Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - AC Origins, Horizon, and Game of the Year - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 144

Episode Date: November 13, 2017

Greg, Andrea, and Andy discuss Assassin's Creed Origins and Horizon Zero Dawn Frozen Wilds. (Released first to Patreon Supporters on 11.10.17) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're looking at $400 to $500. bucks. Movement figured out by selling online. They were able to cut out the middleman and the retail markup providing the best possible price. Just don't go to the mall. Get 15% off today with free shipping and free returns by going to movement.com slash kinda. Buy them now and skip the holiday hassle. That's movement. MvMT.com slash kinda. Join the movement. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast episode 144. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the busiest lady in the business, Andrea Renee.

What's good, Greg? Nothing much. And over there, the Hispanic heartthrob, Andreas Cortez. Como you? Oh, we had to hide it from you last week when Tim wasn't on the show.

But now two weeks in, he is dead. It sucks. We have been running, we've been burning through our old Tim content when he was alive, thinking nobody would notice. We had, like, a long backlog

of stuff that Tim was in. We were like, just whatever we got, put it on there. Suddenly it's like, here's Tim without a beard. Here's Tim with a beard. Remember when he didn't have a beard? Yeah.

That wasn't from recently. That's when he didn't have a beard when he was 13 years old. Exactly. Yeah. It's weird. It's weird. It's been a lot of weird like comp and green screening.

He hasn't aged well. Yeah. So yeah, we're doing the kind of funny games cast. If you didn't know, this is the kind of funny games cast each and every week. Three, sometimes four, sometimes two, sometimes just one.

Best friends gather on this table. Each coming and talk about what they love in the world of video games. If you like that, you can head over to patreon. com slash kind of funny games and get the show early. How early? Andrew Renee? You can get it four days early.

Yeah, well that counts. That's true, I think. Doesn't that count? Isn't that right? Yeah, no, she nailed it. Well, you can watch it live. Like so many people are doing right now on YouTube's private link that we give out to people on patreon.com slash kind of funny games. If you don't want to watch it live, though, you could still watch it early on Friday. We put it up as one big video and MP3

and then Monday, it goes up for everybody. Everybody has a good time. The post and pre-shows where all of the dirt is spilled. That's the best content that we make. See, don't do that. You're riling everyone up. Tell all the people, all the secrets, dude. So many people are upset. Who killed JFK?

All that stuff we talk about. Whatever happened that? They released those documents, but nothing good, nothing new came out of it? They held a couple documents back. It's kidding. It turns out JFK, he was run over. That's what really happened. Didn't see a car coming.

Wow. Didn't see a red light. I was going to say. He was the president. Do you understand? He shows some respect. Too soon. Is it too soon?

us. All right. Oh, you're right. Yeah. Don't get in our basement. I haven't hosted this show in a proper format in a while,

so I guess, shout out to our Supreme Overlord, Tom Bach. It wasn't on the calendar, but I think Tom Bach is just at, Tombach has done that thing on Patreon where he's just supporting at a level and he's just like,

whatever you guys give me, you give me. And we're like, all right, I don't know, he's making his own level. He's really a great person. Mm-hmm.

We talk about sports all the time. We sure do. And he's a Cowboys fan and he's a Spurs fan. therefore he's better than everybody else. Wow, that's harsh. I mean, it's facts. You're allowed to have your own opinion.

A wrong one, yeah, a wrong opinion. You know what I mean? He does bring donuts. Spurs fan, Cowboys fan. Time for what you've been playing to start this show. Andy, what are you been playing? Not much, man. I've been playing like slowly stumbling through Mario Odyssey.

Where are you at right now? I just got through New Dunk City. Nice. And so I'm at the crossroads of the beach level or the whatever level, the ice level. Yeah, that's why I picked the beach one. You love the sun. Mario Nipples. Yeah, Mario Nipples, exactly.

A couple of pinia colladas. Yeah. I'm really liking it. And I don't really have a... I don't love it. Wow, really. But I really, really like it. It's just not a game that's blowing my mind.

And it could have been because I heard everybody's reviews come out and it was so overhyped for me. Yeah. It's a really awesome collect-a-thon. There's tons of great... Oh, that's a good way to put it. There's tons of great mechanics that are clever and awesome. And I'm glad that each new mechanic that they bring into the fold is kind of surprising and cool. But it's not a game that I'm, like, overly blown away by.

I love it. It's charming and joyful as hell, but it's just nothing that... I'd say it's in my top five this year, but I don't think it's a game of the year candidate. Interesting. IMO. But that's IMO. Your O's could be different than myos. Your eyes could be different than your eyes.

Yeah. I mean, they are. That's kind of how it works. They definitely are. And where are you with Mario Odyssey? Have not started it yet. Well, maybe, so here's the thing. Maybe my review right now just brought your expectations down.

It absolutely did. So that when you do play it, it'll be a little bit higher. So here's the thing. I've been a long time big fan of the Super Mario franchise. the last few haven't really grabbed me in a way that I've been compelled to finish them. And I don't know if that's because the art style is, you know, very close to the way it's been for the last few decades. And that the whimsy is kind of lost a little bit on me. It doesn't have the same magic that I once did.

Are you talking about the Wii U world one? Was Mario since 64, right? Since 64, he's looked the same. Oh, no, she said the last two games. No, the last few. Oh, the last few. Okay. Whether it be on 3DS or Wii or Wii,

it's just like, they were good. I mean, I played a lot of Super Mario 3D land. I think that might have been the last one I finished on 3DS. But like none of the Wii U games I finished. And obviously I haven't started Mario yet. I'm obviously very excited to start it. Love Mario. But I haven't been like compelled to start it.

And I'm not quite sure why. I can't like put my finger on it. I think one takeaway you'll have from once you finally get into it is that this game has a ton of different art styles. And it's a, it's a mishmash of realistic fucking looking dinosaur and then like colorful, weird looking people. And like, does it work? Yeah. It's weird, but it works. It's odd.

It's odd. It's see. Nice one. No, I beat. You're the only odd I see, Kevin. Oh, Jesus God. I beat it on Sunday. And I'm still in love with it.

And like, that's the compliment I can pay it right to what you're talking about. I think you're right in the terms of like, you're talking about it like, it's just this joyful experience. That's the way I describe it, right? And like I was talking about on Kind of Funny Games Daily this week that I think it's my game of the year now.

I think it's superseded Horizon, which is interesting because I want to talk about Horizon Zero Dawn, the Frozen Wilds. But beating that game, like, when we were getting ready to do it on extra life and you guys stopped me, you're like, don't root for it. I mean, okay, fine, I ran around.

I came home, took my nap after Extra Life and then started playing again. I was like, I'm going to beat Bowser, see what this end game, everybody keeps talking about it is everybody's like oh the end game so good i'm gonna beat this see the what the end game is stop it and then pick it up when we go to extra life in maryland we're flying out tomorrow and i'm like and i'll be excited to you know play something on the plane but i'm gonna beat this and then move over to frozen wild start that and beat it opened up the

first you know thing of the end game there or whatever and like literally after 45 minutes had to be like no i got to put it down like i got it was so holy shit really this is what's where we're going right now and like to be there and exploring and see how they've what opens up and how they're doing certain things. It's hard to talk about without spoiling it, right? And I don't need to set the bar too high either. But it's just like, and that's even with Timmy, like the end game's awesome or like what happens after the credits is awesome.

I was like, all right, whatever. It is awesome. And it's really cool. And it tugged at a lot of different strings on me that made me totally like, I got to stop playing now. But it was always just another, oh, just another moon. Just another moon. I'll do a little bit more.

I want to see this. Well, this will be in the new goalpost to end it. And so I've then struggled now throughout this week to play other stuff and not come back to Mario, like, I want to hold it for the flight. Because I, I really do feel like in the way people who loved Zelda, and I love Zelda, Breath of the Wild that I loved. But when I beat, when I beat Gannon, I really did feel like, cool, the game is over. I don't feel compelled to go after and just find shrines like that.

I felt like the shrines were helping me on my journey to beat Gannon. I've beaten Gannon. I'm done. Whereas with Mario being a collectathon and being unabashedly a collectathon, I really do feel like this is now the everlasting gobston. for me on the switch, where it's going to be cool, I'm flying or I do have 15 minutes and I am in this one specific place where I'm just going to tool around on my switch. I'm going to do that and have that for months and months to come now, I feel like. And that's why I think it's been

hard this week not to jump back into the end game and go explore and answer a few more questions I have and put it off until the plane ride tomorrow, which I'm going to fight myself not to sleep during to actually stay up and play this game, which is different and weird. Like I like, I love so many Vita games and I'm excited to play them. But I don't think I, for most Vita games I was playing on planes, I don't feel like I ever was like, fuck, I can't wait to be awake on this six hour flight playing this game. And that's what Zelda did for me when we first got it and I was running through and like the plane rides melted.

But this game, the reason I feel so enamored with it is just because people, you know, are talking about it how, oh, it's too easy. Oh, it's, you know, it is just collectathons. For me, all that boils down to, oh, it is just gameplay. where I do, I like the reward of, oh, there's a, there's a moon up there. Like, how the fuck am I going to get that? Oh, I do this. What if I threw the cat? And blah, blah, blah, blah. Or like, oh, there's, there's races in there that I did during the game or whatever that I just couldn't beat. I was like, I'll come back to this later. Like, the little mini challenges in there are some, are so easy sometimes and then so different ever, other times. And I feel like every time I play and I do these, like, lots of times it is just, okay, beat this boss. Okay, go through and, you know, race these fucking turtles. Other times you go into things, and I tweeted this out. So it's only a spoiler. I guess if you haven't seen my tweets,

but even then, it's not even a real spoiler. But it's one of those like, what a brilliant fucking idea on something I can't wait to do, where after credits in the next world you go to, you run into this. I think it was, I think it was one of the toadstool people. What are their names?

Toads, Toads race. It's one of the toads that isn't toad. The mushroom. People from the mushroom kingdom? They're like all toads. Yes, there's toads. Yeah.

