Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Andrea Rene (Special Guest) - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 116

Episode Date: April 20, 2017

Andrea Rene joins us to talk Prey, unfinished games, and Mass Effect Andromeda. (Released first to Patreon Supporters on 04.14.17) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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com slash gamecast. Blue Apron. It's a better way to cook. What's up guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 116 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Getty's thrown by one of the coolest dudes in video games. Greg Miller. Hello.

I'm wearing a purple shirt. and joining us once again to maintain her title of most often reoccurring kind of funny games cast guest andrea hello hello thank you for coming thanks for having me back guys I'm so glad to be here yeah yeah yeah I don't know what was it last last time we did something together I think was kind of funny live well yeah we've done well she's been around I mean well yeah you're always around yeah yeah we did some stuff in the fall yeah after yeah did we remember because I came on the show and did a react with

you guys. You were here the day of the studio launched. That's right. Day one. Right, yeah. I forgot what we reacted to, but we did. I don't remember. The PS4 Slim was announced.

Yes. Oh, yeah. That's what we react to. Okay. The chocolate's falling. So you guys, do you remember last year when you had me on in April, it was right before Easter and I brought you an Easter basket? Batman.

There was a Batman. So in the tradition of cheesy Easter baskets. I love it. Wow. This has some kind of off-brose. brand Nerf. Oh good. I love knockoff

Nerf. Yeah, knock off nerve. It has one little packet of Mike and Ike. Some smarties. Okay. When's the last time you had Smarties? Too long.

Too long. And then some of that. The fruit snacks. The fruit snacks. But we also have the favorite jelly beans. Nice. The Starburst jelly beans.

And of course some chocolates. Oh my God. Are you a big Easter fan? Or is it just your schick now when you come by here? You want to bring something. Well, I thought we should make a tradition of me being on the games cast

for Easter. I'll always bring you some kind of Easter basket. Appreciate it. I do love Easter candy. Sure. I don't generally celebrate Easter. I did as a kid,

but I just don't anymore as an adult, but I'm like, ooh, chocolate eggs. I'm in. You sit around on a Sunday and eat chocolate. Easter candy. Exactly. Can't say I'm the hugest fan

of it as a genre. Yeah. Because Easter candy, I think, peeps. Oh, no. You got to think of those little chocolate eggs. The Cadbury eggs. Not the big Cadbury eggs.

The mini ones. Yeah, the mini ones. You know what I'm talking about. That shell that eventually chafes the inside of your mouth. Right. And like the chop of bunnies that are hollow on the inside. Can I open it? I want to get the rocket going.

With the, like, hair dryer. When you put that against the chocolate bunnies and they're all like melting away. It's great. My favorite thing. Kevin, does this sound good? How good is it sound? It's not terrible. I thought about what's interesting about this.

You look pretty bad. What's happening? What's that on your face? What do you mean? You got like a spotlight or something. You look like, you look like bizarreo, Kevin. and like your makeup's wearing off and you're gonna start talking backwards.

Some kind of a light coming from somewhere. I thought about it. Well, first off, I have two things that both apply to the Game Over Gregory show. Okay. Number one, we just had Lauren Lanning back on the show. Yes. Lauren Lanning, his last appearance

on the Game Over Gregory show was also an April episode. So it's one of those things that just casually happened. But then the other one was I thought about and I mistimed it because I wanted to do it the week before Easter,

coloring eggs on the show. Yeah. And then I blew it and I didn't do it in time. And then I was like, well, maybe we should build Easter baskets. Because I do miss getting the Easter basket and putting that really crappy plastic glass in there. Or grass in there. Not glass.

Whatever kid loves to play with. Glass. Flying disc. I probably shouldn't throw. Should I try to? Oh, go for it. What's the worst going to happen? I'm going to try to throw this to Kevin in the studio.

I'm left-handed, so I have to throw this way. Okay. Okay. I almost made it. Oh, my. That was crazy. That went really far. This didn't.

These knockoff nerves are like not childproof. Hey Andy, can I have your help for a second? Uh-oh. Look out Maximum Cortez. No, hold on. I'm gonna get you, fucker. Jesus. Oh, I don't know if that one works.

Tim, you turn the top. Knock off nerve, deadly weapon. For the people that are. listening and can't see what Greg was doing. Essentially is a foam almost looks like a barbell. Like the middle of a barbell. And there's a push plastic pump on one end and then a blue spout on the other end. It's like a blow dark gun without having to blow into it.

Exactly. If you get, all right, Kevin, this isn't a one-upmanship thing. Kevin actually has a like one of those like. Like shoot sky needles. Yeah. Why do you have that Kevin? Because he's Kevin and he used to practice like I'd come over and he'd just like casually be laying on his bed Shooting freaking needles at the wall like a crazy person.

Alright, I'm gonna eat this chocolate bunny. Okay, I'm gonna eat one of the lady bugs. Yeah. Actually, I'm going for a bunny. We have sidewalk chalk too guys. Sidewalk chalk. Man, man. Ladies and gentlemen.

My favorite. Oh my god. This entire Easter basket is here to hurt people. It's okay. It's okay. It marked me. Sure did. Yeah.

All right. All right. This is the kind of funny games cast. When you get there, give me SkyCam as you can, all right. Talk about video games, all the things you love about them. And sometimes we eat chocolate bunnies.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for bringing props. We always enjoy a good prop here. Yeah, I'm ready. Are you? SkyCam.

So word find game. All right, make it a little, a little harder than Easter being the first word across the top, all right? Oh, yeah. They didn't try to hide that. Come on, guys. There's a maze, though.

I love mazes. I do like mazes. I do like a good maze. All right, it's been a good show. Yeah, great show. So thanks for having me. Is that a bruise? You already have a bruise from what he shot at you?

I already marked. Uh-oh. It shot out way harder than I thought of it. You just want people to look at your biceps on camera. That's what I want. Oh, yeah, that's definitely a mark. Be careful with your Easter baskets at home kids. It also shot completely straight, which I didn't think it was.

