
Well, it could be more like Titanfall. Like, Titanfall, the original was very,

(01:32:07):
you know, probably not as big as the sequel.
Like, the sequel was basically like a whole rebranding and push for getting
everyone onto that, whereas the original was, you know, had a very rocky development
in terms of people, you know, not enjoying the beta and other weird things from that.
But Titanfall 2 had some single-player, right?

(01:32:30):
Yeah, I think the games in general- You're thinking Apex. Oh, Apex.
No, Titanfall. Because Titanfall, everyone hated the original Titanfall.
Nobody hated the original Titanfall. Yes, they did. When it was like beta,
everyone was like, it's crap and boring and there's nothing to do.
Yeah, but that's beta. Titanfall 1 was a single-player game anyway.

(01:32:52):
They're like so they're like games where
they're single player but they're always online so then
the idea is you then use the multiplayer to then
play with your friends so like you connect
into like it's like that post-apocalyptic ubisoft game the um those are those

(01:33:15):
are titanfall and titanfall 2 are more traditional single player games with
a multiplayer component i mean that's That's not really light service.
Apex Legends was the live service experiment for them.
And that one paid off. That's ended up with the community. I don't know what
it's like these days. I don't think it did all right.

(01:33:36):
It's also in a death spot. I mean, they're all in a death spot.
That's going back to the point.
To me, it's really the learning curve with it.
And as you're learning, you sink all your resources into it to the point where
you feel like you have to keep playing. It's such a toxic cycle,
but it's so lucrative and so effective.
It gets me every time, so surely, hopefully you can catch on to this cycle and they realize.

(01:34:02):
Someone's going to try it with a heavy influence on AI, and the idea would basically
be that AI just keeps generating crap content for people to keep consuming,
so they just have to maintain servers.
I would have first that pitch. That's not going to solve the problem with live

(01:34:23):
service because, if anything, that's just going to accelerate the problems with live service.
Ultimately, the problem with live service games is everybody's already played them.
You know that's that's the thing that will develop the best practice and
every new game that comes out is really just following along with that you know
it's it's the best practice way of in get playing keeping player engagement
high you know doing content drops and structuring the games in in a way that

(01:34:47):
because they're all quite simple video games to to play because they need to be,
that for everybody else to fit in the narratives are designed if they have a
narrative at all the narratives are designed in a certain way the characters
are designed in a certain way Like, AI is not going to solve any of that because
all AI does is tap into the homogenization anyway.
So if that is the idea that they're going to do, if that is their approach,

(01:35:11):
then it's just going to crash and burn even faster.
I think, like I said before, I think the industry is waking up to the fact that
people don't want this crap anymore.
People want better crafted games that do interesting things.
And I think, for me, the big thing that will accelerate things from now is actually Wukong.

(01:35:32):
Because Wukong kind of landed and became a mammoth thing overnight.
It's the best-selling single-player game of all time.
And I think that the games industry is going to notice that.
And they're going to respond to that. And Elden Ring was another example of
that. You know, the people, again, the industry has always been one which has had ebbs and flows.

(01:35:57):
So, you know, the industry chases the popular thing at the time.
And then once people get sick of that popular thing, they move on to the next thing.
You know, we've had cycles where RPGs have been popular and then out of popularity
and then back in popularity and so on.
At the moment, I think that live services are very much about to ebb and it'll

(01:36:17):
claim pretty much all of them except for a couple.
Which people continue to play, but the majority of the industry will move on
to, I think, single-player games will actually be resurgent.
I guess we're in a weirdly good spot right now because when no one really knows
what the next big thing is going to be, that's when people are more willing
to try everything, like try experimental things, try unusual things.

(01:36:41):
Well, it's not even, I don't think it's even experimental things anymore.
I think that, I mean, you can, you can debate whether Wukong is a souls like
or not, but you know, he uses that rough formula and then Stellar Blade was a massive success.
You know, it sold big numbers. Yes, part of that was for reasons that were,
I mean, because it was a controversial game, so it got a certain level of notoriety,

(01:37:05):
but it sold big numbers and Elden Ring sold massive numbers.
So that kind of challenging, but also gorgeous and narrative driven kind of
single player game is definitely back on the ascendancy.
Also thinking of the current Nintendo strategy, though, is to not put all the
eggs in one basket and just to do a bunch of side quest games.

(01:37:28):
I'm also really enjoying that because we're seeing things that we otherwise wouldn't see.
Yeah, but it's also at the end of a console generation. They usually do that anyway.
I mean, Nintendo has always been Nintendo and it's found its niche.
It's a big niche, but it's found its niche and kind of stuck with it.

(01:37:49):
It's never really followed the trend of the industry. When you look at the trends
of the industry, though, I think that time where EA famously came out and said
single-player games were kind of on the wane, that's come around full circle.
I think even EA sees that because they did two of those Jedi Souls-likes,
and they both sold pretty well as well.
You know, this is the thing. It's just what sells well is what people will move to.

