Get Played - We Play, You Play: Sonic Frontiers with Jordan Morris

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Heather, Nick and Matt are joined by return guest Jordan Morris to discuss the latest 3D Sonic entry Sonic Frontiers! They talk about Sonic running up giant robots, the open world, the epic soundtrack, fishing with Big the Cat and more! Check out Jordan's comic in Chilling Adventures Presents... Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe of Horrors coming March 22nd, 2023. Pre-order here: https://previewsworld.com/Catalog/JAN231229 Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Check out our premium series Get Anime'd On patreon.com/getplayed or on Stitcher Premium. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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free. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information and we thank Blue Chew for sponsoring the podcast. Alright team, we got a hold of the Yoshi IP. Very, very exciting that Nintendo, uh,

let us, uh, take Yoshi into our care and we're going to be making Yoshi frontiers. This should be a lot of fun and open world Yoshi game. It's about time. Yeah. There's so much we can do with the character, you know,

that hasn't really been explored, you know, so I'm really excited to put Yoshi in some, into some situations that he's not really been in before. Such a fun, colorful, vibrant character that kids love. It'll be great to see what Yoshi and the other Yoshis get up to. Guys, I've prepared a PowerPoint presentation with some of my ideas here for Yoshi Frontiers. Oh, wow.

I love it. If we could dim the lights and hit that music track. What am I? Says white text on a black screen. Am I horse? Am I alive? What am I? We fade up on a gray landscape that extends in all directions. Yoshi, bright green, but out of place. No longer can speak with his traditional brr-brr.

He can only say one word. Loss. Something's happened to Yoshi. Every time he interacts with characters that appear like fog and mist from the distant past, they are memories to him. Long dead. How long?

He doesn't know. Mario says, Hello, friend. It's good to see you. And Yoshi replies, Loss. Loss. Is that the last slide?

Yeah, that's some of the... I mean, there's some supplementary materials here about how Yoshi's going through a divorce. Yeah, okay. Yoshi can no longer lay eggs, but instead ejects like ash. Like the long burnt ash of a building. I was wondering why your wedding photos were such a prominent part of the powerpoint and now i'm starting to connect the dots yeah yeah um everybody experiences you guys have seen mad men we we know that the way that a human being

connects to their own family is the way that we connect a product. And what person hasn't experienced loss? The loss of coming home and the rocks are changed. Truly upsetting experience. Where's the car? Why won't you answer the door? Carol. Carol, answer the fucking door.

Huh? door carol carol answer the fucking door huh all that said if we could make the player feel all those emotions while controlling yoshi and his famous extendable tongue i think we'll have game of the fucking year let's ship ship it. We speed draw circles and collect and collect and collect as we play you play Modern Sonic the Hedgehog

Update Sonic Frontiers this week on Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to Get Played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. I'm Nick Weiger, just coughed off mic, along with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Premiere Video Game Podcast, where we're talking about video games from the past, present, and future.

And boy, oh boy, do we have a delightful episode in store for you today. What an episode we have. What a guest we have with us. Always exciting to have someone else in the studio. Easily my favorite guest and our first guest. It's true. We have other guests who listen to the show. I don't give a fuck.

Fuck those guys. They're going to be like, I'm not the favorite guest. I don't give a fuck. We sort of nailed it first try. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, we didn't have to have anybody. Blank checks David Sims.

Yeah. Sorry, Shiraku Dunlap. I am going to lord this over those triple click assholes. I am going to be insufferable. Everyone's nice and is our friend. Our guest today, a writer and comedian, he's one of the writers behind the new Archie horror comic, Chilling Adventures Presents Pop's Chocolate Shop of Horrors,

which releases March 22nd, pre-order today. Eisner nominee, Jordan Morris. Hi, guys. Great to be here talking about a game. My feelings about oscillated wildly between positive and negative each individual second. We are going to get into it, but it is very much like, I had a similar thing, much like sonic doing a full 360 loop i was like

i was like do i love this is this a mess and i will see where i landed uh jordan thanks so much for for for being back here i have a question for you because this is a and this is somewhat related to the games uh the game we're discussing today but i know you've been gaming for a long time i know we're similar in age and how do you feel about 2d versus 3d because i'm surprised this game has some 2d sections uh yeah i like that we get both i like that we're in a world now where you know you can have your shovel knights you can have your celestas um but you can also do have these kind of you know bigger budget more triple, you know, Mario games. Yeah, I think it's great that we get both.

And I know that, like, when games went 3D, that's when it left a lot of people behind. Like, if you, you know, if you're talking to somebody who, like, grew up in the 80s and 90s, like, having to control the camera is, I think, where a lot of people got left behind with video games. So I love the fact that you can just have, you know, those classic 2D side scrollers that are a little more approachable for folks that, you know, just kind of, yeah, that maybe did most of their gaming in the 80s and 90s. Right. I, you know, I play so many 3D games.

I think I still have such a fondness for 2d games i've said before on the show that i have like my favorite perspective i think is an isometric perspective i just love an isometric game but i know matt is like a guy like you know that he's the he's the youngest of us i love an isometric perspective is like the video game version of if you ask someone if they like dogs or cats better and they're like I like ferrets I was like okay what do you like shooting games or fighting games I like dating sims

that's me those are my gaming tastes Matt you like 3D you're more of a 3D guy you know that's I guess the console generation that I was raised You like 3D. You're more of a 3D guy. Yeah. I guess the console generation that I was raised on was the first PlayStation. So most games that I would play were already in that zone. I probably had seen 2D games,

but I probably played my first 2D Mario when I was a little bit older. I was like, oh, I'd seen it and i obviously knew it as like a reference base but hadn't like got my hands on one until like the game boy advance probably and played uh super mario world was my first mario i think i saw a um graphic going around i don't know twitter Twitter, Reddit, who the fuck knows. Truth social, I don't know where I get these things. Truth social, here, I'll share it with you guys. And it sort of breaks down the console generations by Gen X, Millennial, and Zoomer,

but also subdivisions within that of early Gen X, core Gen X, late Gen X, et cetera. And the idea... I love that these generations are getting even more micro divided up like yes i think i i learned that i'm an xeniel oh yeah i think i'm just i this is based on consoles i'm kind of i'd fall into the the late gen x just by the existence the presence of the nes there yeah um and i guess is there is that i don't think that's a commodore 64 but there's you know there those those are kind of the first things i played video games on

uh you got a master system in there yeah master system is there i think is funny is the difference between core millennial and late millennial and it seems to be a subdivision of two years because in core millennial you have saturn playstation n64 and the game boy color and windows 98 listed as a gaming platform yeah late millennial is windows 2000 so it's a two-year difference between core and late yeah it's so funny to see those Windows logos in there. It's like, late millennials don't know shit about ski-free. Yeah. You wouldn't know how to play Minesweeper.

I also feel like that's kind of a, to me, looking at that and remembering PC gaming of the 90s and 2000s, that's someone who, this graphic was made by someone who like is a little younger because they have microsoft like windows like 4.1 in there 4.0 and there's like that was not a good the windows 3.1 was not like a good gaming platform you're still playing those games on ms dos and ms dos is not represented and then they have like windows 2000 there is like windows 2000 was like for for corporate use. You were playing video games on Windows 2000. Also, there's no there's no Macintosh

represented here. Like there's like the Mac was Where's the Amiga? a gaming platform. Prince of Persia was out on the original Mac. You know, like that's a

that's a long a game with a lot of longevity. And it's just not they were like Core Gen X. I don't know. They played on 8-tracks with a lot of longevity. And it's just not... They were like, Core Gen X, I don't know. They played on 8-tracks? With a television that turned a knob.

This graphic was clearly made by a late millennial. No matter how bad something is, there's always someone who's nostalgic for it. 100%. I'll bring up Space Jam. Sure. Space Jam's not a good movie. No, but of course, I had the sheets.

Sorry, man. I was subtweeting you there. That's okay. No, I fell for the trap. That is my, yeah. I mean, but I don't like it. I just remember it. It's one of those things where I've sort of, I have enough distance from it.

I think actually watching Space Jam 2 made me realize that I don't like Space Jam. I was like, oh, wait a minute. It seems like you're in a good place with it. Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I'm fine with Space Jam. But I did have the sheets. It's true.