That was intense. That was intense. So let's talk about some video games. Yes, let's. Pray. Let's talk about pray. You got to see it. Yes, I got to play.

So Bethesda has teamed up once again with I'm 8bit. Love those guys, Mr. Gibson and crew, to do this really cool community fan event with Prey. And they have a couple different cities where they're letting some fans get hands on time with the game and then they're playing space movies. So the movie that they played here in San Francisco was Starship Troopers.

Classic. Great movie. I think they are doing The Matrix. They did Moon in Austin and Total Recall. The Space movie. Yeah. I mean definitely. Aren't we being harvested by alien?

Who's harvesting? Machines? Computers. Yeah. It's, it's, I think sci-fi is really, got you,

probably a better, there you go, that's right. A better classification than space. That's my fault for saying that, but. Now, real quick,

what is your, have you played any parade? Have you watched me of our stuff on it? I have not played at all. I watched you guys play a little bit at packs. Yeah. Um, I've seen clips of the let's play that you Nick did.

I know, Nick's real into this. Yeah, well, remember, that was the thing, to bring you up to speed. Nick, we sent Nick to the first Preview event.

He played it for it, came back, showed me the footage. I went from whatever, I don't care about this game to be like, oh my God, I can't wait to play this game. Played it packs with Nick. And so now I'm totally in. I can't wait. Yeah, the game looks fantastic. I was at that same event that Nick was at.

And after I played it, I was like, I don't need to see anymore. I'm buying this game. So it's from Arcane, the guys who made Dishonor. It's the same team that made the original Dishonor because now Arcane has two studios. And so the team that worked on Dishonor 2 is the other team. Sure. And it's an action, adventure, sci-fi game.

It's, you know, I'm hesitant to call it a shooter, even though there are shooting mechanics. It doesn't feel like the main mechanic of the game is shooting. A lot of people bring up Bioshock. Yeah, what I love about it is they give me that Bioshock feel. I think it gives it a feel and tone for sure. Mechanics, definitely not. Bioshock had a lot of shooting mechanics that were really well done. And I haven't seen enough of praise gunplay to really do.

determine how extensive the shooting mechanics are. But there's a lot of other things going on in the game. So you play this engineer named Morgan U, and you can choose to be a female Morgan or a male Morgan, which I love. And the characters in the universe will react to you differently, depending on which gender you pick. But it doesn't gate any content for anyone that's worried about that.

All the stuff will be... I thought you'd only get 75% of the content. Well, I mean, sometimes, you know, people will react to you differently, depending on how you build your character in some games. Sure. So you get access to some content. that you don't need to go back for another play-through. What's cool about this game is that it really,

you make choices that affect the end game, but you maybe don't know what those choices are in the moment that you make them, which I think is really neat. So you wake up kind of on this space station, you find out that this alien threat called the typhoon, or the typhon, that's what they're called, the typhoon, have kind of taken over and they mimic things in the world.

So you could walk into a room and not see an alien, but then all of a sudden, like, your coffee cup, like, will jump at you and start attacking you.

I had a nickel. It's a really neat process of you going through this space station figuring out, you know, what happened to the people on board, who is this alien threat, just how extensive,

you know, their reach into, you know, humanity is. And it's got this really cool, like, dark, suspenseful, kind of gritty,

sci-fi thriller vibe. Alien vibe. Yeah. It's the music. Music is awesome. It's like drive music. That whole opening right in the beginning before you even know, were you in the helicopter and you go up and that soundtrack they played behind it.

You're like, oh my god. That was for me when I was like, this was, you get powers and you know, you get to manipulate. I'm sure you did your, your, you're what you played. But like in that first section, they didn't even show you any of that. And it was like, holy crap, this is so cool. There's so much style. I feel like everything should have drive music. Sure.

It just makes it better. Drive music and everything should be blue and pink. There's a neon blue and pink. No, you're making good points there. You're making good points. I mean, neon may be against the theme of this game, a little Perhaps. But yes, I love Neon as well.

So the demo that I played today was a little bit farther into the game. You enter this section of the world called Psychotronics, where you get this psychoscope, which is like a headlamp-looking thing that allows you to scan aliens. And scanning the aliens as you come across them allows you to unlock alien powers in the skill tree. And so you have to make a choice as a player. Do I want to build out my human skill set? or do I want to put points into the alien skill set?

And the more points you put into the alien skills, the more alien you become. And so people in the world start reacting to you differently. If you decide to become more alien than human throughout the game process. And there's things called like automated turrets in the game that will shoot aliens. So if you come across an alien and you run back to where you saw a turret, you know, the turk can play defense for you. But if you are turning into an alien, the turrets will eventually turn.

on you and start shooting you instead of shooting just the aliens. That's awesome. So what other powers are there? So they had the skill trees, I believe, are a scientist, engineer, and there's a third one that I didn't write down. And then essentially like some of your basic skills, like sneaking and stealth, you know, being able to scavenge and craft stuff, being able to build certain things, like you can build, they have these machines where you can put resources in and build a variety of things.

The crafting system is pretty neat. that way. Yeah, you were getting raw materials, right? They showed us this. And once you learn, like, the recipe for something, you can go there and make this gun. Because one of the story machines we saw early on, right, yeah, was to go through these recycled materials to make this keycard or whatever it was to get through the door to get over here. Yeah, exactly. And then at some point, you'll be able to take the exotic material that you find in certain areas of the ship and create neuromods. And neuro mods are what allow you to unlock skills inside the tree. And so you have to kind of make a decision what kind of character do I want to play as.

And they have a variety of difficulty levels. So if you want to try one play-through, one way, you can go back and try now that they haven't confirmed to me yet if there's going to be a new game plus mode. I've asked them several times. They're like, we're not talking about that quite yet. But it seems to me ripe for new game plus. What I liked the most about what I saw in the most recent demo was the, you can already see the seeds of how you can play this game differently.

Because we were walking through and you had to get on the other side of this electrical like, you know, it's arching energy out. And the guy's like, well, if you had invested your skills, you could fix that and that would change something in the world. But since you haven't, you can use one of your guns, the glue gun, I think it is, right, to shoot the glob over there to get it, just temporarily frozen so you can get by it.

