Death Stranding 2 Impressions, Best Games of 2025 So Far # 450

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
You are listening to Video Games to the Max.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Video Games to
the Max is episode four hundred and fifty and joining
us here as our esteen guests. Randy isbel is back
on the show. How are you, sir? Mark is awesome here, Yes,
and we're going to be talking about Deus Surranding too here.

(00:39):
We're also going to be both Randy and Mark have
played it and they're around the same area, so that'll
be interesting to discuss what they think about it so far. Also,
we've got some PlayStation news along with what they're doing
with PlayStation Plus and they're continuing journey with that. More

(01:00):
stuff about Xbox. It's talking about two former employees of
the company giving their thoughts on Xbox's current strategy. We'll
talk about that also the impending or reported layoffs that
might be happening to people in the Xbox team, which

(01:21):
doesn't help that entire strategy either. Whatever was announced at
the Capcom showcase, it wasn't a whole lot, but we'll
talk about it. And EA Sports is teasing yet another
college game, but not football basketball this time, Idea, and
we'll talk about some other things along with all that

(01:42):
all right, Well, Randy, is it working?

Speaker 1 (01:45):
I thanks you? Can you hear me now?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:48):
All right? That these cards are gonna drive me absolutely bumpers.
That's all I know.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well, you got too many chords.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
I don't know, just the chords today, I've decided not
to work at all.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Gotta love having technical issues.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Just unplugged the cord, replug it back in and act like,
oh no, everything's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah right like, oh now it all works. Yeah, that's
awesome technology. Well, Randy of course has uh. Well, the
last time Randy was on, did you did we know
that you were bringing back brad practice. I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
It's been a while, I don't think so. It kind
of came out of nowhere. People kept saying they wanted
to yell at me some more, so I brought it back.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
That's always a good reason.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Robert Taylor was the one. I was like, I need
to yell at you. So so yeah, Bade Brackets is back.
Definitely go check it out on YouTube. We do all
sorts of goofy discussion based bracket discussions about whatever topics.
I think the one that came out today was the
tennis players one because when we just started. We've done

(02:57):
video game sequels and movies sequels and best burger toppings.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
We do it all.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Whatever I could do to make three people really mad
at me for an hour.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Definitely a smorgosborg of different topics, different one each week.
I did put the video game sequels one in the
description there for everybody, So if you've never watched an episode,
go check it out. I was on it with a
good friend of ours, Sis Scott, and of course the
aforemention of Robert Taylor.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, and you guys are all happy about the entire
bracket the whole time.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, exactly, that's that's that's far. We get mad about
things that should be on there but or not. But
all right, whatever, we'll digress here. Well, Randy got to
promote his show just really quickly here to get the
housekeeping stuff out of the way. Thank you for watching

(03:54):
or listening however, you enjoyed every each episode. We do
appreciate you. You can watch us Slave on Mondays at
nine pm Eastern six pm Pacific over on a Randy
side of the town, or you can just you know,
watch later on YouTube on demand. If you subscribe on
the YouTube channel, you get not only what we do

(04:15):
here with video games, but if you like other things
like movies and TV shows, who got routes and broadcasting there.
They just did the Elio review last week and they
are reviewing I think it's Megan two point zero this week.
They keep rolling with the movies every week, so they're
doing their thing. A Taco Cafe handles the anime side

(04:37):
of things, keeping up with the the seasonal anime. It's
about to end the spring season and go into the
summer season with a lot of big hitters returning, so
that should be a fun one for a lot of
people that sort of keep up with the anime stuff.
And if you need some help with that, of course,
those guys are all the way over there to you know,

(04:59):
let's you know what you should watch, which maybe what
you don't need to spend time watching. There's so much
animated comes out all the time, something that's good to
have somebody help you out with that. But along with that,
you can also just listen on podcasts that helps out
as well. Just go leave a review, subscribe all that
stuff on whatever podcast app that you like to use

(05:20):
that helps us, give us the five stars or whatever
you think we deserve there, always appreciate it. So all right,
that's enough with the promoting things here. Let's talk about
a big release one of I know Randy's one of the
most anticipated games for this year and Mark's also been playing.

(05:41):
Y'all are both in the same around chapter six seven,
right before this, So okay, cool. What are your general thoughts, Randy?
You were you were the big proponent for it being
game of the Year the twenty nineteen.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, tucked into it. It was great. Mark was really happy
with me. I forget what where was the fire amblee
game we were going against. We had a lot of
fun with it.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yes, I like that, so that was fun.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Uh So listen again, I'm only six to seven chapters
into this game with fifteen hours. Yeah, it's more deatht
raanding and for those that love it like I did,
it is fantastic. Everything that was a big ripe by
the first game, they've at least attempted to fix a
lot of the things. They really did fix. The graphics

(06:32):
are absolutely insane, the story is just as convoluted and
over the top as possible, and Hideo Kajima, I will
steal this from was it min Max or now I'm
forgetting which podcast I was listening to. Maybe beyond that,
they said it perfectly. Hideo Kajima is the king of
the protagonist, just asking a really dumb question so another

(06:56):
can just completely word at the entire idea at you
for five minutes. That's just a Kagema game. And that's
how it's been since medicare solid, and that's how it
is now. And as long as you can get through
some of that stuff that seems are great, That acting
is phenomenal. Right, if you have not played this, just

(07:17):
watch the beginning section where you go from an opening
video to your gameplay, and it's so seamless and fantastic.
The game's great. I know Mark shaking his head. He
doesn't like it, but I didn't expect him to because
he didn't like the first one.

Speaker 4 (07:31):
No, I was shaking in my head when he said
the performances are great because you can tell that LEAs Sidona.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Does not want to be there at all. Looks's being
held at hostage.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Well, hey, it's money, that's all people are going to
care about the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
The worst character was she again, I don't know. Frederie
does a great job.

Speaker 4 (07:51):
What are you talking about No, I like the actress,
and now she looked like she was better. In the
first one out Marca got too big, so they cantlan
unfragile she had.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
She had a lot of character arc in the first game.
She has no character arc in the second game. She
is now your mentor basically who's kind of just giving
you missions and stuff. So she's not going to get
in toned down aspects of stuff.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
True, But what's different in this game, like what if
somebody were to, you know, kind of had them both
side by side. Is there anything that's like markedly different
from the first game.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
So obviously if you go back for the first first game,
there's a whole lot different. I played the director's cut
a couple of months ago just to kind of refresh
myself for this, and I know they improved a ton,
But my biggest thing is everything goes by quicker all right.
Before it took five six hours before you got a vehicle.
They really made sure that you understood how tough it

(08:56):
is to walk around with a big pack before they
gave you a vehicle.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
To around with.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
What was it mission three or four that I got
my first vehicle? The action is so much better combat.
In the first game I absolutely hated and an avoided
to save my life. This one, I'm the exact opposite,
though I do think it's a little over the top
at times, especially for the whole don't it is superhero

(09:22):
logic as far as death goes, Where Batman doesn't kill people,
but he grows people off a twenty story building, but
he doesn't kill them. That's kind of the logic for
dest stranding. And honestly, if you got really sick of
the BT areas and it was the same thing over
and over, there's a decent variety of different BT spots. However,

(09:45):
I still try to avoid the BACH spots as much
as possible because they are just as tedious as it was.
But to me, there's not a ton like overhauled and
completely different. It's just improved or attempted to be improved.
And again, I'm one of those people that if you
didn't like this stranding, you're not gonna like that stranding too.

(10:07):
But I love das Stranding and I'm loving the second
one so far.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
I got a game for you. It's called Expeditions, a
mud runner game. Really look into it.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Does that mean it's bad or good or.

Speaker 4 (10:22):
It's the same game. You're just delivering shit, you know,
from one side of the map to the other.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
As far as the gameplay goes. But crazy ass story
as this one does.

Speaker 4 (10:32):
Yeah, because it's all empty, you gotta focus on getting
from pointing to point b.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Well, I mean, you know, I think it kind of
depends on you, right, Like Randy said, I think it's
it's more of that with even a bigger scope and
Codema getting to go more crazy. And you know, I
think if you love that, then you know you're gonna
get in. You're gonna be just as into this one.
And that's good that he addressed a lot of the

(11:02):
stuff that people didn't like about the first game. Uh,
you know, especially I think combat was that was a
big issue for people.

Speaker 4 (11:10):
So you know, if you came, yeah, brain gun easy,
like you're right that, like they ramp it up really quickly,
Like I think you start with a machine gun or
like the assault rifle, right, and yeah, by like mission
five you get like you get like the like car
or the motorcycle thing, and then by like mission fifteen

(11:31):
you get to the actual big car. Well, and I
think I think the BT areas are fine, it's gotta
check a few like bligrenades at him and that's okay.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, I like to go to the original rout and
just leave him the fuck alone.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, do you like uh connecting with uh? Is it
easier to connect with people? I mean, I know, last
in what was it the the first time we had
the problem with the pandemic where that kind of made
it I think a little bit harder for people to
do the connect thing.

Speaker 4 (12:02):
Whereas no, that's that's one problem of this game I
think is so the first game had the whole like
the first game to conceit was the mules were basically
like zombies who were like crazy because they wanted likes.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
That was kind of a neat idea.

Speaker 4 (12:22):
This game does away with all that bullshit completely and
it's like, okay, but you still have this like system
in this game.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Why do you have this in this game?

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Because lights are still a thing in this game, But.

Speaker 4 (12:35):
Why like like they are essentially like worthless because like
even the well yeah, like why do this again?

Speaker 1 (12:47):
How many games do you play that they have a
worthless system? Why does it get up your cross so much?

Speaker 3 (12:53):
The like going from one game to the next. They
should shed some of that stuff away.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
The funniest part is the sub, which is kind of
the idea and you can like use it to like
travel around, which is good, but it's basically a glorified menu.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, and it's like, why did you do this?

Speaker 4 (13:16):
More importantly, why is there an internal map for this
thing that you can't walk around in?

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Why, like so you have like hold on so you
would rather stumble around this stupid thing like Grand Theft
Auto five because they don't want to have you go
through menus. They want you to stumble around through stuff.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
Yeah, it's called immersion, okay. And like if you want
to have like the stupid like private room stuff for
the bases or you know, that's fine, but like they
literally give you an internal map for this sub and
it say, okay, but you can't do anything. You can't
like go talk to the captain or you know, go

(13:57):
upon the bridge and talk to Fragile. I mean, the
only person can talk to is the doll, which I
really just like, I just like I don't in the concept.
I just like how it looks like the whole framey
look to it. It's awful. It's like, why is everything
else Round sixty frames a second or around that and
then this thing run like ten because it's funny.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
No I did like yeah, wait wait wait wait wait,
don't you complain about Expedition three three needing a mini
map and then you're going to say that there's not
you know, if not the whole point so you don't
have to get going around in circles getting lost. You know.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
That's well, No, this game has a mini map. You
just can't do anything with it. You can't.

Speaker 4 (14:41):
There's no like it provides like a multi floor map
of the submarine. You can't walk around though. It's not
like you can just like leave the room and you know,
look around. It's just like no, you just they're just
like the menu or the button to go, you know,
take a pee in the shower.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
That's about it. And uh and it's like why why
had this map here at all? Like why did you
do this?