And I wish I still did. They were really great. I don't think I had any themed sheets. I wish I had. I wish think i had any themed sheets i wish i had i wish i'd had like themed sheets like jurassic park sheets oh man that would be great yeah that'd be good kiss the raptors before you go to bed at night night night awesome good night my boys clever girls it'd be cool if they had grown-up themed sheets like if you could get tar sheets oh cool my better call sol sheets i think i think jordan i think that's a million dollar idea

no joke like that's that is easily easily a business that you could scale and then sell to like me on these or something yeah yeah for sure all of wiger sheets were cum themed right i've become pre-stained so you have an excuse like oh no these are these pre-stained sheets and they weren't that stained though it's the theme that right that bothers me about it like because that implies like that that implies like other things right that are like cum adjacent yeah it's like right because if you had a power rangers themed birthday party there would be the hats there would be the cake plates right so to say a repulsa read yeah sure there you go uh right zord you know party blowers to say come themed implies that there's a line of,

yeah, mostly come, but also piss and shit. They're part of it. It's a bodily function theme party. Right. They're all friends. It's a shared universe.

I'm watching our subscriber level. Uh, numbers go down while we're having this conversation. It's fucking disgusting. And I didn't even start this. No, it was, it did not come from me.

Yeah. Hey, I'm curious. if somebody brings up tar, you're going to be talking about cum. I've been angling for Lydia tar and fortnight. That'd be fucking. Let's,

I want to ask because we're, we're, we're, I, I've been playing Sekiroro and and i'll talk about that in a second but but i know you're a big fan of of from soft games uh are you are you are you first off like how do you kind of rank them where do you put them in your head like what are your favorites uh if you have any sort of sort of order and then yeah are you are you are you looking forward to armored core yeah so on the on the topic of ranking the FromSoft games,

I think this will get across my feeling about them, is that Sekiro is my least favorite FromSoft game, but it is still one of my favorite games of all time. I can rank them with the understanding that I think they are all 10s. I think they are all 10 out of 10. There's not a bad one in the bunch uh starting from demon souls i you know cannot comment on the king's field games or whatever uh which are apparently in continuity if you consider the

presence of the moonlight great sword um i watch a lot of lore videos um uh yeah and uh so yeah i um i love all the from soft games uh you know starting from demon souls i think bloodborne is my favorite uh just has like a you know sentimental place in my heart might be my favorite video game of all time and yeah obviously elden ring was uh you know a mind-blowing masterpiece yeah um and yeah i'm stokedored Core. I've never played one before. I kind of got the impression that the, you know, PS1, PS2 Armored Cores were a little janky. But yeah, I mean, I'm just so into FromSoft. They have, like, eclipsed Capcom as the video game company I have the most affection for. Wow.

So yeah, I'm just kind of into seeing whatever they do and if you know armored core has some you know souls like mechanics in it uh um i'm in wow wow well hey maybe you'll be playing armored core someday soon i i imagine you will but right now my question for everyone is what are you playing what are you playing hey uh hey hey resident evil merchant great to see you again man it's been a while yeah we have a guest today it's nice to see you too did you hey you fell out of a plane right no i brought the plane with me oh okay okay great to see you up and around rough rough end to 2022 but we've turned it around in 2023 yeah i know we uh we talked about starting that book club together you still want to do you want

to get back into that or are you just too my eyes can't focus on words okay so uh i i do it for audiobook okay yeah sure i'll listen i'll listen to an audiobook on half speed oh god oh you're one of those i like the low voice yeah i mean this is the. I can think of some books that you maybe might want to read. Like, I'm just thinking about things like Atomic Habits, you know, things to just kind of get your life in order. And that's not a judgment call. I'm just sort of saying, like, you know, we all have some concern for you. And it feels like the power of positive thinking. I don't know.

Maybe some sort of self-help guide might be the way to go. Be Pray Love, maybe. That'd be a fun one. I do own two books. You do? What are they? Yes. Who Moved My Cheese.

Fun. Which is a really waterlogged copy. Like the pages are warped. Found it on the street. And then, of course, I own dianetics so those are my those are my two books they give those out for free with coffee i got handed a i got handed a scientology leaflet getting on the train the other day they're just that yeah you can just get that information out there they're still you have to pay eventually but at first it's free i once stayed in an airbnb

where there were a lot of scientology books on the shelf in a different country and i was like oh wow what i mean what are the odds of this yeah that's how that's how they get you if you just like you're staying in an airbnb you forget to bring your phone into the bathroom just start thumbing through dianetics, and the next thing you know, you're, you know, burning all your money for Xenu. I first gave AG1 a try because I was tired of taking so many supplements every day and wanted a single solution that supports my entire body by filling in nutrient gaps daily. I need energy. I wanted to simplify my morning routine with easy habits. Since drinking AG1, I've felt energized, strong, and nourished. Not only does AG1 deliver my daily dose of

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That's code getplayed50 at factormeals.com slash getplayed50 to get 50% off. Guys, I want to know, what are you playing? I'll start things off, Resident Evil Bir Birchit and I want to throw Jordan into this because I know he's played through this game I'm in the midst of playing it I wish I'd gotten more time with it this week but I was playing the game we'll be discussing at length

Sekiro I'm really enjoying this game I think it's just the combat is such a delicate dance the animation is so great and I just love the sense of lightness of the player character and the way you're able to zip around the environment

with the grappling hook in particular. My question for you, Jordan, and this is kind of targeted towards a way FromSoft handles their this game and then their game design approach in general, which is item scarcity

so for instance there's an item that you get called a snap seed which can be used to you know basically dispel an apparition um but it's it's a relatively scarce item and so you really have to pick your spots and it's the kind of thing where i'm just like i don't want to second guess any other design decisions because they're just these games are so immaculate uh and so so thoughtful and i like that that you have to like you know decide like there's there's so many risk reward calculations that that you're making as you're playing things that that item like how many items you have actually matters it's not like your inventory is loaded up with like fucking uh 1500 frost arrows like it is in other games um but but like that was that was the kind of thing where it's like fuck you kind of need these items for

certain fights and then if you don't have like if you don't have them you just have to like grind for them i i i so i i don't really know like like like jordan what do you what do you think about like the way that that that you just there just are there just isn't much shit that you can collect in a lot of these games or or this sometimes the key items are just like uh you know a little bit harder to come by yeah i feel like i usually end from soft games and rpgs in general i feel like i usually end them just just stuffed to the gills with items i didn't use 100 yeah yeah i am so scared of using those items i'm so scared of like needing them later that i will just like fight the same boss for two days without using the items because i'm afraid that i will need the item later and then i just beat the game

without having used most of them um so yeah i mean i think i think you know the lesson here use the item use the item i well i did i was very good about that when i was playing persona 5 which is just like i just fucking use the shit out of items it's self-care use the item cancel those plans my my entire work my business depends on you using the item that's true but i But I mean, like the merchants in Sekiro were not as. Fuck those guys. You know, those guys are scams. Oh, boy. Oh, it's some sort of union dispute.

I didn't know you. I didn't know merchants were organized. That's really interesting. I'm a union of one. Oh, OK. That's kind of counter to. Yeah, it's the idea of organized labor. That's the point.

But those guys, they'll undercut your price. They don't give a shit about the customer. Is there health care for the video game merchants union? Yes, there is. Because I know you guys fall out of a lot of questions. For example, if you shoot me, when you see me the next time, I'm fine. Oh, yeah. It's a testament to great health care.

Is that still you? Or is that like a clone of you with your memories? When you go to sleep, is the next day Nick, not Nick? Boy, that's a real existential question. I don't know. Yeah. You know? No, I I mean I think about it yeah it's it's wild yeah I don't know you got to get high with this dude sometimes blow your mind we were we were smoking out and he's like isn't it weird that money only has value because we say it has value i mean yeah well i said that yeah wild you get deep that's wild you get deep and you're a merchant your business is you know

your trade is what is that you don't think about it yeah what is a merchant shit great question Great question. Aren't we all merchants of ideas? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Currency. It's selling in the marketplace of the heart. That's right. Beautiful.

I'm freaking high as a kite right now. This is crazy stuff. Hell yeah, dude. If you're listening to this, I hope you blazed beforehand. I hope you're playing it on half speed. Yeah. Really stretch it out. Make the podcast last as long as possible.

