Nintendo Switch 2 Speculations, Warhammer News, and Fortnite Godzilla Invasion | Game Junction Podcast - The Game Junction Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark Trobough (00:00):
Hey everybody, how's it going?
How's it going, Brandon?
What's up?

Brandon Hurles (00:04):
Not much, man.
What's going on with you?

Not going doing, doing pretty good.
This is episode 111.
Yeah, if you're in the Game,junkie podcast 1-1-1.

We only get one time to ever do that.

Yeah, right Now, you gotta wait until 2-2-2.

I know right.
Yeah, I thought it was kind ofcool, I was thinking about it
there.
Yeah, How's your week been man.

It's pretty nice Thanks to the Thanksgiving.
Everything's pretty slow, busyfor a few days, have a nice
little Thanksgiving, slow downon the week.

I know you're excited about that snow.
Funny enough it was snowing.
It was just snowing a few hoursago Again.

For me.

No for you.

For hours ago again.
For me, no, for you.
For me it's not much, but ithasn't snowed since, like
tuesday, I think, for us, butthey're still like just a bare
minimum, but I was driving andit was snowing so it wasn't too
bad the last two nights though,oh my god, I think it got down
to low teens, but we had windchills near zero the last two
nights, with like a good, like10-15 mile an hour wind.
So you're like, within like aminute, you're like my hands

(01:08):
hurt, like I need to put them ina pocket.

Get inside dude, it was cold this morning.
Oh my god, I was leaving forwork.
It was so cold.
I was like ah.
I'm not a fan.

I can do without it unfortunately, if too far
south, not getting that lakeeffect snow.

Yeah, I'd pass on all the snow.
I'm not going to lie, though.
I do like a white Christmas,but I'm like other than that the
day after we can go away now.

I had a white Thanksgiving.

There's that too .
You can have a whiteThanksgiving.
How was your Thanksgiving, man?
I know you probably didn't domuch of white thanksgiving.
Yeah, well, I mean, there'sthat too, you can white white
thanksgiving.
So how was your thanksgivingman?

I mean, I know you probably didn't do much, but
no, had a turkey, some stuffingmashed potatoes, some some
pumpkin pie.
It was good, just pretty muchrelaxed and chilled the whole
day for the most part hey,that's what you know.

It's cool about thanksgiving it's I always like
in the evening just relaxingafter having some turkey and
stuff like that.
You get tired.
Man has that stuff in it thatmakes you tired.
It's always like a chill.

You know what I mean in the evening yeah, just a
just a tad, just a just a weelittle bit, just a just a little
bit yeah, but no, we got somegood stuff coming up.
Got some Pokemon, the tradingcard game, some news, some
Godzilla and in Fortnite news,well, we got some good stuff
coming up.
Got some pokemon, the tradingcard game, some news, uh, some
godzilla and in fortnite news,well, we had some more switch
rumors, uh, you know, drop andstuff like that, and then just a

(02:33):
whole host of, uh, much smallerintermediate stuff to talk
about sweet.
Yeah, let's go dive into it yeah, so we had some, uh, warhammer
40k news about the new patchthat's adding the dark angels
chapter, uh, you know, some newoperations, new enemies and
stuff like that, uh, which isgreat news.

(02:55):
I've heard a lot about this.
I've watched this game but I'venot actually gotten around to
actually play the game.
But from what I've seen andsome like the some of the live
streams recordings, it looksabsolutely amazing.
I've never heard anything badabout this.
So it's nice to.
It's nice to see they'rethey're getting more content
with this game.

Yeah, for sure I think I comment on on X.
You're not following X.
Just definitely give it anyjunction cast and any junction
to follow there.
But you, you tagged me insomething.
I said we should stream thisbecause I have been wanting to
play should.
I really have been wanting toplay it.
So it's like, oh, there's anexcuse to play it, you know.
So I think people would enjoyit and I think I would enjoy it.

(03:30):
So I'm not like a Warhammer guyfor the tabletop, you know what
I mean.
I just don't want to playtabletop anymore.
But the game itself looksreally good and I watched
somebody stream.
I jumped into it and waslooking at it and I was like man
, this really looks fun, kind oflike, um, hell divers to how I
still haven't played that yetbut I want to.
Um, I've kind of been waitingto grab like the physical for

(03:53):
like 20, 25 bucks or somethinglike that, cause there's just so
many games right now.
It's like, ah, it definitelywant to play both of those.
They've both been on my radar,for sure.
Warhammer, again, hoping tofind a deal on it, but I think
if we stream it it'll be anexcuse to grab it.

Yeah, well, I'll say this right now, because now
through December 4th, for the PCaudience over on Steam they
have their Autumn sale, whichnicely lines up with Black
Friday.
So Space Marine 2 is 20% off,it's $47.99 right now.
Is there a physical for it?
It's Steam, it's digital.
You want the physical.
It's probably going to be fullprice.

I'm going to look it up while you're talking.

My local GameStop was doing a bunch of sales but
it was mainly for used games andstuff like that.
Most of the actual physicalstuff was full price.
That I could tell.

I have to look because I guarantee Okay.

so right now, on Amazon it's $50 physical.
You're saving like $10.

Walmart $50 physical.

I assume that's going to end pretty quickly.

It's probably Black Friday, it's just the
first Google search Target.

It's $40 right now, physical Well because also
normally the Monday after CyberMonday.

Yeah, that's true.

The physical stores do it for like a day,
though some stuff gets extended,but the online some of these
sales, kind of like with Steam,they do it for more than one day
, just because they're notlimited with a certain stock or
they just have like a wholewarehouse of stuff that they can
kind of sell.

I will say the.
Target deal that's really good$40, but it looks like on G2A
you can get or hold on.
I'm misunderstanding.
There's an Ultra and GoldEdition too, so there's a little
bit more obviously, but itlooks like there's definitely
some deals out there.

(05:40):
Greenman Gaming is $52.19 forPC, InstantGamingcom $45.38.
So there's definitely somedeals.
If you're interested ingrabbing it, there's some deals.
$40.
Whether it's physical or it'sonline.

Usually these Steam sales are like that's the
time where you usually go andbuy a bunch of games.
Especially if they're oldergames, you can save a lot of
money.
Like Subnautica is 67% off.
It takes two 75% off.
The Forest is 80% off.
I'm now just kind of goingthrough and seeing what was on
there.
Like Cult of the Lamb is 50%off.
Like you can get really good,long as they're not like brand

(06:17):
new games, you're going to get asmaller discount, but for some
of these older games you cansave a lot of money.

Space Marine 2 came out this year correct, just
like yes, once I go orsomething.
Okay, I thought so, yeah,definitely definitely want to
check it out.
Um, I think, probably becauseit is sometimes so interested in
would want to grab a physical.
But yeah, I mean it looks greatlike and the guy I saw
streaming it was streaming onps5 looks awesome.
Man, really good Talk about it.

I guess this game did come out earlier this year,
but uh, like, and the guy I sawstreaming it was streaming on
ps5 looks awesome, man, reallycould you talk about it?
I guess this game did come outearlier this year, but uh, uh,
you didn't chronicles 100 heroes.
On steam it's 50 off, so it's25 instead of 50.
Oh, nice, cool.
So, like you, I guess,depending on how quickly they
came out, of the size of thegames, you can still like I mean
, 25 is a, you know, still adecent amount of money, but like
for a game that's normally $50?

(07:05):
.
Dragon.

Age just came out and I saw it for $15 on
Gamefly.
I got to tweet about it.

Just saying Because nobody wants the game,
resale value is not there at all.

If you're selling off a brand new game,
there's a problem.
That's a whole other story.

Some of the ones I did and didn't have, like Meta
Force, 25% off.
These are all Steam numbers bysure.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is 67%,cyberpunk is 55%, hogwarts
Legacy is 70% off, Ghost ofTsushima is 20% off, rust is 40%
off, helldivers is 20% off, soyou can save some money.
Obviously, some older, moreniche games might have bigger

(07:44):
discounts, but if you're in themarket and you have games you
want to play next year holidayseason, this is the time to
stack up.
Obviously, they don't do this.
They do this a couple times ayear probably once a quarter.
This is a time you find a gamethat you've been wanting to buy.
It's not a high priority, butyou can do only like 40, 50
bucks and then you can get itlike half off.

(08:04):
You're more likely to kind ofgo and pick it up oh, definitely
yeah, take advantage of steamsales like dragon quest 3, it's
still full price.
It's just too too new of a gameyou can't expect.
It just came out on steam theveil guard still $60, so that's
not that they probably shouldhave discounted that totally off
topic sort of, but I just got atweet for Final Fantasy 1
through 6 collection.

It's $35.99 at Woot.
Keep in mind this is like a $70game because it was like a.
It has a small print run, soit's not a standard price.
I paid, I think, $75 on Switch.
I don't know how much you paid,but Close to full price, if not
full price on it, I don'tremember.
It could be quite a bit for it.
And, uh, on woots, which isowned by Amazon, 35 99.

(08:50):
So definitely, definitely grabthat.
I can't recommend that enough.
He has six games in thereremastered, so it's a really
cool collection.
So if you are watching thislive, that's a for you, yeah.
But I mean, I guess, enoughabout that?
Fine Geez, what's that I said?

(09:11):
Fine Geez, I don't try to belike that, it's just, there's a
lot of games you can talk about.
No, for sure.

Like forever.
For sure, I didn't knowanything about this game, but
Avatar Frontiers of Brandora isgetting a new story pack DLC.

You didn't know about this game, the Ubisoft
game.

Avatar.
I didn't care for the movies orthe movie.
I only watched the first movie.
Me neither.

But when I watched this gameplay keep in
mind this came out a little bitbefore Ubisoft was really going
in the gutter this legitimatelylooked really good to me.
I think it reviewed aboutaverage, which I don't really
care about, but it looks fun andI am not at all a fan of the

(09:56):
first movie.
I didn't watch the second moviebut I did not like the movie
Doesn't mean the IP itself isnecessarily bad based on one
piece of work.

I'll say this like the movie, cause it was
really popular.
It did something very popular.
Technology behind the movie wasreally new.
I thought the storytelling waspretty mean James Cameron being
behind.

it was cool Cause, like I'm a fan of his
work, it's not like the actualstorytelling did anything
unexpected or new.

It was just shot in a very, you know, unique way
just shot in a very, you know,unique way.

Yeah, yeah, it was unique.
It was definitely kind of oneof a kind for the, especially
when it came out, and you knowI'll give it that that
definitely did a lot of cooltechnology stuff behind the
scenes.
I just didn't care for themovie itself.
I didn't like the way that itwas stylized.
So I was kind of like instantlydrawn away from the movie to
begin with, because I justdidn't like the way that it

(10:44):
looks.

It's a standard story.
It's like oh, my main character, he's here with the military.
Oh no, you're going to send youin.
You fall in love.
Oh no, maybe you're the badguys and we're going to fight
back.
It's a very generic story thatyou've heard a million times.

Yeah, sure, I had a friend that absolutely
loved this game, so that was Iwas one of the main reasons.
It kind of came on my radar andI still want to grab it if I
find it For like 20 bucks.
I it's actually like 30.
I'm at Walmart right now.
It just like it looks prettyfun.
I'm yeah, I'm saying looks likean amazing game or anything,
but it looks fun.

(11:17):
So for the people that are fans, this is pretty cool.
I think it's neat.
It's Ubisoft, so kindisoft tobe expected, with additional
content, whether it's paid ornot.
I'm not sure I'm going toassume it is Because it's
Ubisoft, but it definitely looksneat and it's first and third
person, so that's kind of cool.

No, 100%.
We've got some news.
This isn't new.
They've done this a lot before.
They've done this before, butGearbox flew out a terminally
ill fan to come out and playBorderlands 4, essentially get
his own personal early accessand stuff like that which we've
known they've done before.
I'm pretty sure they did it fortwo, because there's actually a

(12:00):
character in two based off ofone of the fans of the series
that was terminated and didn'tmake it to the launch of the
game.
Yeah, there's an achievementfor it.
He doesn't always spawn, but hespawns within Sanctuary and
stuff like that.
So this is one of the at leastin recent memory, one of the few
good things that Gearboxactually does.

Yeah, I mean shout out His name is Caleb
McElpine.
And shout out, His name isCaleb McElpine.
It looks like took to theborderlands.
Three subreddits reveals latestage four terminal cancer
diagnosis after being givenabout seven months to live or
less than two years ofchemotherapy.
So there's a progression of thecancer.
Shout out to this guy,definitely.

Yeah it got like over like 19,000 uploads on just
the subreddit.

I mean it's definitely cool.
I wish a lot of other companieswould take notice of this,
because there's definitely, likeyou know, borderlands is a
massive series and I was shockedthe day that they announced it.
Whether it'll be good, I don'tknow.
It wasn't like we've discusseda lot.
The past two games have a badrecord for that.
Yeah, three hasn't beenexcellent gameplay, terrible

(13:07):
story, terrible execution, ifyou ask me.
But yeah, man, I hope this guypulls through.
It was good on them for doingthis.

Well, they did say terminally ill, so it's more
than likely, yeah, but they'restill well, hopefully he's still
, hopefully it'd be nice becauseit did say that they were
saying hopefully he gets to seethe release, and you know
there's always the chance thatit could turn around.

So hopefully it does.
That's never good, so, but itis cool and it is cool that it
also is cool to see that they'refar enough along to be able to
show somebody stuff.
So that means there's someprogress there and obviously
they had been working on beforethey went and threw out a logo,
essentially for the trailer,cause it was pretty much.
You know, there wasn't any,there was no substance there for

(13:57):
the trailer, but we knew theywere working on it.
Um, but it's cool that they'reat least far enough along.
It gives you some hope that wedon't have to wait forever.
For is it supposed to be nextyear?
we talked about for sure, but Ican't remember if it's a 2025 or
2026, but yeah, it looks likehe said so.

(14:20):
I am a die hard Borderlands fanand don't know if I'll be
around for Borderlands 4.
Is there anyone that knows howto get in touch with with
gearbox see if there's a way toplay the game early?
Long shot, but I thought Iwould try.
Thanks for your help.
I had over 19,000 sub uploadson reddit's the studio, so they
would do everything they can tomake something happened.

(14:40):
Thankfully, last week McElpinewas able to visit Gearbox's
Texas headquarters to playBorderlands 4.
Gearbox said Caleb is cool, alegit gamer who knows
Borderlands inside and out.
I'm glad he got a chance toplay.
I'm praying he makes it to whenwe are done.
Thanks, internet, for signalboosting Caleb's story.

(15:01):
We're deeply thankful to theBorderlands community for
rallying around Caleb after heshared his story several weeks
ago.
His courage, strength anddetermination are an inspiration
to us all.
Our team was honored to hostthem last week our studio.

So any word on yet 2025 no, it was just a broad
release.
They just said 2025, but therewere rumors that would be
sometime late spring, earlysummer, the rumors of the of the
window.

But so the only official, they've been working
on this for a while, then I meanthey had to have been like at
least like three years at least,right.

If it's coming out next year, it's four.
Came out a while ago.
It came out in what 2020, 2019.

Yeah, it could have been one of those, didn't
it come out before that.

It came out pre COVID, so I'm pretty sure it
came out 2019.
Okay, well, it feels like youcame out in like 2017.

Um, you can, totally be right.

Yeah, no, September 13th 2019.

Okay, yeah, so it's.

They're probably working on it right away, then I
would assume yeah, I mean someof some other games, but those
very obviously had, you know,less of a focus, probably some
of their smaller studios.
Else we're working on those sorealistically.
This game's been in developmentprobably for at least a good
three, four years.
At this point I would.
I would say so.
I mean borderlands, uh threehad dlc that came out throughout
2020 and stuff like that.

(16:17):
So you're thinking probably by2021.

It went full-on development I don't know why it
feels like came out so muchearlier than that to me, but for
some reason maybe it's becausethe releases have been kind of
so.
There's been so much spacebetween them compared to some
series.

Yeah, like on average probably about five
years between major titles.

Which is a good chunk of time for such a big
series.
There have been Tales of theBorderlands, stuff like that.
Two of those.

Well, the first one didn't work.
On the second one they did andit got awful.

Yeah, it was rough.

That's why I don't have a lot of faith After
three in New Tales.
The writing is terrible.

Yeah, I'm hoping that this is not that way.
But yeah, I mean, I'm with youfor sure.

Let me tab out.
We had some news for darksector is now they say free on
steam for the next 72 hours.
This was posted yesterday, twodays ago, so you're pretty much
through today okay.

So if you are watching live, definitely go
grab that.
I I grabbed it, haven't playedit.
I had it on the 360, um, and Icannot remember for the life of
me how the game was.
I can't remember if I liked itor didn't like it.
So, yeah, I mean if you'rewatching live, obviously, if
you're listening to the audiopodcast, it's going to already
be over, unfortunately, but thatis a good reason to watch a

(17:37):
live podcast or on YouTube orTwitch.
Small plug there.

Yeah, because, as of right now, it's free, it's
free through November 30th at10am.
I don't know what time zonethat is.
That's just what it's saying,so it might be local time yeah,
yeah, so definitely it is a $10game, so it's not like it's the
worst in the world, but freegame is free game that's what I

(18:04):
was saying.

Man got to build up a steam library.

Yeah, right.
Also, there was a court orderthat was delaying Microsoft's
plans to add the Xbox games ontothe their app on Android.
Yeah, Interesting.
Did you know a whole lot aboutthis, or?

I didn't.
I didn't until I saw thearticle.
Um, it looks like so.
Sarah bond said a temporaryadministrative stay recently
granted was granted by thecourts.
Uh has delayed thefunctionality still.
Bond added that they're readyto launch with the feature as
soon as they have the legal goahead.
Um, she said specifically that.
Let me see.

(18:44):
Xbox went to offer players morechoice on how and where they
play, including being able toplay and buy games directly from
the Xbox app.
I recently shared our ambitionto unlock these features first
with the Google Play Store onAndroid devices in the US, while
other app stores adapt to meetconsumer demand due to a
temporary administrative stayrecently granted by the US.