And there is that thing of, you're going to get to things that, obviously one character could get through easier, but you can try to figure your way out another way. Yeah, it does seem really interesting that way that you kind of choose your path through the world. They say if you kind of run straight through the game, it's around 20 hours.

but that it could very easily double in length depending on how many side quests you do, how much exploration you do, how creative you get with the glue gun because they kept saying, you know, there are places that you can't reach, but maybe if you build a staircase with your glue gun, you can get up there and go see what's over there.

And I think that's really cool. But what's great about it is that even though there is an exploration aspect of the game, it's not like a true open world. So even though you can explore within this space station, it's not an endless exploration. I don't, like, I don't like going all over an open world, because I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time.

Sure. Because there's not something everywhere you go in the open world, but I like how it's contained, but yet still has an exploration element. That was the neatest thing for, in the last demo they did for us, where the mission was that we had to go out into space, into zero-g, come back around and go into this blown-out section.

And when we were out there, they were like, So like it's weird to say you're an open world game when you're a space station, but they're like, this is what we mean and the fact that there's going to be derelict pods around here. There's going to be things floating through you can go get. Like we want you to explore this section, this of open space like you to explore the inside of the place. Yeah, absolutely. 20 hours sound surprising to me. Like this seems more like just from what I've seen from the trailers and stuff, it seems like more like a 10 to 12 hour type story based game, right? But I mean, it's story based, but it's it is the thing of how do you want to go off the beaten path? Because like it's, it's, it's, It's the one, it's the class thing there. Are you gonna read the emails? Like when you go in there, you go to the terminals, so much backstory, so much stuff. What I loved about it, I don't know if you got to see it is like,

you know, emails have people's names on them. And then every character in the game is like, the mimics have infected and made their own. So like, you're killing people or finding people and you can go into like the roster and find out this person's dead. This person's alive somewhere. Like every person,

every character you interact with in that world has a name. And they have their own backstory. That's cool. Yeah, like you need to go find. Like it was used in an objective sense for me where it was like, all right, we know this person has this key card, where are they? And so you found them and you set your path and you find them floating in zero G. So then you had to figure out a way to go back and get around to get it.

The initial trailer that came out at E3 like two years ago, I think, with the eye and the blood and stuff. Like, from what you guys have seen in the game, is there the kind of like survival horror vibe to it and then they were like the kind of like scary shit happens? Like not in a dead space way, but just in the, because that trailer was kind of scary. Yeah, you know, I think they're saving some of the, that, you know, for player discovery, but they did talk to me about this one alien called The Nightmare. That's literally the alien's name. Essentially, if you get to a point where you

invest a lot of points into the alien branches, the Typhon are going to recognize that you're doing that. And they won't see you as an ally. They'll see you as like a hybrid alien. And they send this thing called The Nightmare to come and execute you. And it's supposed to be like this big, bad, really scary monster that's sent down to hunt you and like essentially just like kill you, which I think is super scary. And I wouldn't say survival horror because that implies that there's a lot of like running away and resource management. And I don't really think that there's too much of that in this game, at least from what I've seen so far. But there is a thriller aspect for sure.

Thriller is a great way. Yes. The sci-fi thriller, I think is the best way to look at it. where it's, even seeing what Nick played and then playing, you know, the 30 minutes I did or whatever,

the vibe I got off it was, yeah, it's a sci-fi world, but I am in control of it, right? Like the little mimics don't really scare me. Are there annoyance? They're going to do this. And then it's like the,

turn it on a hallway and it's like... The phantom that's coming at you that looks like a humanoid, like blob coming at you. Those are a little bit scarier. But I don't think we've seen really scary ones. And then it was then, yeah,

these crazy weapons, these little, you know, how are you going to get through this this puzzly area. And then there was like, moments was the player that or the build we had had it so that I as a player could mimic things like I had gotten that ability so to me like run away from the bad guys lose their sight mimic a fire

extinguisher lay on the ground and then the guy comes around like as he passes and just keeps walking then this fire extinguishers like slowly rolling down the hall behind him if he looks back you stop and you sit there be like don't do anything and then you get up there and you bust out and you fucking fight him that sounds awesome so wait so is there if you mimic something does that mean there's two fire extinguishers then no you become the fire extinguisher And then can you, wait, you just kind of take it over. Yeah, essentially. There's a whole bunch of backstory that you get to read, like in some of the terminals

that explain, you know, the scientific process behind mimicking. That's what, that's what the space station was studying was the mimic process. So you learn more and more about that whole, like, technology as you progress throughout the game. How does it control if you're a fire signature? I don't know. I mean, a little clunky because you're like, it's like left and right, but. Well, I mean, like, in the way it's supposed to be where it's like this inanimate object, like, waddling down the hallway. Got it.

Because you don't have, like, full command of your ability and powers and things. I'm, like, really into this. No, the game looks really cool. I mean, everything I played in the build that I got to play was a PC build, but I played it with a controller instead of keyboard mouse. And the game looks really great. Was running really smoothly. Didn't see any, like, glitch problems. And I'm really excited for May 5th.

Yeah, it's coming real soon. Really quick. Yeah. So it's like two weeks away from us recording this. Like, do you, do you think? I'm never going to get persona done in time. Yeah. That's my problem.

I'm never going to get persona. That's my way to start. Is this the next big game in that sense? Or do you think this will kind of be like dishonored was where? Yeah, no, it's definitely, I think it's probably even smaller than dishonored. I might be speaking out of turn there, but it's not like a giant RPG. It's not that kind of a game. I think it's going to be very interesting because I think what it'll apply to is what are you into?

Like, what are you interested in, right? Whereas dishonored, like, it's this, you know, murky, it's dark. It's not medieval, obviously, but it was like, whatever. Steampunk. You know what I mean? Like, it's like thrown back as a throwback that way. Whereas this is, I think, easier to wrap your head around of like, hey, I mean, for me again, I'm like, playing it.