Let me touch on Marvel Snap real quick, just because I took almost a month off of this game, and I got back into it and was playing it, and the meta has shifted. It's one thing where I'm really impressed by and it's and it's a lot of fun and and it's the the the matches are very zippy one thing is that the way the the battle passes work is that basically each season there's a new showpiece card that comes out that i think is a little bit usually that like is like is is generally a little op um and decks can be designed

around it to incentivize people to to buy the new card it's good because it shakes up the meta but there's also an element of like i feel like if you really are on a budget and you don't want to spend for these uh you know for the battle passes you're just going to miss out on key cards and it is one of those things that makes me wonder like the, because there's so many like, like, like guys named like Zabu or Sabu or or Babu or something. I can't remember what this fucking card's name is. I'll open up my app real quick. new cards is like there's like sarah but it's not sarah uh is uh is i think sabu uh who's like a a cat that boosts a bunch of your uh lowers the cost of a bunch of your four drops um and now the marvel nerds are gonna yell at me that it's not actually a cat it's some fucking uh it's an

ancient spirit in the body of a cat fine uh zabu is yeah zabu lowers your forecast cards uh to cost two less and so there's just like a bunch of it's one of the inhumans nick they were transformed by the terrigen mists okay okay all right thank you jordan oh my god oh my god oh my god so zabu like like you know makes all your four drops more the cost effective and so there's just like some very high tier decks that are built around this card. And so if you don't have that card, you don't have access to it. And I mean, whatever. Free to play games are always figuring out how to effectively monetize themselves.

This one seems a little bit less predatory than others, but it is one of those things where I just wish I wish you could just get all the best shit and kind of keep the. I wish you could just get all the best shit and kind of keep the... I'd love to see a card game approach where all the monetization was just purely aesthetics. It was just different skins for cards, different card backs. It was just stuff that doesn't affect the gameplay. But overall, I still really enjoy it. You want the Fortnite model. The Fortnite model. I think the Fortnite model is like, that's the ideal, right?

It is the ideal, and I'm glad you said it. Jordan, what have you been playing? Yeah, I... What have you been playing? Thank you. You're welcome. So I just got done with a couple of Wyger wrecks.

Wow. Usually, if we're talking about the get played host that we identify with the most i am a heather um i think we share many opinions every time every time on the show heather is about to say something and she prefaces it with people are gonna hate me for this i'm like i am going to agree with this a hundred percent um so yeah usually i uh i i kind of like the games you recommend the most but um i've been having some great uh i've been having a great time with a couple of wiger games uh marvel snap like you mentioned i've never played a card battler before it's a blast um i'm getting a little tired of it just because i feel like i'm not getting new cards

that much and i don't really want to spend money so um it might leave the phone pretty soon but i've had a blast with it um i finished death's door a couple weeks ago oh Oh, yeah. This is a Wyger rec, kind of a little indie Zelda-like, Souls-like. Great game, great art style. But before I started Sonic, the game we're going to talk about later, I was kind of five hours into Horizon Forbidden West. Ooh. Having a great time with it.

I'm kind of hot and cold on the story, and there's a lot of it, but the cool shit in that game is so cool. Like, yeah, the cool shit delivers, and I get kind of excited because I heard there's going to be some LA DLC. So I got kind of excited that there's going to be like a ruined, apocalyptic LA to go through at some point. So, yeah, that kind of got me interested in playing the base game and yeah and i'm having a lot of fun with it um you know some gripes about the storytelling aside right um yeah it's it the way you describe that of just like

the cool stuff is really cool and there's the story is good but then there's a lot of story it does kind of feel like you're talking about sonic frontiers yeah a lot of a lot of parallels i don't think sonic frontiers hits the high highs that horizon does but um but yeah similar games in a lot of ways i think jordan and i are going to disagree about something later in this podcast we're gonna find out My identity is agreeing with you. We have a parasocial relationship that you don't realize we have. Oh, I realize.

I realize. Let me see if Death's Door is still on Game Pass because if it is, yeah, it is still on Game Pass for anyone who wants to check it out. It is a fun little 10-hour game. It looks great and the 10-hour game.

It looks great, and the combat is very satisfying. You know what? It was a wiker wreck, but I think it's a game that Heather might enjoy because it is so combat-focused, and the combat is pretty satisfying, even though it's fairly simple. Heather, I'm curious. What are you playing? What am I playing?

I've been thinking of selling my steam deck wow i'm so i'm so angry i'd sell it back to you nick all right we can figure that out i'm so angry about it that i that i i resent even it being on my desk when i think about that system's limitations both in terms of like offline play and then the way that it is kettled off from different game repositories, you know, without substantial workarounds, it's less a gaming PC and more just a front end for the Steam store, which of course everybody knows, but I don't think it really sunk in how much that is what it is. And with technologically superior

handheld PCs coming out that are also untethered to the Steam store, have access to the Steam store, can play Steam games, but aren't dependent on it, I'm like, man, it's really, it's hard for me to justify holding on to this thing, especially when it makes me so angry. Have I put in tons and tons of hours into Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

on the Steam Deck on my perennial attempt to beat that game? Yes. Is that the right word? Perennial? attempt to beat that game? Yes. Is that the right word? Perennial? Who knows? Perennial?

Yeah, I think so. But do I still have my Game Boy Advance cartridge and can I put it in the analog? Yes. Do I know where I am in the game on that cartridge? No. Am I interested in starting it over again? Absolutely not.

But I think I can fumble through the first few battles while I figure out what I was doing 20 fucking years ago. When I'm not considering that, I'm playing Fortnite. I don't remember if I, the last time we recorded, I had squatted up with some people in the industry who I don't know personally, but love playing with. Shout out to my squad. You know who you are, even though I don't know what one of your names is in real life. And I'm too scared to ask

because we've been playing for a while now. Also, I don't think you listen to the show. So I can just admit that. It says here Ben Affleck. Sounds like Ben Affleck. Keeps referring to J-Lo. But we crowned four times in a row and that felt like

a major achievement wow that's amazing sorry guys I gotta go J-Lo's calling J-Lo needs me to do something

who could this be who's this mystery man I gotta go refill my Dunkin they were B. Who's this mystery man? I got to go refill my Dunkin'. They were, it felt gross in some way. I know. It's because of how I said it, but I didn't mean it in a gross way.

I'm sorry. He just means a big old iced coffee. Yeah. He's got a poor coffee in his butthole. Yeah. It's the only thing that can get Affleck off is a Duncan enema you got J-Lo right there you still need the Duncan in your hole

I like what I like I'm a Boston boy I gotta have my donkeys up the butt what voice am I doing but I have been playing a ton up the butt. What voice am I doing? But I have been playing a ton of this week's game. And given how intense my love of Fortnite is,

I think that is also a nice trailer for what I'm going to say about Sonic Frontiers later in this episode. I think that's all I need to say. Like, man, I fucking love the My Hero Academia power-up in Fortnite.

It's fucking great. Punching through a building is the best. Matt Apodaca, what are you playing? Oh, thank you. So I, you know, I feel like I'm caught in between a couple of things because Jordan mentioned Horizon Forbidden West. I'm also playing that. And I'm caught in between a couple of things because Jordan mentioned Horizon Forbidden West. I'm also playing that.

And I'm sort of having a little bit of like fatigue with it because I blasted through the first one pretty quick. And I liked it quite a bit. And this one is good too, i'm not 100 in on it yet in the way that i was with god of war ragnarok which is you know the common criticism of that game was it's just more of 2018 god of war ragnar or god of war uh and with that game i was like yeah but who cares but with this game i'm really feeling that where i'm sort of like oh this is kind of more of the same it It still is incredible and looks great. And the stuff in it that's cool is really cool.

But I've put it down and haven't been back to it in a little bit. Playing this game for We Play, You Play, which we'll talk about a little later, paired with our conversation last week that we had on the show, Famous Firsts, has made me go back to Jak and Daxter, the Precursor Legacy. Wow, what are you playing it on? I'm playing it on my Steam Deck that I love so much. I love it.

And it's playing great on there. And so much of that game, I like completely forgot about. But it's like there in like the dark recesses of my brain where I'm just doing like muscle memory. And it's just, it's so fun. I'm like a third of the way through it. It's not very long either, but it's just, it's just it's it's so fun i'm like a third of the way through it uh just it's it's not very long either but it's just it's it's a it's a blast it's still you know it's aged a little bit like

in the the humor not in like a bad way but in a way that i'm not 11 you know but i'm still like oh these guys are fun you know what can you do you do? They're still, they're fun guys. It's not like watching The Hangover 2 where you're just like, whoa, boy. Yeah. This was number one

in the box office. Yeah. This is nine years old. Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's, yeah,

Daxter says some regrettable things. I mean, he said he was being ironic, like that was his explanation. Yeah, yeah, he's doing it because he said he was being ironic, like that was his explanation. Yeah, yeah. He's doing it because he knows he's not supposed to do it.