(19:04):
While other app stores adapt tomeet consumer demand due to a
temporary administrative stayrecently granted by the court.
So we are currently unable tolaunch these features as planned
.
Our team has the functionalitybuilt and ready to go live as
soon as the court makes a finaldecision.
We are eager to launch and givemore choice and flexibility to
players.
Why are you laughing at me?

I'm not.

You're laughing at something.
It wasn't you okay, whateveryou say.
What's your thoughts on that?

I.
I can see why there's somethingthere, but I I assume long term
this is probably going to getapproved I don't, I guess.

see, I don't quite understand.
I'm confused.
What's delaying it?

It says Exactly what was going on and why it was
being delayed with court order.

It looks like Microsoft announces plans
following a recent decision by aUS judge that forces Google to
open up its Play Store tocompetitors for three years Per
the Rolling, the latest victoryin Epic Games' long-running
antitrust battle against Google.
Google will have carrythird-party Android app stores

(20:12):
in the Play Store or grantthird-party app stores full
access to Google Play's catalogsof apps.

So more than likely this is an extension of
that other, because lawsuitsusually they can reach far and
wide compared to just theimmediate person or the company
that it impacts.
Yeah, that makes sense.

It's interesting , I guess.
Yeah, not much else to say onthat.

I don't have an Android so it doesn't really
affect me, but I mean, somethingtells me, long-term this is
going to be a problem.
Oh, you're a big Xbox, get outof here.

We just stringed Age of Empires.
It's an.

Xbox game.
I said I don't have an Android.
I don't have an Android either.
I missed that part, so itdoesn't affect me.
I don't know where you'regetting that from.
I don't know.
Bro's just saying random stuff.

That's what I do .

But I mean talking and sticking with the
Xbox stuff.
We had more game pass stuff.
There was only two games thatwere concerned, confirmed for
next month at the end of theyear.
That was both overthrown andthe Indiana Jones and the Great
Circle.

Okay, first one comes out on the 5th, the second
one comes out on the 9th let meask you, because this is coming
up real soon Is this somethingyou're going to play, because
I'm pretty dang hyped for it.

I love Indiana Jones.
I've not paid attention to itat all just because of the
tracker group.
The Indiana Jones IP as a wholehas had a terrible tracker.

What if I come back and say this is really good
and it's better than Dial ofDestiny.
This is legitimately good.

I need to bother to watch Dial of Destiny after
watching Crystal Skull Look.

I didn't either.
I didn't like Crystal Skulleither.
I didn't watch Dial of Destinyeither.
But I will say I've got alittle hope based on what I've
seen of the game.
It looks good.
It legitimately looks good.

Regardless, because even if it's a game I
would play, it's not going to bea high priority.
It's still going to be a.
We'll wait and see what theactual reviews are like for this
game.

I'm playing it on streaming so if you want to
check it out then, and maybe itmight interest you that way we
can talk about it.

We'll see when it comes but it is just, you know,
just a little.
I mean it doesn't surprise me,it comes to game pass.

I mean they yeah , this is from a studio that
microsoft owns, so that's notsurprising at all which is good
for you.
I mean, I assume this is goingto be able to run on the xbox
one, but there's, you know, I'mjust guessing I mean, if it
comes to their pc version of thegame, pass it, it won't be a
problem.
Yeah, yeah, and which I don'tknow.
If it does, I'm going to assumeit does, because they're pretty
good Xbox, pretty good aboutthe day one, pc stuff versus

(22:53):
PlayStation, for instance.

Well, PlayStation didn't have like a direct.
They don't like own it likeMicrosoft does with like windows
.
Like you remember, you remember, yeah, I remember, Microsoft
owns the, you know, the windowsoperating system and stuff like
that.

So they have a little bit more.

Yeah, I guess available, accessibility and
stuff like that Sure.
Yeah.
And they've been doing this alot longer than Sony has.
For Sony, you know, kind ofdoes it like after the fact.

That's what I'm saying.
They're they're pretty goodwith the PC stuff, which is good
.
I mean, you're right withMicrosoft for sure.
But I still don't see why we'renot at the point where there's
a day-in-day on PC and consolefor PlayStation.
It feels like if you're goingto do it, do it when the hype is
there.
You know what I mean.
I think the way that they'relooking at it is oh, we can get

(23:38):
two hypes, we can get a hype forthis console and we can get a
hype for PC, which is not reallythe case, If you ask me, with
the hype for the console,because the game is actually
coming out for the first time,it feels like that's the main
hype.
The PC hype is not really there,because there's very few people
.
I see oh, the PC version ofSpider-Man two comes out today.

(24:00):
I'm so excited.
Yeah, I don't see that ever.
But when the game is coming outfor the first time, that's when
the hype is there.
I feel like we're going to getthere.
I think they want to doday-in-day.
I think they've got to get thatPC studio right, though.
I just don't think they'vegotten there yet.

Unlike a lot of these third-party studios who've
just been doing this forever atthis point.
Yeah, between console and PCreleases.

I mean, sony has really kind of missed out on
garnering that PC audience too,I feel like.
But I think we're pretty closeto that day-in-day for
PlayStation.
I think they want to do it andI think they get that.
But I also think maybe in theirmind they were first thinking,
oh, we can get two differenthype days for this, and I just
don't think that's it.
I mean, do you see that?
Do you see that hype for the PCdrop of one of these games?
I've already been out for sixmonths a year.

I just I mean, it's always there, but the
problem is the the core peoplethat were going to play it
already got it on the console.
Yeah, so you the the it'ssomewhat there, but it's very
obviously tempered because it'snot a brand new release.

Otherwise, Exactly If it had been first day
with a first release for it.

It would have made far more of a splash.

Yeah, I agree, I'm with you on that.
I think it would sell more onPC if it was done that way.
I feel like there's a lot ofpeople probably who also will
buy the console version.
They would potentially buy thePC version instead, which
doesn't matter as long as theygot the sale.
But I just think that they'regoing to get more people if they
do it day-to-day.

(25:29):
I just think that's importantbecause Microsoft does it well.

You just have the overall hype for the game Once
it's been out for a while.

The hype for a game coming out on PC just isn't
there and like you said, a lotof people who are PC gamers
still own a console, and it'sfor that reason, it's for the
exclusives, it's for the non-PCstuff.
A lot of people that are reallyinto this, like me and you.
We own console and PC for whatwe care about.
And I just think that a lot ofpeople are like oh, I'm so

(25:58):
excited for God of War.
They would have bought that onPS5 at that point.

Yeah, and it's just one of those.
It's just yeah, there arepeople that would have bought it
otherwise, but it's like I wantto play this game, but I don't
want to wait a year to get it.
Exactly, I might eventually getit on PC like you use down the
road when it's on an actual saleand stuff like that, Cause you
paid full price for it once you.

That just doesn't make any sense, right
For sure.
I mean, like Stella blades, anexample here of, like a recent
sort of recent example of howwe're waiting, you know, so long
for that Everybody did want toplay it and had a console
plotted on that Right.

Wanting to shill out another twice the same
amount of money again for thatyou already own and have played
is a big ask for some people,and I feel like one of their
probably thinking like theirthinking there is.

First of all, they may have thought you know,
this won't hit, first of allbecause nobody knew the cellway
was going to be as big as it was.
And also, I think the otherthing was that maybe they think
I'm just trying to get in theirheads thinking about this.
Maybe they think, oh, they'llbuy this again for the mods.
That's the one thing that'sgoing to carry the game is the

(27:10):
mods for that game?

And hopefully when the second game comes out,
it'll be day and day.
But I don't know what kind ofdeal they have with Sony as far
as exclusivity, because I'mpretty sure Sony doesn doesn't
own shift up but shift, butthey're the publisher.

it's like yeah, they licensed it, is that right
I was gonna pull it up.

I don't think that they own shift up, that's
yeah, uh, it's a public companyat a soul, because they've only
made two games stellar blade andthen goddess of victory and DK,
which is a mobile game.
Uh, but as far as it looks likethey don't, they're not.
They're, they're a independentcompany.

(27:52):
They're not running by anything.
It's shift up.
Is the the actual corporation?

right?
Yeah, I didn't think they ownedup.
Uh, my guess is, because it wasa brand new IP, that was a one
game deal.
That's just my guess, but Icould be wrong.
It could be like a three gamedeal.
I'm just going to guess, sothat it was probably that, just
because of it was such new IP,they were a mobile developer
before.
They didn't have any trackrecord of like super success, so

(28:19):
that's just my guess.
For their, you know, I guess,playstation's safety.

Yeah and they just they needed a you know, a
boost in my health.
Like it's not not easy firsttime releasing an actual game.
I mean you're a developer youknow, in november of 23, it was
revealed that shift up signed acontract to become sony's first
korean second party developer.
Uh, yeah, and then, and then88% of the company, of the

(28:47):
employees there were developers.
So, they're a second-partydeveloper, which is a.
This is coming from Wikipedia.
A second-party developer is acolloquial term used by, you
know, the games media todescribe studios that take
development contracts from aplatform holder and develop
games exclusively for thatplatform.

(29:09):
But no, these are not owned.
They've signed a contract.
For how long?
Essentially, if they werepublished on everything, they'd
be what we consider a thirdparty.
First party is their own, thirdparty is they do their own
thing.
So they partnered with them topublish this game, probably
because of the financial, therisks and stuff like that for a

(29:33):
new game, a studio nobody'sheard of before.
So they needed that backing.
But we don't know how, theintricacies of that contract and
stuff like that and penaltiesfor breaking it.
So I would assume probably,whatever the sequel is, it'll
come out, but assuming theycontinue to make money and the
studio gets bigger financiallythese are all financial

(29:55):
successes you could probablyeventually see them becoming a
third-party studio potentially.

Yeah, I could see that.

It would become a first-party.
One of the two is going tohappen eventually.
I could see that for sure.
I mean, sony is a big company.
There's a lot of money there.

Yeah, there is.

I can see that we would prefer to see them as a
third party independent studiothat they've kind of made a name
for themselves.
I want to see this on theSwitch 2.

Stellar Blade 2?
, switch 2?
That could happen.
For sure I don't think.

Switch 2 is going to have the hardware for it.
I don't think the Switch 2 isgoing to be able to play Stellar
Blade at the same quality thatthe.
Ps5 does.

No, I mean you're going to be close.
You're talking about like ahandheld hybrid console, but I
think with DLSS, yeah, you'regoing to be able to run Stellar
Blade 2.

I think you're putting too much faith into what
DLSS is no, I'm not, I've seenit in person, but your core
hardware has to be able to runthe game.
It will to get that upgradeit'll be able to run.

It's still only one.
You don't see the crazy stuffuntil you have a PS5 pro with it
.

Anyway, like you're looking at 30 frames, but
even playing it, it's more than30 frames it's not even.

It's not even what's the word I'm looking for.
It drops down into the late 20s.
I've seen captures going wayforward.

I've not seen that on my PlayStation it
doesn't.

You can't.
When you drop down like 27frames, you're not going to be
able to tell the differencebetween 27 and 30 that much, but
it definitely does.
I've seen where the captureshave had it drop.
It's not a steady 30.
With PS5 Pro it's a steady 60.

But it goes from 27 all the way to like 48.

You get more than 30 frames on that game, no
you are most of the time, butI've seen it drop down to that.
Go watch Digital Foundry'scapture with it.

You can see.
I played the whole game.
I digital foundries capturewith it.
You can see.
I played the whole game.
I never had it.
I know because if it dropsbelow 30, you can't see the
difference between 27 and 30.

Three frames.
You don't see that Like you'replaying the game, you're in it.
You probably don't see that.

But I will say, like I've been playing it at a
steady 60.

And, like it's great, you're putting too much
stock into the pro, I'm puttingtoo much stock into everything.

I think the Switch is going to be more
powerful, but it's still goingto fall short of what some of
these games are still going tobe hardware wise.

It's going to be at a PS4 Pro and then I think,
with DLSS you're looking closeto PS5 closer to PS4 than PS4
Pro.

See that then.
I think with DLSS you'relooking close to PS5.
I'd say closer to PS4 than thePS4 Pro.

See, that doesn't make sense because it's
already close enough to PS4.

The problem is, if it's still equivalent to the
size of the Switch, there's noway you can put the hardware
that you need into it In thedock.

Possible.

It's possible, right?
I doubt it, though it'spossible, right.
I doubt it, though.

I don't know, I don't know any more than you do,
I'm just guessing.
I think we're looking at PS4Pro territory.

I think they could make it the hardware
equivalent.

Maybe Witcher 3, for God's sake.

It plays at a significantly lesser quality.

I played it and loved it though I mean in
handheld mode.
You don't notice that as much.

You've got a smaller screen, but it still
doesn't play to the same qualityas.

No, it doesn't.

I played it on a PC, so there's a significant
drop-off from a PC.

No, for sure.

I mean, you're looking at a handheld console
and I'll say this the problem isthe hardware the Switch 2 would
need to contend with with theother gaming handhelds out there
, Require the price tag to be ata minimum $700, $800.

Well, I think Nintendo's notorious for not
losing money on their hardwareright, so that's the one thing
they can't afford to.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I think the Switch shows they can live off
first-party titles all day.

It's got probably the best first-party
titles all day.
Yeah, I mean, it's got probablythe best first-party catalog
ever, which is insane becausewe've seen every month this year
at least one first-party gamecame out and we're at the end of
the life cycle.
You look back at the DS and 3DS.
That was not the case.
They learned and the Wii Uobviously was like a big example
of how, if you go four or fivemonths between first party

(34:04):
releases, that's a problem.
That's not good for yourhardware.

Um which still, the other consoles can live
without it because they aretheir third party games.

Yeah, yeah, but for the wii u, I mean, that was
like a whole different story.

For that, I mean, when you don't have any third
party games coming out, it's anissue well, the switch and the
third, the third-party'sessentially not, the major
third-party's essentially notexist on the Switch.

Well, you say major.
What do you mean by major,Outside the games that are?

like 5 to 10 years old, like to be fair.

They get.
I mean Dragon Quest was gettinga 3, 8, 2, 3.

Games for the most part.

I mean you look at like, if you're talking Call
of Duty, obviously not.
If you're talking Madden,obviously not.
But if you look at like, I meanI don't even know what the word
is, because if you ask me,Dragon Quest 3, HD, 2D, look at
it, Japan sells obviously a biggame.

It's a big third-party title.
Let's be fair, that's a remakeof an old game.

But it's got a lot of games.

It's got a lot of games.
It's not a graphically heavygame.
The way it's designed and youweren't going to expect this you
would expect a game like thatto run just fine.

I'm actually going to pull a couple things
real quick while I'm thinking ofit, so you can go ahead and
move on.

I just want to show these no you're good, we
did get some.
This is a game I don't care forBrandon might Marvel, a game I
don't care for Brandon mightMarvel rivals.
The PC requirements wererevealed for this game and stuff
like that, you know, as far asthe OS, the RAM drug stacks, the
storage, which I'm pretty sureSSD is the recommended.
Obviously, this game comes outon the 6th.

(35:35):
Oh, this was so.
It's recommended to haveWindows 10, have a i5 1040 for
the processor or a Ryzen 5 5600X, 16 gigs of RAM, graphics at
2600 Super, a RX 5700 XT or aIntel Arc A750, directx 12,

(36:03):
which is pretty standard.
It's a broadband internet, youknow standard thing 70 gigs.
So it's a fairly large game andobviously it recommends it in
SSD.
Some of the stuff drops down.
If you're looking for like theminimum stats and stuff like
that Goes down to like an i56600K or a Ryzen 5 1600X Still
needs 16 gigs of RAM, a GTX 1060and RX 580 or the Intel A380

(36:32):
still requires DirectX 12, notthe Shocker, it's still 70.
It still requires broadband andyou can use an HHD for this.

But the SSD is very obviously, you know,
recommended for sure, are youplanning on playing this one at
all?

As a 0% chance.
I play this game.
I'm not a Marvels fan and stufflike that.

For me it just has to do with it.
It's a arena shooter.
It's just not my type of game.
It's basically a Overwatchclone, essentially.
Yeah, Just not interested muchmyself A la Concord.
I might watch a friend'sgameplay or something.
They stream it, but I'm overallnot interested.

It's just the type of game that I was like.
I don't care for the IP and Ijust don't care for the style of
game.

Oh, quit it.
You're a big Marvel fan.
You love Doctor Strange.
Talk about him, okay, whateverthis guy says.

You know whatever , but we did have some sparkling
zero, some drama.
There was apparently atournament that had some
problems.
Apparently there was a rosterimbalance and what they say
gameplay exploits.
This is still a fairly earlygame In the grand finale.
The grand finals for this gameare happening next month, which

(37:55):
is shockingly close to when thisgame launched.
I'm surprised how quickly thisstuff was moving, which means
there's still problems.
People are still trying tofigure out the actual game and
stuff like that.
As far as balancing bug fixes,exploits Not a lot of time if
you're putting a tournamenttogether to figure out what is
and isn't tournament legal asfar as certain characters and
stuff like that.

Yeah, I'm excited to see what people do
with it, because I'm alwaysinterested to see how.
Just like you know, I'm by nomeans great at the game.
I'm always interested to seehow people are doing certain
things.

You know what I mean, so I like to watch that
People find things to exploitand stuff like that with you
know characters.
Obviously it's not going to bea balanced game at launch.

I mean I was watching which they actually
travel around the conventions toget the competitors and stuff
like that, which is really cool.
But the Tetris WorldChampionships, a game that I'm
not good at, I don't necessarilylove.
I have a soft spot for Tetrisbecause I played it so much as a
kid Obviously original Game Boy, nes so I played this game
multiple times over on differentconsoles.
But I'm not necessarily apuzzle fan.

(39:01):
But to watch these people dothe things that they do like
that kid that actually basicallybusted Tetris and people had no
idea that you could actuallyfinish Tetris that's amazing to
me.
I love to see people who aregood at things and how they do
it.
You know what I mean, because Icould never compete in that
ever.
I would not survive SparkingZero for five minutes.