It's just toads? All right, cool. So, you know what? Toad and Toad at, but then you got a million, and then you got a million, and we got Captain Toad. There's just a lot of Toad's happening. You run into one of him, right?

And he challenges you basically, like, the screen goes to an overhead view, and it's Mario, like a picture of Mario. And he's like, all right, cool. What's going to happen is we're going to erase all the features and drop a whole bunch of, like, basically cutouts of what it would be, and you reassemble the face.

And you'll get a score based on how close you are to really doing Mario. And you need, I forget what it is. you need like 45 to be able to pass this and get a moon. It's like, okay. And so sure enough, it drops all this stuff. The face disappears. And like there's like fake out eyes and fake out eyebrows and all this other stuff.

And you're, you use the cap to capture the piece, walk it in. And then you have 360 degrees of rotation. So you're trying to match it perfectly and do it. And like there's the outline of the head. And like you can see where things are supposed. You know Mario's like basic layout and like his cap is still there. I forgot what I got. I get the moon.

That was great. That was brilliant. And he's like, all right, come back anytime. So I come back again. He's like, all right, cool. Now you need a score of 80. I'm like, all right, no problem. I was like, it's 75 on the first run. Do it. But this time, it's just the outline. They take away all the colors, all the main of pigmentation of hair and this. It's like, now I'm just walking these pieces in blindly putting them down. And it's like, what a goofy stupid thing that I can't wait to get back to and see how much further it goes and how, and like, not even how much further it goes in terms of how many times I can do that. Because I figure, I assume what's going to happen the next time is that they erase even the outline. I just have a blank white thing. And I just have a blank white thing. And I have. to reassemble Mario's face in there. But then when I start playing and get deeper and go back to worlds and go to areas that were inaccessible before, what other completely unexpected mechanics are going to be there for me?

And I love that part of it. And I just love playing it. And it feels so fluid and it feels so good to play and so free to play. And it is like running around doing a mission, but there's an acorn. And I know I need to take that to those planters over there. So pause this thing to run over the end. I don't know. It's just a world I want to exist in and a game I want to exist.

I love that Nintendo just has an, a fucking unending leash to just make whatever the fuck they want. Right. And nobody's going to calm out on it or question it because it's just Nintendo and it's fun. Yeah. And it's like a goofy world that has, that pays no respect to like physics or creatures. Yeah. It's just weird looking shit all over the place.

It's just like, yeah, that's fine. And your question, Andrea, of like, how did all the styles work? Right? If they're so different, it really is the fact that every world has its own vibe. And I feel that those world vibes are built around. the people you're going to possess there. So every world, whether it's big or small, or, you know, I should say whether it's the biggest or one of the smaller ones, feels rewarding in the way that you're in there. It's like every inch of this has been designed

with how I'm going to play it in mind. And the number of times I've jumped up to something and I'm about to run through a warp pipe and I look over there. I'm like, why is there that platform or why is there a corner tucked over there? And you go over there. And even if it's just invisible coins are there and they just start spouting off for you, it's like, the game respects your time, and it respects you for respecting and understanding what it is of the fact of, no, explore every inch of this. We didn't waste anything. You're not going to just going to run that. If there seems to be like nothing that way, run that way. There's going to be something where whether it's a place to butt pound and get a moon or whether it is just a coin or so, it's

just so magical. That's really exciting to hear because I was kind of burnt by the breath of the wild because while there were plenty of people out there who are going to disagree with me, I felt like there was a lot of exploration in that game that was not rewarding or the rewards were very unsatisfying. Like I'm going to walk all the way up this hill or take the time to spend all the stamina to climb this mountainside. And like maybe the most I'm going to get out of it is like a single corsoid. And I just felt like a lot of that in Breath of the Wild just felt like redundant and felt like there was a lot of art assets that were reused. It felt like there was I would walk down. these long pathways and then I would come across like a single enemy unless it was at night and

then you know you'd get the same bone guys that you're fighting like everywhere you go in the world and so it's really refreshing to hear that you felt like the exploration that was incorporated in tomorrow which we haven't really seen in a lot of Mario titles done in a meaningful way recently that it is enticing and it draws you and it feels rewarding I guess one thing I told Greg the day was that I enjoy the exploration in Breath of the Wild more because I just like the fantasy mythical vibe more. And so exploring in a world where it's very similar to like just a fantasy setting with dragons, shit like that, exploring stuff and finding things feels cooler to me because I like that vibe rather than exploring and finding something in a city with like

realistic looking humans when you're Mario. And then the mayor looks different. What's up with that. What's Pauline from donkey call or whatever? But why is her face different? She's misplaced there too, you know what I mean? She's another person out of time. Any of New Dong City, though, was awesome. I mean, there's tons of shit that really makes me think, man, that's fucking cool. But it's still

not a game that I feel like is in, I don't know, it's hard to talk shit about this game because it's so, it's so fucking good. It's not that I'm talking shit. Exactly. I just don't think it's a game of the year type of game. Right.

And a lot of people are going to hate me for that. And they should. I mean, they should. They should. They should not. Like we, I mean, you know,

I'm hopefully going to be able to come back and we can talk about, you know, like game award selections and picks and things like that. But when we're talking about what the criteria is for a game of the year, the thing I keep coming back to is like when we did our nomination process just like you guys did, there's several categories that you nominate games and not just for genre, but things for like art and sound and technical. Music. Voiceovers.

Right. All of these different parts that make up what a video game is. And I found myself, you know, not nominating certain games across certain categories, games that we were talking about as Game with the Year contenders. But then once I took a step back and looked at who we were looking at for achievements in these respective categories. And there really was only one game that hit in every single category. And that was Horizon Zero Dawn.

And obviously I haven't yet played Frozen Wilds. We're going to talk about your play experience, but I'm looking forward to going back and reminding myself why that game had such an impression upon me and why games like Zelda or games like Wolfenstein or even like Hellblade maybe didn't really resonate with me quite on that level. And obviously, as I've said,

I haven't spent any time with Mario yet, but maybe that will change my mind. I think it's interesting to have what I feel the three contenders for game in the year are at least in my head and for my own heart and for my iMO as andy would call uh being zelda mario and horizon and there being so many excellent awesome things about all of them and how they compare right and i think it's interesting to compare the zeldah open world like you're talking about to mario because mario is an open world it is very much you're choosing the world to go to and it's a contained space that like i said

they've fleshed out and done all these different things too i think you're going to love it based on what you're saying about Zelda because again it is rewarding to go in any direction and figure it out and then see things you can't get to and then hours later you figure out through another world how you're supposed to get there and it's like I like that kind of shit where I'm like that's cool I like the fact that I'm being rewarded and there's callbacks to it to what you're saying about Horizon underneath the picture which was and this is the same thing where I I hold I withhold my right to change my vote for game of the year by the time we get there of course but Horizon's been my game of the year and now I do think and I'm in the middle of my I'm in the

middle of my Mario obsession or whatever. I think Mario is going to get my game of the year vote as of now for sure, but I think in the end it will too. But Frozen Wilde's dropping, getting that code and starting that game, it was an instant bucket of water to the face. Because I started and it was that thing of, all right, so how do you play Horizon again? Like what, like, I remember the story and the vistas and the photo mode and the battles I had, but it was that thing of like, what is the moment to moment game playing? Am I going to be able to pick this back up? And is it? And is it going to be one of those things? You're going to hold my hand too much and do that.

And you start that game and you are thrown right back into it. There's fucking shit all around you. You got to go over there to start the new section of the new map. And I jumped in there and I'm getting, I'm level 50. I got the platinum right. And I'm getting my ass kicked and handed me. I'm trying to remember how to do it. But the game by not holding my hand, forced me to go over there and start to start on the way

to the path of the main story or to the story of Frozen Wild. Like it starts immediately beating you over the head again with what it is. And like by the end of the first battle, I'm dodge rolling correctly again. I'm using my trip wires, which Kevin was getting crazy about. I'm using my bow and arrow. Like, by the time I got into the new area for Frozen Wilds, got to the tall neck. And what I loved, and I, because I'm such an open world, I just fucking love an open world and checking off boxes and doing the stuff. So when we got Horizon originally, the first thing I did was, all right, cool.

I went through and got every tall neck I could open up the entire map. So to get in there and oh, like, all right, I got to go to a tall neck to do this. go there and no spoilers. It's different. It's not like the dozen other tall necks you did in the main quest. It is a very different like, oh, and it's like, oh, that's cool. The mechanics or? No, I don't want to, it's, it's a different story thing of how you're going to do this,

how you're going to get it. You unlock it. And as soon as it did it and unlocked the map and it came back on and went, there's bandit camps and like campfires. And I was like, fuck yes. And then I mean, I was, and I just, I gorged it. You know what I mean? I just marathoned it where I was, it was like, it was, it was a game where I was,

you know, Sunday at night, I played it for like four hours. Then we did streams for three or four hours, like the next two days. I was playing at home and it is that thing of just like, give it all to me. I've missed this experience. I have missed Aloe. I've missed this world. And I know we pat him on the back all the time and they deserve it every time. Like, I missed what guerrilla's done with this game.