Speaker 1 (15:05):
It's simple so it's not just a list. I mean
they could just do a list and most of the
things that are just a list and you can go
do this and that as far as the training stuff,
or you can't go to the bridge. And there's a
haha moment about a certain spot of it.

Speaker 4 (15:17):
Yeah, laugh about I get to see the go to
the bridge button. Maybe maybe I'm not looking in the
right spot.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
But okay, but what do you what do you like
about it? About it that? What that you didn't like
in the first game.

Speaker 4 (15:35):
Or well, like I said, it's a lot easier, so
I'm progressing a lot better. I really, I mean, I'm
sure you did it. I liked I died in the
first time, but I really did like that boss fight
when you're in the dead zone or what are the
fuck they're calling it with Bootleg Medal with bootleg Sali Snake.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Uh, that was really cool looking with the fireworks and
like the like.

Speaker 4 (16:02):
There was one funny moment where I think it was
like the bootleg Salid Snake. He was like he's framed
with his guys and there's a bunch of sparks flying
down on him and it kind of takes like a
step forward because he's getting hit by sparks and it
reminded me of like a WWE entrance, like a Goldberg
or you know. I think the core gameplay is still fine.

(16:26):
I can think it's better than this one. I just
did like the I just finished the Inventor part or
I got to his little island, which I didn't make
a drive to. I built the host of a monorail
out there, and then they're like, oh, it doesn't actually
stop here. I was like, okay, that's cool. I guess
how do I get to this goddamn islne I was like,
he can just drive to it. Oh, okay, ah, you know,

(16:51):
I think it's good.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
I don't.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
I gets better in the first game just by it
being somewhat more approachable. I'm still playing it. Let's say
that I'll be playing it right now. If we weren't
doing this, probably.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
That's okay, that's causive high praise right there, better than
the game, and he wants to go if we weren't
doing it, it's in the show. Like Mark Goo played
his favorite game, Mark, I didn't like to Please please understand,
I'm only teasing, and you can have your own opinion
and we can disagree, and it's I'm not trying to

(17:26):
negate anybody's opinion here. But if they allowed you to
walk through that ship, you would be on here complaining
that there's nothing to do on the ship, so why
let you walk around?

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Well, okay, if that's the case, they should have you
do stuff on the ship, but.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
They don't want you to do anything on the ship.
They want you to go outside in the Giant Australia.

Speaker 4 (17:47):
That is a mercy and think about think about like
past games where the ship or the base is important,
like the Normandy in Mass Effect, like you can at
least to your crewmates.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah you can't. I mean there's really nothing else to do.
In the Normandy.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
It can do like the upgrade, but that's like a minute,
but like it's it gives you a more memorable, like
impactful feeling about the ship. And I assume that this
thing is actually gonna blow up or something or you know,
who knows that the story's gonna go. But they act
like this thing is like all goddamn important, and it's like, well, okay,

(18:26):
I guess, but I see one room and that's it.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
And I casually see Fragile in the hallway and I
can't talk to her.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Honestly, don't think this this game is trying to make
this thing that important. It's just a way to get
the same characters over to your spot. Now, this game
does do the whole hologram static talk thing that the
first Desk Stranding does all the time and that can
get tiring. So at least they try to do some

(18:55):
cutscenes or hey, everyone's together, so how do we make
sure that everyone's together?

Speaker 2 (18:59):
All right?

Speaker 1 (18:59):
We rate this this ship that that transports some of
your crewmates closer to you so you can get there
and then if you really want to use it to
move across the map, you can. So that always works
out really good to me. The ship's nothing. The one
thing that always gets to me about the ship is
they anybody? And you'll get to it once you get
the chapter seven. I think it's the first time I

(19:22):
really took note of it. No, one can never just
say go to the ship.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
It is.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
You have to go to the HPV Magellan every time.
And I just ran into a character. I won't spoil anything,
but I ran into a character from the first game
and he said it about four times in a span
of thirty seconds. It's like you could just say ship,
I'm gonna go to the ship, I'm going to go here,
but no, he had to say HPV Pagellan every time.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
Well, there are so many other flying submarines that can
go through the tar that then you just specifically name it,
you know, I.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Just honestly, I wish it didn't like the whole idea,
like it goes through the tar and stuff is great,
which kind of shows why it's only mobile in certain areas.
But then it like it's flying over air, like the
just go, what do you need me carrying stuff around?
Just put it in the ship.

Speaker 4 (20:15):
I mean, if you're gonna like have had that be
a logic problem. The fact that like the bad guy
summons like this like twenty story mech or you know,
all the other bullshit from Tar.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
It's like, what do not put logic in a Kajema
game or you lose? You lose side of what Kajima does.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
I do like the fact that they're like, oh, use
this tar gun on on fire to to extinguish it,
and I'm like, yes, we all know how how efficient
tar is to extinguish fires.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Fire scene was really cool looking. I have yet to
run into another spot that has been on fire yet,
so that target.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Sitting there waiting, you mean with the boss fight.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Or when you're trying to get to the animal animal
shelter and you're running through that and then the like stuff.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
Happens, right, I kind of ignored that. I just I
just had my car and I just drove all the
way through it.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
Oh yeah, no, I did too. I'm just saying, like,
just graphically it looked great.

Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah, this could be kangaroo and my car died for
some unknown reason and I was all right, well whatever,
I will say.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
I know everyone has been praising the weather effects. Other
than the rain making the rivers get larger and or smaller,
the other effects haven't really been fantastic for me. Like
the earthquakes have been nothing other than the alarm goes off,
and half the time the alarm goes off and then

(21:41):
I don't even feel it because I'm a bit farther
away from it. The sand storm is really cool at
the beginning when you're in Mexico.

Speaker 4 (21:49):
But yeah, I'm always in a car, so whenever the
earthquake things goes off and like what do I care?
Or they're like, oh a building got got damaged, and
I'm like on my in it.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
No, I guess yes, that's more of what the earthquakes
are is to be able to kind of reset.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
I think the weather looks better in the in the
very start, when you're like not at your home but
you have to walk on the mountain to get to it.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
I'm like, because the rain anks feel like impacted the
camera and it's really nice, and that only happened the
one time, and I'm like, I've met well.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
I will say I was bringing up that opening section.
I think they put a lot more resources into that
that track home when you first start the game, because
that was absolutely gorgeous, and since then it's been tough
to kind of replicate that because you have more of
the open world and they can kind of just focus
in on that one section. But I'm with with Mark there,

(22:43):
like that section with the weather was it hits you
hard right off the bat and then kind of scaled itself.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Back a little bit, right.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
I think it's sign you know, it's making my top
games of the Year list so far, but that's me
only playing five of the games those year.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
So we'll get to it, I know, because Sean kind
of warned me about it. But my top two are
games that I am currently playing right at the moment.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
That's right, and when we.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Get to that point, I don't know which one I'm
going to say yet, So.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
My top one I'm not done playing it either.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
So yeah, that's zero copy.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
That game is so great and yes I am, but uh,
any anything else you guys wanna talk about as far.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
As the game, honestly, I'm with Mark. I just want
to play more. But for anybody out there listening, like,
I'm not going to argue with anybody whether they like.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
The game or not.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Like I'll come on here and I'll have a good
time and an tease Mark a little bit. But if
he comes at the end of the day and goes,
this game was not good, it wasn't for me, I
one get it. And if he really likes it, then
I'm glad he likes it more than the first game,
because I really do too. But both I can understand
this is not a game for everybody, and the story

(24:06):
itself is not for everybody. I Kajima, especially like the
later on in his career, goes has this weird sense
of I want to tell a very serious story, but
I can't help but make the really dumb jokes along
the way. So then you really can't take the serious
parts serious because I just have to like throw in

(24:27):
a weird one liner in there. And I will also
say he is not the best storyteller, so the way
he tries to portray his story again is just a
well what do you mean by this? And then the
guy just expedition dumps you for a couple of minutes
and then all right, now you know, so it's not

(24:48):
the story is not great. I will disagree with Mark.
I think the acting has been really, really good all
the way through so far. I just got to that
Ellie Fanning character, very curious to kind of see where
she now goes. But I will also say maybe it's
just because there's more based around what he is doing.

(25:09):
But it's nice to see Norman Reed has actually act
in this game instead of being the silent protagonist of
the first one. He actually has to do stuff for
this game, and he does a good job.

Speaker 4 (25:20):
This game clearly shows that Kajima still wants to be
like a film director. Yes, but no, no one that's
stupid enough to give him money.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
I don't think it would make a good film as
long as much as his Meda your solid games, especially
Meddle of GEARSLO four has ridiculously long cut scenes that
are basically movies. Yeah, it would be dough.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
I mean there are three film directors in this thing.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, I mean I think definitely people that would probably
maybe do it as like a twenty four. It has
to be some kind of arts scene, film studio, whatever.
It's gonna be one of those big budget studios.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
And yeah, they't on the money to do what he wants.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
So also real quick and then please move on.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Hass this game.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
But the music player is a godsend. There's one thing
I really wish to have in the first game. I'm
not going full back and like five starring all the stuff,
but there have been times I just want to sit
down and deliver packages and just not care about the story.
That music players wonderful. They do such great things. When
BT's and enemies show up, it just automatically cuts out.

(26:22):
My favorite is You're if you're driving throround, and especially
early on when I only had a couple of places
open and they're not fully connected. You drive through a
spot that you weren't connected and your radio would cut out.
So they do some fun stuff with it. Oh, it's
so nice just to be able to go I want
to listen to Kajima's favorite hits. Well, I'm driving around

(26:42):
doing nothing.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
I'm not kidding when I say this. I didn't even
know the game had a music player.

Speaker 4 (26:49):
Hey, I've been Yeah, maybe I missed the tutorial or
missed it.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
No, it's upper.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
It is one of the side porters.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Okay, then he didn't get play.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
Was it like a Mexico or is that the musician
like the lone musicians? I did him, but I didn't
know he actually gave you like a music player if
he just kept giving me albums?

Speaker 3 (27:14):
All right?

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, if you just go to your main like hit options,
go to your main menu, there's a music player down there.

Speaker 4 (27:19):
You cant that's I'm just watching Stargate SG one on
my other lap again.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
When I went back and was playing the director's cut,
Like when I was just going, all right, I'm going
to just deliver packages that it was became the podcast
game where it's just whatever, and it still will. I mean,
I'll listen to podcasts while I.

Speaker 4 (27:38):
Play this game too, right, Yeah, if you're tied into
like your Spotify account like that would be good, but
listen you're playing the game is to listen to the
Joe Rogan podcast, like yep, now.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
That Mark, now that Mark knows that there's a music player,
I want him to listen to some of them.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
And then I want a.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Music review next week, because if you just play them
all and put them in random, there is some weird
stuff that starts playing in your ears, and it's the
variety of music is wild. But I'm just wait for Mark.
Just play it and then come back and go, I
don't know what any of that was.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
No, it does the same thing that the past game did,
where like certain missions, you know, kick off like a song.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
And it's like okay, and I went, they go in
your music player too, So yeah, but they have some
stuff that do not play in those that I went,
why Japanese pop song that just all of a sudden
started playing music players right like this, this feels different
than everything else.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
Yeah, go ahead is where the death training didn't hit.
So it's still all right, all right?