(39:25):
I would be done completely.
They would wipe me into thefloor.
But I'm always interested tosee how people do these things,
so I always think it's reallycool.
I'll watch playbacks and stufflike that.
If this is live or something,I'll definitely check it out,
for sure You're always laughingat me.
What did I do now?
Yeah?

just trying to keep it happy and stuff like
that yeah, I think it's cool,for sure.
I didn't know a whole lot aboutthis, but apparently the game
that I've never heard of calledBaby Steps was delayed to next
year, which I mean might notreally be all that.
I mean you say next year, butlike what 2024 has, like what

(40:07):
five weeks left in this point.
Yeah, pretty much to say nextyear is kind of somewhat
disingenuous, unless it's like asix month delay.

So do you remember when this game was
announced in place in one of thePlayStation showcases?

Never heard of this game before in my life.

We, I mean, I think you watched it anyway, but
it was earlier this year.

I would have completely forgotten about it.

But this game is really bizarre in that you have
to control their legs liketheir lifelike.
So it's kind of like that gameFall Flat I don't know if you've
ever seen that Human Fall Flat,it's called.
Where you like, control everysingle limb.
So, like like, your controlleris controlling every single limb
when you're walking or moving,so you have to keep them bound.
Yeah, this game is very bizarre.

(40:48):
Go back if you can real quicklook on YouTube and just look at
like five seconds of this gameplaying.
It is hilarious it is not again.
Baby Steps.

Oh, I thought we were talking about the other one
.

No, I mean that that's the same sort of concept,
but yeah, if you just look atthis, you gotta control their
legs, so like you're controllingeach leg separately, and it's
just incredibly bizarre, veryunique concept, but not
something I would ever beinterested in.
I played Human Fall Flat.
I was terrible at it, not goodat it whatsoever Um, not good

(41:24):
whatsoever.
It's just a bizarre game.
It's got a bizarre name, um, soI'm kind of interested to see
somebody play it or something,but I just don't think it's.
It's going to be something I'mI'm going to be playing, unless
it ends up being like aPlayStation plus game and I can
try it out or something.
Um, but did you get to checkout any of it?

Yeah, it just looks weird, super weird.

Right, it's very , you know, I think of it.
It feels like a very Japanesegame, although I don't think it
is Um it just like feels veryJapanese to me.

Sorry, this is the same studio that made the
game.
Uh, getting over it, which islike a very one of those.
It, it, which is like a veryone of those.
It's like a rage gameEssentially.

Really, I haven't heard of that one.

You ever seen that game One dude, that it's
like a dude in a pot and he'sgot like a hammer.
You have to climb up and if youmess up you can fall massively
back down.

No, I've never seen that before.

I have to look at it, getting over it, that can.
It's like a rage inducing game.

Is this something you would play?

I have no idea.

Probably not.
This looks very much like BabySteps.
This is bizarre too.

This is weird.
It's too weird for me, to behonest.

I was like this is like it's by a studio called
Crazy Games.

It's like a game a streamer would play and nobody
else.
This is exactly what this feelslike.

Yeah, this is bizarre.
It's designed toer would playand nobody else.

That's exactly what this feels like.
Yeah, this is bizarre.
It's designed to be streamedand nothing else.

Both these games look really weird.
You can see their whole trackrecord with what they're doing.

They make weird niche games.
Yeah apparently they're oddlydifficult.

Yeah, very weird , that's funny.

Just a little bit .
We were just talking about thisbefore we went live, though
apparently there was a petitionto stop why you gotta say it
like that, mark because I don'ttake it seriously okay to stop
the live service elements inHogwarts Legacy 2.
So this is not yes.
There's like 8800 people thathave signed this that don't want

(43:24):
live service elements inHogwarts Legacy 2.
So this is not yes.
There's like 8,800 people thathave signed this that don't want
live service elements in thisgame.
I think it's going to make adifference.
The only way you don't get liveservice in games is to not buy
the game and give them money.
Yeah, there's every incentiveto put this stuff in the game
because it only has.
You only see the financialpotential upsides.

This one's weird because it's Again.
We were talking about itearlier.
This is a game I want to play.
I was also waiting on a deal onthat and I never ended up
grabbing it.
I actually saw it go out for$20 and I forget why I didn't do
it.
So I still want to play this,because I am a big Harry Potter
fan.
You're not necessarily no.

I mean, the game was fine, I didn't have a
problem with it.
I just I just wasn't a HarryPotter fan, so it didn't grab me
like it did other people, whichmakes sense.

I mean it kind of it feels like a game for the
fans, right Like doesn't it feellike that sort of game.
So to me it's obviously tryingto capture that Harry Potter
audience that's already thereand established.
So that's what it felt like tome and I haven't played it yet,
but based on what I've seen sortof the community, what people
have said, that's what it feelslike.

(44:36):
So if you're not a fan, you'reprobably not going to go into it
having a good time unless youunderstand stuff or you kind of
get the references or kind ofget what's going on.
So to me that makes sense, thatyou don't like it because
you're not a fan of Harry Potter.
Yeah, for me.
I don't know, does this haveany DEI crap or was this just
one of those things where itkind of felt like it even had a

(44:57):
game of the year last year allthe drama wasn't about the game.

It was about the author of Harry Potter.

Oh yes, jk Rowling yeah, all the drama
wasn't about the game.
It was about the author ofHarry Potter, jk Rowling all the
drama was because of the old JKRowling.

None of the drama was actually about the game
itself yeah, I remembereverything that happened.

I mean, look, you should be able to state your
opinions.

I'll put that it felt like a disingenuous
argument and it was on her partthat they used her as a as a
criticism of the game, notactual, legit criticisms of the
game itself.

It very much felt like they really took that
and and tried to ruin a bigaudience that's already there
for the franchise Cause I meanshe, I mean whether you like
Harry Potter or not, holy crap,massive pop culture impact Like
huge.
I mean those movies, if youremember they were massive.

And the game was largely successful.
It wasn't a buggy, broken mess.
It was a decent game.
At launch.
I just wasn't a big fan of theIP.
So yeah, I had a decent timewith you.
Know how much I played of it,which I think was between six
and ten hours, is how much playtime I put into the game.

So you still played quite a bit.
I mean enough to get the gistof the game.
I'm surprised you bought it.
To be honest with you beingthat you're not a fan.

To be fair, it was more of the.
I don't care for this game, butI'll buy it out of spite.
Yeah okay, I gotcha Like ifthere was no drama around it and
it would have sold wellregardless, I probably wouldn't
have picked it up.
But because I just wanted to, Iwas irritated about it and what
the criticisms were about getsinto the culture war stuff.

I don't care what anybody says about anything
, but I'm a fan of JK Rowlingherself.
I've always liked her.
She's always spoken like a veryintelligent person to me.
It's not like I know a tonabout her or anything, but the
stuff that.

I've seen.
Yeah, I mean she's not an idiot.

I don't agree with everything she says, but I
don't know anything else shesays that I would even agree or
disagree on.
I don't know, I don't payattention that much, but she's
always felt like a veryintelligent person, she's always
spoken like a very intelligentperson, so I've always
appreciated that with the amountof books she's written and
they're they're fairlywell-written books like she's.

She's not an idiot.
She just has opinions that Idon't agree with all the time
everybody's got.

There's a lot of stuff I don't agree with.

You know what I mean, but it was like two sides
of an aisle that I don't agreewith fight each other like
there's like the stupid, butwhatever yeah, no, for sure, um,
but no, I, I think that this ishappening anyway.

To me it feels like, yeah, this is, it was a
successful game.
It did well.

It was in a game of the year, you know nomination
, you know so for the liveservice comes down to if this is
single player, it shouldn't bethere.
But 100.
This isn't on the studio, thisis on warner brothers who's?
Yeah, 100, that's where this iscoming down from.

For sure, for sure.
I think it's going to happen.

It doesn't give you a leg up and you can
technically ignore it.
It's not the worst thing, but Iagree it shouldn't be there at
all, and there's only two waysto make sure it's not in a
future game.
Either you don't engage at allwith the live service aspect of
it and make it look like peopledon't want it and not
financially viable.
Those are the only two options.
But to be fair, I think mostpeople aren't going to care, or

(48:11):
not going to pay attention justbecause of how pervasive People
won't care right.
Live service is just sopervasive at this point it's
wholesale irrelevant for mostpeople.
They're just not going to payattention.

Everybody knows how we feel about live service,
right?
So I don't have to restate thatagain.
But hopefully my hope is thatthis isn't required to be
connected to the internet,because to me it feels like
again I haven't played one, butyou can correct me if I'm wrong
it doesn't feel like a game thatwould be have that requirement

(48:42):
or be a game single, but it's asingle player game if it's a
single player game, it shouldn't, but it's not like it would be
the first game that's likesingle player requires internet
connection right, yeah, and myguess is that it?

probably will I guess the only other way is
maybe they go the assassin'screed route where they just uh,
it's just stuff that you can buy, right game, yeah, which still
shouldn't be there.

I mean it shouldn't, but to be fair, I
just bought two DLC packs.
I mean, is it?

DLC's different than buying in-game cosmetics
for a single-player game.

Yeah, I mean, but that's basically what I just
did for selling, because it'sfor outfits essentially.
You get a couple other things,the pre-order, the pre-order.

I'll say this all the outfits in the base game
you can buy.
You just have to collect or docertain things that I slightly
get.
It's a collab, crossoveroutfits and stuff like that.
It's not story.
I mean, it's not egregious at$10 but you are just getting
some costumes.
But it doesn't affect the game,doesn't change the game.
It's a, it's a crossover with adifferent IP.

(49:48):
I mean, that thing could be saidfor like hey, they want extra
money if you're gonna connect adifferent IP to this game.
Yeah, as like kind of like apromotion, like I get that.
There's probably stuff behindthe scenes that they want to do
it, but they were, you know.

They want some monetary kickback and stuff like
that yeah, and the same couldbe the case for Hogwarts, like
you see, I mean they can do thesame thing.
You know $10.
But I mean Ubisoft is far moreegregious with it.

Stuff that should be in the base game, that you
shouldn't have to pay for, yeah,and it's like 10 bucks for a
single skin, yeah, 20 bucks fora single skin money that you to
make the game easier and faster.
That kind of stuff is reallyegregious.

I don't like that.

There's a hard level.
If it's going to be asingle-player game, they're
going to add a what's the bar?

The more you play a game, the more experience
you get, the more awards youknow what I'm thinking of, I
know what you're talking about,but I can't think of what it's
called.

Yeah, because it's like a baseline free, and
then the premium for the nicerstuff that you can get as you
play the game.
It encourages you to log indaily and stuff like that.
Let me ask you what it's called.

Are you okay with either, because I mean it's
one or the other, obviously in2024.
Are you okay with a higherprice for a deluxe edition or
gold edition or having theoptional you know what I mean
Like either having it before oryou're able to get it during and
just get the base game becauseyou're essentially I mean those
are always, like you know $8,000, sometimes $120.

(51:17):
I was just we were just lookingat Warhammer and for the gold
edition it was 90 bucks and thatwas at a sale price.
So are you okay with thatbefore spending more money
before, or?

no, usually cosmetics, but it's like stuff
that I'm like I could just beearnable.

Not always there is actual, like additional
level or different things.
Again that does.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of that.
Okay, so which one would yourather have?

it's a fairly standard thing at this point in
the industry and it's obviouslyit's not going away because
people like buy it.
We're in three generations ofthis now.
I mean they were doing this PS3and 360, so yeah, I mean to be
fair, like if I want the stuffthat's there, I might.
If it's bundled or after I'veplayed the game I might come
back to it, but I'm not gonnabuy it before.
Like I'm not gonna buy, spendextra money in a game I've never

(52:08):
played.
I I might absolutely hate whocares.
They're gonna give me extralevels or something like that?

what about a collector's edition?
Are you okay with that if itcomes with additional physical
stuff, like, are you okay with150 getting?

something for your money, not just, you know,
extra in-game stuff.
That's wholesale irrelevant.
If you're actually gettingextra physical, you're paying
for that physical stuff.
That's a little different.
Okay, so I would say base gameand then maybe something
physical like a statue orsomething else, but if you're
getting something physical, youkeep that, regardless of the
game itself, the game quality.

Sure, yeah, that makes sense.

But if it's just extra stuff in game, I'm just
like that shouldn't even be anoption, you should just have to.
You know when you buy the gamethat stuff's there, that you can
either get or earn, and moreoften than not it's kind of
irrelevant.
It gives you a small boost, butafter you know you know a few
hours in game it doesn't reallymatter.
At that point the the advantageis kind of worn off.

No, I get it.
I'm pretty much with you,because what it feels like is
this was all stuff that youcould have put in the game, but
we're going to charge you $40more for it, or $30, or $60.

That's the other problem.
It's usually fairly egregiouson top of it with some of the
pricing Like $1, two dollars,I'm like, okay, sure I get it
because you put zero extraeffort into what you're actually
giving us, but when you wantten, twenty dollars more for
like what A costume that youwere making regardless you made
before the release.
Endgame levels and currency,which you someone spent five

(53:38):
minutes clicking a button on ayou know on some Word document,
not a Word document, but youknow some code to just bump you
up, which was no extra effort,to be fair.

No, I'm with you .
I think that's absolute BS,especially when it's like oh,
you definitely made this beforethe game came out, so why are
you doing this?
Oh, we can do it, we can getaway with this, we're going to
do it.
People buy it.
That's the problem.

(54:09):
People will never not buy.
If they're like, really intothe ip or it's just something
they're really excited about,they're going to go for that
bigger edition.
More than likely those sell,obviously because they continue
to do it over and, over and overagain yeah, but I mean, that's
just me critical of the actualpeople buying.

I was like, why are you, why are you spending
money on it?
Yeah, for sure, for sure.

I'm with you.

I guess I don't know if you had anybody else
there.
We had a section disc over hereon Twitch popping by.
Appreciate everything.
Yeah, appreciate you, you'redoing pretty good.
We were doing pretty good aswell.
Yep, just give a quick shoutout.
Don't think there's anybody onthe YouTube side.

Nobody on the YouTube side.
We did get an escalated friendbefore we went live said Hello,
can you guys tell me what thebest Pokemon spinoff game is?
I want to play something otherthan the standard RPG.
That's a great question.
I'll let you go first, becauseI know what I'm going to say.
What was the question?
Again, Sorry.
He wants to know about the bestPokemon spinoff game other than
the RPG, he said.
He said I want to playsomething other than the

(55:00):
standard Pokemon RPG.

I've only ever played the Red Rescue Team or
something like that, which isprobably one of the early ones,
from what I've heard.
The actual Ranger games by farare probably the best games.

From what I've heard, I love the Ranger games,
love them.

Obviously, they're out of print for the DS,
so you're going to have toprobably spend extra money on a
used copy and stuff like that.
But everything I've heard aboutthose games and I would like to
get around to playing them oneday eventually those everything
I've heard those are like thebest ones.
If you had to like pick one ofthe two or three games they've
made I don't know which one'sthe best- people really like

(55:41):
those games yeah, I thinkthey've got like kind of a cult
following to them.

It was such a unique concept that it makes
sense that people really enjoyedit.
If you were to explain theconcept to somebody you'd be
like I don't want to play that,but when you play it you get it.
You have to play it with thattouchscreen to get it
Legitimately.
I would say that as well.
But also another mention thatpeople don't talk about that

(56:07):
often Pokemon Conquest it's astrategy RPG like sort of Age of
Empires, esque or what's what'sother big strategy RPG I'm
thinking of?

I can't think of it right now.

Right now, yeah anyway, it's a strategy RPG.
So it's you know you move theplayer in the squares, type of
deal.
Oh yeah, I guess Is MarioRabbids a strategy, Exactly yes,
that's the same deal, so it waslike an expensive game.
Now it's 100 plus.
Now that's insane.

(56:44):
It was one of the last DS gamesto ever come out, so it came
out 3DS was already out for awhile.

Oh yeah, I guess then that makes sense.

So it didn't sell, people didn't buy it.

But there just weren't a lot of copies of it.
Right, right.

Not a lot in circulation, so we got some news
.

It was announced.
They say after 31 years, shu.
We got some news.
It was announced after 31 years, shuhei Yoshida if I didn't
completely butcher his name isdeparting from PlayStation.
He's been the face ofPlayStation for a really long
time.
Let's go.

He's not the head of?

I don't think he's.
Is he the head of PlayStationor, like Japan?

I think he's the head of PlayStation Japan.
I think he's the head ofPlayStation Japan, I think.

I have to double check.
I want to double check just tomake sure.

While you're doing that, I did want to shout
out and let everybody know thatmight be watching or listening.
Me and Mark will be live.
This is our third year in a rowcovering the Game Awards on
December 10th or December 12thor December 12th, I'm sorry, so
I definitely just wanted toshout that out because I know we
haven't talked about it a lot,but this is kind of a thing that
we do, so definitely come byand check out the announcements,

(57:55):
see what we have to say on that.

We'll be live on YouTube, twitch and probably
TikTok as well okay, so from uh,from 2008 2019, he was the
president of the sonyinteractive uh entertainment
worldwide studios, uh, and thenhe's currently the head of the
independent developer initiativeat at sony oh okay, so

(58:17):
essentially, uh, sonyinteractive, so not like the
overall head, but pretty high upthere in sony, primarily
dealing with the PlayStationside.
That's cool.
So he's going.
I know he's been the head of it, so if there's any criticisms
he would have taken like thecriticisms branches off some
controllers.

Just wanted you to say something.

But to be fair, I'm like that's good To be fair.
I think Sony shouldn't havemoved.
I don't know how much he hadwhen Sony moved their
headquarters or the SonyInteractive and stuff like that.

They failed in making the Western studio their
primary studio.

The worst thing Sony ever did Was move their
headquarters to California.

That's what I'm saying, 100%.

If you want, to Criticisms with the studio it
started when they moved theirheadquarters out of Japan 100%.
I, if you want to bad, baddecisions, criticisms with the
studio.
It started when they moved,moved their headquarters at
Japan 100%.
I agree with that not initially, but you've seen it like 20
years later 30 years ago it wasthey become more westernized
compared to the east.
as far as, like you know, if youcare about DEI and games and

(59:24):
stuff like that because that'sdefinitely more pervasive in the
west compared to stuff that'scoming up Like Japan's been kind
of back and forth, depends onwho owns them or the studio, but
especially stuff out of Koreaand China, where that stuff's
very obviously not there.

You mean China?

Sorry, west Taiwan, my bad.

I thought you were talking about China.