I'm like, this gives me so many tones of Bioshock where it's like audio diary is awesome. Like I'm invested in the world immediately. I want to know more of my character and I do want because you're finding messages like the trailer that you left for yourself. So to go through me like, oh, fuck, what the hell is going on? Like, that's why I'm interested to play it. And I think that's an easier thing to wrap.

or your head around than what dishonorzad campaign was. And so for it to come out and be like, hey, there's this sci-fi story that is, is that what you want? Is that what you're in the mood for? And I think it's coming out at a very interesting time where we have, you know, there's been a blood bath for the first part of the year here.

Now there's a little quiet before we get to E3. It has its own little pocket. A couple weeks ago, we did that topic of all the games coming out before E3 and like, pray is kind. I mean, Mario Kart is the week before. Yeah. Port. But yeah, no, it's going to be interesting.

I'm very interested to see how, it reviews and how it ends up selling, like, what the critical feedback, but also the consumer feedback is on this, because it is kind of like a lesser known franchise, but it is a franchise. I wouldn't even, like, I don't know why they decided to use prey as a name, because I think sci-fi is like the only connective tissue between this prey and the original prey. I mean, you don't need to play that game at all. In fact, like, I don't know why you would want to go back and play that game before you play

this game. but I think that it's going to resonate with people because there isn't anything else like this coming out in this in the year so far like nothing has been announced for even later in the year that's even similar to this type of a game and this strikes me as like it could make the same waves that like Wolfenstein did

where Wolfenstein just came out the right time and it's the same thing where Wolfensstein sure there's history to it but it's rare to meet somebody like I fucking love Wolfenstein every verse I'm a Wolfenstein fanboy right? It's like it's an name that has cachet, you know it's important. Then when you sat down and you played the new order or whatever.

No. Whatever. Yeah. The new order's right. It was. And then it was the old blood, right? Yeah. Okay.

Like when you sat down and played that, you're like, holy shit, this is great. And I didn't expect that. And that's kind of what Bethesda's been doing with these games, right? Coming out and being like, hey, we are making things that we believe in that we think are cool and we're going to make sure you get those in your hands on those. And then what that does what a success look like for that? I don't know.

Yeah. But I think it'll be, I think it's going to do better commercially and like maybe cashay-wise then and what dishonor did. And I'm not talking about reviews. I think I think in terms of people, actually, more people caring about prey, I think, is what I'm saying. Interesting. Because I think people care about dishonored a lot more than it sold.

But that's my thing. It got drowned in a season of too many games. Yeah. Yeah. But that was the thing. Even when Dishonor 1 came out, it was like people who played Dishonor 1 love Desa that was underground. Yeah.

It was so good. And so they told you play, play, play it, play it. And then there was that ground 12 community saying how much they loved it. And I think Bethesda bought on that or bit on that because number one, they believed it. Number two, yeah, do something. cool with it. You know, they want to see what Arcane can do. And then to put it out and have it be all right, cool. And like it got, one IG game of the year. It's not like this game didn't get

like, you know, the buzz it needed. But it is a game that the people are like, it's not for me. Like that's not what I want. Whereas I think, hey, you want a sci-fi thriller where nobody really knows what the fuck's going on. Like it's all on a set at first. Then it's in a space station. I'm going to be like, yeah, it sounds fucking cool. And there's little hair monsters. Yeah. That's what the, that's what the mimics remind me of. They look like hairy little starfish. It's a little ones on the ground as they crawl around. Right? They look kind of cute. And they're like, I want a one of these guys? I don't know if they look cute.

The little ones, not the big ones. Yeah. Not the big ones. That's what they say. That's what they say. Let's know in the comments what you think about Prae if you're hyped or not. Let's move the next topic. Okay.

This one comes from NeoGath. Oh, good. It's a topic from username Soldier. Soldier. I thought it was interesting and I thought that he had a lot of good stuff in his original post. So I'm going to read the whole post. It's a little long.

But I think that's a good conversation. Should I call Indian again? No. Okay. That shit is dangerous. What is what's the worst that can happen? I don't know you get marked permanently. I'm getting like weird That doesn't work that way All right between no man sky

Between no man's guy Street Fighter 5 file fantasy 15 mass effect and dromeda and now maybe persona five of all things This is now officially a trend that publishers are taking with their games. I now think it's the single worst thing to happen to video games the thread I don't know I just I'm gonna fuck that up. Sure, there's the glass half full approach to this. Most publishers who release a shoddy rushed out game would typically say, fuck you, got mine, and not bother making any fixes. There's also the strange middle ground example with Final Fantasy 15,

which does not entirely get a pass, as it does have some narrative and gameplay flaws that should have been ironed out before a release, but still alleging to address those flaws as well as add completely new and previously unplanned additions to the game, such as off-road driving and additional playable characters. But the most egregious examples are just far too terrible for this trend to continue. Mass Effect Andromeda is a technical embarrassment, that plenty of people on staff must have noticed.

But it was still shipped out anyway because fuck the fans, get it out there, and later tell them how much we care. Having a detailed roadmap of patches doesn't fill me with any relief. It just tells me that the game isn't worth playing at all until months after the patches, or even then, I personally lost all interest

in never touching the game. There was a brief moment where the argument could be made about, quote, early access console games, and it began and ended with Street Fighter 5. If Capcom had released that game with a functioning arcade mode, the fight money store and an almost complete

online network, then this could have been the beginning of a unique trend with games getting out earlier so long as the core features were available. Instead, the Mercoto walk animation levels of slow updates have decimated their sales and possibly any long-term interest. There's something to be said when every single fighting game released afterward had come out with three times Street Fighters roster and with far quicker updates. And now this might happen with Persona 5. The circumstances may not be as shitty. The translation isn't bad. The streaming situation can be easily reversed, but it didn't have to happen. It was the one game I'm saying. I'm sorry, certain lots of people were hoping would release issue free.