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Well, I mean, you know, you just said that you're
listening to podcasts and music whatever. While you're doing that,
I hope that you are not listening to podcasts and
enjoying the amazing music and Export thirty three the other game,
and even spend some time in Randy No.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Because the music is so darn good in that game. Yeah,
and I have I told you before the show. Apparently
I was not paying attention for the same thing I'm
ever saying about tutorials and stuff. So I was upgrading
my characters completely wrong and got to a cave where
they just every normal fight all of a sudden, like

(29:27):
I was doing fine, and then every single fight all
of a sudden became like a mitor boss battle, and
I was like, why am I hitting them so weak?
I should be doing so much better. I looked up
something and they're like, this is how you upgrade this
to that. Oh, and you can only do it at
a camp. Oh, I am so far away from a
camp right now. It's like, I don't want to backtrack

(29:48):
up so far into this cave. I don't want to
backtrack and fix it. So I am sluggishly, like literally
one fight a day, just before my sanity died, just
trying to work my way through it again. One thousand
percent my fault. It's not the game's fault. I am
a terrible gamer in that aspect. However, the game is

(30:10):
Graphically it is insane, the music is fun. The story
is has me lost, but in a good way because
I want to dissolve things, and I think that's the
kind of the whole point of the game, is you
kind of learn all this stuff throughout and we're right
now at that point of what is going on when

(30:31):
I was looking stuff up and I'm near the end
of act one.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, but you know, I have a long way to
just get ready, get ready.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Oh, I know it's going to get crazier. And that's
why I'm so glad I look something up because I
don't know if I would have gotten any further reay.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Honestly, you know, the there's not like a ton of
enemies in each area. I would really like because once
you upgrade the characters and you're back to doing the
damage you were doing before whatever, especially if you can

(31:04):
figure out like, you know, weaknesses and stuff like that,
you'll go through those, you know, the the just random
battles quick, so I won't feel like you're having to
go through the whole truck again.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
You know those that have played it, where do I
say it was the cliffs or something? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah, Stone Cliffs.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
I'm facing three enemies like every room that one of
them guards everybody, so they give them two shields and
then the one sword dude stabs himself and gives them
four more. So it's like if I could start off
strong and I like, am able to parry here and
there and kind of get ahead on things I do, okay,
if not the next thing, I know, everybody has ten

(31:46):
shields and I'm just using all my ap to shoot
that down.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
And oh man, that character you have to essentially just parry. Yeah,
if you can parry all four, it'll knock out all
his shields. Then you can just go in.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
And I will say, listening to the reviews, I totally agree,
it's one of those that just the more you fight
the same enemy, the better you get at it. The
timing gets down. And then because I was so afraid
to parry for so long because my timing is so bad.
But yeah, I compare now it just I do all that,
and then again I have not upgrade my character. So
then I do my damage and the barges down like

(32:21):
this much. I'm like, God, have to do it perfect
to get so again, don me. But hopefully the next
time I talk to you guys about this game, I've
I've become a better gamer on it, but I totally
missed the correct way to upgrade characters.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
And do you have the break shield move with Mile
yet or no? She has a whole move that this
takes out shields.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
One of her special abilities or one of the combatibilities
is a move off fields. She gets a sword in
the gest town if you did the ino correctly. Yeah,
probably didn't.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Guess who learned that one too late because I used
the different character in that final.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
You can get that sword later, yeah, later in the game.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yeah, and you have to do a really hard boss
fight to get it.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
So I haven't tempted to restart because of that.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
I restarted that game and then had to buy a
physical copy. Yeah, so I am no stranger to restart
in that game.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
It's been and I honestly I probably will have to
because dus Randing has my attention right now, and by
the time I go back to really get my attention
back to Expedition thirty three and give it, uh the
focus that it deserves, I'm gonna forget how to parry
all of that stuff. So I'm going to be doing
that same thing.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
I was kind of mad that apparently the there's a
mime in the first town and you get a trophy
for yeah, fighting it and be it, and apparently that
does not show up a new game. Plus, like you
have to actually restart the entire game. Get that one, stupid.

(34:10):
I'm like, damn, But.

Speaker 4 (34:11):
If you if you restart the game and tell the mind,
the trophy does pop Yeah five minutes.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, I mean that's yeah, that's a good game. I
got the full platinum in that one, so.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Nice. I forgot you told me that you just platting
anything else? Uh, you've been playing Randy.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
No, though, those are the two main things. Nobody cares about.
M WIB the show I played all the time, and
it's it. It is becoming more Madified every year, and
it kind of makes me sad, but I'm addicted, so
I don't care.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
I wonder how much of that is m will be
and how much.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Of that No, it's it's just how sports games are.
It's just Yeah, they want to sell you the cards
and they want to focus on the online play, and
I just don't play the online so I think I
kind of I once again, it's just another year where
very little has changed for me. But I have all
of them, so I'm part of the problem.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
But mark anything else you've been I've been speaking in two.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
All right, and that so I'm happy about that.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Great.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah, I was on the remaster thing.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Made it through sweeking and one and then he's like,
I'm not have you still.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
Not my switch? Still a doorstop.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
In a way I avoided it, Actually, Mark, I do
have a real question for you, so I can never
the Ulian Chronicles. Yeah, is it good?

Speaker 3 (35:52):
Ah?

Speaker 4 (35:53):
Yes, and no it is slightly budget, but it's still
a very good speaking and clone.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
Like it's Visit three.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Because a hit PlayStation plus last month, and I mean
obviously after Destraining and Expedition, I was like, I want
to give this a shot, but I was like, I
know March played this, so I had to ask.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
The problem is like it has three main characters next
speaking in three, but like the African American woman is
like so barely in the game. Like the other two
guys get like five and ten chapters and she gets
like two or something.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
So it's like really weirdly lopsided. And they gave like
they gave the DLC to her.

Speaker 4 (36:30):
But I think this kind of came to a little
too late, Like I guess, but this might have should
have been included in the regular game, or might have
like tried to include this in the you know a
little sooner, Like yeah, it's a very good sweakning clone
and it does have a Pokemon style.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
Got to Catch Them All mini game, so you'll be
happy about that.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Did you end up playing Sea Off Stars, Randy? I
don't know if you.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
I didn't get super far into it. I forget what
game came out, but I was enjoying my time and
then the next thing I know, I was playing other
stuff for him.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
The DLC is pretty great. I also want to throw
out there that Chained Echoes also got DLC or is
gonna get DLC. So glad to see both of those
games that are fantastic. H Western made RPGs that try
to be that are trying to emulate the j RPG
very well, get DLC and do that well, So props

(37:30):
to them.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Finally got to play Switch to with Anaya. We played
some Murder Kart World. She made use of having my
switch to pro controller and she could play the switch
one pro controller. I'm gonna say, like, I don't I
don't know if it's just Mario Kart or but like

(37:53):
or if it's the buttons on the switch and switch
to period that it's like, I'll play was like three
or four races and my finger my thumb's hurt, and
I don't have that problem with any other controller, so
I don't know what that is, whether what it's made
of or whatnot. But she complained about that. I was like,

(38:17):
I'm feeling the same thing, so how you feel. But
she enjoyed it, you know. She liked all the Nintendo
One with the kids, as far as having all the
animal characters that are just kind of random, like the
cow and the crab and the mole and all that.
She was like, every time there was an animal character

(38:38):
that was her, So she won with that. The Knockout
Tour thing is still super fun. I played it with her.
She actually got up to fourth and I was surprised,
so she doesn't play games very much, but still like
she was like really into it, So I think Nintendo,

(39:02):
you know, I'm not like I won't play with myself.
It's not a game. I'm waiting for Donkey Kong to
be the game that I'm sitting there playing my switch
to a lot after I watched that direct. But yeah,
still definitely think it's so worth I do think it's
worth eighty dollars if you have people to play with.

(39:23):
I think if you bought it to play solo or
just online. Maybe it's it's not, but maybe they'll add
stuff to it later on. And that's that's about it,
because I went back and I beat the second Axon
and Exhibition thirty three. So now I'm up to where
you're going to face the Paintress now, which you know

(39:46):
Mark's already cleared that by a mint a long time ago.
But you know, got sidetrack going. I want to finish
this game so I can enjoy this amazing story that
I'm already enjoying. But you know, I heard it get
even work crazy when you get to the end, so
I want to see what that is.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
For you guys.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
No, no, if we don't, But okay, that's enough with
the games we have been playing here, there's not uh
this is not a you know, last week was a
huge heavy news week. This week is not uh heavy
on news, which is good because we have the topic
at the end. So but uh, PlayStations did announce their

(40:30):
Places Plus games, which you can go download now if
you're listening to this, uh tomorrow or later than just today. Uh,
if you don't have Diabolo four yet and you have
PS Plus, you can go download that and play that
right now? You enjoyed that, right, Mark?

Speaker 4 (40:53):
Yeah, I saw Okason I got other day or so
I love it for like ten minutes, look at the
look at the storm, be disappointed, and then to kind
of back off.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
If you're more of the fighting game variety, got King
of Fighters fifteen. That's for PSIV and PS four as well,
along with the Elbow four. And then you got Juice
Sant which that was on Game Pass last year. It's
a dope nod game about climbing literally a mountain, but
it has a neat story do it. So Yeah, if

(41:28):
you like those don't nod games, this is another one
of those, and they do that pretty well. You know,
the NAT's kind of had a rough ever since, like
the strange two colors where it's like they'll get one
hit and then like three of them that are kind
of like all right, this is one of the much
better ones for sure. But I talk about PlayStation Plus

(41:51):
because you know, last was the last week that we
talked about the whole Sony or what the two weeks
ago we talked about the whole Sony strategy with that
business summit thing, and the one thing they didn't talk
too much about was PlayStation Plus. Game File had an
interview with Nick McGuire, who is like their global services lead,

(42:16):
and he kind of said that they're gonna stay the
course of PlayStation Plus. He did reveal which I you know,
they never kind of revealed the like actual number of
like when they do those like day one indies, like
how many they kind of try to go after. He
didn't say there was it's set in stone, but he
said they kind of go after four or five, and
that's what they kind of go with for the doing

(42:38):
the day one thing and then their strategies to kind
of do the first fity titles twelve to eighteen months,
especially after you know, apparently people didn't buy a lot
of hows Horizon have been in West because they put
it on PS plus after a year. So that's leading

(42:59):
them to why they don't don't uh, you know, put
their first party titles in there very quickly, and also
why they remove things. They're their whole thing about removing
things is that they have eighty collections of games across
the catalog, and that apparently they want to keep it fresh,
so they want people to feel like things are going
to leave, so maybe they'll they'll play it or just
to kind of I guess, be able to cycle through things.

(43:21):
Which whatever, Randy you are the PS Plus, you know
a person here, what do you think about like their strategy,
do you wish they did more in a certain area?
Do you think it's great the way it is? What
do you you feeling?