Cause, a hundred percent.
You.
You've seen the there's thechinese studios and korean
studios have started to come upbecause, uh, their games have
been essentially explicitly not,not, not explicitly, but it's
very obvious.
They don't care about uh, diesg initiatives, yeah, to
promote their business they're.
They're making, you want to saygames for gamers, the games

(01:00:04):
that what 20 years ago games inthe west looks like like around
the 360 era, as far as you know,games essentially using sex to
sell their games.
You know a lot of instances,not not every, but on a lot of
them you know attractivecharacters, not you know
ambiguous blobs going both ways.

Brandon Hurles (01:00:24):
Yeah, no, I'm with you or at least they're
there.

Mark Trobough (01:00:28):
Female characters are attractive, like the west
always makes attractive malecharacters, but I mean when you
look at who runs these companies, it makes wholesale sense.
The males look attractive, thefemales look like self inserts.
I think it's legit criticism,100% they do what was the best
either?

Asian video game release recently.

If you see that's , I don't know, it's kind of up
in the air Because the FirstDescendants, it's an okay game,
decent game, but you have tolike that style of game to
really like it, really likeStellar Blade.
Obviously we have some of theDragon Age remakes, but there's
some criticisms and sneaking inwith some japanese games.
As far as the going and poke,uh, the pokemon's had the same

(01:01:15):
issue from male, female to, youknow, type a, type b or some,
right, yeah, like that.
Yeah, see, I mean you've seenit to trickle in, uh, but I
probably it'd be the shift upfor stellar blade and then, uh,
uhmeth Wukong I can't rememberthe actual name of the studio is
Dragon Age in there at all foryou?

I?

haven't played Dragon Age recently to really be
able to say one way or theother.
The last Dragon Age I playedwas like Dragon Age X or
something like that.

I'm sorry, dragon Quest.
I apologize, I meant the newDragon Quest no, sorry, you said
Dragon Age Dragon.
Quest like X Ned, sorry, yousaid.

Dragon Age, Dragon Quest X or X, the World
Tree one was the one I playedand that was like five years ago
.

What about the new one?
I haven't played it.
You haven't played it at all.
I thought you talked about it.

Are you talking about the HD 3D remake?
Yeah, but I mean, that's why Ibrought up the whole criticisms
with the Type A, Type B.

Oh yeah, they did do that.
I forgot about that, yeah.

The original was, like you know, male, female and
stuff like that.

Which is unfortunate.

I mean the rest of the game as a whole isn't a
problem, but I mean it's notlike some of the Western
influence isn't there.

Right, yeah, no, I get it for sure.

I get it for sure .
And then there's other major,was it like it's not Sega, but
there's other Japanese studiosthat you know have gone full on
DEI and some of theirinitiatives and stuff like that,
which is unfortunate.
Criticism all day because it'swholesale irrelevant, that in
fact, a big portion of youraudience says they don't like it
.
Yet you keep going that way.
So I was like that's fine.

(01:02:45):
You start to see some of theseother studios just having
absolute bombs and they startlosing millions or hundreds of
millions of dollars in some ofthese games.
Eventually something's going tobreak.

Something's going to break.
Something's going to happeneventually, because people are
going to get tired of it.

It's usually going to mean studios start
closing because, hey, you bombedon two games, we lost $200
million on you.
We're just gonna pull the cord.
You're doing something wrong.
It's usually what happens.

Concord.

It's amazing.

Yeah, love that game.

We had some other stuff here.
This is in result of the newLord of the Rings movie.
I didn't know this because Iwasn't super heavy into all the
lore, but there is somecriticisms.
And I didn't know this becauseI wasn't super heavy into like
all the lore, but there is somecriticisms the closer we get to
this new, the new movie andstuff like that.

Yeah.

Because apparently, the main character
for this new, for the new moviewhose name is Hera Hammerhand,
which is, I believe it's she'sthe daughter of uh helm hammer
hand, the dude who creates homesdeep and like the, the, the
cause.
This is a story that takesplace on that.

(01:03:57):
Uh, a lot of people go into it,cause apparently there was an
article from screen rant sayinguh, a character ignored by
Tolkien you know the characterhe created to starring in her
own film, who is HarryHammerhand, which is funny
because Tolkien created thischaracter.
Some of the other stuff is aspeople dig more into it, the
closer the movie comes out.

(01:04:18):
She's actually in one of thebooks I don't remember which one
it is that the story takesplace in.
She goes unnamed in the bookand she spoke a single sentence
in the book, I think she's.
She goes unnamed in the booksand she's spoke a single
sentence in the book, whichmeans she is she's because with
a lot of these, a lot of thesestories are not the main books.
Yeah, apparently, with some ofthese side stories and the more

(01:04:38):
histories, if you'reinconsequential to the major
events, kind of like you do nowwith modern history, you're just
not named for the most part.

It feels like the.
Star Wars effect right.

In this story.
She had no impact and she wasessentially insignificant.

So Tolkien didn't name her because she had
no impact in the overall storyof what this movie is supposed
to be taking place on, becausethey do that sort of thing.
And also, I don't know if youremember I mean, we obviously
weren't alive yet, but I don'tknow if you know about the star
wars toys from back in the day.
They would make a character.
They went on so long withmaking the action figures that
they would make a character thatwould have like a split second

(01:05:15):
showing in the movie.
Like you barely saw thecharacter.
Um, so they would like do thatright, like make these figures
for toys that literally nobodyknew the name of the character
because you saw them for a quickframe, like it would be stuff
like that.
And then obviously you saw nowwhat they've done with the
different series and movies forlike characters that may not
have mattered or weren't eventhere at all.

(01:05:36):
You know Rogue One, forinstance, which I like, but just
an example, like thosecharacters weren't even there to
begin with.
They made them up later on.

So it's like that sort of thing is what it feels
like yeah, because I don't knowif this story is in the
Summerillion or one of the otherbooks.
I was trying to like figurethat out for sure because he's
relevant to the story.
I'm just trying to figure out,like, what book he was out of.
Uh, I'm just trying to figureout what book he was out of.

(01:06:17):
The only reference I found wasa comment three years ago on one
of the Tolkien subreddits wherethey said he was referenced in
Appendix A, annals of the Kingsand Rulers.
What's it?
Part 2?
The House of the Eorl?
I can't pronounce that word.
Yeah, I see what you're doingthere, for whatever reason.

I thought it was a.

Temerilian, but obviously there's a lot of Books
that he published Around Lordof the Rings that expand upon
the history Outside of just, youknow, the Hobbit and the actual
Lord of the Rings books.

I don't.
Why are you showing off yourcontrollers?
I'm just being an idiot.

I'm just so confused.
But as you get closer andpeople start, you know,
criticizing it more because somepeople say, oh, it looks like
it's the whole girl boss.
I don't know.
The movie still might be goodbut it's not like.
Especially with Amazon, there'sa good track record with some
of these adaptations and I wouldbe as much to say, the
adaptations started to go badaround the Hobbit movies yeah, a

(01:07:21):
book that's like a third thesize of the Fellowship.
It's crazy to when he wrote thelord of the rings, it was
supposed to be one, one book asa whole.
Yeah, uh, but the really longbook publishers kind of said no,
so he broke it up into threedifferent books.
Um, yeah, but I mean, obviouslythere's people criticisms like
all right, why you focus on this, a character that essentially

(01:07:43):
was unnamed in the books,because it you know, some people
are starting to point out likeyou're changing things that
don't need to necessarily bechanged.
You can still tell the story.
Why are you just addingcharacters that were never there
or irrelevant, or didn't dothese things in the original
books, or essentially actingdifferently?

I wish I knew why they were doing it.
Maybe we'll understand themovie.
I guess we probably won't.
It'll probably just be like athrown in thing, Like we in the
movie.
I guess we probably won't.

It'll probably just be like a thrown in thing
Like we need a new characterhere, and I'll leave the some of
the more legit criticismsbecause I've I like the original
movies and I've read a decentamount of the Lord of the Rings.
I'm still in the process ofreading the books.
I read the Hobbit Wow, youhaven't read the books.

I'm shocked because you're the reason that I
even bought the books.
You're the reason that I evengot in the Lord of the Rings at
all.

You showed me the movies.
The movies are really good andit's the right way to do an
adaptation.

You showed me the books Cause, like I remember
when I watched fellowship thering, I didn't even know there
were books.
You showed me and you're thereason I read them.

Books are like from the fifties, like they in
the 50s, like they're they'reold books they're very good,
though they still hold up verywell oh 100, but I mean it's.
You know, people like to like tocriticize and I I guess
ultimately I'll I'll leave legitcriticisms of the people that
actually know the ins and outs,because, like when it comes to
summer aliens or some of theseother books or or the tolkien's
letters and stuff like that, ifyou actually look into a lot of

(01:09:04):
stuff that either Tolkien did orhis son ended up publishing,
there's a lot of referencematerial as far as the world of
Middle-earth.
Essentially, some of it'seasier to read than others.

Yeah, for sure I agree.

I'll leave some of these other people's
criticisms and be like I'll haveto take your word for it,
because I've not read this book,so I don't know how much of
this is wholesale relevant.
Right, yeah, wherefore, becauseI've not read this book, so I
don't know how much of this iswholesale relevant, right, yeah,
yeah, but I mean, yeah, that'syou know.
Then again, any kind of dramais always going to be a thing,
but you know, some of it's legit.
You'd like there to be no drama, but that would require people

(01:09:40):
to actually, you know, honor thesource material or give people
what they want right for sure uh, yeah, and I brought this up.
I think I tagged it into you.
Either I tagged you orsomething else, but this was
more like a quick thing.
It's been 35 years ago today.
Same day it was posted by ToeiAnimation over on X, where

(01:10:02):
Vegeta broke his scatter afterreading Goku's power level then
they say the 35 anniversary.
I'm pretty sure this is theJapanese original airing for the
35th anniversary, not the oceandub version, where this scene
became infamous and then it wasredubbed by Funimation.
Yes, because it's not theFunimation dub, where this was
infamous.
It was the original ocean dubthat this scene became infamous

(01:10:24):
in.

For sure For good reason, just a neat little
history.

just because I saw it today, I was like oh, wow
this happened today exactly 35years ago.

I love when Toei They've been tweeting some
really cool stuff here recentlyand the Dragon.
Ball account.
Really fun stuff, really goodartwork, really good different
facts.
So you should definitely followthem over on X because it's
cool stuff to see If you're aDragon Ball fan or a fan of any
of their properties.
Really interesting stuff.
Who in the company would havethought of that?

(01:10:56):
Like, oh hey, this was thisparticular episode that was so
impactful.
It's 35 years old today I meanobviously someone, but it's very
interesting.

No, no, yeah, Sorry, I was trying to read
something about that.
I was trying to pull somethingup real quick, okay, before we
move on to the next thing, okay,never mind.
There was a poll that had comeout recently that Nintendo ranks
third amongst newly graduate.

(01:11:27):
There was a poll that had comeout recently, uh, that Nintendo
ranks third amongst uh new,newly graduate, uh, uh, college
students looking for jobs.
Nintendo is the third mostpopular uh destination, wow,
where new, new employees want towork, and they've gotten a
fairly high, uh, I believe itwas above an 80, somewhere
between 80 to 95%, uh,essentially a retention rate for
the company.

Yeah, I mean you work there.
We know you work there for therest of your life.
People that work there, theydon't ever leave and they work
there for life.

Some of that's obviously part of just the—.

Traditional Japanese culture, I mean.

Yeah, but that's not always hard and fast,
especially probably with some ofthe younger generations who are
more likely to leave.
Because obviously a lot ofpeople in the us like job hunt,
job jumping.
For you know, yeah, it's becomevery regular because you know
the culture of you know, workingthere for 30 years, getting a
uh that's long gone here uh,it's not a.
It's not a, it's not retirement,but there's an actual word for

(01:12:19):
pension.
No, like pension or severance,essentially, uh, which would be
you know the the whole reason towork there for 30-40 years.
It's still impressive thatpeople want to work there,
because there's a lot ofcompanies that people work and
might have a decently highretention rate, but the whole
what's it?
Like these old black companieswhere they have a bad reputation

(01:12:40):
and stuff like that.
So people might work therebecause they think it's good
long-term financially.
But I really want to work there.

Yeah, so there was a quote here.
It says of course, nintendo'scomprehensive benefits play a
role in role to this.
They have a high rate of paidvacation utilization, offer
strong support for parenting,have a unique point system for
employees that we can use forgames, books, travel and more.
They also have a deepunderstanding of diversity, have

(01:13:10):
introduced a partnership systemthat allows employees, the
same-sex partners, to be treatedas if they were married.
Among other progressive andpractical initiatives
Interesting.

Yeah, so what I was looking for between April of
22 and March of 23, they had a1.9% turnover rate.

That's unheard of which, if you don't know what
that is.
That's essentially an ungodlylow rate for people leaving your
company, I mean and it makessense, Like you work at Nintendo
, that's like a one-of-a-kindthing, right, Like that does not
happen to everybody.

The idea is that it just shows they take care of
their employees.

Which is great.
I mean, that's good to hear.

Nintendo their first party games are really
good, so they're retaining goodquality that could probably go
elsewhere, to other studios thatpotentially make a lot more
money.

I mean that's great to hear that we know.
I mean because they don't havethe traditional crunch that
these other studios have too.
They don't usually announce agame until they're.

It's just like oh , here's a game that come out in
three to six months, like theydon't even most of the games.
If you ask me, zelda is a wayto get it out.
It's almost done Do you agree?
You avoid the outside pressureof people wanting to play your
game.
Plus, the game is essentiallyfinished by the time you're
ready to talk about it, so youdon't have to go for sure, I
mean, I wish everybody wouldadapt that Cause, then you don't

(01:14:30):
have the crunch, cause you'renot crunching for anyone.

Nobody knows about it, you know infamously.

Cyberpunk is one of the worst games that they
essentially announced beforethey were like properly starting
development, or they announcedwhen they were early on in
development.
Yeah, and not only does it, youknow, like a decade you a
crunch to to get it done in areasonable time, but what you
announced might not be there.
There's there's outsidepressure, there's investor and
pressure to get this game out.
If you just don't say anythingabout a game until you're

(01:14:57):
essentially ready to announce it, which means you're just
finishing up, you know onesiesand twosies here for the game I
think they learned from actuallytwo games.

both in the same franchise, met Metroid Dread,
which had you know ungodly, thatgame was announced for the DS.
For God's sakes.

And then, Metroid Prime 4.
Next, I'm sure there was abreak and then it fully
restarted.
There's no way that game was inconstant development.

For sure.
I mean, obviously they probablyrestarted it twice, it wasn't?

a butchered product.
So there was very obviously itstarted development and then
they stopped for whatever reason.

Thankfully, metroid dread came out as a
fantastic game you know, 10 outof 10 platformer for sure.
But yeah, I mean I think theylearned twice over from the same
franchise, because Metroidprime four I mean same deal,
like we know that it gotrestarted.
They announced that, so it's,you know, been in development
twice, um, yeah, so I mean thoseare both ones that they

(01:15:49):
obviously had to have learnedfrom and they've corrected
themselves since Metroid dread,I mean Metroid prime four, uh,
there's nothing else I can thinkof where it was like, uh,
besides, like tears of the King,that it was very obviously
coming, um, but to me it didn'tfeel like a thing, a crunch
thing either.

It felt like, oh, they had been working on this
right after the first one,because I mean, if there was any
game that you would imaginewould be crunch, would be their
main game, like zelda right,right which sells a lot of games
and they just, they'll justdelay it or be like hey, this is
not coming out and no aspects.

Do any of these games feel like there was a
crunch?
Because you feel you can tellin these games like they're like
hey, we just need another twoyears.

So we're just going to take another two years
and be like well, we'll tell youwhen the game's ready to come
out.

Yep, no peer pressure on having to put stuff
out.

Oh, to be fair, I think the game needed more time
, but, based off the timetable,I can't remember if we talked
about this before, but they werelike this is gonna be a launch
title, so right.
That's probably one of the fewtimes where they they obviously

(01:16:58):
like hey, you have this long tomake a game right, but they're
probably more realistic about itas well as like, hey, this is
be a launch title, so you'regetting a little bit more time,
but you're only getting thismuch more time.
You're not going to get anotherbump on this.
This game has to be ready to gowhen the Switch launches,
because it's going to be alaunch title.

Yeah, I totally get that for sure I get it.

There's crunch.
That is unacceptable.
But and we've talked about thisbefore to some level you can't
just work on a product forever.
You have to have a deadline onthe game so your budget doesn't
go over.
You know it needs to bedelivered.
You can't go over budget.
So by to some degree there isgoing to be a crunch.
But you know proper timemanagement and just proper
management of your company canmitigate a lot of that problem.

(01:17:41):
Oh yeah, you know knowing, youknow having like, hey, this
needs to be done by here, thisneeds to be done by here.
You have a decent be done byhere.
You have a decent amount oftime.
This is.
You know you might have tocrunch here or there, but with
proper managed time you minimizethe amount of crunch.

I agree.
I mean, yeah, you obviously gota deadline.
You have to.
You know you're working withmoney here, so but yeah, I mean
like the crunch, for instance,with Cyberpunk, which was the
one that massively put it outthere that that existed, which
is like a year long, and thegame obviously didn't need
crunch.

It needed like another two, three years in the
oven, realistically 100%.

I mean now, it's an excellent game, but that
doesn't take away that itlaunched for crap.

It took them like two years after they launched
it to not just be a buggy mess.

Right, yeah, which is not okay.
I played off PC, which was likethe least second, from what I
understand, of all of them.
My problem with it was I hadthe game just crash on me
several times.
Other than that, it was apretty good experience, but I
had it just crash and I lost allmy progress.

(01:18:38):
I'm like okay, this makes menot want to play this game
anymore.

Because I played it and beat it at launch.
There's a good game here, buteven on PC I may have had one or
two crashes, but there was alot around the edge.
The core game here is good, asmuch as I thought the game was
too short, but a lot of theperformance, the NPCs, how
certain things acted in theworld.

(01:19:02):
You can tell this game's notfinished.

You can tell that it had problems.
Kudos to them for fixing it,but it shouldn't have been
released that way.
It's still not okay.