Because there is a distinct, no spoilers. Mission in this game you go to and you're getting the great dialogue of the other character you're playing with, who's like this different, you know, boisterous guy. And it's like, oh, this guy's cool to talk to. And then in the area he's in, there's another one of the collectible stories where I'm sure so many other people either skip him or don't do them. But like, I got like the first two or three audio diaries and it was like, wow, this is super cool. This is a, and it suddenly shifts totally from the mundane quote unquote of crawl up there, go through the air duct,

come back down here, turn this wheel so he can come over here to do it all over again to where the fuck's that next audio dog, the dialogue and what's happening? And you are reminded again of horizons, one of Horizon's greatest strengths, because the game's strong on all fronts being the storytelling in it, and how awesome it is, not only an Alo story, and the main story of that, but also in the way they make you care about people, the old ones, people that have been dead for hundreds of years, and then the way you care about these people you meet in the interactions they have now in this world, because it's the, I actually beat it on stream not paying attention because I was like, okay, whatever, like, you know how it is, there's side quest, there's a main

quest, but like they're all underside quest because none of them are the main quest, because the main quest is still the game part of it. And going through and wrapping up the quest that was the main quest of Frozen Wilds, I was like, all right, this is cool, blah. And then even then, like, we were horsing around and like day one, when we were doing, we were all drinking and playing, having a good time. And day two, I wasn't. And Kevin was trying to talk to me at one point. I'm like, I got, I'm reading the dialogue. And then it's like, even that, this weird thing that I was like, maybe even the beginning part of it, half paying attention to. At the end, I was, like, like, sad

because of, like, the way they've written these characters that are inanimate robots or AIs or people or whatever. Like, they've just done such a great fucking job with this game. I wonder if the scheduling for releasing the DLC was in any way, uh, like planned to sort of remind the player like, hey, remember our game will release earlier this year and it's fucking good. 1,000% it must have. 100% to get them game of the year non.

Yeah. I mean, like, for them, they are the antithesis to me to Resident Evil. Whereas now that we're talking about it again, but the first time somebody's like, oh, yeah, don't forget Resident Evil. I was like, Resident Evil came out this year. Like, holy shit, that does not feel like something that happened in 2017 because it happened right in the front of the year. I wonder how much Wolf and Sinai and his Hathens Creed will suffer for just that release window.

The problem is that 2017 has been such an amazing year for game releases. I mean, we, midway through the year in July, when you did like a Game of the Year so far podcast on what's good, you know, we talked about how Resident Evil 7 was up there as a contender for a game of the year, but there's just been too much. And I, now that I've played so many more hours than Assassin's Creed, I absolutely would put it as a contender for game of the year. I need to finish it for me to, like, really judge it side by side with Horizon

because right now nothing has toppled that for me. But it's been such a fantastic year. it's really tragic to me that a game like Wolfenstein is going to get overlooked because it doesn't have as much gameplay as these open world counterparts do. So you just have the ability to spend more time in the world of Mario or Zelda or Horizon or Assassin's Creed than you can spend in the world of Wolfenstein. I mean, if you want to play that a game again, you can just change the difficulty, I guess. You would have to start on the easiest and you technically could play out of each difficulty all the way through and see how that changes the experience for you.

fundamentally, that game is going to be the same, right? And I think the, where it suffers the most is that games like Assassin's Creed and Mario require so much of your time and intention. And for someone like me, like, I thought I was going to be able to play all these games. And then I played Wolfenstein for like two hours. Loved what I played. Played Staten's Creed for like an hour. Loved what I played.

It's just, and the problem with Wolfenstein is that, yeah, it doesn't have all these sort of mechanics and RPG. elements of like upgrading your skills and all these different things that we come to expect in a modern game. But I want to play that game for the story. And I want to and I want to trudge through it and I need to get back to it. I was really kind of discouraged when I found that it's like a 12 hour game. I was hoping or 12 to 15. I was hoping it was going to be like a seven-ish game just so I can kind of get it out of the way. And I was running to some of the same problems you're having, Greg, where it's like, man, I'm dying a lot of this. Man, this game reminds me over and over again.

I'm terrible at it. I love Wolfenstein too. I'm going to when I restart it, when I restart it, When I come back, I'm totally putting into baby mode and just like, let's go. Let's just kill stuff. And for the first hour of playing Assassin's Creed, opening up the world map and being like, oh, fuck, this is huge. And all these icons are all over the place. And God damn it, I'm never going to get to any of this, huh? Like, it was just that sad realization that I just don't have time to play all of these games.

Well, that sucks. The thing about it is games, even at this time of year, even for us, but for anybody, like, all depend on your mood. And I think that was a big, for me, a backbreaker with Assassin's Creed, where I, I was like not jonesing for another open world at the moment. And so I when I jumped in like, right, my complaints are weird of like, I jumped in. I felt like I was thrown in the middle of story.

New mechanics, okay. But then it was like looking at the mapping, like, what the fuck is all this? And like, that's not who I am. I love open worlds and I love that. But usually they're parsed in a little bit differently, right? This is similar, I feel like, to how Horizon, this DLC tosses you in. But it's like, I know the horizon world. I didn't need it.

I didn't have slow learning group to. Yeah, that experience is a little bit different. So that's a fair complaint to make about Assassin's Creed origins, but I think they were trying to find a balance between having too much exposition at the top, which they got really panned for in previous Assassin's Creed games. So I like having too much story at the beginning of people saying, I just want to get to the action. And now it's almost like they have not enough story because they have a brand new protagonist.

You're in an all new setting. It's meant to be like this origin story for the brotherhood. and you kind of stir off the game really confused about who you are, what you're doing, but they do get that info to you rather quickly. It's with any RPG, and this is the thing that's been hard and that I've been talking about with, in particular to this franchise, is that they've really doubled down on bringing the RPG mechanics into the action-adventure part of the franchise, which I'll fully admit, and I've said this before, that I was very, like, hesitant against.

I was unsure if I was going to like this. As someone who's played all of the Assassin's Creed games, I was just like, I don't know if this is the right move, but now that I'm like 30 plus hours in, I think that they have managed to weave it in so expertly that this was exactly what this franchise needed in order to get people reinvigorated and to kind of refresh the gameplay systems,

the mechanics that they're using. And so I would say to people who are maybe in your position, Greg, that are maybe hesitant about starting or they started it and they weren't really intrigued to give it another go and remind yourself that any great RPG takes probably a solid 10 to 15 hours to really kind of get over that initial hump. I mean, if you look at all of the best RPGs, you probably don't really start having an excellent time until like 20 hours in, right? And so this is clearly designed to be like a hundred hour game experience. Don't let the icons overwhelm you. And I will say I commend them on having it not be as bad as previous Assassin's Creed games, but there is a lot.

But the good news is a lot of those icons are easily checked off and they're short checkboxes. It's not like you're going on these endless fetch quests to go get things. It's like sometimes you just have to go in, open a single chest, and then it's like checkmark, you get experience points and you're on your way. Nice. Which is great because they really did an excellent job of making sure that everything in the world feels like it's contributing to your overall progress. aggression, whether it's a piece of gear or it's a ability point that you earn or even if it's like a legendary outfit you get for a specific side quest, everything feels like it has a purpose and there has been, there's been RPGs that have been out this year that doesn't

feel like the case. And I can confidently say the design of the open world of Assassin's Creed Origins is better than any open world game I've played this year. Better than Horizon. It's better than Horizon. Wow. And Horizon, open world is fantastic. And there's some other things about Horizon that I like better than Assassin's Creed, the narrative being one of them. But the way that the open world is crafted in Assassin's Creed is just phenomenal from the individual art assets that make up each area of Egypt to their attention to detail with the historical landmarks that are in the game with making you feel like you want to be called out to the desert to follow a mirage or over

to an island where there's a question mark and you're like, you know, is it, is it a tomb? Is it, uh, an enemy outpost? Like, what is that thing over there? I don't know. If you want to just like call your mount and go anywhere in the world, like it feels rewarding in a way that I haven't seen yet this year. And I absolutely can't say enough about how much I am impressed by this game. Wow. Yeah, that's the thing is like I was telling you, you know, earlier, like the, when you talk about it, you definitely make me go, oh, I got to you. And I think part of that comes from. obviously you're you telling me know this, that, and the other, and it gets better and how it plays out, but also the fact of coming off Frozen Wilds, where even then I was, it, it sounds stupid,

but I kind of forget that that was in open world, RPG kind of game, right? And so like, to get back in and like, oh, right, the map and oh, I'm clearing this, and oh, I'm fast traveling campfire to campfire, and I have this mountain, there's this new enemy to fight. And it was that rare thing when you know a game's doing it right, where I'm in the open world and I'm riding to my objective in Frozen Wilds. And then there's this, you know, beast over here that has nothing do with the mission is just over there and I stopped to fight it for no reason other than the combat's a lot of fun you're a new monster I can't even collect more stuff because I'm still max from getting there and they've done a few different like additions to gameplay where there's another skill

tree now so you have more more place to put your points or whatever for frozen wilds um when you're you can break stuff down and get half the money right on the spot rather than have to go sell it and stuff like that so if your bags are full but it's just like I also am swimming in shards I don't really need to worry too much about that I feel like like Horizon would have definitely been at the top of my list had I enjoyed Aloy Moore. And I told other people this. I love

Ashley Burch as an actress and I think I don't think she was utilized as much as she could have been. Oh no, I agree with you. I think that she is a great character but I think there was definitely potential for her to be more relatable. There certainly were a number of scenes particularly in side quests

where she just felt a little stiff and I don't think that that has to do with her performance. I think it has to to do with the way that the writing is and how something seem more brief than they needed to be and they didn't truly like make those interactions as interesting as they could. That being said, I still think they did an excellent job, especially if you compare it to the side quest system and a lot of other open world action adventure games or open world RPGs that are out there standing against it.

Yeah. Like I don't know. We've heard her as tiny Tina. We've heard her be crazy. And obviously that's not Alois character or whatever. But I just, when I hear performances like Pladia Black as Chloe in Uncharted Lost Legacy, that's kind of what I wanted Aloid to be. I guess I just wanted another female Nathan Drake, which is what Chloe was.

Gotcha. But just sort of funnier, more sarcastic, silly. And a lot of time I just kind of felt like she was like this humble, soft-spoken woman. But that's not who she is as a character. I mean, you're talking about a girl who grew up as an outcast, who has no friends, who doesn't have a place, who feels like as an outsider. She's not going to have... Aladdin was like that too, and he was very...

He loved Brett. He did. He sure did, Greg. Thank you. I remember Aladdin. And that's just my preference. I just want a character that's funner to play as. In Frozen Wilds, and it might be just because it's compact,

but I think it is probably just because they realized they didn't do much with the system. I felt like there was just in the main quest and a few of the sides I've done, right? Three or four of those, do you want to answer with the heart, the brain, or the fist thing? So it's giving you a chance to not make her more of your own, but bring that out in her. And I feel like in her interactions with it, she wasn't like smart alecky or outside of it, but she was having more personality, more emotion in this. In some of the selections in the standard game, where you spoke out with a fist. Yeah. And you heard that emotion.