Speaker 1 (43:40):
And the one thing I wish they would fixes the
classics And I think we've we've talked about it on
here before that you don't need to have the top
tier for PlayStation Plus because they really don't add a
lot of the classic games and usually when they do,
like some of them, won't come with the trophies of
Mark and I like to go after. So that's a
little disappointing. Capcom. Please get on their stuff. I want

(44:04):
a Platinum, the original resid Eeval please. But to me
that that's fine.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
I have no problem with them not doing.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
The Xbox version of all this stuff and having day
one games right on their PlayStation Plus stuff, other than
some of the indies that I really think are trying
to do that they get their name out. And I
have a game like Stray that was kind of took
the world by storm because a lot of people could
hop on there real quick and play it and it
was fantastic or or animal well for me last year

(44:34):
was it was one of those games as far as
their first part of games. No, they want you to
buy their games. They want to make a profit. And
yes we talked about all the time. Game Passes one
of the best affordable things you know, as far as
gaming goes. But it's not like it's doing Xbox a
ton of good, because you guys are talking about some

(44:54):
bad stuff going on with Microsoft right now, and there's
no perfect way to do it. And when you do it,
you're gonna have gamers that get really upset that other
things aren't free. And games cost a lot of money
to make, and a lot of people get laid off
every every time I'm on here. We talked about that
l word, and it's because games are really expensive. So

(45:15):
why in the world would we expect them to then
spend all that money and then go here you can
have it for free. That's just not how it is.
So that the one thing I would change still after
all these years, is improve on the classic classics. They
had far better classics when during the PS three days
and I don't know why we aren't able to be

(45:38):
that that way again. But that's that's just me. But no,
I have no problem with their strategy as far as
like day one stuff goes.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
Let me, let me propose this idea for the ultimate
They said we're going to We're going to make a
p S one, p S two, and PS three emulator.
I can I sell you a games, but if you
saw the old discs around, you can load it in
and you'll play the game and they'll be they'll be

(46:07):
you know, they won't have any up career during it in,
but you can still do it.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah, it would. It would save me a lot of
room over to my left. I have PS one, two
and three hooked up to my left. It would save
me a lot of rooms. So I would be fine.
But but to me, that's also a niche thing. Like
you and I are kind of in that that collector's realm, right,
But there's not a ton of people out there, especially

(46:30):
to move the needle for a Sony like for you
and I amazing absolutely signing me up day one, but
it would cost Sony money in the end.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
And Sony has no reason to really, you know, That's
one thing I think we can malign Jim Ryan for
all the you know, live service initiative and how well
that's not gone. The one thing he hammered home a
bunch of times is that there's no money in that
for them. The return that they would get and all

(47:01):
the investment would be very small. And like you said,
it's there's a lot of people that talk a big
game about how I wish we had this this old
game and in this whole game, and then when you
come down to it, they don't actually play it. They
just want the idea of it being there, and then
you never touch it right, And you know, again, it's

(47:24):
the whole Xbox needs to have any kind of win
they can possibly have. So of course, you know the
rumors about them trying to make an emulator so that
your Xbox three sixty and Xbox Original games do wind
up working on the handheld thing and they can work
with your PC library and play anywhere and all that stuff.
That's part of their initiative. They're spending the money in

(47:46):
that where Sony doesn't need to, right. So I do
think that I would love to see them do more
of the indies on day one, just because like this year,
I mean FBC firebreaks on an indie particularly, But two
of the games that they've showcased they've also been on
game Pass, So it's like, you don't have that standout

(48:08):
thing that's like, Okay, this is the thing I need
to go to PS plus for if you're into like
playing the having that day one game that they're really showcasing,
you know, great for blue prints. Either way, that game
got a lot of talk because it was on both
services and Sony people got to play it. They wouldn't
have either anyway. You know, I wouldn't have touched it
if I had to go and spend the twenty thirty

(48:30):
dollars or whatever. But I gave it a world because
it's on there, and that's the whole point of that thing.
But you know what, Sony's been doing their thing. I
do disagree with them slightly on the you know, once
it's your game, you know, once it's at the point
where you're selling it for like ten bucks, is what
does it matter to take it out of the damn

(48:52):
PS plus? You know, like that's really just kind of
petty at that point. It feels like, but you know,
even Nintendo is not removing stuff out of Switch Online,
right like, and they're charging you way less for that thing.
Then they're charging you a whole year of Switch Online
for the price of one month of psplus or Xbox

(49:15):
Game Pass. I feel like, you know, once you get
to games that are like three four years old, nobody's
buying that anymore. Like what would be the point of
removing God of War, Ragnarok or you know whatever? At
that point? I would I own the game. I don't
particularly care. I'm just saying for people that maybe they
started playing it on there and then now they can't
because you know, you took it off. It's just it's

(49:36):
your game. You're not really earning a lot from it.
I just don't see the point in that. But you know,
the rest of the strategy I understand.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
I will say that the one counter argument, not that
I agree with it. I'm with you that the first
party games, after a while, go ahead and just throw
it on there, because just kind of have it builds
your catalog and then you can say you have so
many games on there and so on and so forth.
But I think their idea is, all right, we put
Rock on there, we can see the numbers that's going down.

(50:07):
Now we'll take it off, so then in a year
we can go, hey, grod to wear, Ragnarock is on
PlayStation Plus and it'll pop it up even more. And
a lot of that time to they will also put
it on the main the like the second tier where
you don't own it and you don't have it forever,
and then they'll take it off, and then a year

(50:27):
or so later they will then put it as a
PlayStation Plus game that you then own for as long
as you have the subscription deal, and then kind of
technically upgrade it that way. But again, it's just one
of those things where they can sell you on the
same thing three times.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
Yeah, it's the whole like Disney Vault thing, you.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Know, Yeah, exactly, the whole Disney thing. Well, all right,
and they need.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
To do that right now because they're not coming out
with any games because the one strategy that Sony really
sucked that was we're gonna do a bunch of life
service games. Oh wait, that failed, and now we're waiting
for other games to be made and to come out.
So they need to be able to recycle these games, yeah,
and put them in rotation while we wait for actual

(51:11):
games to come out again.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Just please don't do it with Ghost of Sushima because
I'm still working my way through that game. But you know,
do whatever you want, I guess, Sony, But we know
Xbox is obviously on the other side of things, and they,
you know, the thing with them is that their messaging

(51:33):
is kind of all over the place, and they've pivoted
so many times over these years where since they've had
Game Pass, and of course some of that led to
the acquisitions and all the other things that have happened
with the Xbox and unfortunately, as has been the case,
I think this is the it was four times last

(51:56):
year they had a small mention of between like everything
at Microsoft. But the one that they're that Jason star
is reporting on this is also to affect the Xbox
team in general. Uh, it was, It is surported by Bloomberg.
Jason Schard is saying that Microsoft plans to cut thousands

(52:16):
of jobs next week, most consisting of as sales sequel,
but now appears this gaming division will also be affected
by layoffs.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
This will be the fourth major run of layoffs at
Xbox in the past eighteen months, which coincides with the
time that they bought Activision Blizzard. This is never good,
especially after you've made such a big deal about game
pass revenue went up and you know, all of the

(52:45):
other eraas except for your consoles went up, and now
for some reason you're still laying people off. This industry
makes no sense.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Yeah, that is doing the best thing ever doing, you know, Yeah,
but I.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Mean already I don't know what else there is to
say with these things that feel like, oh.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
It's sadly risk and repeat. We absolutely hate it. We
don't want people to lose their jobs, but it is
just we I think all of us kind of saw
that is coming when they went out and bought all
these these companies and thought it was going to change everything.
So yes, game pass prices went up like so they
tried to settle it that way, but it wasn't like

(53:26):
they're going to bring in a ton of new game
pass subscribers because they're already doing a lot before that,
So it wasn't going to like triple by any means.
So you just spent all this money or not making
a ton back from it as much as you're hoping.
So the best way that businesses do is just get
rid of the small people, according to them, and it's

(53:49):
just sprints and repeat, and.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
I'm with you.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
It's it's so tough when you see these kind of companies,
whether it's in gaming or sports or whatever industry, where
they they have one meeting where they're like, this was
the best year ever for us, and this was great,
and we saw improvements here and an increase of this percentage,
and then next week ago, we are cutting this percentage
of people because now we have to top last year's

(54:16):
numbers and we to do that, we have to not
pay as many people.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
So it just.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
The business world sucks.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
Yeah, Sonny just did it too. They laid off people
at Ben Studio and then they announced, like the week before,
they announced how much how much the PlayStation five generation
has made them money. It's such a crazy industry, this industry.
I hope we get to the point where this can
level out. I don't know that when it will get

(54:45):
to that point.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
We are very much headed to a video game crash
two point zero, and it's not because nobody's buying the game.
It's because there's nobody left to make them.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Yeah, I hope that's a you know, it's it's one
of those things where like, yeah, we're seeing so much
change happen. I'm hoping that with so many successes that
we've had this year with the smaller games, whether it's
you know, Schedule one or Expedition thirty three, Repo Blueprints,

(55:18):
you know, people start getting the picture that you don't
need to have these immense studios with all of these
people work in there. You can have these smaller studios
with smaller size games.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
And you know, I think the one big example that
you just brought up is Expedition thirty three, like the
other ones, like Blue Parents is such a niche game
that I absolutely adore, but it's not going to be
for everybody, but Blue like Expedition thirty three is just big,
beautiful looking game and it's getting a lot of people's attention.
And what was their staff, like thirty forty people, And

(55:54):
it didn't take ten years ago that they had but
it didn't come out. It took them just a couple
of years from when they showed it off to having
it out. Grant that thought of six is hoping to
come out next year. It's been over a decade. Not
every game has to be absolutely master like get this
stuff out right. Listening to old podcasts where they're talking

(56:15):
about you know, Fa Fatasy seven eight nine came out
in like a four year period and now we're games
are a lot harder, but we just need to scale
things back when need to lower our expectations as consumers
and not expect everything to be top tier quality as
far as graphics go, and let them get these games
out first.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
To enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
Yeah, I'm kind of hoping that with the you know
how iterative these console cycles are going to be going
forward and the Switch to is I mean, place in
five and Xbox series were that, but Switch two is
even a bigger showcase of that, that the diminiscing returns
on graphics gets to the point where it's like, okay,
now we're going to focus on making great games again.

(56:58):
Not that there hasn't been, but we don't have to
have you know, twenty thousand people working on one game, right,
you know, for years and years and years and spending
all this money and then you have to lay off
half of them because it didn't make anything near what
it costs. You know. But you know, speaking of costs,

(57:21):
we know that Xbox Microsoft are doing that with whether
it's marketing, whether it's game Pass, whether it's whatever they
pay people to put the games in game Pass and
the games that they make, and also you know, spending
money on consoles that supposedly, according to the the deal

(57:41):
that they did last week with AMD, they are continue
going to continue to make consoles at least for one
more generation. Whatever that ends up looking like. We have
two former employees of Microsoft kind of giving their opinions
on Essentially they're not happy with the what Microsoft has
decided to do with Xbox going forward, and they wanted

(58:05):
to voice their opinion about it. Mikey Barrow, who worked,
you know, as part of the he was vice president
of Xbox will have an Xbox Game Pass. He worked
in various other roles in Microsoft. He was also you know,
head of Blizzard for three years before he left. He
kind of said, you know, it's tough to see Xbox
confuse about who it is and what it should be.