No, they should have delayed it, Just been like
hey, this game needs another twoyears.

I mean, if it came out in 2022, then that
would have been great.

I mean, it would have been better, that game came
out that game almost hadessentially like by the time it
even came out.
So you're sitting there likewho actually thought this game
was.

Ready.

And the other problem was when they initially
announced it.
They were still working on theWitcher 3 when that game was
announced.
Right, right, right.
I think, we talked about it.

They announced the year Witcher 3 came out.

But that means that game is in early
development.
They're still big.
These are not small DLCs.
For the Witcher 3 they wereworking right.
So while they probably startedto move over and were early on
production, you think for a lotof games like a lot of these
games are going to get you knowabout a year's worth of dlc.
You know two, three dlcs orsomething like that.
So you got to think, hey, agame is announced when they're
done with this project.
There's probably a little bitof uh, of r&r that needs to be

(01:19:57):
done.
People need to take, you know,a little bit of rest after the
game before they come back andstart working on another project
.
Yeah, so most games you'rethinking at least a year and
then that's assuming yourpre-production is good and then
you need to go into fullproduction and if it's not a
sequel to new ip, everything hasto be built from the ground up.
That's assuming there's noissues, no delays and stuff like
that.
Or you're trying to put you'respending time on stuff you want

(01:20:19):
to have in the game.
Because I think we went backand looked there was probably
close to like about a legitthree to four years worth of
actual development done rightgame?
Yeah, because it came out whatDecember 2020 yes, which are
three came out in what 2016,2017 sounds about you're
thinking, you know,realistically, the game went to
full development probably around2018, after the Witcher 3 DLC

(01:20:40):
was fully done.
So you know what's 18, 19, 20,20 series.
The game had, like you know, atbest three to four years of
development, which is just notenough time for what they were
trying to do.

Exactly.
I just wanted to do thistransition real quick Cause we
didn't put this in the notes butit was one of the big topics
for this week and completelyforgot about.
So I apologize.
But the Witcher four wasannounced to officially be in
production.
They said it would be better,bigger.
And was announced to officiallybe in production.
They said it would be better,bigger and greater than the
Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077.
They said they don't want to goback to those problems.

(01:21:13):
In an actual quote here, theysaid next game we do will not be
smaller and it will not beworse.
It will be better and biggerand greater than the Witcher 3.
And they continued we don'twant to go back.
Even if there will be somesweaty moments, maybe even some
bad stuff happening, I thinkthat we will try everything we

(01:21:34):
can to make it even more thanwhat we have achieved in the
past years.
So they're saying it's going tobe a bigger game than anything
they've done essentially.
So we did get this this weekearlier this week, like Monday
or something.
So I mean that's good to hear.
I mean obviously we're bothWitcher fans.
What's your thoughts on this?

We'll wait and see, because on top of that
there was some maybe minor, butthere was some at the very least
, badly held PR when it comes tothe Witcher 4.
Okay, because an article doneby over by that park place this
is later down as you brought itup and stuff like that where
they and there was an articlewhere IGN says hey, the Witcher
four is entered full scareproduction.

(01:22:16):
There was a user by the name ofat Raven rainfall where she
said I'm not excited for it overthe Witcher series, it's one of
my favorite game series.
He Witcher series, it's one ofmy favorite game series.
Cd Projekt Red is too deep inthe whole DEI, esg, ds.
And then one of the directorsor one of the senior designers

(01:22:36):
essentially made a comment underthat of the laughing with the
hand and then a clown emojiafter the fact.

That doesn't sound good yeah.

Comes out and is like you know, like, oh, why are
you saying this?
Obviously, he came out and saidimmediate allegations, along
with the misinterpreting.
Just wow, clapping I mean I get, but then why bother to engage
with it all?
Right.
Because he later, kind of CMS,says I'm sorry, I'm not going to
engage with this conversation.
You know over, you know a bunchof other stuff, but it's like

(01:23:12):
why bother make the comment atall right and regardless of
whether you know you're playingon it being there or not, it's
just another example of you knowpeople in your industry not
knowing how to handle pr.

Game Junction (01:23:15):
If you don't like the criticisms, just ignore.
Who are these better off hiring?

anything than saying something because you
think it's it's uh, in bad faith.
And then it, you know,potentially it just takes one
person on youtube to find this,and then it, you know, it blows
up.
And then everyone immediatelyis just now looking for
something to criticize your gameover.

How long do you think it'll be before these
companies learn not to do that?
I mean, is this like that's anextra two thing?

Financially, they have to figure out what does
and doesn't work.
Pr probably would help, andthen, if you don't want it there
at all, you have to essentiallyget people out of these head
departments.

I mean either that that it won't be there, the
hell divers to PR stuff, rightwhen they were literally putting
people down.
The guy was do you rememberthat whole deal?

Yeah, like that's .
That's the problem.
It's just like you don't knowhow to have people run social
media Right right, you're betteroff not even going after any
criticism You're better off justignoring it, because if you
ignore it whether it's legit orit's just bad faith criticisms
if you don't say anything, noone's going to know, no one's
going to see anything, it's justgoing to fade into obscurity
when you say something it'sgoing to be interpreted a

(01:24:20):
certain way and that's going toblow it up.
And then you know.
You know the internet does whatit does best.

Yeah, for sure.

I'm with you, and there I mean, obviously it's
not the first time like CDProjekt Red, for a while now you
know they've received awardsfor.
You know their, you know DEIand stuff like that.
What was the exact award?
Innovative approach todiversity, equity and inclusion
in business.
So there's to be fair, that'slike a standard thing in the
industry, but it's stuff thatpeople are going to be like well
, this wasn't here when you madethese old games, so what are

(01:24:49):
you going to change?
We're just in a world now wherepeople are looking for this
stuff because they've been burntenough times that they don't
want to see it.
The whole Gamergate andGamergate 2.0, stuff like that
these people are going to belooking for it and they find one
instance of something.
It's going to be like I'm notbuying your game.
We're going to make as muchnoise as possible because

(01:25:10):
essentially, it's a, it's an allor nothing when it comes to
this and we get it like youdon't want to talk about bad
stuff.
Bad stuff you know bad newssells like let's be fair that
that's more people are going toclick on something negative than
positive.
But there are a lot of peoplethat don't want.
They just they don't want totalk about this, but there are
those people that that are goingto because they don't want it
there at all yeah, I mean.

(01:25:34):
I mean, to be fair, they'reprobably still extremely early
on the witcher 4.
We're not going to see thisgame anytime soon.
This game's probably going tocome out on the back end of this
decade uh, 2028 to 2030,realistically.
So I'll just take the approachof we will wait and see on this
game.
But that's the approach I'velong since taken on every game.
There could be no DI in thisgame at all, but it could still

(01:25:56):
be a terribly written game andan extremely buggy game.
It could be a bad game.
We have no idea.
To be fair, the bulk of thepeople that worked on Witcher 1,
2, and 3 probably aren't therefor this game.
It's been a long time.

man Witcher 1 came out a long time ago.

Yeah, you're talking about the same thing
with Mass Effect 4, regardlessof whether there's DEI stuff
there at all the people thatmade these- first three games
for Mass Effect 4, the bulk,very, very few of them, probably
if any of them are still therefor 4.
So, regardless of that, youhave no idea what you're going
to get for a game.
Cause, it's not the same.
You know heads, it's not thesame.
You know writers, directors,animators, you know it's going

(01:26:33):
to be different.
You got different people Just bythe by the nature of of how you
know business works.
It's 2025.
How many people that were therewhen you got there are now
working now?

Right, I mean, that makes sense.
It's not specific to the game.
It's going to be less than like5% of people for sure.

Yeah, names and faces change, so you know,
regardless of what you want tosay for stuff that you're
looking to criticize, the game'snot going to be the same
because it's not made by thesame people.

Right, that makes sense.

It's a good way look at it because I mean it's
true, so for sure but I thinkeverybody nobody should
pre-order things unless you'reabsolutely sure you're going to
play this game day one.
You want to play it, I think,regardless of the game outside
Nintendo, just because they'venot had a bad track record.
But even then I don't reallypre-order the game, I buy it at
launch.
But just by principle I don'tpre-order games.

(01:27:24):
You should always just be likea wait-and-see approach, like
yeah, I want this to be good,but let me wait and see just to
make sure there's no problems.
At the very least, all of notSkyrim but Bethesda is this just
a buggy mess at launch?
Do I need to wait three monthsfor you to patch some stuff up?

Right, yeah, I mean, which is?

I think that alone is the industry has a very
bad reputation of making buggygames.
Get it out now, we'll patch itin a year.

That's what they do, they do and they still sell
.
You can't get enough people tocare about it.
Regardless of what we do, themajority they don't care.
It's the hype, right, it's theFOMO.
But to be fair.

If your core audience is loud enough and
obnoxious enough, the normiesare going to see it.
They're going to tell theirfriends don't buy this game.
These normies, as you want tocall them, the people that
aren't super into the gamesindustry and stuff like that
that we are paying attention toeverything.
They're still on social media.
You still see them when you goto work.
That word's still going tospread Because, to be fair, most

(01:28:34):
of the games they're playingit's like Call of Duty or it's
like a sports game or somethinglike that, where it's just the
yearly version of the game, andthey're playing the multiplayer
where it's kind of irrelevant.
I agree.
For sure of irrelevant, I agreefor sure, but it's just uh, want
to give a shout out, obviously,section disc that he came back
around the twitch we also hadgamer freak, you know, just
stopping by and stuff like that.
Sweet, I guess was askingsomething you're gonna play day

(01:28:57):
one.
I don't know if it's, I guesswhether it was Mass Effect 4 or
Witcher 4 for either one for meas much as I want to, it's gonna
be yeah, it's one to.

It's going to be generally it's a wait and see.
It's one of those things whereit's like, yeah, I want to, but
I mean I have to see when thetime comes, because I don't know
, I might just wait For one, thepatches, as you said, for
Bethesda always has to happen.

To be fair, Skyrim was a really buggy game.

It was a mess.
I mean, and look like mosttheir releases are I played
Skyrim like a year after it cameout.

I love the game.
It's just the technicalproblems with the engine and
where it was at when it came outwas like a buggy mess.

What?
15 years later, At least itfeels like it's not been that
long 15 years later and 10releases later, it still feels
like there's still some issueswhen you play.
It's like it's still a littlebit, but still got a bug.
That's the problem.

Like they've released this game how many
times?
And people are like this.
Community has the charm oftheir games.
Oh my gosh, there's the skyrimunofficial patch that fixes so
many bugs.
They've never bothered to patchany of those bugs.
Yeah, that's, that's crazy.
The community's alreadyessentially done all the work
for you, right, some of thesebug mods, and you don't even
bother to look at it and be like, hey, we should implement this

(01:30:08):
stuff into our game.

Sonic the Hedgehog.
So I don't know.
I can't remember the guy's nameoff the top of my head for some
reason.
I knew who he was, but he didports for and I believe I'm
accurate on this Sonic 1, 2, and3 on mobile and fixed a bunch.
Fixed some issues that thegames have Because it's such a
fast-paced game that there'ssome minor issues.

(01:30:29):
They hired that guy who didthese mods for these games to be
transferred there and he madeSonic Mania one of the
best-selling Sonic games ever.

I get it.
Skyrim's made you a lot ofmoney.
You've released it how manytimes?
And you couldn't either justfind the money to pay some of
these bug fix mods, At the veryleast just compensate them for
it.
I mean hire them or just paythem to use the mod.
The work's already done for you.
You don't even have to doanything, just implement the
source code.
I'm sure there's some extrawork compared to a mod to

(01:30:59):
actually make sure it actuallyfixes, but a lot of people have
already done all this work.
You can just find a way toimplement this into your game.
It makes no sense.

To me, it's like get in touch with these people
that care about your game Likethey need to, I don't know be
more self-aware.
Maybe they don't care.
Yeah, maybe they don't care.

Nobody's going to put more work, effort into a
game and nobody's going to caremore about a game than people
that mod to fix your game andthe people that that are the
most critical of your gamebecause most people that are
they don't want they're the onesthat that if people didn't care
about your game, they wouldn'ttalk about it Right, exactly.
I'm sure there's some peoplethat talk about the games and
talk about the negative stuffand most people that those and

(01:31:45):
that the post wouldn't gettraction if people didn't care
about an IP.
Yeah, we all say it's fun to ripon Bethesda because their games
are buggy, because they all arein jazz.
But most people when theycriticize it, it's because they
care about this game.
They want it to do well and itto be a fun game.
This isn't bad.
Most of this is not bad faithcriticisms, I agree.
I'm like sure you can alwaysfind bad faith stuff out there,

(01:32:07):
but the bulk of some criticismsis usually not in bad faith.
It's because they want to seethis game do well.
They love the game for what itis yeah and they don't like.
You know they're criticizingstuff they don't.
They don't like about it thatyou're doing and they want you
to know.
But some people just take it asyou know criticism and they
just immediately yeah you know,snap back and attack.
When that's not the right wayto handle criticism, you take it

(01:32:27):
as okay.
How much of this is good faith,how much is this bad faith?
And try to figure out.
Okay, what.
What are people legit?
Have legit concerns for forsure, take the take.
Just to be fair, it's fairlyeasy to find a good faith and a
bad faith argument.
Usually in just the generallength of a poster of legit
criticism 100.
You can usually tell ifsomebody played a game based off

(01:32:48):
of did they write?

three paragraphs .

Oh, that's right, you can read the game and tell
really quickly did they actuallyplay the game or not?

For sure, I'm with you.

They put a lot of time into your game and they
have legit criticisms.
It's worth hearing them out tobe like, okay, maybe this does
need changed.
Is this just a one-off or isthere other criticisms kind of
similar to this?
You know there's a legit way totake and process that
information 100%.

I agree with you .

But some people just want to be like nope, my
way's the right way.
You all are dumb and stupid.
I'm going to go on social mediaand call you dumb or stupid and
then be shocked when my nextgame, you know, loses money and
doesn't sell as much.
And I'm just going to continueto criticize you more.
Like that's going to fix theproblem.

Yeah, it's not the way to handle it.

Regardless of whether you even care, like some
people just don't know how todeal with, with social media and
proper like interactions.
There's a reason why we callcertain speak PR speak, because
you're not trying to saysomething that's going to, you
know, invoke a lot of criticismsfrom one way or the other.
You're not trying to attackpeople or you're not trying to
promise something that you mightnot be able to deliver.
You're just trying to be middleof the road, be like we're

(01:33:52):
aware and we will look into it,because that works, because it's
the proper way to handle it.
You're not going to inflameanything one way or the other.
Yeah, people are going tocriticize it because they don't
like it, but it doesn't reallygo any further than that.

I'm with you.
Yeah, I agree with you, forsure, 100%.

Like the game we're going to play tomorrow no
Man's Sky was notorious forfixing the problem and like, hey
, the best thing you can do isjust not say anything at all.
Sometimes Just be like, hey,we're going to work on this and
then we're just not going to sayanything, because sometimes
saying something is just not.
It's whatever you say, it's notthe right time, or nothing you

(01:34:30):
say is going to fix the problem.
Actually, you know, fixing aproblem or making the changes
your actions are going to speaklouder than your actual words
are sometimes but if you say thewrong things.
People are going to take thatand it's going to blow up.
It's just more ammunition forpeople to throw back at you.

People are going to inspect every word you say
when you put out a publicstatement.
So you should be very awarethat people are going to inspect
everything that you put out andit's going to make headlines
because of what you said.

That's why everybody posts the same PR BS
that we just talked about.
It doesn't give you anyammunition.
One way or the other, thesepeople know it will be used 100%
.
But we also got some good newsas well as somewhat of a
discussion on certain games.

(01:35:19):
So Space Marines 2, essentiallyin three months, has hit 5
million players, 5 million sales, which is really good for a
game for a game, but yeah butsome people were also taking the
time to come out and criticizethis because they're saying, uh,
I believe this is the finalfantasy seven remake, which is
also the intergrade, so it's notlike the most recent games, but

(01:35:41):
it took, uh, what, seven orthree years hit 7 million copies
on those games and stuff likethat, or three years to hit 7
million copies on those gamesand stuff like that.
It's all two ways.
The main thing people werecriticizing this for is the fact
that exclusives don't carry theweight that they used to back
in the day.
As far as trying to get to sellyour console.
Final Fantasy sold the 7remakes sold 7 million copies,

(01:36:06):
which is really good.
But would it have sold far moreif it wasn't an exclusive on
the PlayStation, if it was onXbox, if it was on the PC and
stuff like that?
It was all these that launchedbecause, to be fair, this is a
Square Enix game.
It's not a Sony-owned IP.
For the most part, it's beenprimarily attached to the Sony,
but Square Enix is, it's its owncompany.

(01:36:27):
So the main thing was isexclusivity just bad for games
in general?
As far as the overall sales, wetalked about Sony and Microsoft
at the very least teasing withthe PC market at the very least,
and in teasing maybe some oftheir first, some of their first
party games going to the otherconsole they did so just just a

(01:36:50):
few months.

maybe some of their first party games going to
the other console.
They did so just a few monthsago.
We did talk about how SquareEnix said that, yes, they are
not leaving these games anymoreexclusively to PlayStation, that
they are going multi-platform,so they want to do that.
They signed a deal, though,with Sony to release them for
just PlayStation.

They signed an actual deal, yeah, but to be
fair, most of these contracts,you know, there's usually a
stipulation to it's for acertain amount of years.
You can break this contract,but there's usually some kind of
penalty on top of it.

Yeah, they're not going to do that.
Usually a lot of contracts.

There's no contracts to ironclad.
There's no, you have to do this.
They're usually like hey, ifyou want out of this, that's
fine, but you owe us X, y and Zto back out early.

I think the thing is because it is.
It'll still remain to be theirbiggest platform for Final
Fantasy for sure.
There's no doubt about that.
I can see why.

Sony wants this, but, to be fair, it might
benefit Sony, but it's probablyhurting Square Enix.
If this game had been launchedon PC and Xbox, it probably
would have sold two to threetimes as many copies, to be fair
.