My launch experience has been soured as a result and if Atlas is going to come up with their own patches roadmap to polish the localization, I might just put the game down then and there. It's extremely rare for me to go back and replay a game 30 plus hours and persona games tend to go towards the hundreds. What's the point of playing a product that I know is officially inferior

especially when I can still put time toward the games that come out bullshit free? Imagine Nintendo pulled the shit with Zelda or any of their other releases. I'm at a point we're just reading the PR formatted letters that state how these fixes are the result of the fans and strong community feedback makes me want to puke. We aren't your fucking fans.

We're your customers. If you really cared, you wouldn't have done a sturdy to begin with. Again, not every instance of this is a no man's sky fuck up, but it's becoming more and more a common trend. And I for one, I'm sick of it. Blah, blah, blah. There.

What's your tag? Why are we throwing? I don't understand his persona attack. I'm trying to find the news story. He's upset because of the translation people don't like and the fact that the streaming thing. The streaming thing is like, that's not a patch thing.

That's not a patch thing. And then the, the translation. shit I've seen, I mean, few people complain about. I've played 24, no, maybe 25 hours in the game now. And I'm not there like, oh my God. It sounds like persona. What are you talking about?

I don't think we need to like split hairs whether persona should be included in that list. I think his, the topic that he's really hitting home about is games that are shipped that are not fully functioning, right? And then we have these giant day one patches or worse. You know, it takes a couple of weeks or even months before the game is. you know, operational. Sure. I've been citing you a lot recently because when the letter from Aaron popped up about Mass Effect and how we're going to fix it, we're listening to you, all this stuff. And you were like, I'm like 75 hours in. Like I'm happy you're taking care of your fans,

but what about me? Yeah. It's frustrating that now I'm seeing all these people come back and say, oh, the animations are so much better. And I'm like, well, I'm done now. I don't think I'm going to go back to Mass Effect until DLC is released and then maybe I'll, you know, try to start another play through. It's certainly frustrating. And I understand, I think he really hits home there when he says, we're not your fans, where we're your customers. And that's something I think to note the difference between the developers who create the game and the publishers who ship the game. Not very many companies are one and the same. Like very few people who actually make the code and do the art and write the narratives are actually like getting the discs in a store. They're not the same people

generally. And what we're seeing is a lot of these giant publishing companies who have responsibilities to their fiscal year, to their shareholders, to their public stock price, say, hey, this game is in this fiscal year. If it doesn't ship in this fiscal year, it's going to screw up our financials. And so we have to get it out the door no matter what the cost. And that's really where we've seen a shift in a lot of games coming out half big because the publisher will say, well, we can just put a patch in it, it'll be fine. And the audience saying, but hey, you're asking us to pay $60, for a game that you know isn't ready to go. Yeah.

And instead of thinking about your customers who are paying for this, you're thinking about your shareholders and your stock price and your profits above all else. And they should be going hand in hand because you can't make profits without customers. Sure. And that's why I get why a lot of gamers are really upset. Like, they have a right to be upset. I mean, I was mad about all of the stuff that was wrong with Mass Effect because I love that team, but I know that BioWare wouldn't choose to set at a game that they knew was

broken. That 100% was EA's decision to keep the ship date as it was. You know, if that, if that team could have gotten an extra six months, you don't think they would have taken it. Of course they would have. But, you know, that wasn't their choice. I mean, see, that's an interesting perspective too. But when you take it to the side of square, like with Fong Fantasy 15, like, I'm sure they would have took another five years if they had the opportunity to. At some point, you do need to kind to kind of just commit to it. Get it out. Yeah. And I'm sure there's so much business that we don't know. but it's like if March 21st or whatever was the date, like you got to get it done by then.

And if you don't get it done by then, then you're going to ship a bad game and that's going to have the repercussions that it does in terms of the feedback. But it's a weird balance between EA at the end of the day. They're not being assholes for saying, hey, you've got to get it done by now. Right.

That's the commitment. That is, they're funding a game to be made in a certain way, in a certain time frame. Absolutely. And it's like, you can only be like, oh, we need a little bit longer. We need a little bit longer. I mean, we're at a point now with games where if there's no longer the holiday season, the entire year is full.

So, oh, we need two more months. All of a sudden, dramatically changes the game plan of EA as a whole. So it's like, you've got to get the game out when you say you're going to get the game out. But this all comes back to the fact that like, I mean, as consumers and players and gamers or whatever, and mainly as consumers, we're not blame free in this. This is what we else talk about, right? Don't pre-order a game. Don't do this.

Like, my leading into Mass Effect, right, I kept saying there's no way it's launching in spring. Something's wrong with that game. game. Why haven't we seen it? Why aren't we seen? And then they double down. And I was like, well, fuck, they must have something awesome and they just don't want to spoil it. And then they put out and it's like, oh. And this then reflects back to everybody who is so upset about the mass effect three ending. And it was like, okay, if you're really upset about mass effect don't buy the next mass effect. And if you were, but that you run out and you buy the next mass effect and you're mad after the fact. Like we can, we as a culture continue to send the

wrong message, right? And like this is the problem. And I, I'm part of it. Like, right? Like last night, I tweeted out. Like, I decided to take a break from persona. I'm going to play Walking Dead season three, episode three finally. Yeah. I got the first trophy for the first section of the game. And then the next one crashed twice on me back to back. Yeah.

And it's like, I wish I could say, man, that never happened. That was what happened in episode five of Batman. And I was like, that's weird. Why is that happening? And then, of course, beyond that, I've had pretty good luck in terms of crashes with telltale games, but there's problems with you see people saves getting eaten and this not working. And it's that thing of if people like,

me continue to give them passes on everything. You can't be mad than when it's fucked up. Absolutely. I think the the vote with your wallet kind of mindset, it gets complicated because the people like you need to keep supporting it because you're supporting things you like about it. You're not paying because of the stuff you don't like, right? I think for me, an example would be Nintendo games in the Wii. I completely supported the Wii and I bought all the first party Nintendo games that I love because I love those things. Yeah. But it's like I feel like I am rewarding bad behavior because I didn't like the console. You know, and I didn't like the direction they were going with that stuff.

However, I do want to support them putting out super polished high quality games. So I'm going to support those titles in that way, right? Sure. And this is the problem, right, is that we feel like if you fire off an angry tweet, you said all you need to say. But in reality, all these things have no teeth. Everyone on the internet, include, you know what I mean? Like, hey, I'm mad about this, blah, blah. And then you forget, you get excited.