(58:26):
Some great people still there. They have to figure out
what needs to change in fast. He was later asked about,
you know, what it means for them as a console maker,
and he says, from what I see, they're no longer
that as in a consolemaker, Stradling defense is not a
winning plan. And then lower Friar made a whole twelve

(58:47):
minute video. She is actually one of the lead people
on the original Xbox team and she was gone on
to work on various games. She went as part of
a WB later as far as Epic. She essentially just
says that she hates seeing Xbox become what it is because,

(59:08):
you know, to her, Xbox men something else right, the
exclusive games, the having the console. She's not happy about
the whole Xbox play anywhere and all this the direction
that Xbox is going in that she thinks that Xbox
Hallward is essentially dead, that they're going to just keep
doing the rog l I x is going to be

(59:29):
the future. They're just going to keep uh, they won't
have anything that just has Xbox on it. It'll it'll
keep having another manufacturer make it and they to slap
the Xbox logo on it. Randy. Uh, you know, Mark
and I have talked about it a lot, so I
kind of want to get a fresh perspective on.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
This whole thing of.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Do you you know I I saw a firsthand with
my daughter playing games with her because she plays you know,
she mostly plays Roadblocks and other things that you could
also play your phone, but She asked me, like, why
can't I play this thing on you know, the Xbox
or why can't I play this? And it's like, well,

(01:00:10):
because it's not made by them, or it's just not
on there whatever. She's like, that kind of doesn't make sense,
you know, And I can kind of see their strategy
that way of that. You know, our kids that are
coming up, they're not used to that, right, I mean yeah,
they're used to like I could turn on my phone,

(01:00:30):
my computer and whatever I want to play, it's there, right,
And so they're kind of betting on well, everybody's going
to just want to be able to play their game
wherever they're at. Do you think that this winds up
working or.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
It depends on how many people want to play along
with with Microsoft. Obviously Microsoft and Tony don't play along
super well unless they're forced too. So that's not going
to be the case. We're not going to see game
Pass on Ony platform anytime soon. Microsoft at Xboxing to
be working a little bit closer. But yeah, my daughter's
the same way. She has her games that she wants

(01:01:09):
to play, and she has gotten fully hooked on Minecraft
and we'll play it on the old old one on
the Xbox three sixty or the Xbox One, sorry, the
Xbox One where she's able to play it near her room,
or she'll get on the PS four with my kid,
or we finally broke down and bought it for the

(01:01:31):
thirtieth time on the PlayStation five so we can all
play it as a family, or she'll play it on
whatever to try to get it the same thing. Like,
my son's really into the Roadbox and Addie likes watching
and she started to play Fortnite too, and it's it
is kind of fun to go in there and my
son's playing on his PS four and she's playing on
the switch and they're playing together on Fortnite. So there's

(01:01:54):
games that can work like that, and Microsoft's trying their
best to be that way. And honestly, if you're Microsoft,
it is so much cheaper to put a sticker on
something then to make your own console. So why not
work with other people to then allow your games to
be played on more places, because I think that's where

(01:02:15):
the next generation wants it. They don't care about console wars, right.
People need to understand that you can go on Twitter
and people care, but that's not the world. It's just
cranky people like us that get on there and whine
about stuff. Right, the next generation just wants to play games.
They don't care where. Just give me the game that
I have seen everyone else play. My daughter will watch

(01:02:38):
some random kid YouTube or whatever and they get hooked
on a game, and she wants to play that game. Yeah,
and then all that she cares about is having access
to it. She doesn't care if it's on a Sony
or an Xbox or a switch or just let me
play the game. And I think that's what Microsoft's trying
to do.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
It's like, all right, we get it, we're third place
in the console stuff. So now let's just make sure
that our game Pass, which we think is our big
money winner, can go out to everywhere and who wants
to work with us and who wants to play nice?
And I think that's what they're trying to.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
Do mark anything.

Speaker 4 (01:03:14):
I mean, the old the old heads are right, like,
why why even have the Xbox division around anymore? We're
not going to build an Xbox Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
I mean, I think there's the strategies that we've talked
about this, but it's a strategy of they do not
want Windows to become a platform that only exists because
you have to have it to have a computer, because essentially,
you know, if it went away from gaming, is a
way for them to make money, right, So if they

(01:03:44):
can make Windows be something that you can then actually
use on a handheld.

Speaker 4 (01:03:51):
Then literally talked about how they're laying thousands of people
off right in the Xbox division, so they're cruently not
making that much money.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Oh, they're making money, but they don't want to pay
the people that they don't think they need to pay. Yeah,
you don't need to say you don't need a sales
market if you're not selling an Xbox.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Right, And I mean we already know that they you know,
they have so many different devices that don't sell. Like
I don't ever hear anybody say they bought a surface anything,
you know, but they they make those things every year,
and I imagine that every year it's diminishing returns because
once you buy one, you don't need to buy another
one for like years. So I mean, and I will say,

(01:04:34):
it's it's a interesting concept as far as like you know,
Sony talked about how they don't want to lose that
PS four audience, right, and it's going to be interesting
to see like, how when we get to the PlayStation six,
are you gonna do what Microsoft does by now where

(01:04:55):
I can literally play any game that I own on
the Xbox One in my daughter's room. I put in
a room, but it plays through the cloud, right, is
Sony gonna do They do that with the PS three games,
But it's Sony going to do that with your you know,
PS four game. If you still want to play let's
say something on a you already can't do that with

(01:05:17):
your PS five games right on the PS four you
have to own the actual PS five. So that's one
area where I feel like, as we go in time,
and let's say the consoles keep getting more and more
expensive as we imagine they will be, because those those

(01:05:37):
prices to get the components are not going to go down.
Will people just keep staying with those PS fours and
Xbox ones and whatever and not upgrading because they can
still play Fortnite and all these other games? And then, oh, well,
the system that allows me to play all these other
things on the console everybody own you know it does?

(01:06:00):
I can see where that works in a way, doesn't
move enough people to that ecosystem. That's the thing that
I don't know. You know, that whole strategy I think
is great for the consumer, but I don't know if
it works for everyone. Right where Mikey Burro might be

(01:06:22):
right in the in the long end of this, where
Microsoft just says, Okay, we're going to become Sega, you know,
and we're just going to be the biggest publisher there is,
and that's it, right, But they are a big enough
company where like I just said, with the surface, they
could legitimately just keep making consoles. They don't care that

(01:06:43):
it wastes money. They're just doing it because they have
the money to do it right, and they're gonna iterate
so much that consoles are going to become such a
thing where seeing maybe two different ps, five pros or
something might not be a thing that's too long in
our distant future, or just you know, who knows if

(01:07:08):
at some point, like I wonder, does does Sony start,
does Sony eventually make a cloud machine that just you
know says Okay, here's the PlayStation seven or whatever it is.
You know, it is an interesting thought to see what
concolors are like after this next one that we know
is happening. As you know, Internet keeps improving and all

(01:07:33):
that stuff. They said that they're not going on Cloud yet,
but let's see what happens when we get to that.
But you know, Sony has no reason to change anything.
They're doing great as far as things go. And I
think Xbox has the ability to do what they're doing
because they have all the games that they can count on,

(01:07:55):
the big, the big ones that make them money. Right,
if they have that, it wouldn't really go anywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
Yeah, you mean game not games.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
Well, they have Candy Crush and they have other you know,
mobile games that Activision owns that get them money. It's
just yes, you're right, they have Call of Duty, but
you know they have their Minecraft also mix them quite
a bit, especially now with that movie that really made
people start playing that game again that weren't still.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Yeah, I'm in trouble with my daughter to try of
Microsoft store.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
So that's the thing that that already happened to me.
I already had to buy her like a few games,
and I'm just like, Okay, I didn't even know this
game was a game. But I'm glad that you know,
now she's trying to get me on the because she
has my switch one now and She's like, oh, so
this hello kiddy games there. You know, I'm just like, man,

(01:08:58):
you know, this has been on. This isn't a nice
like ten to fifteen dollars. This is like a full
hour game here. I don't know, you know, but I'm
just happy to shoot playing games. That's all that matters
to me at the end of the day. So however,
somebody can make it easy for for you know, future
generations to play, that's that's what matters. But yeah, I mean,

(01:09:22):
speaking of bringing back games, you know, Randy, we both
really enjoyed that EA Sports College Football twenty five last year.
Twenty six is about to come out way too soon
next week. Yes, and now they're apparently going to be

(01:09:42):
the return of the EA Sports College Basketball game the
first time in sixteen years. And you know, just for
basketball in general, they haven't had a basketball game since
NBA Alive nineteen, which is uh, what like seven years

(01:10:04):
in general for them. For basketball in two k's essentially
just become the de facto basketball game. You know, I
think neither one of us are big college basketball fans,
but I do like seeing this kind of comeback because
there are a lot of college basketball fans that not
as much as college football, but I think there are
a lot of people that will be excited about this.

(01:10:25):
You know, where are you standing on the whole?

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
I will wait and see. As far as college basketball, obviously,
college football was the game I played a ton back
in the day because I thought they nailed it, and
I always liked college football over Madden, even before Madden
became right all about cards and stuff. But they, like
EA has never been able or at least for a
long time, being able to really nail a good basketball game.

(01:10:49):
I always liked NBA TWOK more than NBA live back
when I played NBA games, and they I never liked
any of their college basketball games. I have of the
NCAA Basketball ten, the last game that they made, and
it is rough. It just does not play well. And
it's not just because it's sixteen years ago. I mean

(01:11:10):
you go compared to other games of that era, and
they just were not able to nail it. So this
I knew NCAA football the moment they announced that, all right,
I'm getting it because I have that itch, and I've
gone back and played the old one many times over
the years just cure that itch. I had no interest

(01:11:30):
for college basketball, but hopefully they gave it the love
that it deserves so that they actually come out with
a really good game. Because college basketball died well before
college football games did. College basketball games did not die
because of the legal reasons that college football video games did.
It just died because nobody ever made a good one
and nobody bought them, and they just moved on from it.

(01:11:54):
So I'm hopeful, but I will wait and see.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
Yeah, I'm on that same void. I really hope it's great,
just because you know, it's great for the people that
love those games that it's another way to kind of
live that whether you're in university right now, or you
get to play as year old school or the school
you love or whatnot. I don't know. Maybe it will

(01:12:21):
inspire because I've always been one that I grew up
with like NBA Live and stuff like that, so I
was kind of always partial to those. Obviously, they went
way off track and were just terrible after a while,
and you know, of course, eventually when you have like
two k to eating your lunch, what's the point, right,
But it's like it would it would be nice to
see them be able to accomplish this something they haven't

(01:12:43):
been able to do and so long, and maybe perhaps
this brings back the the NBA Live as well, and
you can have that. I haven't really loved then EA
basketball game since EA Street Volume two when they had
the EA Big label and all that. So you know,
it's great. I'm happy that they're they're bringing this back.

Speaker 4 (01:13:05):
Both you guys basically have said that that EA can't
make a good basketball game or it's been like fifteen years.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
What about NBA Elite eleven that was awful? Exactly?

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
Yeah, well they actually technically canceled that game, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
Yeah, and they have obviously they're gonna have hopefully new
people that work there that maybe have figured out how
to do a basketball game. But yeah, this has a
higher mountain to climb to be successful.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
Oh definitely.

Speaker 4 (01:13:37):
This seems like a fool's errand because at least like
the football, like the college football game, it has a
I mean it's not exact, I guess, but it's a
good enough, you know framework in a Madden game that
it's you know, slept it, n CUA a coat of
paint on it and called the day.

Speaker 3 (01:13:52):
But yeah, they got like making new make a new game.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
No, I mean I would say that there's actually a
lot more differences in the college football game that they
don't add to Madden, because there's just things about college
football that just aren't the same.