Yeah, I don't think Xbox would have made.
That was a discussion when thiscame up, because they were
talking about is Final Fantasyfinally coming to Xbox?
Again, I don't think Xbox wouldmake that big of an impact for
Final Fantasy, although it wouldmake some sort of impact.
I just don't think FinalFantasy on Xbox is a big thing,
so I don't feel like it wouldhave been.
Oh, this actually sold 8million copies.

(01:38:17):
I don't feel that way.
Anyway, I could be wrong.
But PC is definitely the otherbig, Obviously Nintendo, but for
what it was, it couldn't comeout on Switch.
I mean, that's very obvious.
But yeah, they were talkingabout Switch 2, Xbox PC.
Are these games coming over?
And they're finally doing thatwith Final Fantasy XIV.

(01:38:37):
It's now on everything,including mobile.

So they are doing it, but the problem, I guess
but we kind of talked about thisearlier in the episode though,
by the time these games come toPC or they eventually come to
seven, the hype is gone.
Like you, you, there's a lot ofsales that you probably lost.
They might be, they mighttrickle in, but you're not going
to get the the same sales, youknow, four years later on a PC,
compared to what you probablywould have gotten at launch when

(01:39:00):
there was all the hype.
Hype does matter for some ofthese games.

It does 100%, it's very important yeah, but
yeah.
But that's good on the 5million players.
We got a little small area.

We got a question from GamerFreak.
Okay Was asking favorite SuperNintendo game.

Gamerfreak was asking for something new to play
that's retro asking forsomething new to play that's
retro, I mean I can list in mytop 10.
Earthbound, link to the Past,super Metroid, f-zero would be
probably.
Those would all be in my top.
Of course, the 11 out of 10platformer that is Super Mario

(01:39:44):
World is a very obvious choicethere, but those would be some
of my top.

Yeah, because I think for that one specifically
and we've talked about thisbefore it's hands down Yoshi's
Island on the SNES.
It's my all-time favorite gamefor that console, but it's not
like there's other games tovarying degrees, because I like.

Super Mario Kart on the.

SNES, as much as that game is brutally difficult
to play.
It's not aged.
Well, you know, all the otherMario games on the SNES are good
.
Yeah, obviously.
You have the OG Zelda, you getSuper Metroid, ghouls N' Ghosts,
I guess technically, earthDefense Force is on there,
though I've never played it onthe SNES.

I didn't even know that.

No, I didn't either.
I guess what you have?
The OG, donkey Kong Country,which I did play.
You know all the F-Zero gamesthat are on that.
Well, no, I take that back ifyou're able to.
I hit, I hit a button and myscreen did something that's not
good it like full screened thepage that I was on and I can't

(01:40:47):
not make it full screen.
Uh, oh, that's not good.
It like full screened the pagethat I was on and I can't not
make it full screen.

Oh, that's not good.

Give me a second.

No worries, but yeah, I mean to add on that
Chrono Trigger, super Mario RPG.
There's so many good RPGs forthat.
I mean Final Fantasy four, forGod's sakes.
Okay, there we go.
There's so many good JRPGs.

I had to say Chrono Trigger before I hit one
of the F keys and I had tofigure out which one I was going
.
Chrono Trigger is an absolutegreat game on there, or just
general RPG.

Yeah, for sure.

I guess you have some of the older Final
Fantasies that we talked about,that they were re-releasing.
You talk about the Secret ofMana games.
Those are on the SNES butthey've been since re-released
The Earthworm Gym is a reallygood game, for sure.
Great platform, a very goodgame.

For sure.
Great platform, a very uniquegame.

Yeah, I guess, just because I can just ask it.
As far as favorite Metroid game, for me it'd be Prime 2.
It's my favorite Metroid gamewhich is on the GameCube.

I guess, besides Hunters, if I was to do a 2D
Metroid, I love having anaffinity for the Samus Returns
remake for the 3DS.
I love that game.
I feel like because it came outon the 3DS and not the Switch,
it did not get the love itdeserved, but an absolutely
excellent game.
If you ask me, it's one ofthose Metroid games that's like

(01:42:27):
perfect.
It has very minimal I mean, Ican't think of anything off the
top of my head issues, and then,of course, the God's Year,
federation Force yeah, but thisother one.

This is an article that's old, but I saw it
earlier this week kind ofmaking the rounds on social
media and stuff like that.
This is an article back fromJanuary of this year from
Bounding Into Comics.
That was Bandai Namco.
Their localization teamessentially came out and said,
yeah, they tell the Japanesedevs like hey, you need to
censor this.
The exact quote was we tellthem that the cleavage is a bit

(01:43:04):
too exposed or the skirt's a bittoo short, to where the overall
censorship, or the localizer'stelling from the source you need
to change certain things.
It feels like this has been anongoing issue with localization
in general, but stuff being madeone way.
This has been going on sincethe beginning of video games you

(01:43:24):
have to change your originalvision because we the handful of
us don't like it.
We, you have to change youroriginal vision because we the
handful of us, don't like it.
We want to change it.
I mean, and then the then theactual audience comes out and
criticizes like why is thisbeing changed?

this has happened forever.
If you ever look at I mean like, for instance, covers for video
games, you look at a japaneserelease and then the american
release is covered up.
Like this has been happeningforever.

To be fair, what was it?
The 90s and 2000s?
It was the conservative rightthat didn't like this, and now
it's coming from the left.
It feels like as far as thewhole US ideological aisle.

It does.
It feels like a shift.

But at every single step.
It doesn't matter.
The core audience is kind oflike we don't want this.
Stop doing this.
It's been like this for 40years.
As long as gaming's been athing, people want to censor
stuff.
I was like we don't want this.
Stop doing it.
Why are you doing this?
You're not the one buying thegame.
We are we're telling you wedon't like this.

Why do?

you not listen to the audience.
We obviously got the ESRB.

That makes sense , because I mean does it though
for the game?
I mean some games need to beprobably rated, sorry To be fair
.

There are games that A 12 year old shouldn't be
playing For sure.
But the game shouldn't even becensored.
You just need to be like hey,this is for.
This is not right.
That way you're not having amature Bloody, you know rated
game.
Being played by like an 8 yearold.

If the game's T for teen or M like, why does it
matter at that point?
Why does it even matter, likewho cares why?

are you?
I mean there is some level ofregulation.
It's kind of like with TVratings and stuff like that.
You know there's people saying,hey, this is inappropriate for
certain ages.

It needs to be a range, so like yeah, but if
it's rated not for little kids,then why does it matter?
Especially, if it's a rated Mgame, then you definitely
shouldn't be censoring anything.
Why does it matter?

If it's rated, M yeah it's stupid why isn't this
game.
This is a mature rated game.
If you're under the age of 17,you can't even play this game if
you wanted to.
You're not supposed to.
So why are you complainingabout kids?
If you're complaining that yourkids are going to play an
M-rated game, you're just a badparent.

There's no way around it.
Don't buy the game for them,don't let them get it, take it
away.
I mean something.
Don't ruin it for everybodyelse.

I guess at this point it doesn't matter who won
the political aisle.
Somebody wants to censorsomething and the audience is
the one getting screwed at us.

Stuff at the end of the day.
Yeah, it's stupid, it's dumb.

I think we all collectively say we don't like
censorship.

No, not a fan.

It's one of the ideas like hey, if you don't
like it, don't watch it, don'tplay it.
It's as simple as that.

Yeah, no, I'm with you, I agree.

We did get this with some, so I guess the Dragon
Age was a little bit of newsthis week.
So they made a post essentiallysaying laugh reacts will get
you banned.
We're not going to tolerateanyone that laugh reacting to a
personal post of someone whenit's not meant to be funny and
you're only laughing becauseyou're making fun of them or
being a bigot, obviously laughreacts is exclusive to their

(01:46:24):
Facebook, but it's the samething.
If you've never been on Facebook.
Regardless of what you say,it's one of the more popular
social media sites out there.
Essentially, the Lafayette isactually used for two things.
One, because it's funny or youdon't like what the person's
saying.
It's used as a there's nothumbs down.
It's the only way to say wedisagree.
I'm sitting here like.

(01:46:44):
This is just.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in
my life.

Like this isn't going to fix your game.
People have legit, People havecriticisms over it.
I'm like that's great.
If you want to censor them,that's great, but that's not
good PR.

It's not going to bring people to buy your game
.
It makes no sense to me at all.

To be fair, this just brings more attention to
this.
If you knew this was going toget found out and was going to
get blown up on social media,you'd have been better off
either just banning peopleoutright or just ignoring it
until people forgot about yourgame.
In another two to six months,no one's going to care about
your game anymore.
People are just going to ignoreit.
It's going to be your smalllittle community that's going to
be left.
It's still irrelevant, becausethe game just came out.

(01:47:22):
If you just didn't saysomething or just didn't do this
, eventually these people aregoing to go away.
Yep, because, to be fair, youknow, people laugh, people do
stuff like this part of it Cause, hey, I get a rise out of you.
Let's, let's, let's dig harder,let's, let's put the knife and
twist it even harder because you, you apparently don't like it,
like a hundred percent.

(01:47:42):
That's what people do.
People do this kind of becausethey're trolling on you, but
when you acknowledge it, it justmeans that their trolling's
working.
Yep, yeah, and then on this, atleast on X, it's just people
just laughing at the game.
Laughing at these people andjust being like this is stupid.

(01:48:04):
You're asking for more peopleto come after you.
You're keeping your game toorelevant when your game's not
doing well, when you'd be betteroff just letting a lot of this
just slide away?
People are going to findsomething else to latch on to.

For sure, I agree.

It was a small thing that I saw, but it's just.
Y'all can't stay out of the Idon't want to say the news,
because it's more smaller scale,but you can't keep any kind of
negative press out of the newsat this point Because even if
it's something small like this,this game's relevant enough.
Somebody's going to latch ontoit.
I guess, kind of like whatwe're doing here or some other

(01:48:41):
people on YouTube thatespecially cover the drama and
the anime and games industry.
They're going to take that andit's going to spread to more
people and more people are goingto talk about it, more people
are going to be critical of youand it keeps the negative press
around longer, when yourealistically don't want that
happening For sure.
At the very least, if you careabout your core fanbase, just
stop talking about it altogether.

(01:49:02):
Yeah, nope, I'm with you but Iguess here's the same thing with
the with Assassin's Creed.
This wasn't in this articlethat I saw something.
Someone mentioned somethingabout a.
By the time this game comes out, the whole drama about Yasuke
isn't going to be the top 10criticisms of this drag of a

(01:49:25):
whatever.
I've already forgotten.
What a shadows for dragon?
Yeah, because they did come outand they said the EULA for this
game wants Ubisoft to be ableto monitor your RAM, for
whatever reason.
Yeah, it's dumb.
Now they're just like no, wewant to monitor certain things
on your stuff.
Obviously, we already know this.
It's got a Denuvo anti-tamperDRM, which is a single-player

(01:49:50):
game that doesn't do anything.
It's just so stupid.
And now you want access topeople's.
In the EULA you're saying, hey,we want access to your PC for
any reason yeah, I don't supportthat first of all, this is
irrelevant.
Second of all, it's just moresalt on the wound of people not

(01:50:10):
wanting to buy your game, ormore ammunition to people to
criticize your game.

For sure, I agree.

It wasn't something big, but it's just
like man Ubisoft you just everyweek it's just some bad news
about this game is coming out.

I know.

This game is.
Most of this criticism is noteven about the core game at this
point.
It's just stuff around the gamethat's like why is this here?
Why are you asking for thisstuff?
And, to be fair, this could bein other games.
But you're a big game.
You get a lot of criticisms.
You have a target on your backof people to just find things to
criticize your game of.
But then again, I think it'sfair.

(01:50:45):
Why do you need to monitor howmuch RAM my computer is using
for your game, even if you'regoing to use it for future
development?
That's access you don't needfor my game.
If you can't figure this out onyour own machines, that's your
problem.

I'm with you.

But the fact, even with the anti-cheat, you
don't need kernel-level accessto my computer for any reason.
It's way too invasive it is.
You shouldn't even be allowedto get that level of access for
anti-cheater, a gamer or thiskind of level stuff.
This stuff should be blockedoutright.
Yeah, and if they want thislevel of access, regardless of
it's on the box or on a storepage, this information should be

(01:51:24):
out there like hey, we, this iswhat we're going to do on your
computer.
That way you know if they'rebeing super invasive and they
don't need that kind of access.

Yeah, there should be no way to even do this
.
This should not be a thing thatthey're able to do, period.

And, in fairness, yeah, they might not do
anything negative with it, butwho's to say?
somebody doesn't hack yourservers or there's a bad actor
within your company that won'ttake advantage of it For sure.
The likelihood within yourcompany that doesn't take it
won't take advantage of it forsure.
The likelihood of it's reallylow and most people just most
people aren't worth the time togo after on their computer.
A hacker is not going to goafter some random joe schmoe who
has like ten thousand dollarsto his name.

(01:52:01):
You're not getting anything outof it.
You're gonna run through amajor corporation.
That's that's where the powerand money is at.
Yeah, but it's just like, atthe end of the day, why do you
need this level of access?
Like, why are you even askingfor this?
Why is this even a thing?

Yeah, it makes sense, but at the very least I'm
.

I'm good that a lot of this stuff's becoming
more prevalent.
You know, in the in the generalzeitgeist is because this is
more of a PC problem.
But like hey, start lookingmore like has it?
How many other games are askingfor this stuff?
Because, let's be fair,nobody's reading your terms of
service, nobody's reading theeua like nobody's.
They're just hitting, accept onthis stuff and playing the game

(01:52:35):
yeah, crazy uh, fun times.
Uh, we, I, we, I did.
I can't speak.
We somewhat talked about this,I tagged it for you, but
obviously, obviously, theLegends of Zelda Echoes of
Wisdom.
Surprisingly quick, theNintendo actually came out and
gave us an official timelineplacement for this game.

(01:52:57):
Yeah, which.
I don't know if it's relevant,but you know people like to know
and they want to know.
So we did get officially fromNintendo that this is in the
Hero Defeated timeline after ALink Between Worlds, but before
the original Legends of Zeldagame.

And it makes sense.
We said it makes sense Lookingat Ganon the pig monster.

Ganon makes a lot of sense.
This isn't a downfall to time,because this is what the only
timeline this version of Ganonis in.
Yes, is the hero defeated asfar as the story goes, it's
irrelevant.
I guess it makes sense.
Zelda doesn't know who Link isgoes, it's irrelevant, I guess
it makes sense.
Zelda doesn't know who link is.
So it's not necessarily tied towhat we thought be.
You know the, the new timeline,essentially that we're dealing

(01:53:36):
with, uh, but and I don't thinkas far as the placement probably
doesn't over overwhelm overallaffect the overall story, uh,
but it's, it's just interestingto know they're, they're still,
they're not like completelydisregarding the old timelines.
Is what this is telling us,what they're doing with the,
with the breath of the wildtears kingdom?
We have no idea as far as theoverall timeline placement,

(01:53:57):
because we know that's kind ofvague.
It's just not officially a partof any of the other three.
But this just kind of comes outand says zelda nintendo's still
willing to, to put games in theother timeline.
So that means we get anothergame in the in the child
timeline, another game in theother timeline.
So that means we get anothergame in the child timeline,
another game in the adulttimeline potentially?
Yeah, I guess that brings hopeif you want more sequels to some
of those games.

I mean this makes sense.
I mean, for a lot of peoplethey're going to say it doesn't
even matter, who cares.

I mean for the most part, it doesn't.
For us what I mean yeah, so ifyou're not sure, the official.
So it goes Ocarina Timelinehere defeated, and then it goes
Link of the Past, link'sAwakening, which we did get, the

(01:54:43):
remake for which is Link'sAwakening, oracle Ages and
Seasons, which hopefully we get.
Was that coming to NSO?
I think they just came to NSOyeah, they're on NSO Talking
about some of these remakes.

Yeah, I'm hoping .
I think that those should benext.
I really, really do.

Then it goes Link Between Worlds, triforce Heroes
it's Echoes of Wisdom.
And then before, technically,before Zelda 1 and Zelda 2, it's
the decline of the HyruleKingdom, if those matter.
Because obviously before A Linkto the Past you have the
Imprisoning War.
If you're super into thegreater lore and stuff like that
, the Imprisoning War and thedecline of Hyrule was still

(01:55:21):
there.
So it's after Triforce Heroes,but it's before the decline of
Hyrule.
So the idea because I stillhaven't beat this game does this
game lead into the decline ofHyrule?
Is this like a, the precursorto that, or is it just?
This is just where they decidedto put the game at Right?
Yeah, cause I think I feel likethat would be an interesting
thing to talk about.
I don't know, it's been, it'sbeen a few years.

(01:55:49):
They want to start puttinggames closer to some of these
major events and stuff like thatit makes sense for sure sorry,
I just wanted to shout outbecause Gamer Freak did redeem
something.
It's the Fuhoku Rari.
Appreciate that.
It's just for the podcast.
That stuff's not going to popon screen and stuff like that.

(01:56:10):
Appreciate it.
Sorry, I just wanted to putthat out there real quick.
It's only to say the podcast,that stuff's not going to pop on
screen and stuff like that.
Appreciate it.
Sorry, I just wanted to putthat out there real quick.
It's only to say for the podcast.
The rest of our streams that dothat.
That stuff is still good to popon screen and stuff like that.
Yeah, definitely, I guess.
Did you have anything else tosay about that?

No, I mean yeah, it makes sense to me.
Yeah, I guess did you haveanything else to say about that?
No, I mean yeah, it makes senseto me.

So yeah, so we did have some rumors for the
Nintendo Switch.
This is going to keep happening, obviously, until we get the
Switch, because what they say,their fiscal year ends in March
of 2025.
So we know, by March of 2025,we're going to have an

(01:56:55):
announcement for the Switch, andthis was posted on Tom's Guide.
But essentially, one of themajor rumors was that the Switch
will get announced in Januarywith a March 2025 release.
I could believe the Januaryannouncement.
I don't know if I believe theMarch release.
That's just too close, twomonths from an announcement to a
release for a console, a game.
I could see it.

I mean April would make more sense to me than
March.