You get back on the hype train. Well, that's what I'm saying with Mass Effect, for example, like the people that were mad about Mass Effect three's ending is the answer for them to not support Mass Effect. Andromeda because supposedly you'd be supporting them doing something different. But I mean, the argument would be like, okay, instead of jumping in full force, I'll wait and see what people think reviewers. That is absolutely fair. Like, yeah, the don't pre-order, go for that.

Sure. I mean, I'm kind of split on the don't pre-order thing because I pre-order a lot of games because in my mind, if I'm going to be buying the game anyway, I might as well get the free bonus item that is being offered in the pre-order. And just to be clear, I pre-order stuff all the time. I pre-order persona collector's edition. Like I'm not saying that's the answer necessarily, but if, sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, that's okay.

I think the problem when we talk about, you know, games that are broken is that the standard seems to be different for every developer. I mean, I remember when Mass Effect first released, a lot of people on the internet were talking about, well, why does Bethesda get a pass with some of the janky animations that they have in Fall Out in the Skyrim, or Skyrim in Fallow 4 when, you know, Mass Effect Andromeda is. getting so much hate. Sure. It's like why do certain developers, you know, get to have glitches and bugs in their open world games and other developers don't? Like the standard is so much higher. Sure.

You know, like, why does Ubisoft get crucified for having bugs in their open world game, but other developers don't? And I think that that's something that we as a community maybe need to reconcile and go like, yeah, why do we hold some developers to a higher standard and not others? I mean, maybe we should, you know, recognize as fans of video. video games that making games is really hard. And one of the women who was targeted by some online hate, who used to work at BioWare, who was falsely accused of being in charge of the animation.

You made all the faces. She was like, you guys really don't understand the complexity of what they're doing. And even I saw some stuff online about some people from other studios who do animating and saying, like, you can't compare what Noddy Dog does. And uncharted with what Mass Effect is doing with Andromeda. There are two completely different types of games. And the production schedules are wildly different. And they have different types of artists.

And so it's really frustrating when people jump on a soapbox and criticize the thing that we love without going, hey, like, that's somebody's work. Somebody put years of their life into that work. And you have no idea what it takes to make that. But you're so quick to say, oh, you fuck. suck. I'm never giving you money again. Which of course, that makes me sad. History has shown you will give them money again.

You're just mad in the moment at what's happening here and all these different things. And that's why it's such a weird complex situation of taking developers who are artists and pairing them with publishers who are businesses and being like, okay, this is how, I mean, how can you get something like that delivered on time? How can you not have it turn into Final Fantasy into Last Guardian and have it just go on and on and on? Because, yeah, of course, you'd want as much time as possible, you know, for everything if there's not a deadline.

I mean, out of all these games, the one that affected me the most was Final Fantasy. NC 15, which I waited for that game for years, and I wanted it so bad. And I love the game. I still do, despite all of its flaws of which there are many. But playing through it, it was disheartening to know, oh, there's a roadmap for patches already, and they're going to fix chapter 13. And like, there's all these problems with the game that they're going to fix. But if you want that experience, you got to wait. And it's like, I don't want to wait. I don't want to wait. I don't want to wait either. Right. That's the problem. And so for me, I played through it. And I'm like, I took it for what it was. And I think that the, the big question,

of this whole thing is what would we rather? The devs and publishers being like, it is what it is, we're out, we're on to the next thing, we'll fix it then maybe, or being like we're going to do patches, we're going to do fixes so that when people in a couple of months play it, it will be good for them. What's the right answer?

And is it a case-by-case thing? I mean, it's a tough question to answer because a lot of games now are building in extended roadmaps for post-launch content to try to see. see how much they can extend their audience to keep playing the game after release. You know, we see a lot of developers now talk about like monthly DLC updates and in free content that they do community events like logging this weekend and you can play this mission, you know, just this weekend, stuff like that.

And I think we're going to only see more of that instead of less. So I don't think a future where like post-launch patches don't exist is ever going to happen. Yeah, you're constantly, I mean, that's just where we are, right? And that's the thing where people are like, oh, there's a day one. Of course there's a day one patch. It's 2017 now. This happens all the time. When is it not going to have that?

It's the fact of we are dealing with this, and this sounds really shitty, but there's a weird archaic system of like, all right, cool, the game's gone gold a month, three weeks before it's going to go live. And it's like, well, no, they're going to continue working on that, especially if they know they can make things better. They can try to fix the animations. They can try to do whatever they want to do. Like, that is the solution, but it then comes down to us as consumers being like,

we understand the social contract we have here, right, in terms of like, all right, cool. Like, yeah, like, for me, I'm the opposite with Mass Effect, where I was like, I can't, oh, Mass Effect and Drama, I can't wait. Got it. I was like, man. And I was, then we jumped back into persona and I was just gone. You know what I mean? And I'm, but I'm, I am one of those people of like, I'm going to get back to that game.

I want to get back to Andromeda. So when I'm here about this patch, I'm like, oh, great, cool. That's great for me. I'll just let them all build up and then I'll worry about it when it's time for me to worry about it. Yeah. I mean, the other kind of way to go about fixing the problem is like what Ubisoft's doing with Assassin's Creed. Like when Unity came out like two years ago now and that was like such was it three years? Because they took last year off, right?

There wasn't a Saskatchew. Syndicate was the last one. Yeah, but you're talking about Unity, the first next gen one. Yeah, the first one that like fucked up everything. With no face and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So like, because I remember we did a topic on the show about broken games a couple years ago.