Speaker 3 (01:14:09):
But even that just I mean, I mean, is it
the same way.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
There's different people. Yeah, they work together. Madden is slow
and sluggish and college football is more arcadie.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
College football wants you to go out there and put
out forty to fifty points and have a good time.
Madden is like stuck on realism and they don't like
the frostbite engine cannot do it, and they try their
best to have everything down to a tee and it
just breaks the game. Like the bugs and Madden. There's

(01:14:47):
bugs in college football. Let's not get crazy too. But
it plays completely different. And I only say that is
I wait for Madden to hit game pass and then
I try it, just I see how how it works
out if has changed, And then I played two games
and go and I loved college football they played.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
Agree it's gonna be interesting because I do agree, Mark,
they did have the framework, like they know what that
football game needs to be or whatever. Whereas the basketball
that's got to be a whole. That's a whole different
thing they got to make because they don't have a
basketball game to pull the framework from outside of just
you know, taking with two.

Speaker 4 (01:15:25):
K does and yeah, well Randy's point, like the college
football game, it's still ye Orlando, it's still Frostbite, right,
It's yeah, they can go see it up for you know,
hopefully fix some ship.

Speaker 3 (01:15:40):
But it's the same basic game.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Well, I mean, it's just they play so differently though there.
It's just it does not feel the same and just
the whole the whole atmosphere of it and everything else.
They do a great job of keeping them separate of
there are a lot of gameplay elements that are the
same there. You know, they a lot of things they
get introduced into college that year, they tried introduced into

(01:16:04):
Madden next year, that kind of thing. They obviously have
the whole Road to Glory thing that that goes from
college to the pros and you continue the same character whatever,
but they play differently, which is actually good. That's that's
the whole point, Like, because you can't have the the
EA Arcade games anymore, it is nice to have that

(01:16:25):
differenti in between the two.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
So you know, what you should bring back is the
arena a Football league game, why not, you know, although.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
They are Football League football.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
But we'll see what happens with That's probably one of
those things that I'm sure it's not gonna get released
next year. I wouldn't be surprised if that's not till
twenty twenty seven.

Speaker 3 (01:16:49):
I can.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
Yeah, that did take at least what they did that
with the football one, where they like announced it randomly
and then yeah, it was like two or three years
later they had the first trailer and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
They did the teaser, and then a couple of months
later they're like, it's not close.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
Yeah, it's like it's coming, but you know, we'll tell
you when. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
Literally the teaser is we got green lit.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
Yeah, I have to go do the game.

Speaker 3 (01:17:18):
That's now. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
Then they're banking on that thing, like that's one of
their core franchises supposed so, you know, skate.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Not to get too far off the rails. Skate got
hosed because they're like, we're making a skate game, and
Tony Hawk went, you can play my old games and everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
But nicer. You can play my old games but looking nicer.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
Exactly, here's Tony Hawk wanted to skate.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
What, Yeah, it's gonna be in a thing once. You know,
Tony Hawk's you know, three and four come out in
a couple of weeks here, anybody ever going to think
about skate after that? So they might have to go
back to the drawing board there with that. But you know,
at least we do know when one of Calcom's flagship

(01:18:09):
Francis their next game is coming. Resident Evil, Rquiem Reside,
Evil nine, whatever you want to call it, is going
to come. February twenty seventh, twenty twenty six, they had
Capcom Showcase, which I don't know really what this was. Uh,
it felt like just an excuse to have like thirty
minutes of Monster Hunter at the end.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
Have we ever had a Capcom showcase and not?

Speaker 3 (01:18:32):
When? Why?

Speaker 2 (01:18:36):
Yeah, it was nice to see more Pragmata, at least
after they kind of just showed that one trailer and
then that's it. Anything game is.

Speaker 3 (01:18:48):
Like a disaster.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
It's crazy, man, Like how much people are still playing
Worlds right, and people are still playing Rise. Not that
people aren't playing Wilds, but like, definitely it has gone
down right, and I think even the reviews have turned
negative and all that. With that game. But the fact

(01:19:13):
that they took so much time for that, that really
shows that they wanted to make sure you knew that
there is content coming, because they really need that thing
to keep making money. Although it did ten million already
just off of the initial sales for this year or
whatever when it came out, you know, at the early

(01:19:34):
part of the year. I think the best thing that
I heard about Requiem was that thank god they decided
to not do the open world part. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
I don't know how that would have ever worked for
a Resident Evil game. I would have been really worried
about it. I know they all they're trying different stuff,
but yeah, Resident Evil and open world is Listen, we
try to do like the online games with us of Evil,
and most of them did not work. This game is

(01:20:08):
based kind of on an online game, so.

Speaker 4 (01:20:10):
Yeah, you know, the village is kind of opened the
world to an extent. I mean you have to like
do the side side areas to progress the story, but
like there's like mean to do in like the initial town.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
Yeah, I would say open, very small open zone. Resident
Evil game far more open than any other Resident Evil game, right,
So I totally agreed there, And it might be that
way for this one, hopefully you get to explore kind
of the streets of Raccoon City and it it becomes

(01:20:41):
a little bit more open because everything's blown the hell up.
But I will say I love the fact that you
can switch freely between first person and third person. And
I don't know if this was the case or if
it was just the way it was for Summer Game Fest,
but everybody that went there and tried to demo out
it basically said this is best played in first person,

(01:21:03):
and this is best played in third person. So obviously,
different areas will be more creepy like that they were
showing in some of this trailer, and some will be
more action based, and maybe you want to be third
person that way, But I do like that you can
freely switch back and forth.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
Do you like that that they're kind of trying to
meld both. I guess you could say two and four
together instead of staying in one lane. And they do
seem to go back more to like, we wanted to
make more of make it more horror this time, but
they also wanted to have the action on once. Are
you okay with that or you wanted it to be

(01:21:42):
more just all horror?

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
It depends on how far they go with it. If
you're having the spooky sections like the house in Resident
Evil seven, where you have a giant creature chasing after
you or whatever, and then the next thing you know,
you're facing off a horde of zombies that are running
at you, and and knights armor and crazy stuff like

(01:22:05):
you get in four, maybe it gets a bit too much.
The only thing I don't want is six, where they
try to do everything and.

Speaker 3 (01:22:12):
They don't do any of it right. So that's the
favorite game.

Speaker 1 (01:22:16):
That's fine, but okay, that's good to me. Resident Evil
six was we want to try this and this and
this and this.

Speaker 3 (01:22:26):
And this and this and this and this and that,
and they don't.

Speaker 4 (01:22:30):
They overstuffed it and had like no personality. Because of that,
every character is supposed to play differently, but that doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
I know, there there's been it's all rumors and just
people trying to figure out stuff. I know, Leon Kennedy
has been a big Oh it would be great if
he came back and they even mentioned him by name.

Speaker 3 (01:22:50):
Yeah, that that capcom thing, But that's the real wrong attitude.

Speaker 4 (01:22:56):
This game should just be full of like the Resident
Eviel cast off, characters like don't have Chris or Lena
have like Jake Mueller from Resimi Evil six and Sheva
from Resident Evil five.

Speaker 3 (01:23:08):
The characters that like run one game that no one
cares about.

Speaker 1 (01:23:12):
The character they've shown is the daughter of a character.

Speaker 3 (01:23:15):
From About Her Like that's the funniest thing ever.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
So that's what I'm very curious where we go. I'm
just happye to Racord City. Never thought we'd see that again.
And you know what, it looks like it's in better
shape than I thought it was going to be compared
to how big of the explosion was.

Speaker 4 (01:23:32):
Intell find that Alison from the films as a video
game character.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
I would imagine they don't want anything to do character
at all. But yeah, hey, speaking of movies, thank you
Mark for that segue. We got the casting for a
street Fighter. Yeah new movie. Uh well you did say

(01:24:05):
what do you think Jason and Moore could do?

Speaker 3 (01:24:07):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
And you mentioned Blanc They got that one.

Speaker 4 (01:24:15):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
Curtis fifty cent Jackson will play ball Rock and Roman
Reigns is also going to be and this is a Kuma.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
Uh r ready I do for that character.

Speaker 1 (01:24:32):
So Acuma is only going to show up for thirty
seconds of this movie, right done. He only shows up
a little bit every year.

Speaker 3 (01:24:41):
You he's gonna showing into the Superman Punch.

Speaker 1 (01:24:44):
Yeah, Oh, I guarantee you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:46):
Oh, definitely that's gonna be a spear is happening.

Speaker 3 (01:24:49):
In Acuma's signature moves the Superman Punch. It will be.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
The next street Fighter game that the ads a Kuma
or a DLC for the Street Fighter Game six. It's
gonna do that and there he's gonna go for it.
They're gonna go all in with it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
Yeah. Will it making up as much money as the
the you know, the first street Fighter movie that's gonna be? No,
you don't think it'll make at least one hundred million.

Speaker 3 (01:25:22):
I mean it depends on how much it costs them
to make it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:25):
Yeah, that's it's definitely not gonna cost thirty five million.
They're definitely gonna put more money into this.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:25:32):
The only asking for this thing that I see is
approaching good is Alan Richardson is guile.

Speaker 3 (01:25:41):
Yeah, fair enough, and the only thing with him and
I like him.

Speaker 4 (01:25:46):
As you know Reacher on that show, but his flat
tap needs to be growing with it with every scene
he's in. So at the end, it's like six feet tall.

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
Yeah, sure, Yeah, it would be cool to see one.
It's like, you know, they have a trailer for this
and whatnot, like you know how they're going to actually
be as characters.

Speaker 4 (01:26:08):
You guys ask you this since I know you're perfectly
still watching wrestling, And I think, how much do you
think WWE get is behind this thing?

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
No, because it is not there and nobody else cares
about w W.

Speaker 3 (01:26:20):
Films, So I don't think not I mean like that.
I don't mean that specifically, I don't mean like.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
Advertising stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:26:27):
Yeah, oh yeah, I'm sure it will probably be a
sponsor for one of the Premium Lave events whatever month
it comes out in.

Speaker 1 (01:26:34):
And they'll have a logo on the ring, Matt that.

Speaker 2 (01:26:39):
And they did it for King of Fighters for God's sake.

Speaker 1 (01:26:45):
Depending on the month this comes out. Like WrestleMania has
sponsored matches, Yeah, Classic Clan sponsored a wrestling match at WrestleMania,
so Street Fighter will do that.

Speaker 2 (01:26:55):
Yeah, they have Fortnite regularly as a sponsor.

Speaker 3 (01:26:59):
So it'll be a Kuma vers logan, Paul, Yeah, hilarious.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
It was a New Day versus the Viking Raiders and
it was sponsored by Clash of Clans. So the Viking
Raiders came out as Clash of Clans characters. That was
their entrance, was them in that outfit. It was dead
whatever for money.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
Yeah, I guess the place did not h he learned
that side of it. He gotta gotta do whatever for
money on that. Just the programming note, I guess on
Wednesday there's going to be a band on MCOs showcase.
They did have the Arc System Work showcase, but I'm

(01:27:42):
not even gonna bother with that thing because the major
game that they showed, I have no idea what the
heck it is. Uh, And the rest of it was like, okay,
that's a game I forgot. The Vola Ball was getting
a new game, and Dragon Double Dragon Revive is a thing. Sure,

(01:28:08):
but yeah, at least Bendana has a lot of things
happening uh here. So they got plenty to show between
that Blood of Don Walker game, the Shadow Labyrinth, the
Evil pac Man thing, uh, you know, techn eight, Little
Night Murse three. So it's gonna be interesting. Plus they

(01:28:31):
keep teasing if they're gonna have either another Tales announcement
or Ace Combat eight.