I was like, that's what I want more. Like, I just felt like every answer was kind of very bland. And I was just like, oh, man, I want you to be more excited. That literally sounded like. I wanted to be you more. Link, I just don't enjoy it. The blood moon rises. Link doesn't have a voice.

I said Zelda. Zelda. You're talking about Zelda. Yeah. Yeah. I remember Zold. I said careful, Link, the blood mode right. Link.

That's my thoughts. No, I mean, am I going to play Frozen Wild? Probably not. You're a monster. Because I also need to get into, I need to play Assassin's Creed and I want to play Wolfenstein.

Yeah. And I'm going to reserve more Mario for my flight back home on next Friday. Cool. When I go home for vacay. Well, there's something else you need to add to your flight back home.

for vacay, ladies and gentlemen. This goes back to what I'm talking about, where you have to be in a mood to play a game. Started Doom on Switch last night. Yeah? Having a lot of fun with that. Did you ever beat it? No.

Whoa. I played on PS4 and it was literally... I never beat it either, yeah. It was that thing of like, I played it, I got it, I understood why this was cool, but that's not what I wanted last year,

or last year, right, when I went through and played it and screwed around with it. I think I beat it at the end of January, but had I beat it like in the time frame of 2016, it would have definitely been up there as a game of the year. Well, it's one of those games. I feel that works so well on the switch.

And I think on paper, people might have questioned it, obviously, especially coming out of the gate because it was Bethes is first. I mean, I questioned it after spending hands-on time with it. Yeah. I'm like, why is this there? Well, my big, if you remember on Games Daily when we talked about it and a bunch of people came after me after that episode aired. Hey, I-Y-O.

Yes. In your opinion. Well, my point was, Doom as a game is a great game. I just don't think Switch is the best platform to play that game. on. That being said, you said already that you played it on PS4 first, and then you went to Switch. Obviously, PC is the best place to play Doom, because that's where its heritage is. But the drivers and the mindswee, clipy. How are my bios?

I don't play games on my PC, which is why I got an Xbox 1X so I could play 4K games. But like, the thing is, is like, Doom on Switch for me was just, it was lackluster because I the small screen just was not giving me that big bombastic experience that Doom encapsulated so well

and you're not wrong I'm with it I mean if you want full tilt this is what Doom was when the music kicks in and the visuals are crisp Kindofloney.com you're not wrong right in kind of funny.com slash you're not wrong

but for me it's an interesting fit of Doom on PlayStation 4 isn't a game where I need to be worried about following the narrative or I need to be paying my full attention to it It is a fun arcade-like experience of shoot you, you're flashing. I run up, I break your neck, I get, and like, so last night I was doing that while

Jen was watching TV, and then we went to bed and I just kept playing there. And I'm like, I can totally see me playing Zelda or Mario all this flight long, but at some point being like, let's take a break and jump over and do a level and run through and kill some stuff and do it. And I tweeted about it like, the visuals are a downgrade. I'm playing it on, I'll mean handheld mode so far. You're using joycons. Yeah.

How does that feel? The sticks definitely feel loose. I can totally see that this is going to be a game on the plane that I pack the Pro Controller for and do the thing where I have the switch on the table and the JoyCons. That's the first thing I was wondering because playing as the tank in Mario Odyssey, I was like, these sticks feel like shit, man. And I need like an actual control. Yeah, I need an actual pro.

But the real thing that I didn't even think about or I thought they would have thought more about is how fucking tiny the text is on screen. I was playing it in handheld mode and it runs up and it's like, I'm like, oh, hit B or X or whatever to open a door. And I'm like, no. And then I literally went like this. I'm like, oh, R3. You know what I mean?

Like, I was like, I didn't. You have admitted publicly that you've raised this font size on your cell phone. I have. I am an old man. It's official. Old man, Hey, I'll go get it right now. You can tell me if this is a font small on the screen.

All right. It's tiny. I want to say it's not small no matter what. I hate you so much. It's small, but it's not that small. Yeah, old man Miller. All right. Well, it's not going to stop me from playing.

Like, I had a great time. time and I was really surprised that I had such a great time. It's a great romp. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good romp through hell. Dude, I love that. I fucking adore that game. Yeah.

That's why I'm like so, I'm itching to get back to Wolfenstein. Sure. And it just doesn't seem like it's anywhere in the near future. And I said, here's what I got to do. So what's your priority then right now? Here's what I have to do. Gundams. Well, right now I've been playing Odyssey.

But I need to like not play that so I can get to the other games because I can play Odyssey anywhere. With the Switch, Andrea, you can play anywhere. I'm aware. And so I'm going to save that for my flight. I have like a three-ish hour flight. Actually, no. There's like a bunch of different fucking connections?

Connections, yeah. You got this flight for 19 bucks, so it's 17 stops before you get to Texas. So I'm going to be playing for 38 hours straight. So between now and then, my priority is going to be Wolfenstein. And you get back into Wolfenstein. And I need to finish that story. And so when I started playing Cassus Creed, I was like, you know what? I'm going to mainline this.

I'm not going to do anything else. I'm just going to, and like two hours in, I was like, I cannot mainline this. Or like an hour issue. No, you can't. I'm playing on easy mode because I'm trying to get as far through the game as possible before Game of the Year votes are due. And even on easy, it's still challenging. I mean, the progression is has been not a hindrance.

I've been able to do enough side quests and really kind of match my level. But I have found out very quickly you can only get. do quests that are maybe one number level, potentially two number levels over you, or it's just not even doable. You'll just like get one shotted by all the enemies. Is there a cutoff

time for game awards? Depends on who's voting and what you're talking about. They should have like, you know, like for the Oscars, if a movie comes out a month. For the game awards, Jeff Keely, yes, there's a cutoff. There's a date. There's a specific dates. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Because I don't know. Which makes it weird because Final Fantasy 15, is technically in this year's running from Game Awards. Really? What the fuck? Because how they cut it off last year? I mean, you figure it starts what? The Game War's show is always

that first week of December. So like you have to cut it off in November. You have to put in your ballots and all this different stuff. I just feel like there are going to be so many reviewers out there rushing through the three major games that came out. The problem is this happens every time for everybody. I remember it. Every area.

I remember at IGN so vividly, Andy. When Mitch Dyer brought us all into a room and he's like, it was the end of November. We were all getting ready. you started, you're already thinking about breaking all stuff. And Far Cry 3 didn't come out that year until December something. And he all brought us in a room. And he's like,

you guys need to understand that this game is awesome and different and amazing. And he had like, he did a section where he ran around and did stuff. PowerPoint. No, I don't think he had a power point, but he had a whole bunch of bullet points he wanted to hit. And we all left and we all voted,

nobody voted for fucking Far Cry 3. And then over Christmas break and we came back. And I was like, why didn't you tell me I could make a shark skin wallet? And all, like, it was one of those. things of the game was amazing, but there was no way to express that when everybody else has

already been like, oh, I've been playing this and it's amazing. I'm playing this and it's amazing. That's always what happens. And the problem you run into when you're any content creator, right, is like, where's the cutoff? Because if you do it too early and you go too early with your game words, you miss stuff. But if you want to wait to everybody plays stuff on the backs of Christmas breaks or whatever and you come in, then you're in the loss in everybody else's game awards or you're too late and you're not timely. The people who put out awards like January 15th of the 30th or whatever, like they may be more comprehensive,

but now it's already the wheels are spinning up of what's happening in February in March. That's what's tough about like the game developer conference awards, is that, you know, they're usually in March. Oh, GDC. Yes, sometimes late February. But they really are touching on all the games that were big the previous year. But by that point, you were usually in Q1. and now Q1 has become a very desirable release window.

And so every year when that award show happens, I'm like, oh, people are still talking about all of those games. It's like the South by Southwest Awards. Yeah. Even Dice. Like, you host that last year. And it's that thing, you get to Dice. And it's like, man, we are deep into this year already,

but we're talking about stuff that was last year. But different audiences and what people want out of it. We need to change. We need to change that. And I'm putting my foot down. Okay. That's my fist. You can't see me putting my foot down.

What you can? What's your, what's the vote? When are we cutting off the year? The day before all these three games came out. Gotcha. That's where the dates should be. Jeff Keeley, if you're watching this.

October 25th. October 25th. Yeah, right. 26th? 26th, 27th. One game I want to give a shout-out to you. Call of Duty World War II. Started that last night.

Another fucking game. God damn it. Dude, it's awesome. And it's like, I wanted to like it from the pitch. Originally, I thought I'd like it. Banded Brothers. Well, I weren't to tell you this story about this platoon. I got through two missions last night and started the third.

And it's like, it's beautiful. The story's good. The characters are cool. It's not super bro-y. It's not like I can't believe it similar to like last year's infinite warfare with me where I'm in the space and all this other shit Like all right not not for me. This is just a cool thing that's going on. I like it in terms of what you're talking about where you wanted Wolfson to be short I've heard this is right where I want it to be in the sweet spot of you know, call of duty campaigns, but even from the main screen I can see like the different chapters that are going to be the missions and I'm like I can do one right now and do something else or I can try to do too or I at least see the progress I'm making like it's playing out like a episodic World War II show and I'm totally into it. I'm in that sort of phase right now where

I'll have a spare 40 minutes a night and I'm just like I don't want to, that's not enough time to sort of dive into an Assassin's Creed like game or Wolfenstein where I need to get really invested. So I just play a game of fucking NBA 2K 18 on my career. And that's been like whenever I have a spare 40 minutes, 40 to an hour

that's where I will just play a game of 2K. You're talking about persona five syndrome for me. Really? Of like, oh man, I'm only 25 hours into persona five. I'd really like to beat it. But I know that that means I have 70 more hours of persona five. I want to take it out in big chunks. I want to do this.