Right, right. But it plays really well. It's just a really solid, you know, 3D action platformer. It's a lot of fun. And it is... I can't believe Daxter would say those things and Jack would stay silent.

I know. And that's sort of more of a... Your silence speaks volumes, Jack. believe i can't believe daxter would say those things and jack would stay silent i i know in that sort of more of a your silence speaks volumes jack it's yeah it's more of an implication on jack than anything really because he's kind of okay with it he just lets it slide off of him um but i i yeah it's it looks you know it looks like a ps2 game but it's like very lush very colorful like it's it's it's really like i don. Like it's, it's, it's really like, I don't know. It's interesting to think about the jump they made between that first one. And then Jack two,

when they were like, you know what? There's gonna be a bunch of fucking sand everywhere instead. And it's going to be in a shitty city, uh, which I also liked. And I can't wait to play after I finish, uh,

this one. Uh, I might be waking, making my way through the jacks, but that's where I'm at right now. Good way to spend your time. Let me ask you this, and we don't want to get too in the weeds here, but I'm just curious, as a Steam Deck owner, you're playing an emulated PS2 game on it.

How much work was it to get that all up and running you it is a little bit of a pain um you just have to get into desktop mode and have either a plugged in um keyboard uh i have a bluetooth uh like mouse and keyboard like combo thing that's all in like it's like a foldable thing that i just have in my steam deck case so i just do that i get in there you have i downloaded uh i think it's called um chiaki which is a um sort of like a third-party app that uh allows you to play uh ps5 remote play on among other things but that's not even how i'm playing it i just downloaded oh mu deck is what it's called for um i was just thinking about that because it is a playstation game that i'm playing

on the steam deck but uh i you if you install emu deck it basically does everything for you you just have to get the um the the roms and like the iso files uh in in the correct like seed folders right uh so that is a lot harder than um uh just downloading something that has your games on it already um but it's it's not impossible if you sort of just know what you're doing and are uh patient and don't want and have your steam deck not in your hands um so you don don't slam it down in frustration. I think you could do it in a couple of hours. I don't have an extensive emulation library on my Steam Deck, but I will also specify for all the fucking cops listening

that they're games that I own, bitch. And turn it off. Turn a fucking podcast off, pigs. This ain't for you. go solve a crime or something uh well hey uh by the way the steam deck sounds pretty cool i'd be interested i think buy it off heather you have an opportunity here to actually make a little money on your investment you can sell it to weiger with the stuff you have on it and that sort of is like an interesting thing because now it's sort of more but I mean I can sell it to him with my emulators

on it I think but I can't give him the keys to my Steam store who knows what he'll do with that he's downloading Honeypop in a second on your Steam deck and then it's in your library and you can see when he's playing

it right then you know what else is happening i wish fucking sony would just come out with a fucking steam deck me too yeah i know or fucking microsoft it sucks no sony sony sony but microsoft would have game pass you just have fucking game pass games on yeah that is true i kind of want the xbox one more than i want the PlayStation One, unfortunately. I want them both! Let's get some more handhelds. I want both. Don't get it twisted. I mean, if they both came out tomorrow,

there's no way I wouldn't buy the Sony One first. Oh, yeah. Okay, interesting. Yeah, you're probably right. I'm just going to say, just also because it would have such a better industrial design. It would look so cool. And it'd be harder to get in the long run you could get the steve you can get the microsoft one in a couple weeks proprietary cable here i come yeah this isn't a fully formed thought but it's interesting that like over the course of like the 2010s like the late aughts into the 2010s

we kind of went from like like every all the publishers were like well games are just going to be on phones now consoles are dead to wait no consoles are more popular than ever people want something to do not on their phones make them bigger weirder shapes exactly but then also but like but handhelds we don't need hands i'll have olds anymore people have phones and then now it's like no handhelds people love don't need handhelds anymore. People have phones. And then now it's like, no, handhelds. People love the Switch. People love the Steam Deck. And Sony and Microsoft, Microsoft never made one.

Sony abandoned it. It's just like, maybe they'll get back into it. I don't know. It's kind of fascinating that people have this endless appetite for devices when everyone thought everything was going to converge onto one thing. Vita 2, it's time. If there was a Vita 2 now that had some sort of on-demand Netflix-style library of just PlayStation classics, it would not need to be new games. I would buy that in one second. I would stand in a virtual queue for a day to get one. get one.

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with a delicious bowl of high-protein cereal at magicspoon.com slash getplayed and use code getplayed to save $5 off. Thank you, Magic Spoon, for sponsoring this episode. Well, look, we've got a big game to talk about. This month's We Play, You Play is Sonic Frontiers, developed by Sonic Team, published by Sega, directed by Morio Kishimoto,

and released on November 8th of 2022, so it's pretty new. I'm going to start things here with a pretty loaded question that I think will just kind of take the temperature of the panel. Is this game awesome? Yes. My answer is yes. Yeah, my opinion about it changes from second to second.

Yeah, my opinion about it changes from second to second. Sometimes I am like, what a wonky, broken ass game. And then one second later, I will be like, fuck, yeah! It's like the chaotic person you dated in college. It is just like, you know, it's wild. I cannot tell how I'm going to feel about it second to second. Apodaca hasn't said anything yet. Here's mine.

Hmm. Always the stoic, thoughtful one, Matt Ap i can't i asked myself that question as i was playing this game and i think i land closest to heather but kind of maybe between jordan and heather because i had i have i definitely have my reservations with it but there are times when i'm just like fuck the this feels so fluid and it's got so many like cool ideas and just like it's they've tried sonic in 3d so many times and it's never really worked and this one feels like kind of janky but also at times it feels just absolutely glorious and i don't know i mean like like it's there's also a thing of just like this is an insane idea to just say like hey we're gonna make breath of the

wild we're gonna make breath of the wild. We're going to make shadow of the Colossus, but we're going to put Sonic as the player character. It's like, it's like kind of, it's kind of just like a bonkers idea that tonally sometimes just absolutely does not make sense at all. But then when you're playing it,

you're like, wait, this is fucking, this feels so incredible. And this is so I'm just engaged by every second of this. I'm all over the place, but I want to keep fucking playing it. I don't know, Heather. Well, that's because it solves the problem of Breath of the Wild and Shadow of the Colossus, which is it takes too fucking long to get anywhere.

And in Sonic Frontiers, like if you to, if I was to mod those games, I would make the characters fast. Because the, like, yeah, the joy of traversal, but Breath of the Wild isn't Death Stranding, right? Yeah, there's shit to, like, interact with, but I shouldn't have to take so long

to get from one. Like as soon as I see something interesting on the horizon, I should be able to fucking boost my way there. So the first thing I did in Sonic Frontiers was dump everything I had into speed. And I was playing on hard. I was so fucking weak, but I was so fast. Like Matt complained on text about having to take on the boss like multiple times. That asshole had no shot against me because by the time I got to our first Titan, I was so fast that it was kind of broken. Like it was just not there was no Congress between what I was supposed to be doing with that boss and what I was doing with the boss.

And then when I discovered that if you max out your rings, you can get even faster. I took all of my like ring capacity and dropped it because that meant that it took fewer rings for me to get super fast what a fun game it is extremely fun and that's the thing when it's fun it's so fun like i'm just i like i'm having a fucking blast uh it's it's so as jordan mentioned earlier you're you're running through this open world and which with awesome music. Oh, yeah. The music. The music is great.

There's like a, you know, the running around the overworld music is this like kind of peaceful, kind of lonesome, mournful music. And then you start to fight a boss and like a fucking Evanescence song kicks in. you start to fight a boss and like a fucking evanescence song kicks in. Like, yes, it, it takes you through the pantheon of emotions in a, in a way that music in a game has not for me in a long time. That,

that boss theme has a part where it's like, it's like an evanescence song. And then it's like, wait, this just has a guitar solo from dragon force. It just like turns into fucking speed metal. I was like, this is insane. I shared the boss theme.

I think we can play a little bit of it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, let me play. First, I want to play some overworld music. So there are different. You start off and I didn't.