Speaker 3 (01:28:39):
So yeah, they haven't done the Tales of a rise anime.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
Yet I think they might have if you know, the
DLC would have caught the game on fire again, but
that that game kind of had its moment and that
was it.

Speaker 3 (01:29:00):
Yeah, but the deals he came out like a year
and a half two ways.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
Yeah, that's too. But yeah, the the before we get
to the I guess they're the you know, best games
here really quick, just because it's interesting to see like
how much this has changed. They're there. You know, we
talk about changing strategies with with Xbox and everything. Netflix

(01:29:24):
has really gone one eight with how much they have
been promoting games, uh, since they even went to the
far as getting Joseph Staton to be part of a
Triple A game studio that then closed down without even
making ever showing us anything about a game. To now
they are just delisting games off of Netflix Mobile, where

(01:29:49):
they tried to make that such a big deal, even
having day one releases and having they even they owned
a studio, the Night School Studio and everything that's supposed
working on a game. Randy, Like, I thought Buba was
to be big like what happened here with Netflix, and
they're just data listed like all their big games basically.

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):
I'll be the first to say I always forget Netflix
has games.

Speaker 2 (01:30:14):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:30:17):
True.

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
If I wasn't on this episode or I did not
listen to this particular episode, they could have came and
gone and I would have totally forgotten. I would have
never noticed.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
Honestly, I've just I don't watch that. I mean, you
know there are people that watch everything on their phone.
I just I have Netflix is somewhat on everything that
I never opened the app on my phone. I always
have it on my TV or something else, so and
I know they're on my TV. Like the the LG
that I have, you can play the games with your

(01:30:51):
I could technically hook up a Bluetooth controller and play
the games on there, but I'm not going to. But
it just I think the only time I really care
was when they had that Rustle Quest game. Uh, and
I think I played Carmel San Diego a few times
and I thought it was fine. But like, really, that's
the thing is I think they don't they had they
realized that they couldn't charge anybody for these games, Like

(01:31:12):
nobody's gonna pay any more than they already do for
Netflix to play this stuff. So it's like it's not
an incentive for anybody to get the highest tier of
Netflix either. It's like, what do you gain from this?
So though I don't know, just I feel bad. I mean,
I guess people got their money, but they.

Speaker 4 (01:31:34):
Even delisted like the Choos Run Adventure stuff's like yeah,
which thankfully I still have a DVD of that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:43):
Yeah, I figured once it started, you know, like delisting
the chooserru on a Venture stuff, it was like only
a matter of time. And like Monument Valley three basically
just got added, and that thing's already getting delisted up there,
like you know, it's it's crazy that they just want
it like the other way with that. So at least

(01:32:05):
the Apple Arcade is still technically a thing, but it's
it's interesting to see where you know, like mobile games
are going, uh with that? But all right, uh let's
get into our best games of twenty twenty five so far.

Speaker 3 (01:32:21):
But you forget the important new is that Sonic Adventure
is not getting a remake.

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
Oh I was trying to stay with some time, but.

Speaker 3 (01:32:32):
Yeah, wait you so.

Speaker 2 (01:32:39):
Okay, I like Tonic Adventure. Something wrong with it? I
just I also kind of agree that not everything needs
to have a remake. So I kind of agree with
uh Le Zukasan here that I'm glad to hear that
we're not getting remakes or remasters's Sonic Adventure anytime soon, Like,
go make something new, please do?

Speaker 1 (01:32:59):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (01:33:01):
I mean Sonic Adventure. It's like it's like two parts
of a good game. The problem is are six parts,
so the other four parts are crap?

Speaker 2 (01:33:11):
Are you also including two in that?

Speaker 3 (01:33:14):
No? Because two has like three parts and only one
part is like somewhat decent.

Speaker 2 (01:33:18):
Okay, Like maybe they realized that too, that it's just
too much work for probably very little return. Yeah, I'm
happy to hear that Sonic Crosswolds apparently is not going
to have as much rubber banding, which that's good.

Speaker 4 (01:33:33):
I'm actually surprised they're not remaking it though, like just
call it like an NHD version and ship it out.
They crapped out that Shadow the Headshot game recently, and
so good as for.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
That, well, but they added that on. I mean that
game's actually sold pretty decently. Yeah, you know, so credit
to them. I mean the Sonic Games. That's like when
they revealed those sales numbers last week. I mean, the
Sonic Games are doing pretty well, so you know, credit
to them, but I don't think that bringing back these

(01:34:05):
Dreamcast games are going to do the same.

Speaker 3 (01:34:08):
Numbers hung back sonic Ar from the Sega Saturn.

Speaker 2 (01:34:12):
There you go. But all right, mindy, what are your
best games so far that you've played.

Speaker 1 (01:34:21):
In You mean the games I've had a chance to play,
because that's the list.

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
That's fine.

Speaker 1 (01:34:28):
I have five five games I've played this year. I've
beat two of them. Ones not a game to beat,
and we've already talked about the two currently going through.
But number five, of course, I'll just say I want
to be the show because I get it every year,
hopefully by the time we do Game of the Year
at the end, I've played ten games and I don't
have to add it to my list, but right now
I needed it for five, so that's fit. Split Fiction

(01:34:52):
is actually number four for me.

Speaker 3 (01:34:55):
I really liked it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:57):
Hayley and I played it all the way through, just
like we did.

Speaker 3 (01:34:59):
It takes.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
It's too long, and not like the game itself, but
like the levels and the sections are just too long.
I think It Takes two was fantastic because it had
so many mini games to get lost in, and we
had so much fun playing all of the little things
along the way that you just kind of got lost
in the game split Fiction. I think it was a

(01:35:22):
lot harder, which is difficult when you're playing with somebody
that is not typically a gamer, So we got stuck
in a lot of parts, and other than like one
or two side stories, like all the other side stories
could have just been missions. Anyways, they're not off the
beaten path. I really thought the imagination was going to

(01:35:43):
happen when you do the Pig level. If you've not
played that, it's the highlight of the whole game because
they try to have fun and they went way off
the rails. And my daughter still wants to play just
that level anytime she wants to play Split Fiction, but
I just they get hit the same marks as it
takes two. Still, very good game, just wasn't up there.

(01:36:05):
Number three for me is Blueprints. It was the game
this year that has made me cuss more than any
other game. It is the most frustrating puzzle game I've
ever played, but I couldn't stop playing it. The amount
of times that Haley and I would be playing. I
get frustrated and toss the controller down and then go

(01:36:26):
all right, let's play it again tomorrow was countless. The
whole randomize rooms thing creates some really interesting aspects to it.
But when, especially once you get to the conclusion and
you technically beat Blueprints and now you're just trying to
do all the extra stuff, trying to get rooms to

(01:36:47):
a line up to unlock the secret things that you've
started to figure out, became a chore. I say that
I could not put it down, so for what it's worth,
but it was not like Lorelai and the Laser Eyes,
where just the puzzles were really really hard and we
banged our heads against it trying to figure out the solutions.

(01:37:09):
The puzzles weren't super hard for Blueprints.

Speaker 3 (01:37:12):
It was just the depth that.

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):
They went really impressed us. And then it got a
little while. I've just got to the point where I
watch videos of people that are really good at that
game to get the super deep stuff. But like the
base game, I absolutely loved. And then my top two,
which who knows, I'll say Death Stranding two right now
would be number two. It's just dees Stranding but more.

(01:37:37):
We talked about at the beginning of the show. I'm
absolutely living my time, but my main Battle and Mark
can use this against me when we come back in
December January for the top ten my main battle for
Death Stranding winning Game of the Year. It was something
completely different, something we've never seen before, and that's why
Expedition thirty three right now is my game of the

(01:37:59):
year at this point, these two I've not beaten. We
talked about it already, but absolutely I'm going to continue
playing them, and by the time we get to the
Game of the Year, I will have hopefully beaten them
both and we'll have even more praise to say. But
those two are kind of neck and neck. But I'll
use my same argument against me. Expedition thirty three is
unlike anything I've played before, and they absolutely knocked it

(01:38:22):
out of the park so far.

Speaker 2 (01:38:25):
All right, Mark, what are your whatever? How many you
want to have in your.

Speaker 3 (01:38:31):
I have six.

Speaker 4 (01:38:32):
I can get to a few of these pretty quickly.
For number six had Capcom Fighting Collection two. That's like
Project Justice. People like Powerstone, I guess, so that's all right.
Number five is Sniper Elite Resistance. It's more Sniper Alaska,
you know. I mean, it's kind of like Blaze through It.
It's still enjoyable and so I just fun to you know,

(01:38:53):
shoot Nazis and the nuts. Number four was split fiction
for me. I didn't like that one as nearly as
much as it takes two Like it takes two head
like the one annoying a racist fairy guy if you
think guy's name, oh right, the book Yeah, but like

(01:39:18):
specs fiction like yeah, like slits fiction. It's just like
it's so dumb, like the like the bad Guy is
just so over the top, like and I agree, Like
the levels are too long, like you said, your wife
got you know what, Like your wife's not a gamer
and she got stuck.

Speaker 3 (01:39:39):
A few times.

Speaker 4 (01:39:41):
Are gamers and we still got stuck a few times
and it's like yo that like there are problems in
the game where it's like they should have some tutorial
or you know, it's like, oh, if you're if you
keep beating your head against this puzzle after like ten minutes,
you have a skip button or show me what how
to do, like uh and man, like, like I liked

(01:40:03):
it takes too Like it had like a few big
open worlds like the Christmas world and they said, this
is a big area and you got a ton of
shit here and it takes too I mean sorry, Spectation
didn't have any of that.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
Yeah, it's linear.

Speaker 3 (01:40:16):
Yeah, uh, that's quick.

Speaker 1 (01:40:19):
I don't I don't want to mess with you. You
just made it pop it in my head. Uh. But
have you gotten to a point where I know you
died saying you're fighting the metal of your rip off
and destreading too. Have you died to any other bosses
where it goes try again or just pretend you won? No,
it's hilarious. I died to one of the really big

(01:40:43):
boss outside of one of the the places, and that's
your option. I didn't click it because I don't know
what so I don't know what it does. But it
was literally try again or pretend you want So it
has that option of all right, you don't want to
do this boss, we could just skip it.

Speaker 4 (01:40:57):
Yeah, I think it's valid. Yeah, sure, love it. Like
I have only died the bosses in that game, like
especially the first one. I just don't like how they
do bosses and death stranding, like the whole like area
full of tar jumping from you know, school bus to
school bus. It's okay, I guess, but like I like
the octopus one. That's pretty cool. Number three actually or

(01:41:23):
number four sorry with split fiction. Uh, I'll say that
Sydney Sweening movie, especially depending on how unclosed she gets
in it, that might be worthwhile. But uh, number number
three is Death Stranding two.

Speaker 1 (01:41:37):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:41:39):
Again, I want to play six games. So number two
for me is Asassin Screwed Shadows and number one is
Extradition thirty three. That is I I mean, I can't
say every game come out for the next six months
or five months, but I don't see anything taking that game.

Speaker 3 (01:42:01):
Real good.