When the Switch came out.
It came out in March, but itwas announced in the fall.
It was a good six-monthbuild-up which, to be fair, a
console probably needs a goodsix-month PR build-up and stuff
like that Obviously needs a goodsix month PR build up and stuff
like that.
Obviously, we've had rumorsabout they want 7 million units
ready to go at launch, but youstill need to deal with this.
As far as the online, thein-store stuff with a lot of

(01:57:41):
your retailers, as well as justthe overall general marketing,
it's the switch.
It's going to make the rounds.
Obviously, for those of us thatare super into this stuff,
we're going to right the averagejoe schmo probably needs more
than two months if they want to,you know, think about buying
this console.
yeah, yeah there's a lot ofpeople like, hey, I want to buy
it, but, like two months, Imight need two, more than two

(01:58:03):
months to find you know, moneyto buy this console doesn't seem
like enough time at all.

That's to me.
That's, um it kind of dis Like.
The spring makes sense, but theannouncement only two months
before I just I can't seeNintendo doing that.

I could see this where like yeah, because we
pretty much said, hey, if theydidn't announce it before
Thanksgiving, it's not coming.
It's not getting announced thisyear After the new year.
Yeah, they're just not.
It doesn't make any sense toannounce something in the middle
of holiday season, where youwant people to buy your products
.
As much as.
Nintendo pretty much came outand said hey, they're internally
nothing's changed.
As far as from what they said Icould believe a January

(01:58:41):
announcement.
But I mean, at that pointyou're looking late.
Spring probably the earliest toget a release.
They probably still want a goodfour to six months at the
minimum from announcement arelease.
They should probably still wanta good four to six months at
the minimum from announcement torelease.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Because, to be fair, they're probably not
shipping, they're not going toship this to retailers until
it's announced, and that's stillgoing to take time to ship a
lot of that stuff worldwide.
Yeah, yeah for sure.
Obviously, this stuff's indevelopment, but Nintendo is
probably holding on to this,onto this because they know the
moment they start shipping stuffout and it gets to retailers
somebody's going to get theirhands on it and will have less
than reputable ideas to getcloud on the internet.

(01:59:18):
It's just going to happen.
You can't control what retailersdo, so the best that they can
do is to have some kind of lockon the console.
But if somebody gets theirhands on it, they're going to be
able to do something with it,especially if it's backwards
compatible.
Yeah, yeah I'm with the veryleast it's like hey, I've got
this, this is what it looks like, this is the internals and you
know all that fun stuff.

(01:59:38):
So I 100, I could believenintendo will probably even.
But when, even when theannouncement, they're gonna
still, if it's like a six monthwait, they're probably not gonna
start shipping stuff tillwithin a what a month of release
to minimize people gettingtheir hands on it early yeah, or
people that work in some ofthese places getting their hands
on it early.
You, just you, have to.

Yeah, I mean, at this point we seem like Mario
and Luigi Brothership, whatevergames are at launch and stuff
like that.
People are taking pictures ofthe games before they were even
out in their hands at home.
Stuff like that.

I'll say this there is a way you could prevent
these consoles from being used,but I don't think Nintendo
would do it.
The idea that to activate theconsole, to activate some of the
stuff, it would require aninternet connection when you
initially start it up.
It's the only way you couldlegit prevent stuff from getting
it leaked early.
I don't think that's the move.
Microsoft tried this a decadeago with a console that most

(02:00:32):
people are gonna have it pluggedinto the internet anyways right
when they get it, and that gota lot of backlash because you
got the console even if it'sjust for startup.
You know, even certain games andstuff like that, still it's
still legit criticism.
So yeah, and you know, if youdon't have that lock on there
like oh, they could have like aninternal battery lock on it,
but that's easy to overcome ifyou know what you're doing with

(02:00:53):
the hardware.
To fool the hardware, to belike, oh no, you can unlock it.
I think the move is just togive some time before and then
ship it closer To ship as lateas you possibly can to your
retailers.

Which realistically could be a week
before.
I think that's enough time Aweek Because they're going to
make sure these get there.
Two to four weeks would berealistic, yeah, but I mean I
think you can get it a littlebit closer, because I mean
shipping, you're looking at liketwo days.
To be fair, if there's aproblem maybe four days.

The initial batch that gets shipped out is going
to be 100% pre-orders, so unlesssomebody that works there
pre-ordered it and they're justgoing to take their copy early,
I mean that's what they did.
Yeah, that's what wouldminimize some of the problems,
but it's not going to be a netzero.

For sure, I'm with you.

So it's just one of those.
You just have to wait to shipit until you're as close as
possible to launch yeah.

Yeah, definitely .

If it wasn't backwards compatible, you could
ship it early and then just notship your games out till later,
which would be you know anotherway to kind of deal with it, but
yeah, yeah, for sure I think atthis point we just have to.
I don't know if it, if itdidn't happen, they they handled
it with the switch, with the,with the switch itself.
They're probably gonna do thesame thing they did with the
switch too.
So yep, I agree I just havesomething in the back of my nose

(02:02:10):
that I can't get rid of, but atthe end of the day, what is it?
Sorry, I completely lost mytrain of thought.

Oh, you're good yeah.

Oh hey, section Dis.
I noticed it because GamerFreak did it.
We appreciate it using some ofthe community points and stuff
like that.
But for the podcast thatstuff's just not going to air on
screen and stuff like that.
So I do apologize.
It's good for every otherstream.
It's just not going to pop onfor the podcast because it would
affect with some of therecording stuff that we post up

(02:02:46):
elsewhere.
Appreciate it.
Sorry that's not popping onscreen but obviously when we
stream tomorrow and stuff likethat, we'll be back on screen.
You'll be able to hear anything.
So I just want to give thequick shout out for that stuff
like that absolutely yeah, wealready talked about the CD
Projekt Red.

(02:03:08):
Oh yeah, there was.
I think I should put thesetogether.
There was some legit criticismsfor ubisoft oh, if you thought
they the other stuff was bad.
Uh, allegedly ubisoft wastrying to pressure steam to get
rid of the concurrent playercount.
Uh that way, oh my god becauseobviously when their games do
bad, the steam concurrent playercount, people immediately go to

(02:03:29):
like, oh, this looks terribleand we we can use the concurrent
count to to realize how littlepeople are buying and playing
your game.

Yeah, 100 steam's not going to do this,
but it's still a bad.

Look that ubisoft reportedly even going after
this but they even tried.

That's stupid.
Yeah, I mean why crazy.

Oh, because they went back, because the for this
article on that park place, youcan see the all-time player peak
for a game For Twitch on Steamand stuff like that.
So you have players right now,24-hour peak and then the
all-time peak Gotcha, yeah, thiswas great because it's got
November dates through the 24thon here.
This game on Steam peaked alltime with less than 2,500 people

(02:04:15):
and that was, I think, on the24th of November.
It hit its all-time peak rightnow.
That's the stance right nowfrom what the Steam DB was
grabbed on this article postedon the 26th, so a few days
earlier this week.
It's like Wednesday orsomething like that.
Interesting, oh, yeah, becausethis game launched on Steam on
the 20th, 22nd, something likethat.

(02:04:36):
It launched about a week ago onSteam.
So, yeah, okay, interesting,and those numbers for a Ubisoft
game are atrocious.
That means they made no moneyon it.
They're losing money on thisgame For sure.

I mean it doesn't look like a game.
But before we go quickly overto the big news, just get and
show what we got for the week.
I'll show real quick one ofthem I already streamed, which
was Sandland.
I wanted to pick this up.
When I got a deal, I raved onhow much I enjoyed the demo 20
bucks for Sandland so I wasecstatic about that because it

(02:05:12):
still just came out this year.
$20 is a steal on it.
I'm really happy about that.
Also got now this one's a littleweird because I don't know on
the Switch too, but it came outfor $20, and I really liked the
series.
So I was like, ah, should I getit again?
I did.
I love Star Ocean.
This is should I get it again?

(02:05:33):
I did.
I love Star Ocean.
This is Second Story R.
So this is like kind of the HD2D thing that they did with Star
Ocean, which is another JRPGseries I absolutely love, like
Ys.
So I was pretty happy with itbecause I actually had not
played the Second Story R yet.
I have it on Switch, but Ihaven't played it yet and I was.
I think I would.
I think I'm going to play it onPlayStation first, but I'm

(02:05:54):
definitely really excited aboutit and looking forward to
checking that out.
And then, for the second time,I got Stellar Blade here, had to
rebuy it, very happy about it,but I am stuck at a major boss
that I cannot beat.
And it's one of the first timesin a game in a very long time
where I got so irritated I justquit the game.

(02:06:15):
I was done.

What boss was it?
Do you know?

The girl that's in the beginning.
I forget her name.
You fight her again and she'sgot a robotic arm and wings.

Is it the original, that monster-looking
thing?

Yeah, she turns into a monster with a helmet.
Is it the original, thatmonster-looking thing?
Yeah, she turns into a monsterwith a helmet.
She pulls the helmet down.
Are you past the space elevator, then I'm in the sewer area,
I'm in the sewers, so this isthe very end of the sewers.

The girl that you she's your teammate at the
beginning.
I cannot.

I tried probably about 20 times.

She's one of the first real tricky bosses of the
game.

I could not.
It pissed me off.
To be fair, it was.
I'm like why did I rebuy this?
I was just going to go and getstuck five hours later.

That's one of the ones.
You have to learn some of hermoves and you have to be fully
stocked up on uh, on like healthand stuff like that.

I am as stocked, as you can get on that and
still what's weird about stellarblade is you can have like 12
of the item but still only acertain amount will ever show in
your inventory in your bag youcan keep, you can you have like
your overall.

You can keep collecting stuff over and over,
but on your person you can onlyhave so many.
So, if you run out on yourperson and you go to a location,
you can pull those out.

I would have had her beat if you could have more
than one revive.
And I was just telling you how.
I only had to use a revive onceon an enemy just recently.

I can't bring out a revive.
You can only revive once.

I have like 10 way to be like hey, are there
any upgrade stuff that I'vemissed so far that I can kind of
work on?
That would also require youdoing every single side mission
and exploring every nook andcranny as you go through the
game.

I mean it's too late for me.
I'm right at the end of thesewer, so there's no way to do
any more side missions.

Did you watch a?

No, I haven't watched a video yet no, I was
just trying to do it naturallyand just couldn't do it.

I mean, I would say this the combat I'm not good
at.

I like the game, but I'm not good at Souls
combat period.
I'm just not.

I don't even really think it's really proper
Souls.

The only thing that after a while oh dude, it's
got the Souls hard and combat.

You get used to the game, the combat, the game
goes on.

obviously you can level up your weapon damage
Yeah, but so do the enemies.

Most of the mobs become trivial after a while,
but after a while the only thingthat ever really gave me a
struggle was the bosses, and Idon't think there's a single
boss in the game that I gotthrough without dying, at least
once or twice.

For the most part, yeah, I'll definitely pick
it back up, because it was allthat I was playing.

To be fair, she's not the hardest boss in the
game.

Yeah, that's great to know.
See, that's what I don't wantto know.

I'm like why did I?

rebuy this why.

You know that monster that kills.
Taki at the beginning of thegame yeah, because I don't know
how much of it is in mylivestream.
You fight that boss very, verynear the end of the game.
It's like the last three bossesvariant of that boss.
Once you get to that boss, ifthat makes sense, I think that
monster is like yeah.

(02:09:16):
If not the hardest, one of thetwo hardest games Because, to be
fair, the final boss of thegame is also very challenging.
But I think, yeah, that monsteris probably even harder Because
you have to play through thegame enough to start learning
attack patterns.
Attack patterns in certainthings are very important
Knowing how to properly dodgewhere you can, because you do

(02:09:37):
have limited healing, so youhave to be able to learn.
You have to know dodge in someof the counters for the
different colors, know how toreact to those, as well as just
generally know what the monsteris going to do.

That's really the only thing that reminded me
of the Souls-like is you have to, you have to learn, you have to
know how bosses attack you inthe different stages.
Um, you got to be able to dodgeand then you've got to be able
to what's the word?
I'm thinking of attack themafter they attack you, the yeah,
the counter, like, because theone thing is like when the, when
, the, when your sword hits blue, the monster goes blue, then
your sword goes blue.

You're able to counter, dodge and stuff like
that to do damage, yeah, uh,well, some of those you can just
uh dodge, some of those you canparry, uh, but just just
knowing, like hey, when the,when the without, without like
the, the color notice, and whenthe monster, when the, the boss
comes at you, some stuff youjust you're better off just
dodging and slowly trying tododge, dodge, do what damage
where you can.

(02:10:28):
But some bosses are moredifficult than others.
But it also comes down to ifyou've been trying to, I guess,
say min-max, do as much as youcan to continuously level up and
find stuff where you can.
For the most part, that alsomatters, because if you're
ignoring some of the collectiblestuff, that will level up your
healing, level up your damage,level up the BP and stuff like
that it just makes it harder toget through the game because you

(02:10:57):
can.

It takes longer to do some of your more powerful
attacks.
That makes sense.
I mean it does make sense.

Yeah, I did the game on normal mode.
But I had.
I had all my my in-game gearfrom my first playthrough that
was also on normal, so I some ofthe some of the content combat
became super trivial on mysecond playthrough.
It probably should have made ithard instead of normal.
Yeah, but just generallyknowing the ins and outs, how
the combat works and then justslowly willing down.

So you get the best stuff rolls over on your
second playthrough.

Yeah, it's a new game plus.

Oh, okay.
All right, gotcha.

All the stuff you've leveled up, all the gear
you have swaps over and you cancontinue to play on a normal
playthrough or go to easy on asecond playthrough if you're
just trying to rush through thegame.

Well, the last thing I got was this Xbox
controller.
I wanted to get it to match theother one I picked up the week
before last, which was the clearone.
So this is the Vapor Bluesee-through one.
The thing is about thiscontroller.
One of the things I really lovethat it's kind of underlooked
on these specific ones are thesegrips that are on here that
aren't on any other controller.

(02:11:54):
They aren't on switch bro, theyaren't on the PS five
controller and they're reallynice.
It just feels really good.
So I'll mostly use these forfor PC and then obviously for
the series X too.
But I just thought they'rehonestly, I got it for like 35
bucks.
They're pretty much brand new.
They just came out.
So I was like, yeah, I'll grabthat deal.
That's a really good deal.
They're generally just goodcontrollers, period.

(02:12:17):
If you ask me, other than nothaving the PS5's haptics,
they're the best controller.
Do I use them the most?
Not at all, but when I startdoing more with PC I'll have
more opportunities to use themand stuff too.

So as I upgrade and all that stuff.
Before we went down the wholeStellar Blade path.
I meant to mention it because Iwas looking for it and I don't
have it.
I think I got rid of it quite awhile ago.
That's good.
I used to have a Star Ocean,the Last Hope for the 360.
And, for whatever reason, I gotrid of it.

I do regret that Star Star Ocean's a really good
series too, just like Ys.

it's one that I recommend it had like 2 or 3
discs to it on the 360.
It was one of those games itsure did unfortunately I never
got more than like 10 hours intothe game.

But yeah, I love the Star Ocean games.

They're awesome especially the retro ones on the
Super.
Nintendo stuff yeah, that waslike back when I wasn't playing
that type of JRPG, from like the2000s and 2010s.
It wasn't until a few years agothat it got back into those
games.
I'm like that's not bad.
The story's really good.

I would say that that game is by no means even
in the top five of the StarOcean games, but it's still a
good game.

It was the first game I technically had, yeah
fair enough.

Did you pick up anything this week?

I did so.
The first thing was I finallycame in the mail today.
Like right before we startedstreaming, the Lollipop Chainsaw
Repop came in the mail.
That's sick.
I think I mentioned to Brandonfor those people who don't like
it.
The limited run logo was onlyon the back.

But it also came with like a little booklet.

It's just character information.
But a colored booklet is niceOn top of the fact that the
entire back art because you cankind of see it has like actual
artwork.

Is that supposed to be reversible, or is it just
artwork?

it's just artwork , but that doesn't mean you
can't make it reversible theonly thing that sucks is.
There's like a something thatsays hey, see important
information in health, orsomething like that that
probably has to legally be onthere yeah, that's really cool
man.

I'm glad that finally came up.

Nothing big, it's just nice, but it's colored
character information.
Do you know if they everpatched the game?
I never had this game when itwas originally on the 360.

Well, I mean no For this new version.
Remember it had issues when itlaunched.

Oh well, I just got the game.
I know you didn't play it, butdo you know news-wise if that's
been patched.
I'm sure there were someperformance issues.
I thought that were announced,but hopefully they were patched
out.

I want to play it.
I loved Lollipop Chainsaw, sothat's cool.

Man Jealous, and I told you some of these were
posted in our Discord, but mylocal GameStop, for whatever
reason, had Mario Kart 64, forthe 64 for like $30 that I
bought Probably needs a littlebit of refurbishing done on it,
but the fact that it was thereand for whatever reason, Was
that the only 64 game?
They had like two other onesthere.

Mine hasn't gotten any cartridge-based games
besides DS.

They always have DS games, but Not even GBA.

They had a handful.

They had like three or four SNES games, but
they were games.
I didn't care for Smaller games, that's cool, I mean major
games.

Is yours a GameStop retro?
Is it supposed to be one?

They've been getting more retro games, like
more PS3, 360, ds games now,like 64 and stuff like that, so
they probably are.
Yeah, I mean mean it's like theonly game stop in, like I don't
like a 200 mile, 150 mileradius or something like that.
So okay, well, that's cool man,I either have to go to Cheyenne
or Salt Lake.
It's probably the next gamestop, to be fair.
So gotcha okay, cool stuff manbut yeah, I was surprised it

(02:15:47):
because I was like it's BlackFriday, I didn't really care,
but I was like it's like youknow 11 o'clock, like I'll go
see what they have, why not?
I'm not getting up at 5 am.
Did you get a good deal?

on it?
Did you get a good deal on it?

uh, technically, because this and the other ones
that I got because they're allused, it was like the buy two,
get one free.
I mean, this was the mostexpensive uh used game that I
bought, so it wasn't free, but Igot two $10 games for free
technically.
So the other ones that I pickedup, I kind of said screw it.
They got a little more stuffthan I'd seen there before.
But Shadow of War, shadow ofMordor, these were the two free

(02:16:19):
games that I got because theywere both like $10 a piece.