I had the same feeling you did, Heather, when we talked about our text. When you get to another island, I'm like, oh, shit, this overworld is vast. Yeah, you start on one island that feels like the whole game space,

and then you get to a second island that's more desert themed and has its own sort of aesthetic. But the music that's playing is, again, it's just like, this is Sonic. So of course it's taking itself way too fucking seriously. And it's stupid, but it's also kind of awesome. Here's some of the audio from the first island it's just you're a blue hedgehog running around uh collecting rings and like spin dashing at robots and the music that's playing is like Philip Glass's score from the Truman

show but it's great there's no reason this game should work and it the thing that Sonic 2D makes you feel and you don't know it is that you are just slightly out of control. Like you're moving a little bit too fast.

You always dead end into spikes unless you've memorized the game. Right. So you're always a little like, oh, which is what it feels like to go super fast in a car or on a skateboard or something. You're like, oh, no, like a little bit too fast. And that this game captures that madness. Even when you're on rails, you're like, yeah, I don't. I don't a lot. Yeah.

A lot of rail grinding in this game. Going back to something Heather was saying about about speed earlier. this game uh going back to something heather was saying about about speed earlier and i think this also like speaks to the open world design of this game is when you're talking about breath of the world breath of the wild yeah the world is the world is vast it's fun to ride your your horsey around it's fun to climb but you reach a certain point where you're like unlocking unlocking the various uh sheikah towers whatever they're called and then you're just fast traveling like you are in other open world games i don't believe and i could be wrong i don't think this game really has fast travel yeah you just hold down boost am i right that's what i mean it's like it's not fast travel

travel baby okay all right you guys are making my point for me which is that he no you're wrong nick yeah i don't know if you know this sonic is fucking fast dude you don't go into a world map and like teleport to another location you just run around really fast or like new grind new rails open up that connect different uh portions of the map and you can grind on those super fast and there's a point where it's like this kind of just works like you kind of don't really need fast travel it's kind of fun to just have this all be continuous there is a fast travel item that you can fish up in the fishing mini game which we'll touch on later uh i was gonna get to that which is a school i love fishing with you

you want to borrow my bowl you can fish with with me. Give me purple coins and you can roast some meat. I played with the Japanese language track. You all just sound like idiots. Like you don't know what you're referencing. You don't recognize Big the Cat's famous dumb guy voice? Can I also say that the Japanese language track, the subtitles don't match at all what they're saying. So the script is very different between the two

the two localizations very weird um but you can you can fish up a scroll that lets you fast travel to the power-up guys whose names i don't remember because i don't fucking care uh and that's as far as i know the only fast travel items that you can get. Oh, you mean the Koroks? Oh, no, sorry. The Kokos. Okay. What are you talking about? So, yeah, there's these little Kokos that are kind of like the little guys that you

collect, and then you bring them over to a Koko chieftain, and then by rescuing his mates, he lets you upgrade your rings or your power or your speed and what have you. But yes, so this is another thing that speaks

to what you're talking about the fishing mini-game, because I found that same thing. I found the scroll, I went to Big the Cat's fishing world, and I almost called him Big the Fat. He's a fat guy, he's a fat cat, he knows. He's a thick king. His name is Big. He's a fat guy. He's a fat cat. He's a thick king. He's a thick king. I'm comfortable with my body type.

I'm not shaming you, Big the Cat. A lot of people find this attractive. I've seen the fan art. Big the Cat, you go fish with Big the Cat. It's hard to tell when I'm pregnant. But I always am. Every character in this game is always pregnant. I always am. Everyone, every character in this game is always pregnant.

And you're fishing, and you fish up a map, like Heather was saying, a scroll that lets you, like, fast travel to just one particular person, like one particular NPC, and then that is a different map that you find on every island, and it just sort of is one of those things like

this just strikes me as so over designed and clunky like why do I need to find a map item during a fishing minigame to be able to fast travel to one specific NPC when I can't fast travel anywhere else it's kind of like a microcosm for just

like so many of the bizarre decisions that went into this game. But, uh, that said a lot of stuff that I really, really like, I want to get back to the, the boss theme.

Cause Heather mentioned it and you wanted to play it. So I've got it right here. Let's, let's play a little bit of this song. Uh, this is the evanescent sound alike, um, which plays when you are battling the first of the Titans.

You are supersonic during this sequence. You are supersonic fighting a Kaiju who is like the size of a building. It's fucking insane. And great. is like the size of a building it's fucking insane and great here's the thing about this too there you know i'm sort of softer on this game i think than than the rest of the panel i lit lit up when I heard that song. I fucking love it. It's great. It's great. And it's awesome.

And the way this boss fight transpires is that you've got this, you know, this colossus-sized titan. You're in this- I think it's worth mentioning that this colossus is named Giganto. Giganto. Just the most fucking phoned-in, let's-go let's go to lunch name I've ever seen for anything. Dominated Lucha Libre in the 1970s.

Now he's a boss in Sonic Frontiers. So you like you run and this is a trick they do throughout the game is like this massive creature this massive like robot that you run up you scale its surface which is like okay this is really cool in

theory but it also because the camera is really janky it like feels a little clunky um but it is cool and you get to the top of it and then you get the the the chaos emerald that lets you turn into supersonic and then you're battling him as supersonic which feels like a fucking uh you know like a zone of the enders fight if you if I mean, I don't know if you guys experienced this because I had boosted so much, but I hit like the leg of that Titan and then was about 300 feet in the air above it. Like just like ran, hit his knee, launched, and then I had to like very very very calmly control my descent back onto his head yeah that sounds like how you do it i think if you have not jacked yourself with all your speed points um when you get to it you can kind of launch up a little bit and then you have to do that kind of tedious open world game climbing like for for some reason, Sonic's, you know, climbing is not fast.

It's, you know, anyway, so yeah, that, and I think that is something about these open world games that people complain about a lot. And yeah,

in this game, it, it feels really weird. So I guess, yes, I guess the secret is just Jack, your speed to the point where you launch above everything and never have to climb.

See, some of the movement feels really good. And the climbing in particular feels extremely clunky. And I sometimes was like, I don't, I feel like I'm going in the wrong direction that I'm, I'm like, I'm trying to input one direction and it feels like Sonic is going

someplace else. It was like, it's, it did like, that was like, that was extremely awkward and clunky. And to me, and it kind of just falls into the same thing of like,

I just, I feel like this game was rushed. The, the feeling that I have is like, there's a bunch of shit in here where it's just a little buggy. It's a little unpolished. The pop-in, which is a thing that,

that, that is, is really egregious for it, for an open world game. But there's so much pop- in as you're running around, like just like objects, like popping into the existence over the horizon as you approach them.

And like, that's just, a lot of the stuff just feels like, man, there's just a final coat of polish that this game needed or like another six months in development that this game needed that it didn't have. I don't think it did i think this is maximum sonic i think that the first off the the baldness of how it rips off other

games like made me rethink sonic's relationship to other games and Sonic the Hedgehog is just an answer to Mario right it's like he jumps on top of enemies like the mechanics are the same he's just faster okay so it makes sense that Sonic Frontiers is like what games have worked in the last few years and can we make that faster and like a ROM hack of those games, the glitchiness and the, like sometimes you don't even know where Sonic is on the screen is fundamental to the experience.

I love this take. This is the greatest take, by the way. It should be broken. If you play Sonic 2 and you go fast enough, you aren't on screen anymore. And that game is a classic. 10 out of 10. People are like,

Sonic 2, pinnacle of the series. But the same thing happens in this game and people are like, ah, this sucks. I don't like it. No, that's the experience. It's like, where the fuck is he

and i i could get on board with this and i think it is a little bit like death stranding which took me a little bit to lock into i love love love that game but it it took me a while and the kind of the thing about it that was frustrating is like this is frustrating and this is hard. Like I'm falling down, I'm tripping over rocks. And, you know, once you play that game more, it's kind of like, Oh,

this is kind of the point. There's this kind of macro, you know, theme of like, this is how crushing modern life is. This is how, you know, sure.

The, our bad economy and, uh, you know, all of this information being beamed into our brains. This is how overwhelming life feels now. And yeah, I think if you kind of take that same logic and apply it to Sonic, it's like, what does it feel like to be out of control? And I think if that is the case, then, yes, this is the best example of that ever in video games.