Speaker 2 (01:42:02):
I mean there are there is for Sundeple, I already
see Best Training two people that ever viewed it that
that have it as their game of the year. Definitely,
it has the same score on I think Open Critic
right now it's Expedition thirty three. I'm not counting this
all the remakes that's bs that Metacritic counts that. Just uh,

(01:42:25):
I guess I'll get through mind that we can talk
about any games that you guys that have already come
out or games that are gonna come out that you
definitely want to play.

Speaker 1 (01:42:34):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:42:36):
For me, I'm going to do I'm going to do
six as well, with a couple of honorable mentions. Just
the rest of the Necro Dancer was great to kind
of start out the year. Loved that. You guys can
take the Necro Dancer formula turn that into a guitar

(01:42:58):
hero game. You got me right there with some great
music and they did that awesome, So you know, got
to review that and it was really fun. Rematch is
also really good as well as from Slow Clap. They
are Look, it's not perfect. They got some rough edges
for sure, but it's definitely I think it's gonna keep

(01:43:21):
growing as a party game and somebody got three million
people playing it and it's just it's short. It gets
to the point. It's fun. Just take a like arcade
version of soccer with some crazy stuff like kind of
like Rocket League with people, and they did a good
job with it so so far. I'm hopefully they just
keep iterating on it and definitely get some of the

(01:43:42):
cross play and some of the things that are missing
in there. Some more people can can play, for sure,
but number number five for me is top of Midnight.
It's just an absolute look that the battles of the

(01:44:06):
actual gameplay is you know whatever. But the world is
amazingly well done. The I still can't get over the
art sometimes the way I did it, and just the
way that they absolutely capitalized on giving the Southern culture
a place and doing that well in the Southern folklore,

(01:44:29):
absolutely tremendous. So like I want to give them Compulsion
Games a nod for actually coming out with Look, the
game is not not oh my god, I would say
you got to definitely go out there and play, but
for being on game Pass and it's like, you know,
ten twelve hour thing, it's well worth experiencing and it's

(01:44:53):
also you know, modestly price. So credit for that.

Speaker 3 (01:44:57):
For them.

Speaker 2 (01:45:00):
Number four, I'm gonna say Doomed the Dark Ages still
play that here and there a really fun game. I
love the you know, the stand and stand your ground
combat with the shield and everything, and then you just
get the shoots up and that gains fun. I'm not
big on the exploring and finding all the stuff. I

(01:45:20):
just want to go through and just kill stuff and
that's that's a fun game to just pop on, just
kill some dudes and go on with it. You know,
still probably think they paid too much attention to the story, honestly,
but you know it is what they're They're just they're
trying to end it on a on a note, I guess,
so give them that Mark cart World Number three for me,

(01:45:43):
fantastic game. Look, the free roam stuff sucks, but the
rest of the game is top notch. That World the
knockout Tour thing is tremendous. Great job on them fighting
a battle of oil. To Mario Kark, I'm going to
be interested to see how if they keep adding stuff
to it eventually. Number two is Despoloting absolutely one of

(01:46:07):
those games that like takes you to that moment and
it's really short. Never thought there would be a game
that shows you how it is, how a whole country
got behind getting to the World Cup for the first
time and doing that so well and such a like
old school style and one of my absolute favorite games

(01:46:28):
that I've played in a long time, just because you know,
hit me in all the fields for that and then
next edition thirty three number one. I haven't beat it yet,
but I know it's gonna be my number one. It's
the game I've enjoyed the most. It's a game that
I thought about every time when I'm not playing it.

(01:46:48):
So when I had to like pull away from it
because I had to play other things for review or whatever,
it was it's like, damn it, you know what, I
got stuff playing this game, but I and go back
to it an noown since I don't have anything, I
have to play until Donkey Kong unless the cost Football
twenty six review code shows up or something. But yeah,

(01:47:12):
just enjoyed the hell out of that game, and it's
a testament to Sandfall and a little people that they
made this game. And I'm glad that it's getting all
the I really just hope at the end of the
day it gets the awards that it deserves when we
get to the end of the year and not just
gets overtaken by something else. We'll see any games that

(01:47:35):
you guys haven't played that are like on your list
that you feel like you want to play, Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:47:44):
Lands for that, everybody come out. Sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:47:49):
Yeah, Actually a lot of your guys's listener stuff that
I'm looking forward to. I have South of Midnight and
Doom Eternal downloaded, I just haven't not and around to
giving them a try yet. And I haven't played Assassin
Street Game, and since I got really really open world,
and I've heard good things about Shadows, so I want

(01:48:09):
to give it a try, just because it's a little
bit smaller compared to like Odyssey and stuff, and it
feels like I can actually not spend eight hundred hours
on it. So I'm very curious about that game too.

Speaker 3 (01:48:20):
I might give it. Ah, that's a partial lie, but
you can break the game, so it makes a lot
a lot quicker. So here you go.

Speaker 2 (01:48:29):
Uh, I might. I'm still gonna try to go back.
It's not my kind of game normally. It actually might
be something that might work for Mark more because he
likes more of the strategy stuff, but he also doesn't
like a lot of the stuff from a little Bit Studios.
They're the ones that make Frost Funk and whatnot. But
the Altars, I really like the setup of it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:49):
I like the.

Speaker 2 (01:48:52):
The like the whole thing of like making different altars
and going through that story or whatever. It's just like
the strategy game part of it is is the one
that's like kind of racking my brain trying to figure
out what I'm supposed to do.

Speaker 3 (01:49:08):
So Multiplicity, I know that that sends.

Speaker 2 (01:49:12):
Yeah, as far as I know what's coming, guys, anything
that's like for sure, you know you want to play
that's coming.

Speaker 4 (01:49:25):
Alight, Mark, We can all agree with porter Lands for uh,
I assume for Rain that we saw on Hell Fuh
for me maybe Ghost to Yo Tai Uh and you're
guiding for Yeah. I would say Vampire Bloodlines too, but
that's never coming out. Uh yeah, that's kind of about it.

Speaker 2 (01:49:53):
I needs you gotten Rage Bound for me as well
as Shanobi. Both of those look awesome. Uh, glad that
both of them are. Are you gonna Are you gonna
play the middlegirs Solid Delta, Randy?

Speaker 3 (01:50:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:50:06):
Absolutely. I was just looking at a release list and
realize how bad the end of August who the beginning
of October is for me, and that from my job
is the busiest time of the year. I'm trying to
I'm looking at this list, going all right, so Medigris
out Delta August twenty eighth, then September is everybody's golf

(01:50:31):
and baby Steps. I want to try if I have time,
because that game just.

Speaker 2 (01:50:34):
Looks there's a demo I'm trying to want to play
a Mark.

Speaker 1 (01:50:39):
New that I want to play. Silent Hill have fun.
Fantasy Tactics is another one that looks interesting just because
I like the original. But I know they're not doing
a ton and it doesn't seem from everything I've been saying,
seeing they're not using the Vita version for a lot
of stuff, which is a little disappointed, not the beat
of the PSP version, which is a little disappointing. And

(01:51:00):
then of course goes to YOT So there's like five
or six games that come out in like a six
week period. I'll probably have time to play one of them.
So and if I only have time to play one,
it the retily he'll have because that game looks like
a complete mind trip that I'm all here for it.

Speaker 2 (01:51:16):
Yeah, Lost Soul Aside for sure, if that ends up
coming out, it doesn't get delayed again. Another game that's
like add to the August craziness, uh sort of the
c as well. That's one of the PS plus games.
Mafia the Old Country, Donkey Kong hell is Us has

(01:51:40):
really intrigued me every time I keep seeing it, so
and I'll and of course Tactics as well. I have
to end And how could I not include my Digitmond
story Time Stranger. I'm so happy that there is another
game in those in the story series. So yeah, and
of course Ninja Grinding for like Mark mentioned, so, and

(01:52:03):
there's a lot of stuff that still apparently doesn't have
a release date, so we'll see if it actually ends
upcoming this year or not.

Speaker 1 (01:52:13):
But there's always some kind of an indie game that
sneaks in and surprise. Oh yeah, even this late in
the year.

Speaker 2 (01:52:18):
There's already one that, like I went through and was
looking at like, Okay, do I need to play this
or that or whatever. I'm just like, oh god, there's
like ten of them. I don't know that I can
get to all that, but we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:52:35):
This.

Speaker 2 (01:52:36):
There's one that's like a Zelda like the Peepee Strollo
that looks freaking great, that has like a eighties nine
medical Open Critic or whatever. But yeah, there's still a
lot of awesome games coming left in the year. What
is your favorite game or best game of twenty twenty

(01:52:57):
five so far? I Crafty's community to kind of give
me what they thought. We had some decipolotism there, a
lot of exhibition thirty three Kingdom Come Deliverance too got
a few shouts as well. One that I don't think
any of us probably has on the the hole to play,

(01:53:22):
But yeah, I mean that shows how like this has
been a really great year so far, even though we
were not going to get GTA six or whatever, like
it shows that hey man, as for all the city
craft that we have to talk about with games, you
still get a lot of great games to come out

(01:53:42):
in the air. So yeah, this is going to be
a phone when we get to the you know, deciding
what ends up winning Game of the year and all that.
But yeah, I mean, I think Expedition will wind up
being like you know, the top, but everything else like
it's like after that and maybe like desk training too,

(01:54:02):
and a few other things. It's like, okay, what's what else.

Speaker 1 (01:54:05):
Is in there?

Speaker 4 (01:54:05):
That's it goes Exhibition thirty three and then Garfield Cart
two all you can drift right.

Speaker 2 (01:54:11):
There exactly exactly even beats out Mario Kart World. This
is is yeah, all right, uh let's I guess ends
how we always do talking about the games that come
out and the week ahead. It's always kind of usually
you don't get a lot in that first week of

(01:54:34):
the month, but you do have mecha break that people
have been waiting on for a while. This is the
the Gundam game that's coming out for PC and Xbox
that's coming out in the first You did get to
Mario Strikers coming to Switch Online. That's the next GameCube

(01:54:56):
game coming for Switch to and at Harvest Moon remaster,
it's Harvest Moon, Lost Valley and Skytree also coming as well.
So then next week you'll start getting the I would
call it football and some other things. So but all right, Randy,
you want to promote your bad Brackets again here?

Speaker 1 (01:55:20):
Yeah, I just look out Bad Brackets on YouTube. Go
check out three people yelling at me as we do
the twenty four item bracket that we break down to one.
I've turned it into a game show, so there's high
stakes for everybody as well.

Speaker 3 (01:55:31):
Again, our best.

Speaker 1 (01:55:32):
Tennis Players was this week. Video game sequels with I
don't know if it was last week or the week before,
but we do everything from video games to movies, the
wrestling to food. Whatever you can think of, we will
argue about it. So yeah, just check out Bad Bracket.
Chounsmen on it several times and even eight past the winners.
That's why he has nice things to say about it,

(01:55:53):
because he's one an episode.

Speaker 2 (01:55:55):
It's lost funny as well.

Speaker 3 (01:55:57):
Yea.

Speaker 2 (01:56:00):
Even though Randy has gotten me very frustrated sometimes I'm
just like, damn it. But that's what's fun about that game. Yeah,
thank you so much for being on, Randy always appreciate
and you can join us here and you know we
will see y'all next week, you know, hit light, subscribe,
follow on whether it's YouTube of the podcasts or Twitch

(01:56:24):
or whatever you end up watching or listening to us
on and we'll see you later.

Speaker 3 (01:56:29):
Body wait

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