So, oh, yeah, I got an hour and hour and a half. You know, it's 45 minutes before I want to go to bed. Like, I'll play Friday of 13th. I'll play Marvel Heroes. I'll do, you know, like now I'm, you know, I'll play some Mario. I'll chip away at it that way or Mario Kart. You know, Mario Odyssey's kind of been that game too,

where it doesn't, obviously it's like kind of like just this mindless game where you don't have to remember about the intense story. It's just like you're fucking getting hats or whatever the fuck, you know. It's this weird. In these moons, Andrea. It's this interesting for me, this year's been so crazy because it is a year where suddenly I'm playing Destiny 2

and having a great time at Friday of 13th, and I'm doing the online games as a service, whatever stuff. I've never wanted to play multiplayer. But it's also the same thing of the comeback, I think of just like game playing a way, where I'm always the guy who wants a great story and that's why I play games and I want to be entertained that way. But Mario is a game where no,

I just want to run around and get, moons and like I know I can get a couple moons to go to bed or get distracted and do something else now I'm talking about the same thing with doom or a cart early in this year running around and doing that there's too much happening there's so much choice this year I'm excited for destiny dLC oh my god I can't wait for her at osiris something that's kind of easy to forget yeah no but knowing that it's on the horizon ah dawn oh I'm gonna be having wild frozen time wild fun zero zero don't I just got to finish everything before then what do you have to left to finish. Do they get to 300 or whatever? Well, I have to finish the mainline story of Assassin's Creed.

I have to do all Mario's campaign. I thought you meant you had to finish something in destiny before that came on. I was like, I feel like you're really done. I have one. My hunter's 305. I'm fine to start the, the DLC. I mean, I want my other two characters to get obviously get above 300, but I had to take a break. I obviously, everybody who listens to this show or GameSaly knows that I love destiny, but I needed to take a break because there's just I was not doing my professional due diligence and playing other stuff.

Sure. I got to get serious about this platinum. You gotta get serious about Assassin's Creed. And I were into it, I was like, I love this by I could see why. Let me tell you what. He's, the thing that I was really hesitant about liking him as a character from the preview events that I went to for Assassin's Creed is that I loved the swagger

of characters like Etzio and how he had this charm and this kind of you know, um, bragged docious attitude, but he still... Devil may care sort of attitude. But he still had like his convictions, right, to the creed. Right. And Bayek, I kind of was like, I'm not sure if this guy's got enough personality.

He seems like a little, like a little bland almost. But now that I have gotten to know him as a character, I love this family man assassin that they've created. This guy who is... He's fucking cool. He's so cool. And he's on this like vengeance quest and how all of the children in the world, he's got these fantastic interactions with and how he goes out of his way to do these crazy side

quest to help like pregnant mothers and how he has this amazing like husbanda relationship with Aya. And like it's it's so great how they've made him this really down to earth family man with like real convictions that aren't just like superficial that he feels really rooted in a genuine authentic place as a character, which is the kind of in-depth character development. we haven't really seen in a lot of the assassins across all of the franchises. I mean, obviously, ETSO got the most amount of attention because he was in the most amount of games. But even, you know, people like Edward in Black Flag, like he was a fun character, but I don't think that he was a character that was relatable. And Bayek really kind of crosses that line into a place where you can see some of these really human qualities in him as a character, which I find really fantastic.

I was wondering why pregnant mothers gave this game a 10 out of 10. 10. Pregnamothers.com. Yeah, pregnantwothers.com. If you want a relatable character in Frozen Wilds now, you can officially take off your headpiece. So you don't have to walk around

with like a diaper on your head looking stupid. You can remove that because they realize that's dumb. That was a dumb look. Dumb way of force. Time for this week in gaming where we run you through crazy stuff that's happened through our video games. This week in gaming.

It's here. It's here right now. Oh my God. That was this week? Four years ago. November 2nd. Oh no, so November 12th, 2013, Assassin's Creed for Black Flag came out. What a game.

Fantastic. That was an awesome game. Are you kidding me? Now number four on my Assassin's Creed list. The first game that I really gave a shit about the franchise. Your origins. One, I'm assuming, no? No. Brotherhood is still number one.

Okay. And then AC2. Is that a... And then Origins and then Black Flag. Is Brotherhood being number one? Is that like a hot take? Is that one of those like polarizing sort of takes? I think so.

I think it's a pretty divided opinion about that game. Most people say two, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, two was really iconic. I loved the camaraderie element that Brotherhood brought in, being able to call in other members and really fight those battles. And some of the traversal mechanics and the combat mechanics that they introduced in Brotherhood,

I kind of really thought was a great departure from where they started. But, yeah. I was telling Greg. Origins, by the time I'm done with Origins. it might move up the list. Black flag, though, fantastic game. Yeah, that's the first game that I really even gave a shit about,

like in the franchise, because the other ones just weren't for me. I thought when this game first debuted, when part one was, like, showcased at that 1E3, where Jade Raymond came out and, like, showed you what this game was about. I was like, this is going to be my franchise.

It was the same year as BioShok. I'm pretty sure. And then it just never resonated with me. Like, the fact, the going into the future, that aspect lost me. I was like, I don't like that whole part of it. See, I love that first civilization stuff. And that's also kind of polarizing,

but they've touched on it so far in origins in a way that I'm intrigued by, but they haven't quite hooked me yet because they haven't done enough with it yet. Is it still going on? Like, that's what I didn't even understand anymore where we're at with the Templars and assassins in the real world.

Because I, spoilers, guys, not for current. Not for origins, but like for the Assassin's Creed thing. I when did they kill Desmond kind of funny.com says you're wrong revelations I don't think I made it to the end of that one so I remember like I remember when I was

when I was into it when I was into it right I remember like how I'm playing the story and Avazio we're going back and forth Desmond's there Kristen Bell's there all right great I think three yeah and I remember that one where there's that awesome cliffhanger

actually I think it was two or maybe it was Revvations where the woman's, one of the gods is talking to, but then he says, Desmond, and it was like, what? He's like, who's Desmond? Wait, who's Desmond? Blah! I don't know.

He sounds like kind of Dracula, but it was Ezio. Who is Desmond? Oh, what? Nah. So the cliphanger was in Revelations, and then they wrapped up his story in three. See, three was the one I just, I can't even do this. It was a Cassas Creed, three.

That's good, that's good. Thanks, man. Thanks. But then when we got to Black Flag. show so far. Black flag when I got there I was like holy shit this is awesome but and it's a tired story for I know kind of funny fans who listen everything but like I played that game

for so many hours and had such a great time and I was I know my thing was I'm gonna go island by island and just clear them all out. Hell yeah and I was like yeah and it was like 25 hours on the clock I'm like yeah and I zoomed out and I had like I don't like a try and I'm like I can't do this it was the same thing of like I have to play other stuff this year I can't do this rest of my life so I never got any of the story there

I didn't do unity I did syndicate for a little bit, but all these ones are like, syndicate even was just like, all right, cool. And the modern day stuff, like, here's your desk. All right, thanks.

I'm on a computer and now I'm back in Britain. I don't know what's going on. Well, when Corey May left the series, like they really ran into this weird position of like, where do we take it? Because they gave it such a definitive end with,

you know, Desmond Miles storyline. And there were parts of the community that love the present day stuff. And then there are parts that are like, just get rid of it. Yeah. We don't want it in there at all.

you're just taking it away from an otherwise really great historical action adventure series. But because they had done all of this buildup in the first half of the franchise, you can't just like abandon that and pretend like it never happened. And so I think that they're trying to get back to a place where it's meaningful, but it's not intrusive, where like there is a point to it and ties into the overall lore of the Assassin's Creed canon, but that it's not like in your face all the time drawing you out of the thing that you want, which is to be inside that world. Interesting. So are we done? Are they done fighting? Are the Templars and everybody cool?

I'm not, I'm not to the end of the game yet. I don't know. You know what, guys, we can coexist. No big deal. Six years ago, 11, 11, 11, the Elder Scrolls, Skyron. Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah. What are you shaking your head at? It's crazy that that was six years ago. I know, right? I was at Best Buy in Georgetown. I remember meeting Todd Howard for the first time at E3. It was maybe the previous year. Maybe it was 2010.

Maybe it was 2011. And he gave the behind closed doors presentation for the Elder Scrolls 5, Skyrim. And that was the only one raised. Like, look at this rabbit. It was like a 45 minute presentation. And like when he showed like the dual wielding thing and how you could like have a weapon and a spell on one hand or do like double spells. Like everyone in the room was like, oh my God.

And he showed the detail and how you could like read the books. and look at all the different items and pull all the food from your inventory or whatever. And it was just so magical. And I had never really gotten into an Elder Scrolls game before Skyron. Me neither. Same. And Skyrim was really my first entry into that amazing fantasy world of Tamriel.

And it was, I mean, even to this day, Skyrim on Switch just came out. Next week, yeah, right? Well, I mean, wasn't, I feel like Skyrim was the first game that really had a pronounced presence on the console. because like four Of the series? Yeah I feel like it was the first game

that really had that Yeah, no I think that's fair I mean they existed Elbow scrolls four Fucking Morow win that was it Well I thought Morwin is three Oh no oblivion

Was that four? Oblivion It is oblivion That one was on consoles And I remember But it was like It was so early on consoles If that makes sense

I got you figure I get to IG in 2007 And that's already Old News by then People had already Stop like Klingman was still obsessed with it and he's making fun of horse armor. But like...

Yeah, I just don't feel like as a console gamer, Elder Scrolls were really a big deal. I agree with that. And I think a big part of that was Fallout, right? Like, Fallout came around and I remember, fallout was the first Bethesda game as me coming up and paying attention that we were like, whoa, I was like, whoa, what the fuck's Bethesda?

This game's insane. This is awesome. Playing that and then New Vegas and then Skyrim coming. Then I think you, I think we all had a way to wrap our head around what it would be if you hadn't played anything before. It's going to be open world. and dragons and shit.