No, I think that i that i agree with but what i'm going to say when i'm talking about polish i'm talking about just like how some of this game is just broken and buggy like like like to the point of like i oh this cut scene is playing and a boss health bar is still on screen or objectives consistently remaining on screen during that yeah that's just like an absence of polish and and and i've had a few times where I just like, I just fell out of the world. I just fell through the floor and into oblivion. And so what Heather's talking about in terms of like, yes, it being, having this incredible sense of speed. And like when you're grinding or when you're flying through one of the levels in cyberspace, not the open world, one of the more linear levels.

Like those feelings are great. But like, you know, when I'm just sort of running around and I see items in the distance because the the box that the or the chest that it's contained in has not yet been drawn on screen like that streaks me the thing of like this is just a failing of you know this is just something they either needed more time or more resources or they didn't quite have the technical ability with this game's development cycle to pull this

off it's just like it's at times like a little bit too ambitious but it's ambition is also what makes it great so i don't know um fair those are fair those are fair complaints the the skill tree is a thing where i'm just like this feels like they threw in a skill tree because they know open world games have skill trees and it's kind of a fake skill tree because it only branches twice and the skills are they're so gated where it's like okay this skill

costs you know whatever I can't remember there's like 18 currencies yeah so many currencies yeah this one costs you know whatever love it more collectibles I want to collect fish I want to collect

gems I want to collect flaming metals to free knuckles. Did at any point you guys just start learning, realizing that if you just draw circles with Sonic, you can just get infinite currency? Yes. I like that. When you're drawing

Psyloops, which is when there's an ability where you hold down a button. Psyloop is a really, really fun mechanic. Yeah, you run in a circle and it creates this sort of zippy trail behind you, and then once you connect it, it usually spawns a bunch of rings, and you can use it against enemies or against obstacles to affect the environment,

and it's really fun, and it's really cool, and it's a great way of taking advantage of Sonic's core attribute of speed. You can also build mini Psyloops into your combat using the skill tree. Like you can unlock a, I played this game a lot, guys. I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, yeah. And then you'll like do a micro Psyloop around a character while fighting them. The combat system is fucking ridiculous. Like you have a sense of what you're supposed to do, but you also can be really good if you just mash the buttons in random sequences. Yes.

And the more rapidly you randomize that sequence, the more insane the shit on screen that Sonic does. It's God. I really had a, a 3d blast playing this game. About the combat, my thought was, and we're on the same page here, because the combat is both overly complicated and brainless. Because it looks fucking awesome.

A lot of the animations are really cool, the way he zips around, you know he'll go into a stop like you can go into stomps you can go into like um uh you know you know kicks uh you can you can throw projectiles you can do all these things and kind of this dizzying flurry of air combos i know he's been doing kind of melee combat for a while now but it's still weird for me to see sonic punch someone to just see it's a little funny yeah yeah you know obviously it was also weird when shadow the hedgehog just pulled out a gun and shot at cops but but this is also weird just to see sonic run up and punch a robot yeah so so like like what one thing that happens in the combat, I agree with you. The, the is like, I'm picking up controllers. So remembering how it works.

So like the Perry system is for some reason you have to hold both. You have to hold two shoulder buttons to Perry, but it's, but like the Perry is not a timed thing. It's a hold. So it's like a block. So if you're just holding both shoulder buttons, two shoulder buttons, you will, and you get hit by an enemy.

You will parry. Is that how that works? Yeah. And I totally was trying to release the button when I was about to get hit. Yeah. No, you were trying too hard. You're not supposed to think at all. And this is the thing.

Hold the buttons down. Does Sonic need to parry? Like, I don't think he needs to i think it's like it's there's you were talking about this earlier as being like an over-designed thing and i think that falls into it i think he's you know i have not had a lot of experience with sonic uh so this is my first you know i guess we played oh six a little bit uh we did um shadow kiss any human women in this this is sort of my biggest i mean i like the game but i'm like when's he gonna lock lips with a human being there is a haunted child yeah yes it's got that going for that haunted child should should the should anything ever happen to the resident evil merchant god forbid

yes i think the haunted child could be a new Heather character. Just constantly telling you you're going to die. I got to listen to the English track, because that is not how she spoke in the Japanese track. That's so funny. But the over-design of this is like, you have to get these gears to unlock the ability to get... Another curse.

Yeah, gears! There's seeds! There's hearts! Yeah. You gotta get the gears so you can do the play-a-level so you can get keys. Yeah, to get keys, yes.

To get keys. And the keys unlock Chaos Emeralds, and the Chaos Emeralds unlock... And then... Dinosaur bones bones it's like whatever to speak to amy you have to get hearts and it's like why am i collecting so many things just to do this i was getting so frustrated because okay i need how many how many hearts do i need to get to talk to amy i need two where where am i gonna go i have to go so far in this map now to be like

i gotta find just two more. Cause they're not instant drops. They're around, but like you have to kind of look for them. And so I just couldn't believe how many things you have to do. And then Amy, for instance, or whatever NPC they're,

they're all of Sonic's shitty friends are eventually represented as like, I'm not shitty Nick, I'm a great guy. I let you borrow my rod when you come to my lagoon. Big's the only one that I really like. Sorry, Big. Big is also the one that I really like. Sorry, Big. Big is also the one who's not like a digital ghost. So they're all like trapped in a cyberspace and they're trying to reconstitute themselves in the physical realm.

And by doing that, you collect a bunch of whatever their token is. So for Amy, it's a bunch of hearts. For Knuckles, it's a bunch of metals. Flaming metals. Flaming military metals. Yeah. So you have to collect all these things. So it is in some sense kind of like an egregious, like rare N64 game level collect-a-thon.

But I think that's also because they have, because of Sonic's speed, these environments have to be so vast. These open world environments are part of why we're seeing so much pop in as well. So they need to find a way to fill these environments. And they're like, well, shit, we'll just give you a bunch of shit to collect. Because otherwise, what's the reason of running all the fuck all over this map? It's going to feel very vast and empty. But it is a thing where it just becomes, it becomes kind of overwhelming and daunting. And then also like where you're talking about,

uh, so you go get Amy, a bunch of hearts, then she'll like, just move arbitrarily to another section of the map. Yes. And you have to go find her over there. And so I had a number of situations where I like had so many hearts where like,

I found Amy. And then my next objective was to find Amy. And then you're just running down the map and talking to her again. I was just talking to you. Couldn't you tell me how sad the Cocos make you last time? And the Cocos died before they went to space? Yeah.

Anyway, the plot is wild there's clearly an intended way to play this game yes and i don't it sounds like none of us managed that like i i thought that the problem with why i kept getting to amy and just dumping a million hearts into and then dumping a million in the next one was because i was doing something sequence breaking but i dumped all my points into speed it doesn't sound like you guys did that so i don't i feel like whatever it is they wanted us to do none of us were were found it like by the time i'm talking to knuckles on the second island it's like like, when I first approach him, it's like, you need like 50 of his, I don't know, like military medals in order to unlock talking to Knuckles. And once I'm like,

oh, I just want to run around the fucking island, kill everything I can. All right. By the time I got back to Knuckles, it was like, okay, here's 50. Yeah, I i'll go i'll unlock you here yep okay there's 50 more i'll i'll go over here i'll unlock 50 more um it's it whatever it is they want you to do i that's it's that's a mystery yeah hard to say hard to say can we talk about the sonic voice acting choices yes man yes again you're i've I played in Japanese, but there was talk on the thread about Sonic's voice acting, so I'd love to hear a sample if we

have one. Yeah, it's interesting. In previous Sonic games where he's voiced, he seems to have a real, like, 90s cartoon character vibe. Like, alright, dudes, we got it! I'm gonna get some chili ducks and then go fast i um from one of these games we played there was a recurring voice clip when you got hit that

said it's no use oh and i said that lives in my brain so every time i like can't find a parking space i just think it's no use um and it seems like they kind of went the other way with the English voice track anyway of Sonic being just very blasé he's kind of just this guy he kind of just talks like this and he's kind of low energy and he sounds like he's about to tell you something he just heard on the Joe Rogan podcast. He sounds like this. I need to find a way to restore Amy. Whoa. I could really use her help finding tails.

Holy shit. Yeah. I didn't need to get the vaccine because I get too much vitamin D. Okay. Well, I submerge my body in cold water every day. It feels like they took a Pratt Mario approach. Yeah, a little bit. They were just kind of like preemptive.