(01:38:14):
At the moment, you can't release a live service game without it crashing and
burning. And meanwhile, if you make a decent or good quality single player game,
it sells in absolute bucket loads.
So, yeah, it's going to be interesting over the next year what gets announced
because I think it'll stop being live services. Thank God.
And we'll benefit because we don't cover live service games,

(01:38:39):
but we like to cover single player games.
Have you played Black...
Black myth wukong have you played wukong i
haven't played it to be honest i'm not a massive souls like person
i know so i'm i'm waiting this
wave happens well that's the thing it's like i
said it's not really you can debate whether wukong

(01:39:01):
is a souls like it's really on the fringe and i
think stellar blade was a little bit like that too they kind
of look and well they don't feel like they they look
like souls likes but they're not really it's
a solid like for me though is that's the question well
no because your issue with souls likes you go down

(01:39:21):
the wrong path and then get stuck you can't go down the wrong path with black
with with uh wukong it's very um it's quite linear the the best way to think
about wukong is probably more like it's a boss rush style game but the bosses
are not that difficult like it's not a really really difficult game.
And it's a really good interesting take on journey to the west is the thing

(01:39:45):
i think my issue with the with the soulseeker genre is more that i'm not a big
character action person like my favorite way of interacting the game is not
always just to control from third person and my character and fight things.
Like, I'm more of a systems and, I guess, strategy kind of person nowadays.
So it's not really the style that appeals to me the most.

(01:40:08):
I find the games that I'm playing nowadays are a bit smaller and a bit more,
like, top-down rather than third-person.
Yeah, that's fair enough. But you should definitely check out Wukong anyway
because it's one of those, you know, zeitgeist-style games where it's useful
Useful to just be aware of it. Yeah.

(01:40:29):
Because it is going to be influential, I think.
I think backing up on Stellar Blade, the fact that these two games back to back
just demonstrated an appetite for a certain type of video game.
And perhaps also...
A less of a reliance on the American market, I think, is a factor as well.
Well, yeah, because they're both Asian games, right? Yes, yes.

(01:40:54):
We've just had a message from Trent in a little chat that he's dropping off.
Thanks for joining us, Trent. Good to catch up. And thanks for being on the podcast.
Yeah, no, both Stellar Blade and Wukong were developed by Korean and Chinese developers.
I think it was actually Chinese, not Taiwanese Chinese, but Chinese from mainland China.
I think those were both, yeah, they were both developed in Asia and they were

(01:41:18):
popular in Asia first and foremost.
And I think that was the thing, like Wukong took people by surprise a little
bit with how well it sold because the sales came out of China.
And I think in understanding that, that's going to shift things a bit too,
because people realize traditionally the whole industry has just been on the

(01:41:40):
assumption that you can only be successful if you're successful in America.
Like that is the one market you care about more than anything else.
You know, we had the Japanese industry try for multiple generations to just
create American content.
And it resulted in some absolutely dismal video games.
And some fantastic video games, like Metal Wolf Chaos.

(01:42:02):
Yeah. Yeah. Then that one didn't end up selling that well anyway. It was great.
I love the idea of appealing to Americans by completely making fun of Americans.
Oh, no, no, that's, that's a great thing. But I was thinking more like,
I don't know if you remember, Koei Tecmo tried to create a Gears of War-style
game called Quantum Theory.
And that was just absolutely terrible. Square Enix did all kinds of experiments.

(01:42:26):
They tried to create a, most memorably for me, they tried to create a first-person
shooter action thing called Mind Jack. Yeah.
It was just dismal. Anyway, the Japanese industry tried for years and years
to just make sure that they were appeasing the Americans.
And that was to their detriment. I think what we're seeing now is proof that

(01:42:49):
the market's a bit broader now.
So we can have games that don't necessarily worry too much about what Americans want.
And that's a good thing. I can't say too much on this. I'm not that familiar.
Earlier but i did recently go back to china and visit and live
service games would be enormous in china china still
has quite a big pc cafe scene

(01:43:12):
where it's it's not like you have a console you game at home it's like you game
with people in an environment and that's an environment where live service games
actually really kind of thrive is because you develop this almost third place
that you go to play games but i wonder what single player will mean for that because i think single
player is like not hard to enjoy, right?

(01:43:34):
It's not hard to explain to someone why a single player is fun.
Whereas sometimes multiplayer games, you need a social group to bring you into it.
Otherwise you're not going to like start playing League of Legends by yourself,
you know? So it'll be interesting to see how that goes.
Yeah. And especially in cafes playing single player games, we do not disturb. Yeah.
Yeah. Especially, you know, as, as those games go on, they become harder and harder to get into.

(01:43:59):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Like League of, League of Legends is impossible to get
into if you don't have somebody really walk you through the coaches now. You need a coach, yeah.
You need someone over your shoulder for the first 10 hours just being like,
here are what all the buttons do.
Yeah. So I think that that is an appealing point to single-player games that
you can just kind of jump in and don't need to worry about that.

(01:44:20):
I mean, China's such a huge market, it can sustain anything.
When you're talking about a billion people, or a billion and a half people,
you can have live server sixes side-by-side with single-player games and they
both be hugely successful and make a lot of money and everybody's happy so i think that's.
Music.