Skyrim was my first one. I never beat it, but poured hours upon hours into it. No, no, me neither. I did the same thing I always do. It was like 60 hours. There was one day where I sat there. I dig it. On the weekends, there was a weekend where I sat there listening to, this is a time capsule,

that Goatee song, his only song. Somebody that I get. Yeah, I am. Listen to that on repeat pretty much off of YouTube because the song was stuck in my head, porting in my lap, sitting there, and then just doing the... No way that song's that old. This stealth glitch, or not even glitch, but like where there was like a monk praying and you go behind him. And then you do it.

And then you get like one stealth point. And he'd stand back up and then he'd sit back down and you'd do it and get one at stealth point. And I was like, there's a lot of cheeses in that game. Yeah. As there should be. Nine years ago, 11, 16, 2007, a game that when they revealed it, I gave it a standing ovation. Only person at this event in Vegas. Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe.

This is like, I mean, this is my first, I haven't even been in IG in a year yet. Me and Broadway went to Vegas for, that would have been Midway. Yeah, we went for midway. And they showed us all these games. And when that one, it was just the most, why is Batman? And so just like, I got off with like, the balls on you got to do this. Yeah, sure, okay. Yeah, right?

It wasn't like a hip-hop gamer chair. Oh, no, it was very much like, I'm a DC fan and this is dumb as fuck, but I'm here for you. Good job for doing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, and then to show you how broken IGN was back then of we review everything, somehow I reviewed that game. Oh my gosh. Because I was a DC fan and I had played a Mortal Kombat before and so I played that. There you go.

And I remember what a dumb idea. They'll never do that again. And here's injustice. One of the biggest things going on a multimedia fucking fronts everywhere. 10 years ago, November 12th, 2007, Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii. That's a game right there, Andy. Never had a whole lot of experience with the galaxy games. Wait, really?

Yeah, I never owned a, like, the only time I owned a GameCube was one that I bought at the Pond Shop because I wanted Smash. Oh. And I wanted a way to practice Smash at home. Well, Galaxy isn't GameCube, it's Wii. Super Mario Galaxy. Not Sunshine. Sunshine was the only. Sunshine's a GameCube.

Well, I never owned a Wii either, so that makes sense. Okay. Well, you're just a weird. But yeah, like, the galaxy. Definitely one of the best Mario's fall time. The Galaxy games, the only, like, experience I had with them was, like, being at a cousin's house and playing it from. a while as well as I was there. Mejo, let him play Galaxy, Miho.

He doesn't have a Wii where it comes from. He doesn't have a Wii. Yeah, that's my only experience with the franchise. And I know that, like, it's just like, I know the phenomenal games, but like, and I enjoyed what I played, but it was like hours at a time, weekend separated.

Yeah, I know, I hear you. Yeah, I hear you. It's crazy. You missed a great one. It was really, really good. That was the first time I ever met Reggie, too. Was at a press tour for that. He walked by.

I was like, shook my hand. That's great. Big, big, big moment for me. Remember I could, I hate, got a hated waggle though. That was the one thing that I did not like about Galaxy

was like shaking the thing to do stuff. And here I am still to this day now. Fucking shaking this joy. Spin in circles, Mario. God, get them all. You still have to spin it sometimes to do that stuff.

You got to do it. Unless you, there's some spin. It's just a pain in the butt. It's easier to look like an idiot. Like I'm jacking off this giant switch. Ten years ago, November 13th, 2007. Assassin's Creed,

we talked about it earlier. The first one shows up as Hillary Gold, scene called in his preview the first next gen game of that generation. And then he gave it a seven and everybody got really mad at him. But it's also the review that made Harley Morinstein a fan of IG until the day he does. Because he was like, these guys shoot straight. I like that. I never played the original assassin's screen. I think I started it. I was like, this is boring. Neither did I. This is not a fun one of it. I never, I don't think I finished it. Definitely

played some of it. But it's one of those things where I don't think it's aged well. Yeah. And AC2 was just definitively better. I know I said that word like five, times this podcast. I apologize. It's because AC2 was like, oh, all the boring shit that didn't make sense and like trying to blend back in and we'll just, we'll fast track that. We'll give you just the good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Uh, let's get some PlayStation stuff on here. A decade ago. November 16th, 2007, Uncharted Drake's Fortune comes out. Wow.

Launching a franchise, a face of PlayStation, taking Naughty Dong to a new place, a new level. I remember being on tour with my band on tour, which is like just like shows in Texas or whatever. And my drummer was talking about how Like oh dude Oscar's even playing this game uncharted on the PS3 I was like yeah but nobody plays PS3 bro Yeah nobody's playing it nobody's playing that cult Man it's gonna it's gonna die

That franchise is gonna die and go nowhere Yeah Nottie Dog Crash what? Yeah yeah sort of thing Jack Daxter guy yeah I would have never expected that It would have become this huge And this like incredible you know Well it's the funny thing for me you know That's still my first year at IGN

and I remember going down to L.A. with the guys, the whole PlayStation team for some PlayStation event where they're going to show so much stuff. And in the giant bus we were taking down there with a whole much other games, Jerno's Dunham turned to me and he's like, all right, these are the games you're covering. And they had a code name for Encharta that don't remember right now. I was like, what is that? Dolphin. And he's like, do you remember the, the Jack and Aaxter guys? They're naughty dog. And they're making this new game and some kind of like piratey action adventure thing. I was like, all right. I remember playing that and everybody gathered around when I'm playing this thing. And it's like, look at his, look at his

pants are wet. He went in the water and they came out and they're wet. Everybody's like, the coolest tech of all time. Yeah. Like, God, then that thing fucking launched. 11 years ago, November 14th, 2006, shout out to Calamoriardi. Resistance fall of man came out. Again, another franchise. The chimera man. It was, you know what I mean? It was there. It was there to fight everybody. It was there. It was there. They were doing it. Insomniac. Yeah. Tried multiple times that I, you know, resistance didn't click for me until the PSP game by Sony Bend. And then, uh, I like three a lot.

the final resistance on PlayStation 3. That was a really good one. That was a franchise where, like, the only person out of all of our friends had a PS3. Yeah. Like, his brother bought a PS3 because his brother just bought everything or whatever. Yeah.

And so that was a game that I'd go over to my friend's house to watch them play and be like, this is whatever. Yeah, it's very brown. It's a weird one. 12 years ago, November 14th, 2005 Mario Kart DS. A great Mario Kart. I remember camping out for Wii to get my pre-order in for Wii.

And the guy next, me hadn't for some reason I'd have it yet but you could share the game with everybody so we just shared it with this giant line of people and I by the time they opened game stop I went in and I was like I'll take a wee and Mario Kart DS and bought that and took it home snaking big problem online though Andrew be careful that's making 14 years ago you know you remember this you know you could drift too much and then people just snaked and then it broke online it broke online no I don't remember that I never played that online you guys are missing out me uh 14 years ago November 10th 2003 Prince of Persia of the Sands a time

game game another fucking game you play this one or you're touring this one you know oh my god this is the game that ended my piano career because I was like wait wait wait you were gonna become a professional I was taking piano

I was taking piano lessons in in college and I was like it was that thing where I didn't tell anybody about it for a long time because I want to see if it stuck and it stuck for like six months and I remember for Christmas I actually got a keyboard from my mom because I finally confessed that I was doing this and then like a few months or I guess this is, I got it for my birthday.

Whatever. I got it in a way where I was like, all right, cool. And then this came out. And it was the day of where I was like driving. And I just read the article about it. And I was like, die of a ball off piano practice today. It went to GameStop or EB and never ever went back to piano. Didn't even call the cancel because I'm an asshole.

16 years ago, Andy, November 12th, 2001. Metal Gear Solid Tucson. Oh my God. Jeez, what a fucking game. They don't make them like that anymore. No, they don't make it. Having my brother walking to my house, and I'm just like walking to the limingroom,

I'm like, just playing some PS2. And he's like, no, you're not. I was like, I don't know, maybe go check my room. And I had Metal Gear Solitude, and just the intro cutscene of being on the fucking bridge in the fucking octo cam or whatever the fuck it was called. One of my favorite games. And you know what?

A game that the whole bait and switch of the Ryden thing to say anything, It didn't affect me. Because like, I played part one. I love part one, but I wasn't in any way, like, married to Snake. Yeah. So I thought that was cool as shit. I was more upset as somebody who loved part one so much. I was married to the idea of Merrill. And like, I hated that Metal Gear Solid 2. Like references are when he, you know, when, you know, when, you know, when, you know, uh, Pliskin's dreaming or whatever. I was like, I wanted more. I wanted to know what happened to her. I was upset than nobody ever talked about. I guess in most games, I love being like the young hotshot rookie. Sure. With his back against the wall, you know, like I love. open his balls while he cartwheels around. Yeah, exactly. And he's like, athletic, he's like cool white hair.

I was like, man, this guy's fucking cool, man. I was like the only person. Yeah, everybody hates this guy. We didn't have the internet, so we didn't know really how much everyone else hated this guy.

No, I mean, I remember reading articles in GamePro where I was like, oh, people don't like it. Like, feeling like really weird about it, but I love them, man. Jack, Rose. So cool.

And then also 16 years ago, November 15th, 2001, Xbox. The original Xbox releases. I remember looking at this thing, you're like, no, sir. that we already have enough consoles. We all go nowhere with your cords.

They made a big deal in their interviews. Bill Gates would talk about like, we workshop this thing forever. And if somebody walks and their controller cord catches on the leg, they disconnect them in the center. So they won't yank your console off or yank the controller. I'm like, no, I'm fine. I don't need this crap.

You and your giant duke controller. My first Xbox was, I remember going to, I would babysit in Austin for my cousins. I'm babysit. Like, they were really like five years younger than me. but they just wanted somebody to be around like during the summer. Yeah.

And so I bought, I was going to go to Austin to babysit so I can make money and then come back and buy an Xbox so I can buy Halo because all my friends were playing Halo. And by that time, before I even went, my dad was like, I bought you this.

You're going to have to pay me back for it because I know this is why you're really going up there to spend money on. And he bought me the Halo like clear green one, Halo 1 edition Xbox. Yeah. And fucking blew my mind. And the fact that I would like burn CDs on there and have like my songs of like all my bands that I'd listen to and play Halo online.