Great games, it's $10, why not One of the
best enemy battle systems ever,the Nemesis system phenomenal?
I mean battle systems ever theNemesis system Phenomenal.

They're one of a kind it's Shadow of Mordor that
came out first, right?
Yeah, I have that one on PC andI've played it, but I didn't
get super far into the game.

The battle system is just incredible.
Still nothing else has usedthat battle system like it.
Should they perfected it.
The Nemesis system isphenomenal.

These next two games, one that I'd seen before,
the other I didn't, but theywere both under $20.
So a game that I technicallyhave for the Vita, which is the
Final Fantasy X and X-2.
Nice, the HD remastered version.
I was like I should probably goback and actually give these a
proper shot, but I don't want toplay on the.

Vita yeah.

Fair enough, but I don't want to play it on the
beta.
Yeah, fair enough, and then, aswell as the final fantasy, 15
as well.
I hadn't played before but Iwas like, screw it, I'll buy
these Final Fantasy games.

Eventually I'll get around to.
I really want to see yourreactions to remake and rebirth.

I've got one of those two for free on my PS Plus
.
Oh yeah, because the first gameI had was 16.
I still haven't played it yet.
I've now got what's that?

I still gotta play it too.
I haven't played it yet I got10, 10, 10, two and 15.

And I've got the one through six and the the on
the switch version.

There you're building the last one this game
has been there for.

You made a comment.
I've seen this game for like ayear over a year and nobody ever
bought it.
This was like the second mostexpensive game.
But the?
Is it wrong to pick up girls ina dungeon?
Infinite combat, combat.
However you want to say, it'sgot a weird subtitle, show it.
But I'd also just got back intorewatching this.
I'm still like is it RPG?

so what's that?
Is it an RPG?
It?

What's that?
Is it an RPG?
It's made by Mages and P-Cube.
Probably to some degree it'ssupposed to be a retelling of
the story.
It says it's a dungeon crawlerRPG, but it just goes over the
story.
It doesn't deviate too far fromthe story of the anime.

I wouldn't mind trying out the game though.

It's not too bad.
We talked about it in the lastepisode of the Anime Junction
cast.
I'm halfway through Season 2right now.

Dang boy, You're getting far.

It just means I wasn't doing other things.

Well, we got We'll kind of run through these,
since we're getting kind oflate we got Nintendo Switch
Online plus an expansion pack,sega Genesis.
So new Sega Genesis games.
Finally, I was really excitedto see this, just because, like
I said, it's been a while withthe Sega Genesis that we've
gotten any games.

(02:19:03):
I was kind of wondering, likewhat's kind of the point of them
even having this, becausethey're not adding any games to
it at all.
But we got Toe Gym, earl um wegot trying to remember what the.
We got vector man and we got uh, mercs.
So those are the three segagenesis games.

(02:19:24):
Two of them are basicallyessential sega genesis games
vector man and toe jam and earlum, definitely Earl, definitely
at the top of essential gamesfor the console.
Mercs is cool.
I don't love it, I don't hateit, but it's cool, it's fun.
It's not one I'm going to tryto play through again because I

(02:19:44):
beat it years ago, but it's kindof nifty.
But we also got Donkey KongLand.
We got one last week which wementioned, which was like a
random out-of-nowhere drop.
And then this week we gotDonkey Kong Land 2 for the Game
Boy, which is really interesting.
Weird separate drops for somereason I'm not sure why they

(02:20:06):
separated them by like a week orless than a week, I think.
But that's cool.
Five new games for SwitchOnline Looks like they're
finally building stuff up, and Ithink they're doing it for a
reason.
I think they want to have acatalog of games for Switch 2
ready to go.
They've already got all thesegames, so they're just going to
add more at the launch of Switch2.
That's kind of my predictionwith it.

(02:20:30):
No, yeah, I agree with you, yeah, so cool stuff we got, so this
one is interesting.
Mark, I want to hear your takeon this.
So Tencent plans to releaseLight of Motorom, which some say
is a ripoff of Sony's Horizongames on the PS5.
This game looks identical, Imean, to a t of horizon like how

(02:20:53):
they can get away with thisfrom it more than inspiration.

I'm looking at it , I'm like is this the next
horizon game it's not a one forone, but they're taking the same
style of game, it looks I mean,it's not like, it's not the
first time they've done this, uh, that they've ripped.
They've I don't say they'veripped off, but they've got
games similar to like uh, one ofthe more popular games is like
a breath of wild yeah, yeah, butI, I would say that one with,

(02:21:18):
with, um, why am I forgettingthe name?

uh, it, it was still.
I played at launch.
It was still so different forbreath of wild.
But yes, it used like theglider mechanic and it semi
looked, looks like GenshinImpact, impact but when that
game first came out it kind ofdid the same thing.
It was extremely similar butyeah, it definitely now.
Now it's nothing like breath ofthe wild, but yeah it's one or

(02:21:43):
two.

First of all, I think the second Horizon game
wasn't as good as the first one.
Yeah, I like some of thechanges they made to it.
To be fair, yeah, you can do it, but the games industry has
been doing this for forever.
The problem is is it a goodclone and does it push Horizon?

Visually it looks good.

Does it look good ?
Does it play good?
Does it push the genre forward?
Does it compete heavily againstHorizon to where they need to
innovate and change to becompetitive?
Because to be fair there's nocompetition in a central area.
Well, it's going to breedstagnation and less innovation,
because you're the only gamedoing this.

Enemy designs look exactly the same, character
looks the same.
Everything looks like this.
It looks like it could be aHorizon game.
It looks like it could visuallylook that way.

It looks potentially like the Horizon
sequel that we should havegotten.

I'm just interested to see.
I think I would try this out,just out of pure curiosity.

It looks good.
These aren't Chinese games from20 years ago.
They might still do a lot ofthe same thing as far as the
clones go, but the industry doesthat as a whole.
It's a matter of do theyactually make a good clone game
to the point where it stands onits own, or it can actually
compete with the original IP?

I want to try this out out of pure curiosity,
but it is definitely interestingstuff to say for sure.

I saw that, but I'm like this could also be a
good thing as far as pushing theindustry forward or just
challenging Horizon 2 to dobetter, even if you want to call
it a rip off game.
The industry does this all thetime, but not every rip off game
is a failure.
To be fair, sometimes the ripoff game can you know, do better
than the original game.
I just don't, I haven't seen.
Sometimes the ripoff game canyou know do better than the
original game, fair enough, Ijust don't, I haven't seen

(02:23:33):
enough of it.
But I mean, yeah, you know, Iguess I guess.
Only time will tell.

For sure.

What do we got next?
Apparently, nintendo was alsogoing after some of their, some
of the Switch pirates.
Like this is like an ongoingthing, cause I know you talked
about it.
One of the things they had goneafter was the modded hardware
for the, for the mig switch andstuff like that.
Yeah, it started been you knowgetting the eye like it's just

(02:24:00):
say what you want about it.
It's just anything that that'srelated to the switch, switch
emulation and switch gamesthey're obviously going after
because it's like their currentconsole yeah, it makes sense.

I mean, like I, I don't agree with doing that.
They're not necessarily goingafter.

GameCube or SNES stuff or 64 stuff, because well,
those aren't current consolesso it's not realistically
impacting their sales for themost part.

For sure, I agree with you.

Yeah, because I think we've talked about this
before, like say what you wantabout it.
Like Nintendo has a legal rightand probably legal obligation
to protect their ip, especiallyfor current consoles if it's a
current console.

It was like for the wii, u slash we.

Or like the ds, like well, those consoles are
out of print, like they're notmaking games anymore, right?

that's not making money off those.
That's not so tired they wentafter those like dolphin
emulator.

I had a little bit more of an issue, but this
is uh, oh, this is.
I have less of a problembecause it's current console and
that people are trying to getaround some stuff In that aspect
.
Fair enough, I understand.
I'm not going to criticize youfor that because this could
potentially affect their bottomline for current games, current
consoles.
I mean, you've seen people goafter current games.
It's a very potential problem.

(02:25:07):
Nintendo's not as big asMicrosoft or Sony because
they're not strictly in thegames industry.
Nintendo needs the Switch tosell.
Well, that's where all therevenue comes from.
Of course, by nature, they'regoing to be a little bit more
aggressive.

Yeah, for sure I agree.
What do we have next?
Was it some Game?
Awards rumors.
Yeah, oh, sorry.

Leaks for some games that we could hear at the
Game Awards.
What was some of the stuff theywere talking about?
Was it another God of War game,rise of Ronin DLC, split
fiction, release date and stufflike that, yeah.
Some of the stuff potentiallyleaked.
Obviously, we're not going toknow until the actual game
awards.

Since we're covering this, I would be
interested to see.
It also says Dune Awakeningrelease day and more news on the
Perceiver and two Chinese games.
Whatever that means, just twoChinese games.
We're getting those.
The post leaves room for thelatter to potentially be an
upcoming PlayStation event ahead.
I'd definitely be interested tosee.

(02:26:15):
I feel like there's going to bemore than that.
I mean, god of War obviously ishuge.
If they announce that, it's abig deal.

I would be surprised if a game that big was
announced here.
To be fair, you wouldn't besurprised, I would be.

This feels like a game that so was announced
here, to be fair.

You wouldn't be surprised.
I would be.
This feels like a game that somany would want to announce.
On the other end, I mean, theyannounced Breath of the Wild.

There they announced.
What Didn't they announce?

the Samurai game?
Yeah, or is it just a moredepth look?

At the very least they showed the trailer.

I think they announced it there, though it
feels like Nintendo.
That's something they want todo on their own, but they showed
it for the first time, it wasrevealed.

I mean, it was showed there for the first time
for sure.
I do know that 100%.
I think it was the fullannouncement, but we got the
first trailer, the first thingat all for it for there, for
sure.
And didn't they announceMetroid Prime 4 at the Game
Awards?

No, we never got anything about Prime 4 at the
Game Awards.
Where was it announced?
Because we saw the logosomewhere On a Direct.
Was it E3?
No, at that point it would havebeen a Direct.
I guess technically E3 wasaround, but Nintendo was doing
their Directs at that point whenwas it announced?

2017?

I think 17 it was originally, and then in the
January February of 19,.
They said hey, we're restartingSwitching studios, restarting
development Gotcha.

Okay.
I'd be interested to see whatthey announce.
I'm looking forward to theannouncements.
I always do it To be fair whenNintendo was doing this.

This was years ago, like 16, 15 or something
like that.
At this point, it just feelslike Nintendo themselves are
going to want to do everythingin-house.
At this point we might see aNintendo game that we've already
had been announced at the GameAwards, but an initial
announcement at the Game Awards.
I don't see Nintendo doing that.
They're direct, springingenough traffic on the road, they
don't need to.

To close out here we've got some Pokemon TCG
Pocket News.
If you're playing that, I knowme and Mark are heavily into it.
A little bit of stuff on it Onethe trading is coming in
January, which I'm lookingforward to, because I have so
many doubles it's not even fun.

I have a regular Charizard and an EX Charizard.

I pulled it today.

And I can't use it because I'm missing
Charmeleon.

I got another one today which is so
frustrating.
We gotta trade man.

I've almost got completion because I'm like a
2-0-6 out of the 2-26.

I just hit 2-0-1 today.

Yeah.
So I was like how do I have allthese cards?
I can't have a.
How do I pull two differentCharizards before a Charmeleon?
Yeah, that's wild.

Actually, to be fair, I think I did too.
I pulled a handful of.

EX cards and I still can't get Charmeleons and
some other cards.

This is so frustrating.
So many EX cards, it's not evenfunny.

I'm exclusively pulling the Charizard pack now
because I want a Charmeleon.

I pulled it in a Pikachu today.

I assume it's one of those cards you can probably
pull in all three, butobviously there's exclusives to
each pack.
Yeah, for sure, but I thinkthose are the ones that scroll
at the top that you can be likeokay, these cards for sure only
open in this pack.

Yeah, that makes sense.
Looks like new cards will beadded before the end of 2024.
And I guess the thing we don'tknow is if the previous set will
roll over or it won't Likeyou'll still continue to be able
to pull from it, or if it'sdone during a period of time.

So you get a period of time to pull and then
you can't.

I would think so Because, to be fair, even with
their actual physical cards,they're still releasing
multiples.
They still print multiples atthe same time.
Yeah, not forever, once they goto the next ones, but usually
they tend to print a lot of thesame, like Scarlet.
They go to the next ones, butusually they're they.
They tend to print a lot oflike the same, like scarlet and
violet.
For the most part, you canessentially get all the the
packs versions pretty, prettyreadily available.
It wouldn't make sense if theystop printing those.
Well, there's just so manypeople that want to collect the

(02:30:00):
cards that then can't like whyit makes sense to introduce a
new pack after like every threemonths.
Yeah, like what they do withtheir cards, but to to
eventually like this apex.
Eventually they're probablygoing to stop letting you pull,
but like three months that'sjust not enough time to pull all
the cards.

I agree.
And there's 250 cards.
So there's a lot of cards,that's a lot of pulls you have
to do, and plus you've got torepeat over and, over and over
again.

You can get the bulk of them fairly easily, but
if you want all of them it takessome dedication of opening
packs.

I mean I'm at 201, and I've been pulling every
single day since it's launched.
So you have over 1,000 cards.
I have 600 and some, and youknow I'm not that far from you.
But what that says is youpulled over 1,000, I'm at like
650, and I've got 201, you'vegot how many?

Uh, I mean, I can pull it up right now and double
check I, I can pull it up rightnow and double check.

I mean that says you said like 210 or something.
So that says to me oh, I gottapull another 400 cards just to
get 4 more that.

I need to be where you are.
That's crazy to me.
It's like what the EX ones, andthen like the specialty art
ones, are like the harder onesto pull.

Yeah but it's just like wild to me that, like
I'm only you know that many awayfrom you and you pulled 400
more cards than I have, which iscrazy.
I mean that's a lot 400 cardsjust for me to get that many
spaces closer to you For thegenetic apex.

I've got 203 of the 226, and 24 of those are
star cards.

What's a star card?

I believe those are the.

The ones you can buy.

No, let me double check.
I think that's like thespecialty cards, like the EX1s,
the special art stuff.

I'm not even sure what that is.

It's all the cards that have got stars.
You can't see it too well.
Is it like the Mewtwo got stars?
You can't see it too well.

Is it like the Mewtwo that zooms into it and
does the whole?
Yeah, it's like one of those,if you look at the it has a
whole scene.
I can't show the top screen.

If you look at the bottom left of the card,
under the Illustrator and theWeakness, you'll see the rarity.

The star is.

You're talking about stuff like that so it's
only like a handful of them, butlike it's like the ones like a
bulbasaur with like the actualspecial art and stuff.
Right, yeah, uh, not just likea regular bulbasaur, but like
the special.
Like there's like threedifferent evs but like no,
there's like four different evscards, but the one has like the
full art that covers the entirecard.

That makes sense and you know certain certain.

Yeah, and like the x cards and stuff like that.
Those are like the starrarities.

Okay, that makes sense.
So, yeah, I mean there'll beinteresting to see.
I'm looking forward to the nextset coming out, so we'll
definitely be talking about that.
I'm sure.

Get as close as you can, but when that new pack
comes out, probably focus onthat to get the bulk, and then,
when you're struggling to pullstuff back and forth with packs,
to get some of those rare runs.
Plus, obviously, you've got theWonder Picks and sometimes it's
like oh hey, there's like oneor two cards here that I can try
to pull, so let me see if Ican't potentially grab one of
those.

Sometimes I forget about the Wonder Picks,
but yeah, I pulled one today.
I sent you that it was one ofthe top cards I won.
It wasn't an EX card oranything like that, it was just
I finally pulled it today Aftertrying, that was what I was
going after from the beginningit's a Gardevoir.

It's actually a really good card because when
the Gardevoir is in play.
Whatever the main Pokemon is,you can just give it an extra
Psychic power-up.
You're able to get that cardpretty early, that's really cool
.

Have you pulled it, yet yeah, I haven't.

I pulled it like a week or so ago, heck.
Yeah, because the Psychic deckis like the primary deck,
because that's where I've got.
I've got two of them U2 EX1sand those are pretty decent,
heck yeah, do you have anythingelse for us, mark?

We did run a little later today, but we ended
up talking about it.

Brandon's over here thinking like, hey, we
don't have enough news to talkabout.

Yeah, I mean, I legitimately thought that.
Yeah, well, we appreciateeverybody watching and listening
.
If you are listening on any ofthe audio platforms, if you
could give us either a follow,subscribe or a like on whatever
platform each one's different itdefinitely helps us out a lot
If you're watching on YouTube orTwitch, giving a like, dropping
comments, letting us know whatyou thought of the episode All

(02:34:18):
that stuff helps out a lot aswell.
Every Saturday, we stream liveat 8 pm Eastern Standard Time,
playing a different game everysingle week.
Then we've got Anime Junctioncast every Sunday.
Do we have a time?
It just drops on Sunday thispast and then we've got Anime
Junction cast every Sunday.

Do we have a time , or it just drops on Sunday?
No Sunday, I mean this past onecame out late, but I lost power
all Sunday so I couldn't finishgetting it together and
publishing, so it came out onTuesday a little later,
unfortunately.
But yeah, outside ofextenuating circumstances it'll
come out Sunday, usuallyprobably later in the afternoon.
Cool.

So, yeah, we got that.
And then, obviously, thepodcast is live every week at
8pm Eastern Standard Time aswell.
So, yeah, we got a lot comingup.
Game Awards gonna be fun.
That'll be cool.
Looking forward to that.
When do you have the date forthat, the 12th?

12th, okay, so yeah, it's like what about two
weeks out?
Yeah?

it's like not even two weeks.
I don't think.

So that's just under two weeks, cause two weeks
from now it'll be the 13th.
So yeah, it's Thursday.
Yeah.

So, looking forward to that, that'll be fun.
That's something we've doneevery year and something you
know we enjoy doing.
So, uh, yep Again.
Appreciate everybody watching,listening, and we will be back
again next week.
I'll see y'all later.
Have a.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Nintendo Switch 2 Speculations, Warhammer News, and Fortnite Godzilla Invasion | Game Junction Podcast