But it was a very different conversation because like then there wasn't the patch roadmap. It was just, oh, it's just broken. And you're just going to fucking. be sure. Maybe you'll hear about it. Maybe you will. Yeah. But the solution they have is to take the time off and then come back with the next game and fix it. And we'll see. Yeah, I was going to say, but you know that it's going to launch with something. I mean, like, that's the problem is like, you can't, there's no way to test video games like this and not have someone run into something. I mean, I think, I'm following, New Vegas is obviously the most famous example in my history that

I can think of. I'm just like, who would have thought if you wore that hat that you bought from that guy and you had this other thing equipped and you went on the strip, it would crash the fucking game. You know what I mean? Like you have to have that we are, we're all testing a game every time we play a game because well, what the fuck's going on? How to do is that really a thing? Do we know how to fix that? How do you fix that? And that's the problem of like, as games get more and more complex and there's more and there's, you know, it takes years to make these things because there's so many moving parts to them that when you put it all together and you get it out there. And then it's like, I mean, like another example of personal example, right,

is the fact of like both PS3 and PS4, right? When I have the full friends list, which not many people did back in the day or not now on PS4 in the same way like every housemark game fucking broke and like it was the point of like people from PlayStation coming to the office at IGN did look at my system be like what the fuck and then it was finally we figured out that it was trying to ping the servers and that was crashing the game and the same thing happened with Tetris Ultimate from fucking Soma and Ubisoft right where it was like all right cool and it went on it was just like chug chug chug and they couldn't replicate that back home because there's no way for them on a test server to say all right cool popularly the auto friends

list and ping for information that I totally agree with you. I think the community though is angry at the idea of having to pay $60 to be a beta tester. Right? So I get why people are mad, but I'm in your camp that like there's no way that the development teams can, you know, project the problems that are going to happen with the game on a global scale when millions of players are finally, you know, have the code in their hands and they're testing it out. Sure. So it's, it's a tough situation. I would say like if you truly are so angry about, you know, that games have flaws, then maybe you should look at spending your money elsewhere

if it makes you really mad. Because I think we all love video games because they're fun, right? I think that's the biggest thing. I don't think consumers are wrong for feeling like beta testers, right? And I understand where that anger would come from. My counterargument would just be that, though.

That is where the market is now. It no longer is, hey, I bought this fucking NES cart and I'm going to go home and pop it in, and that's the game. If something's wrong with it, if there's a game breaking bug, which there were, fuck me, that's the end of it.

You know what I mean? Like it is to the point now where it's like those, I remember I was, you know, go back to WWF No Mercy that I bought four times and returned over and over again to game stop because there was a bug in it that that erased all your progress. And that was finally when I was like,

fuck my NES. I'm done. But that was how it was. There was no way for fucking T. Yeah. I mean, we're at a place now where not even Nintendo games are done. Yeah.

Every, even like breath of the wall comes out. Day one patch. Patch two days later. There's been another patch. It's like that. It's crazy. But again, that game's different, though, because it was polished from the beginning and it didn't have the game breaking.

And that's the whole thing with like, and correct me if I'm wrong, because you know more about Final Fantasy than I do. But with the most recent Final Fantasy, where it was like, oh, chapter 13 or whatever, this is really hard and people hate it. We can fix that. Yeah. So otherwise it would have just been. Yeah, yeah, it would have been a line in the review and on message boards. And it's just, I don't know. Like that, the Fallen Fantasy 15 thing is that and Street Fighter 5 are the ones that are most interesting to me.

Because with Mass Effect, it's just clear. It's just like they just, it wasn't finished. You know, there was problem. with it and they just shipped it with Street Fighter it feels like that was the best intentions like they were trying to give us what we want like the thing that we've talked about so much of games as a platform yeah like what's the point of putting out several iterations of Street Fighter 5 which we knew they were going to do let's just put out one and keep adding on it and have it be free updates forever after that and that's what you get right um or paid things for more substantial

pieces but then they put it out to bear and it's like well you you fucked up from the beginning there. Like now other people aren't going to try doing that. Like we're not going to see the Grand Turismo platform or Madden platform or whatever because like there's a stigma against it. Then on the side of Final Fantasy, it's like, I just wanted to play through the game. And it sucks that like, did really nobody know that people don't like chapter 13? Like, that's something that you like later, you're going to be like, we're going to fix that thing that nobody in the fucking reviews liked. It's like, you knew that that that wasn't good. There's no way that like that was just something that everybody was like, it's not come on.

It's okay. And like the, I think that if they stood by it and we're like, no, that's in the game, then that would be one thing. But the fact that they did go back and change it and they did acknowledge that it's a problem, I think that's a problem is that when they're going to change something that's like part of the story of the game, like, come on. Like that's a different experience for people. Having different animations or like fixing the animations or whatever, that's one thing, like the shading stuff. Like that's just adding to the experience. but when you're changing the actual experience, I'm not so okay with that.

I don't know. I am. I wish we could do that in more types of media. Yeah, I mean, same thing I go back to, you know, it doesn't matter.

We just had Marvel Heroes in, right, for Marvel Heroes Omega and talking to Anthony about that and being someone who's there from beta on. And I'll never forget when David Breivitt came in for his second up at noon after the game had launched a year later

when they were relaunching it as Marvel Heroes 2015, right? And I was like, oh yeah, and he's like, well, and I'm like, why didn't rename him?

He was like, well, it wasn't that good when we launched. Like, we launched and we've learned a lot and it wasn't where we wanted it to be. And so we've worked. And now that's why we've put this new thing on it. Because this is a brand new game and now it's really great. And they're like, I find that refreshing when the developer is like, yeah, we fucked up. Like, you know what I mean? And we could just wash it and lay everybody off or whatever, but we're going to get in there.

We're going to do it. And like, yeah, I don't, I'm not versed enough in what was wrong with chapter 13. What was it? It was. I mean, it was just, it was totally really odd and different. Okay. All of a sudden turned into like a weird horror thing. Okay.

And it was super long and like a maze that just there was nothing good about it. Gotcha. You know, whereas the rest of the game, there might be a problem here or there, but it was still good. It was just totally stood out. It just was not the problem. Oh, well, he's 45 years old. Why am I going to go with you? Let me cook food for you.

Oh, my fucking God. That was your warning shot. You pissed me off again. It's right in the face. I mean, my thing is like I'm talking about in a final fantasy game. You should not be changing a core piece of the story. Sure. Like that is the one thing that you should nail.