Yeah. Back with like XBC existed. Yeah. Trying to figure out XBC. This is the best, dude. I completely skipped that generation. Yeah. Because I was in college at the time.

And like your friends, a lot of my friends were playing Halo. But I was still playing PS2. I was still like playing all. my games on that system and I was still playing my Nintendo 64 and I just didn't have as much time to play games during college and so I kind of really just

didn't even touch that that system at all but the next generation 360 I went all in on 360. You went ham well we didn't have like online or whatever where when I was going to Austin they had online but I didn't have like a way to do XBC because it was my uncle's computer and he was really

like touchy about me using his shit. So like my experiences with Halo that whole summer we're like how fast can I beat this level of the library because it was like that really scary moment where the flood you sort of first see the flood it was horrifying Greg right horrifying no for me it was that yeah I went to college with the PlayStation 2 and uh what yeah I went to PlayStation 2 and then when I moved in with my friends at the antler house they had a game cube and we're like oh this is great and then it was the next generation behind me of the young kids that came in the next year where we were

having a house party and it was like going great and I'm And then literally it was like, everybody started leaving. And I was like, what the fuck is going on? And like, oh, we're all going to Devon's house. We're going to play, we're going to system link Xboxes and play Halo. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about? They were all just gone. You're like, all right, fine.

And it totally blew by me until a roommate, one of the young kids who moved in had an Xbox. And I would go over there and borrow it to play nights the old republic. And then I would sit there and play Jade Empire, my senior year nonstop. And then finally just bought one and played Stubbs of the Zombie. and both nights of the old republic. I remember kids at high school talking shit to us. Like, how we can beat your Halo clan. I was like, guys, my parents are going out of town this weekend.

You guys are going to come over, and we're going to invite them over, and we're going to challenge them finally. And so I don't know what game type they're going to choose, but we're going to choose CTF on Hangham High. And whatever, I forgot whatever they chose. And oh my God, we just smoked these fucking fools, dog. Just killed them. And I was like, man, this wasn't even fair.

I'm sure it was exactly how it went. The second matches didn't even going to be fun. No, it was. They trashed your parents' house on the way out. You fuck you. Slit their tires. It was awesome. It was the shit.

Those are the days, man. Yeah. We got a whole bunch of reader mail about the topic of the show that I'm going with. Tots, tots, tons, tons. Comes from Stuart Little, who says, why isn't Wolfenstein 2 getting the same level of controversy for its brutality, including against women that the Last of Us 2 clip, I don't consider it a trailer is. I know there's context, but that doesn't always stop people.

Well, it's not a... Right. It's not a trailer. It was a cutscene. Yeah. That's what Neil Druckman said. It's not getting as much publicity because Last of Us 2 has a much bigger name behind it in terms of like popularity and last. It's the last of us, right?

It's a naughty dog game. And that game was showcased. On stage at a major media showcase, which is why we had a problem with it. Yeah. Whereas why I had a problem with it. And that's why people aren't talking about Wolfenstein too. Because Bethesda knows a lot of that really hard R or hard M. for mature rated content is locked inside the game.

When you buy Wolfenstein 2, you're buying your ticket to that ride. And you know or should know what you're signing up for. Yeah. Whereas the thing with Paris Games Week, it was like, I can't wait to see what Sony's going to show. And it was, you know, it ran the gamut right from it's going to be, okay, cool. Here's the samurai game from Sucker Punch. Here's Concrete Jeannie.

Here's this. And then here is a very brutal scene that doesn't necessarily mash up with everything else you've seen. I mean, fuck, the scene in Wolfensine 2 had me like, oh my God, I can't believe they did this shit. Yeah. Because there was a bunch of, I, as somebody who's still early in the game, but I was on the bomb cast, like, apparently you've played more of it, right?

It just keeps ratcheting and ratcheting and getting more and more fucked up. And like, yeah, to the point where I was like, I can't believe they, this is allowed. And I almost had like that old man moment or whatever, like, oh, Mortal Kombat's violent sort of shit or whatever. Who will protect the children? Yeah, I, again, I, it's nothing that I was offended by, just more shocked by. The Noddy Dog, Lasavis 2 scene didn't, like, I didn't feel offended it anyway. I just kind of like, oh, that's really, really violent or whatever.

Yeah. But I had more, yeah, I guess Sue Littles right, where I had more of like a reaction to the Wolfenstein scene than I did. But again, you're right. I mean, it's locked. It's in the game. It's not a cut scene. They're showcasing at E3 or like a giant show. Because you figure even Wolfenstein, right, the demos I had done previously with the scene you're talking about if I'm right, right?

where the first introduction of the bad guys are talking to... One of the preview events has that scene, but they conveniently cut the scene in the demo before it gets to the really gruesome part. I mean, both for narrative reasons that are also like, hey, like, we don't need to show this level of gore in a demo of this game. And I think that that is really what is the difference here,

the primary difference. Yeah, they showed that cutscene at a fucking TGS or, E3 or something, it would have had, people would have reacted the same way. Yes, agreed. Yeah. And that's the... Now, is his question like violence against women or just violence in general? He's, why isn't there a controversy? Why isn't there a controversy about Wolfenstein too, the way there was about the last of

his party? Gotcha. And what I find interesting about this question that I've talked about a little bit here and there is the fact that when they reveal Last of Us the first time around, they also avoided the really gruesome shit. And I remember not putting it together, but now seeing this reaction. more when I came back from playing it for the first time and being you know at their reveal hands-on event coming back and they didn't give us B-roll and there's a famous PlayStation conversation where

I'm explaining it to Colin and I start reenacting it and I'm like oh yeah and you slam his head on the table and then the glass breaks and he's like doing this and then he shoves the glass into his throat and it was like oh right that's why they didn't show you to give us that footage because I with no context around that no framing of what's happening in the story that is fucking terrifying and scary and a whole bunch of horrible things. things, but when you're in the game and I know that I've signed up for this post-apocalyptic, there's fucking creatures slash zombies all over the place that are in the email live, let alone the fact that it's man's in humanity to man now.

You know what you're getting. Yeah. So I saw some of the sort of anger on the internet was like there's so much violence towards women in this. Is that, we're not talking about that. We're just talking about violence in general. We're talking about violence in general because that was the even removed the women part of it that was the big argument.

It was just so brutal and people getting hung in. The women part is, I think, a non-starter. I think there's just a lot of violence in that game against humans, regardless of gender. Sure. Cool. John at home writes in. Cool. Violence towards people.

Cool. That's a kind of funny shirt, I think. We've kind of hinted around this, but I want you guys to make your pick. With Battlefront 2 being the last notable release of 2017, what are some games in your backlog you'd like to wrap up before years end? What's the game you're thinking you got to finish? I'd go for, I'd say Assassin's Creed. Yeah.

Or Assassin's Creed Origins. Just because I know that I can get around to Wolfenstein and beat it. And I'm probably going to put it on an easy mode. Yeah. And just try to get through that story. But I would say Assassin's Creed, too. It's going to be the biggest one to tackle just because I know it's their biggest world. Right?

I think they said that. Assangecrete origin said it's our biggest world. I'm paying attention. I'm pretty sure. The thing it is. Yeah. I would be shocked if there was a world that's bigger. I don't think there is.

I mean, unity and syndicate were both large. but not this big. Kind of funny.com, says, you're wrong. Don't bother. The live chat, I'll correct us after the fact. What's the one game

you want to finish? In your backlog. In my backlog? Breath of the Wild. I have two of the divine beast down and like a healthy amount of shrines. But I haven't done

the Gannon fight yet. But I'm really not drawn to finish that, but I feel like I need to finish that. I also haven't finished Lost Legacy yet either. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

And I know that that's much shorter, but I just like, I just never finished it. Easier pill to swallow for sure. Yeah. Just because it's shorter. Yeah, there's so many smaller games that I'd like, like I got really, really into Hobb by Runeick, rest and peace. And Hobb is great and it's fun and it's really cool and clever. I never beat it. I got really into a ruiner published by Gorilla.

No, not Gorilla. Devolver. Kind of like a similar looking word, devolver gorilla. You see what I'm? No, no. You know? I mean, there's V's in both of them, so yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. And Ruiners fucking awesome and fun and brutal and beautiful. And from a, from someone like me who's really into art and design, that game is just like a fucking wet dream for me. Like that's a game that I wish I could have made back when I gave a shit about like doing stuff like that. Ruiners grade. Fuck. I don't know. There's so many games that I haven't finished Hellblade

I haven't given enough time. Oh really? So Hellblade's really short too, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's like six hour, seven. Yeah. I was going to say eight.

Seven. Sounds made split the difference. Jen played it. Because I'm really good at games, Greg. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, of course. Two hours for me. Yeah.

No, no. Yeah. It took Jen two days to platinum it. And like that was just playing during the daytime. And I watched a lot of it. And that's why it's like one of those games that I played a little bit of and I was like, I don't know.

And then watch her play a whole bunch of it. And I feel like I've gotten the experience out of that one. Totally respected. Understand why it's amazing and all that things. You brought up something interesting though. Zelda. You're not drawn to it, but you feel like you should finish it.

You should finish it. I feel like I'm getting peer pressured into finishing it. This is my problem with persona 5. That I love persona. Period. Persona 4 Golden I loved. I loved persona 3. Persona 5, I love.

And I don't, but it's now this albatross that I feel like I is. It's just around my neck and I'm just like, it for sure is the game in my backlog. I wish I could finish, but I'm not drawn to it. I'm drawn to so many other games that I feel. And I don't know if it's because I feel the weight of the next 60 hours I need to put into it or if it's just the fact that. Are you talking about the pressure from online? It's everything.

It's just jokes, right? Oh, well, yeah, but every. I mean, I know. It's like the same, like, you never planned a metal year solid five. Like, I don't think those people are serious about that. No, I know. But there's plenty that are. But here's my issue.