Like, okay, we just want to like a kind of very generic sounding Sonic. Wow. Yeah. What is the vibe of the Japanese Sonic? Anime hero. he just sounds like standard anime hero yeah this this certainly feels like he's emoting yeah it's it this is more right to me this this is a little less less shocking than the kind of blase barista that they got to do Sonic in English. Can we talk a little bit about the levels, like the actual linear levels that you go to?

Because I think I like the open world stuff more, but these are pretty good 3D Sonic levels. And there are ones where you're both running into the camera and they're also, or I'm sorry, running away from the camera, running towards the screen. And there's also ones where that are side scrolling, uh, that kind of 2.5 D treatment. I think they both are just like, they kind of, they kind of capture that.

That's Sonic level design, linear level design of like, there's some branching paths. There's some jumps you can make or miss that affect your trajectory. Uh, you, you, you're going through it.

You're collecting, like trying to collect five red coins and, you know, as many rings through and you're collecting, trying to collect five red coins and as many rings as you can, trying to meet a certain threshold of time, hitting the S rank in terms of speed. If you do all these things, you get a whole bunch of keys which you can use to

unlock whatever the fuck. But it's like, I thought those levels were really fun. When I got to the desert island, which is like the second big biome, I felt like I was running around for 90 minutes before I even found another level. I was like, like some of it, like it feels like the first the and I'm curious if the other islands are like this, but like it feels like the first island is a little bit more jam packed with content. And then as they were going, and this again makes me think that maybe the development was rushed, that they kind of scaled up these the open world aspect. And we're like, well, shit, we can't we don't have levels to fill all this. Or they ended up cutting levels and development. But it's like, I feel like there were like large sections of this game where it's just like, I'm just between levels.

I'm like, oh, like, like, I don't know. But I like the levels themselves if all that makes there was a level in that sand island that was extremely frustrating to play and felt um it felt like classic uh level like bad but good level design i could there was one that i just flat out couldn't beat because I could not get any sense of where Sonic was supposed to be jumping after a certain point, like just lost.

And I was like, okay, maybe I'll go this way. And I boost and there's nothing over there. And I fall to my death over and over and over again and eventually just gave up. But you don't need to do all of those levels in order to progress through the game. You can skip, because there's so much currency, you can skip huge portions of the game

in order to fight things. But yeah, I was really, like the side-scrolling and classic levels were my least favorite part of the game. I loved running around the open world, especially because his little feet made a great sound. Yeah. When he's running on grass. I do like the feet sounds.

The feet sounds are pretty good. And when he's in sand, it's... Oh, it's so good. And he leaves footprints behind him. Nice. Yeah, that is cool. Just for nostalgia factor, some of those side-scrolling levels are supposed to kind of remind you of classic Sonic levels. And I have a lot of Sonic nostalgia being a Genesis kid.

And so, yeah, so that was really fun to see kind of some of those classic level designs. There's Metal Sonic level. There's like a Green Hill adjacent levels. Like, yeah, it's like, oh, okay, great. But nothing beats that overworld. Heather is correct. That's it distilled. It's just like, I like some of the levels.

They kind of dot the landscape erratically. But yeah, running in the open world is so much more fun. And I think we also kind of haven't really adequately captured. It's tough to do so i think unless you're playing it but just like what it feels to like sort of run like the kind of obstacle course feel of the open world because it's not just like running around planes it's like also you'll run into like oh here's a here's a uh you know here's a little bouncy pad uh that will knock me up into the air and then while i'm in the air i will be able to you know target lock

onto another bouncy pad that will launch me over this way that'll lend me onto a rail that rail will will set me onto a booster which will lead me to climb something and at the to the tippy top of this little like you know 90 second gauntlet uh there will be some sort of reward all those little segments are are just so fun and a lot of times they feel just like dizzyingly fluid. I love those. Yeah. So, so that shit is really,

really cool. And that's almost like expanding on what Heather was saying is I almost wonder if like, is that just the, should that have just been the substitute for the linear levels that we go into? But then again, I also,

I bet someone at Sega was like, no, there have to be levels. What are we talking about? So I don't know. I don't know what to think about this game. I think my overall take is that it is awesome. It's a mess.

It feels unfinished, but it's so ambitious and weird that I'm really glad it exists in the state. And I was never bored playing it. I was never like, oh, God, I have to play more Sonic Frontiers. I was I was always like, hmm, I wonder what this fucking insane game is going to throw at me next. I will give Sonic the highest praise that I can. And that praise is, it made me annoyed that Fortnite didn't move faster. Wow. Like, I went from Sonic to Fortnite and I was like,

ugh, these guys are slow. What a bummer. Like, I wish there was speed-boosting mechanics in Fortnite because of how much I liked traversal in Sonic frontiers. It's the biggest praise I can give that game. It seemed like maybe I like this game a lot,

but it seems like maybe we got a better Sonic game earlier last year. Is neon white the best recent Sonic game? Boy, that's a, that's a great great call i mean neon white is so fun and and accomplishes that speed that sets the speed so well i mean it is first person i feel like just people will think you know in terms of mascot platformers they feel like i have to see my guy but it but neon white is like those short compact levels and like grinding for an s rank in neon white is so much more fun than like trying to get an S rank in any of the weird levels in Sonic Frontiers. So I think in terms of, yeah, just like a fast platformer, that's that's definitely a better game.

It has speed. It has precise platforming. It has horniness. Yeah, it's very horny. It has precise platforming. It has horniness. Yeah. It's very horny.

Yeah, that's a... Man, Neon White was great. Matt, any closing thoughts? Yeah, I think, you know, a big complaint I've had about Sonic in general, and you're going to laugh, is I think he's too fast. I think... It's a hot I think I did laugh

a lot of hot takes in this episode I think he's too fast slow down stop looking at your phone yeah take the big the cat approach and just chill out just vibe out man that's something

about him that I've never really like somewhere he's always fucking drunk we know it so he's cracking a cold one don't judge me i'm just having fun and i won't judge uh but i as a kid i was like i can't keep up with this guy just there's too much going around sort of would make me sick i didn't have that problem with this but there was just i i just felt like there was really just too much going on i could have used a few less currencies a few less different systems uh in mechanics and stuff and just for sure i wouldn't i wouldn't have minded if it was just uh like honestly like crash style just a bunch of a room with a bunch of portals in it or whatever or wherever these fucking towers are and just go and do these levels because the levels are like the thing that i can do that i i like the best i don't know if i

need to like be keeping up with like oh i need to have enough hearts so I can speak to Amy or enough fucking medals or whatever to talk to Knuckles. That's all too much for me. And then, I mean, Sonic running up the leg of a fucking kaiju. I was like, what are we doing? Just make him go

in a loop. That's all I i want all i want is him in a fucking loop man i don't want to drink a glass of milk and make sonic go in a loop you used to be able to keep your fucking doors unlocked and now sonic's running up a fucking kaiju okay all right all these bandicoots out here taking our jobs yeah i i just yeah i don't know this wasn't for me i i did recognize in it that there are things in it that are funny and fun you know uh flying or you can fucking fly in this thing you're sorry you're supersonic and you're flying fighting this thing i was like okay this is, this is funny. This is like crazy. But it was just maybe a little too much for me and not my cup of tea.

But I don't begrudge anyone. Weirdly, you complaining about the game made me like it more. That's fine. I'm like, yeah, that sounds cool. And there's stuff in it that I was like, this is fun. Because I did my due diligence and put you know some hours into it and I was like I'm not gonna I guess I'm not

not enjoying this but I didn't enjoy it enough to say that I like it and I didn't not enjoy it enough to say that I hate it I'm just sort of like I don't know what this was and it's I guess it just is what it is I think the Sonic Frontiers experience.

Yeah, I think that's whether you like it or dislike it. I think that's every you just kind of leave a little. Yeah, this feels like one where where, you know, I would say to anyone out there who in this state if it was on if I bought it on sale or if it was, you know, on Game Pass or something. So this might be one to see if it wait and see if it goes to it comes to PlayStation Plus or or Game Pass or something before taking the plunge or you you find a used copy on stale at GameStop or something. But, but it is, it is, I think worth playing because it's,

it's just fascinating. And I'm glad we covered it. 10 out of 10 keys, 10 out of 10 chips, 10 out of 10 gears, 10 out of 10 nuts, 10 out of 10 nuts. 10 out of 10 hearts. 10 out of 10 medals.