And I think it falls into. in line with your Zelda argument is the fact that a lot of people in our community, the best friends, watch the content, hear us talk about the game of the year, and they're like, if one of them would finish persona five,

persona five would be in the, that's how I felt about Bioshock infinite with a lot of people. No, I beat it. It just wasn't that good. It wasn't that good. It was good, but not game of the end. It blew my mind.

Did you play the original Bioshock? Yeah. That's a much better game. It's a much better game. Much good. Anyways, I feel this is very much a game that I've played

the 25 hours of. I get and I love, but I'm just not drawn to go back to it. And I feel like what I, I just don't feel like it is game of the year. Because, you know, I love persona five.

I think it's probably the best persona game there's been, but it's just more of the same. I'm doing the term-based stuff, and I'm doing this, and I'm working this and I'm getting this girl, or I'm getting that girl, or I'm going here.

I just don't have time for teenage drama. Yeah. You live it. You live adult drama. What about, um, so you're not into, um, well,

the game, the fucking, the game, no, The other teenage drama one. Emily is away. No. Life is strange.

Life is strange. Are you into that series? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Is that anywhere close on your game of the year? No. No. I mean,

well, that game is great, and I did a lot of work with Deck 9 and Square Unix over the summer, like promoting that game and being on a lot of panels. And I love that game.

It's definitely not game of the year because there's just too many other really outstanding achievements that have been accomplished this year by other studios. In terms of narrative, narrative, I would think it has some of the... We nominated it for best narrative. It has some of the, it definitely has some of the moments of the year.

Like, where like the junkyard scene in episode one where she turns the corner after smashing a bunch of shit, it was like, fuck, that's awesome. And like the D&D game and the play in episode two, like there's a lot to fucking love in that, but I don't think it's game of the year. I don't think it's that revolutionary. But it's amazing. Best internet for me is definitely Horizon. Love that story.

It's so good. I love that story. The whole game is so good. So is the DLC for us and while. It's available now. Gotta go download it. You fucking chill. How much is Sony paying you?

Come on, pony. Wiggles writes in and says, Just for N7 Day. What was your favorite Mass Effect game? Mission for the game. And why? I'd say Mass Effect 2 is my favorite. Hell yeah, that's my boy.

My favorite mission. I don't know if I had a favorite mission. I'd say that my most favorite moment, Jesus, Andrew, watching that N7 video that Biowar put out. I tweeted, it hit me like right in the feels and I actually like teared up. I got so teary-eyed when they talked about the,

where one of the developers was like, yeah, one of the gamers is talking about the moment where Morden is ascending. And that, to me, is still one of my favorite moments in games. Obviously it was heartbreaking, but it's just like one of the best put together, moments in gaming where like the writing

and the emotion and the environment exploding, oh my God, it's just one of my favorite moments ever in video games. In media. In all of media. All of media, dude. All them books. You know, there's a lot of books out there. A lot of books, man. This is one of my favorite moments.

Tom Sawyer, frog and toad. I know you're talking about. Bar-in-Same bears, all of them, man. This is a hard one for me to to narrow down to a single moment. I mean, Mass Effect 2 by far and away is my favorite game. I played that game front to back five times.

For a moment, there's a lot of different moments from the different games. One in particular that stands out to me is the moment between, you know, Talley and Legion where you have to kind of make this decision about, you know, like, is there sentient life in this race of AI, beings, right? Like, are you going to save them? Are you not going to save them? And like,

how that consequence or that decision's consequences affect, you know, the rest of the gameplay. My favorite mission, though, is not an emotional one. It was the DLC layer of the shadow broker. Oh, yeah. With Liyara, which was so good. Arguably one of the best DLC packs of all time. Really, really good. Really well done. I love the final one, too, but that was just a lot of fan service. The one with all of your crew members. Really well written.

There's a lot of funny moments. Was that called Citadel? Citadel. It's just like there's something about the characters in the Mass Effect franchise and the way that BioWare has made them so accessible that really I feel like so many people have found

a different character that they can resonate with. Making a hero like Commander Shepard who you can really identify with no matter or what background you come from and being able to really craft Sheppard to be your own, not only through like the character customization from an appearance standpoint, but also like being able to choose all of these different dialogue options

over the course of, you know, dozens and dozens of hours of gameplay to really kind of craft that character into somebody who means something to you. And you get so invested. Not only with, you know, Shepard as the hero, but also with all of these individual crewmates and their stories and wanting to help them and make sure that, you know,

get everybody's loyalty. I mean, I had to play Mass Effect so many times because I could not lose a single person in their loyalty missions and in the final mission. I just needed to make sure that everybody was on my side. And I always had Paragon play-throughs. I never once did a running game.

Renegade was never the way to go. I love Jack's sort of loyalty mission. Loyalty mission. I love Before you get there, I'm sorry, my game is Mass Effect to my mission is Jacob's loyalty mission. Follow closely by Jacks. But I'll never, I mean, Jacobs, I remember running to the top of that thing and just like, is his dad going to be here or what the fuck

are we about to get into? I love the lead up to finding out that Archangel is Garris. That moment for me was so cool because Garris was my number one dude in part one. And so figuring out that he's back. And then even like the lead up to finding out that like Rex is on Tachanka, like all that shit just kind of blew my mind and how there's so many good moments in that franchise. And I kind of worry that we'll never. I don't, this is going to be like a hot take,

but I don't think we'll ever see a trilogy as good as that ever again. Just because of the way that the, the way that games development is moving towards this like, live service, sort of live service, open world thing. Like, will we ever get a trilogy of games

that are story-based for your character, the people that you kill in part one, don't pop up in part two? Like, will we have anything like that ever again? I mean, I was working at IG when they announced this, right? And it was outrageous when they said they were making a trilogy. And the choices you made in this first game, we're going to affect the final one years and years later.

We were all like, how is that even working? What do you do? And it was like, now it's, you take it for granted, but it was at the time so crazy. What a crazy mission statement to put out there.

And do it. Final question in the week comes from James Myers. Greg and crew, do you think the lack of release dates at Sony's Paris Games Week showcase means the claim about games releasing in the first half of 2018 was mostly wrong. Which games do you think will miss this release window? Will PSX have release dates or has the

announcement ship sailed? I didn't pay a whole lot of attention so I needed to be cut up on this. So basically they got criticized at their Paris Games Week showcase because they showed a lot of new assets for games that they have already previously announced but they didn't give any concrete dates. Detroit, Spider-Man, all that. Yes. So we got some kind of. We got a couple like release windows, but we didn't get concrete dates for a lot of things. And if you remember at E3, what the deal was, they showed trailers. And if the trailer, and this is, Sean Lane

said this after the fact in an interview. If we showed a trailer and it ended and said 2018, that's in the first half of 2018. Which didn't include Detroit, but did include God of War, Spider-Man, and Shadow the Colossus. It should follow up and said spring, right? Then at E3 as well, David Cage says, no, we are a 2018

game, but that was not on their trailer, so it didn't fall into that thing. And so they're still 20-20s. But considering how many games we've seen in recent years slip their dates, I don't think it's necessarily the worst tactic, you know, in hindsight. After I, I did publicly criticize them for not giving information. Like, listen, if you're going to have a media showcase. You're going to call it E3 part two.

The whole point of a media showcase is to disseminate information. And if you're not going to disseminate information, why not just release these trailers whenever, right? is that if they don't release a date, then if development needs more time, they can push the date and then they're not having to step on people's expectations. Right. So if they had said like February 15th, 2018, and then they're like,

well, we need to slip to April. It's day before my birthday. Then they don't have to, then they don't have to, you know, come up with the next story saying, oh,

we have to push back development, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's one of those. I think, you know, I think I helped increase the expectation

that they're going to put release dates on it at Paris Games Week because, hey, they were like it's, you know, E3 was just the beginning. You figure this is the end then is how you do it. You explain it. I don't think that's you doing the expectation. That's them. That was their own messaging. But I feel like every time, and it's been

a decade, every time a conference comes around, we give out these pie in the sky things, then it inevitably isn't that. So we come back and we're like, we should have been more realistic. I thought this was realistic based on what they had said before and made sense. Well, they also just don't want to disappoint people. Sure, but to their credit, PlayStation has really

for the most part, and I'm doing the best I can to rack my brain live, been better about like, hey, we're just going to put a PlayStation blog post when we have a release date. I remember that's how naughty dog did it. And when they delayed their games, how they did it for Uncharted 4. They don't usually go the route anymore of, hey, it is going to be a press conference.

It is going to be this big thing. Here's the release date similar to like Game Awards with Uncharted. I would expect that at PSX you're going to get no release dates at all from that Sean Layden thing on Friday night, the whatever they're calling it, not showcase, showcase. It's a presentation. Presentation. It's a special presentation.

Maybe, maybe medium molecule comes out and gives you a date. Just to be like, hey, motherfuckers, here's this game, we're explaining it to you. This is the game. It is a game. It's not such a creation tool. It's a game.

I think we get a game. I don't think we get a date. I don't either. I'm just saying maybe. And then, yeah, like, sucker punch won't give you a date. I think it'll honestly be that we'll get all the way through the holidays come back in January

and probably get a date for, I would say God of War. And then I would think if one of them's going to slip out of the first half of the year, it would be Spider-Man, but I can totally see them hitting Spider-Man in the summer as well. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the Kind of Funny Games cast episode 144. Rest in peace, Tim Getty's all hail the new overlord Tom Bach.

Thank you so much for watching. Remember, this show goes up on patreon.com slash kind of funny games each and every Friday early. If you don't have any bucks to toss our way to get it early, no big deal. You can get it on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games Monday or on podcast services around the globe Monday as well. No matter where you get the show, thank you so much for. watching and listening, we love making it for you. Consider supporting us on Patreon, throwing us a sub, going to Andy's house, ringing the doorbell, running away when he comes to it. He opens the door. He's in his boxers. You throw an orange at him, but one bite out of

the orange. Then if you've gone as far as that, I want you to have put two eyes into the orange. Put a little fucking speaker in the orange and it just goes, and Andy. He just put to any of that. That was a really, really long rant. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.