10 out of 10, wow, you caught a swordfish. Okay, I have one more thing to say about Big the Cat, which I touched on earlier. Visible testicles. There's, yeah, all out there. Very weird. And four. It's strange.

So there's fishing there. You catch fish. You can also roast meat. There's a meat roasting mini game. Oh, man. I haven't roasted the meat yet. So I assumed, okay, I caught this swordfish.

I'm gonna... The meat roasting will be... We'll be roasting this swordfish and I gonna the meat roasting will be cut will be roasting the swordfish and i'll get some sort of thing for it no it's unrelated meat big the cat just has meat there and you're just roasting his meat for him and you get like you get prizes for it it's such as it was like why is this element also in here I don't know I was so I was so confused by it and again it's

it's I've used the word microcosm already but it's just a microcosm for this game of just like what what is this doing here what's going on but I'm kind of having fun roasting the meat it's really funny when Sonic catches a fish there's this very anime like fast zoom on his eyes and a bolt of lightning goes behind him.

That's very, very funny to, yeah, like, add those anime effects to just, like, catching a fish. It's like the Persona 5 eyes close up that happens, like, with, like, a little ting. It's like that that feeling but what just when you catch a fish um and you can roast meat afterwards uh hey uh it's time for the you play of our we play you play it's your review crew the re-u crew hello all right this is um these are all sourced from our discord and you can find the link to our discord in the episode description and i'll go ahead and say it right now to discord.gg slash get played wow wow uh so here we go this one's from six wire and they write it's the first great 3d sonic game i don't think

that's a crazy take i i think it's it's the it's the best 3d sonic game right it's like none of the sonic games have 3d sonic games have really really worked um i have a lot of fondness for sonic adventures and sonic adventures too i have a feeling those games have an age great but this one is like, this is a game. This is a fucking video game. Yeah. I don't hate that take.

Yeah, I also have fondness for Sonic Adventures, but I have not played it since like, yeah, I have not played it since the Dreamcast days. So, yeah, I think you're probably right, Nick.

It probably doesn't hold up super well, but I did have a nice time with those games. This next one is from Koopa Troopa, and they write, Gotta review fast. Sonic Frontiers really captures what is unique about Sonic when compared to other characters like Mario. I don't think there's really anything quite like

seeing a little hedgehog guy flying around fighting an Eva-like machine to music that absolutely shreds. And this is not the only comparison to Eva's in the Discord chat. I'm going to share my screen here so you guys can see this other comment that was left here. This one's, this B-Tai says I. TBH didn't play it, but this needs to be talked about. These character designs

are very similar to angels for Evangelion. Yeah, these are pretty, I mean, that's pretty one-to-one. I mean, look, Big the Cat is just fucking Totoro. This is a Sonic thing. They borrow a lot. What do you want, if not Sonic fighting the angels to the soundtrack of Breath of the Wild?

Yeah, nobody's saying it's bad. So fucking good. And it is really tropey, but also like, it feels classic in some way that I couldn't wrap my head around. It feels like the way I used to feel playing video games, whereas, you know, you play your God of Wars or your or even your cyberpunks and and and you're like, this feels like a now, but Sonic Frontiers feels like an old in the in like the way that i used to feel when i played games when i was younger that's what i think yeah uh this next one's from murder donut

i'm on board there's so much random stuff in it i haven't decided what i like and what i don't like yet but i'm hoping that the stuff i don't like isn't so much required for uh isn't so much random stuff in it, I haven't decided what I like and what I don't like yet. But I'm hoping that the stuff I don't like isn't so much required for forward progress. Also, I got it from the library, so free game. Wow. That's the fucking hack right there. That's the headliner. You get it from the library. Yeah.

I always forget you can just get a game from the library. Can you? Yeah. You can, certain libraries game for the library. Can you? Yeah. You can. Certain libraries. Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone get a library card.

That's a great way to play this game. Yeah. Yeah. Here's one from Hail to the Ging. Good at everything, not great at anything. That's pretty pretty good. Pretty spot on I

think. This one's from the odd tech. Definitely the best 3D Sonic in a while. The writing in VO is terrible and the open world on rails part

breaks a lot but the rest is a solid 3D Sonic. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting about the writing. The plot is so

bananas despite having the very very familiar video game trope of there was a race here before us and we're discovering their tech that is the plot of every other video game i feel like yes we could probably go around and name 10 between us um but yeah but there is this kind of weird element of like okay some characters are trapped in another dimension and it's such a it's such a wacky plot kind of coupled with the fact that it's a little unclear on what you have to do at any given second and it's kind of mirrored in the plot sometimes amy will be talking to sonic and you know you'll have collected something and it unlocks something and he'll say he'll like say well that worked for some reason and it's just

like yeah even he doesn't really know what's going on he'll even comment of like it just kind of feels like i should be doing this and that is either like very lazy or kind of genius um yeah of like i guess that's why we do anything in a video game it just kind of feels like i should be doing this and that is either like very lazy or kind of genius um yeah of like i guess that's why we do anything in a video game it just kind of feels like we should so um yeah i don't know maybe that's maybe that's the best part of the writing uh i got two more sort of quick ones right here so this one's from boise's i can't decide if this is the ugliest game i've ever played or the most beautiful. Listen to these. These comments are getting at something that's like, man, this game.

So I would rather you feel this way about a game than that you're like, this is great. I had a good time. People are like, is this the most beautiful game I've ever played? Or Mary sat down on the couch next to me, looked at it and went, this looks so stupid. It's the greatest case for our video games art yet, because that's how people talk about art, right? Like they'll look at a painting or something and be like oh i don't know if this uh like uh david hockney uh sprinklers painting is for me and then somebody will be like this is the best painting i've ever seen we could have a daco with a hockney reference did i go with the one artist i know by name because that is my favorite painting absolutely uh uh and then finally from playing card fiend it has metal in the soundtrack

10 out of 10 have not played this game a lot of really funny ones today good job everybody yeah good stuff uh hey that's this week's get played links to our discord twitch and social media are in the episode description and our engineering is is by Jordan Duffy. Jordan K. Duffy on Instagram. Also check out our premium show, Get Animated. Heather, we're still making our way through the rebuilds of Evangelion. Yes, we're watching the Evangelion rebuilds. And I believe our next one is Evangelion 3.0 plus 1.0. Bye-bye all of Evangelion.

Thrice upon a time. You can hear our wild takes on that series and also our upcoming anime coverage of, can I announce it, guys? Yeah, why not? Blue Lock! We're going to be covering Blue Lock on Get Animated.

You can subscribe on patreon.com slash getplayed, right? That's right. Yeah. That's the URL. Jordan Morris, thank you for playing Sonic Frontiers. I feel less bad about this one

because I think this is an interesting game. Oftentimes we're subjecting you to some real garbage, but I think this was an interesting one to play through and discuss. We're not subjecting him

to garbage. Sonic Team has been subjecting him to garbage. It's not our fault. And the one guy went to jail for it, right? The one guy hauled him off to jail.

We're burying you under the jail for what you've done to Sonic. No, yeah, listen, I always have a fun time talking with you guys. You guys are a blast. Yes, I have played some real piles of shit to earn the privilege of talking with you, but this one is, I think,

I think a lot of fun in a lot of ways. So and really interesting, really fun to talk about. So, yeah, this was a hoot. Check out Chilling Adventures presents Pop's Chocolate Shop of Horrors that releases March 22nd, but you can preorder it now

at your local comic shop. Jordan, tell us about Pop's Chocolate Shop of Horrors and anything else you want to plug. Yeah, so this is from the world of Archie Comics. If you're not a regular reader of Archie, maybe you don't know this. It's kind of cool. They do a horror anthology every month where they put the popular Archie characters you know and love into some truly fucked up horror scenarios.

It's a great line of comics. I'm a huge fan. And these are three spooky stories set in the famous diner from the Archie universe. So yeah, a lot of great writers, a lot of great artists contributed to this. A couple of cool covers if you're a cover collector. But yeah, you can pre-order that now.

Pre-order is very helpful for comics um so yeah go down to your local comic shop and ask them for pop's chocolate shop of horrors uh march 22nd check that out and uh jordan as always every time you guest in the podcast we have to end it by saying you got played and it's my... I love being played, Nick. That's my fucking secret, man. I love getting played. Play me more! I love you.

I love you.