Middle Gear Solid 5 is another example. Where was the end of that game? Why did it not have an end? And that's the thing. If they were to come back and fix it now, it's like, no, too little too late on that. I would have wanted to wait to get that game as it should be. Instead, you gave me a masterpiece of a game lacking an ending, lacking an entire like third it felt like.

That sucks, you know? But then again, it's like, all right, well, is the answer just not doing it? I don't know. But the real answer is finish the game. Sure. before you put it out. Sure. I hear you.

It's complicated. It is complicated. I just want a metal your solid five to have a good story. That's all I wanted. I mean, you got it fine. Well, you didn't. But you had a lot of fun.

You played a lot of fun. The game was great play. It was amazing. It's why it didn't matter. Story fucking side. If you want a great story, you go play Peace Walker. Best Metal Gear of all time.

Hit you right in the watch. I was trying to get a stick. You did. Next topic. I want to talk about how these companies get their information out there. These motherfucking companies. Nintendo.

Sony, Microsoft. Sure. They each have varying versions of the same type of thing when it comes to talking to the audience. Nowadays, everyone has YouTube channels. They can put up their own trailers whenever they want. Like, PlayStation channels, like, pretty legit. Like, they release stuff constantly. Nintendo has its directs.

Xbox is the Xbox Wire and Major Nelson. There's, like, killing it with all that type of stuff, and making it more personality-driven while still getting the information out there. But with the amount of conventions there are where there's E3B, being the kind of main one, and then there's still the Paris Games Weeks, the Games Coms, the TGSs, and all of that, there's pretty much every month something happening. And now with, even with E3, with people splintering off and doing their own thing with EA play and Bethesda having its conference and event and all that stuff. Like, what do you think is kind of the best way for

them to get the information of their games out there? I mean, it depends on the announcement, I think, right? That's the big thing. I mean, to take PlayStation example, I love the fact. I love the fact that there's PSX because PSX is, hey, I want to talk to the people who listen to PSI love you every week. I want to talk to you. If you're so into this one thing, yeah, we want to talk to you about the Indies we're bringing a Vita. Fuck yeah. But in the same breath, what is it, six months prior, hey, USA Today, here's all these fucking awesome AAA trailers that we're talking about and we're not going to mention VR, which is weird, but no big deal. We're doing all this awesome stuff. You know what I mean? Like, they have a great balance to it. I don't think

they nail it all the time. You know what I mean? The PlayStation blog is great, but I love the idea of Major Nelson. And if I don't, and I mean, I know Major Nelson, but if I, I think maybe was more of an Xbox guy, you know, for the last 10 years, I would know more. I would love to see them take the reins off of Sid and Ryan and all of them and let them be personalities. I would love it if they were on the YouTube channel. And if you went to the PlayStation blog. And it was, yeah, exactly. It was them chilling out. You can go to PlayStation and read a whole bunch of posts and stuff. But they're PR and stuff. And that's not bad. I mean, that's coming from PlayStation. It's an official chain. I mean, I kind of like that, though. I like that the, not. that they aren't allowed to really have their personalities out there, but I like that the PlayStation blog is a place to kind of get all of the information about games. Like when the Crash Bandicoot trilogy was actually announced or whatever, like I went to the PlayStation site and it had everything. It had more information than I even got from like Activision's press release. And it's just like, because they dive. They're hardcore. They're hardcore. And it goes into the like, yeah, they're totally remastering the soundtrack and it's going to be this, this and that. The PR thing didn't

say anything about that. Sure. And there's been a lot of other. times recently, like last week when the Uncharted Lost Legacy release date was out there, reading that blog post was like, there's a lot more information here directly from the source, from Noddy Dog that makes this feel different than normal just PR statements. Sure. Yeah, I think it's interesting how we've really shifted from, you know, these big brands always releasing their biggest stuff at E3 on stage at a press conference to now in these two months leading up to E3, we're probably going to get most of the big announcements before our E3 even gets here.

Destiny 2. I mean, I think we're going to hear about, you know, Scorpio before E3. We probably won't see it until we get to the stage. But like Nintendo, you know, kind of led the way with saying, hey, we're not going to be doing a press conference at E3 anymore. And said, we're going to do our Nintendo directs. You know, they just had a recent one talking about, you know, a lineup for, for Switch games that are coming out later this year. And, you know, they are kind of marching to the beat of their own drum at E3, too. and even companies like Bethesda that are putting out their stuff.

I mean, I didn't expect to see that extensive scene we saw from the Lost Legacy until E3. And Noddy Dog's just like, here's a cool trailer, you know, get your pre-orders in now. And so I think for people like us that, you know, make a living off of speculating on what's going to happen, is really kind of throwing a wrench into the whole situation going, well, when is Xbox going to tell us what their next big first party game is? When are we going to see that trailer? Is it going to be 83? Are they going to have a standalone event? When are we going to see new hardware from PlayStation?

Are they going to respond to Scorpio? When is that announcement going to happen? It's been interesting looking at how YouTube specifically has kind of changed the way that these publishers make their big announcements, because before they would go to like your IGMs, your EGMs of the world. Let's get a cover. Exactly. Or your game informer exclusive reveal. And now we're seeing less and less of that

Because first off, leaks are everywhere And if they have their own channel, why not just release it there? Yeah. It's interesting too because since there's been this shift Away from E3, like E3 is obviously still the big one. But that kind of scares people off to do their own thing as well So that they can own the moments.

And it allows them to put content out in a different way. Like they, I don't think they would have shown that scene from Uncharted at E3. You know? Like it was kind of weird just being a random snippet of. of the story, right? But because it was just, the whole post was about Uncharted, they're allowed to kind of do their own thing and then just be graded and like judged and commented on based on, oh, this is just about Uncharted's release date. Cool. Whereas if that was part of a bigger messaging, then it's just like, all right, well, that announcement's not as big as this announcement

that it's next to and compared to this press conference. Who won Tuesday? Yeah. So what's interesting, though, is going to the Nintendo side of things like the Nintendo directs. I love them because it's just randomly once a month, maybe once every two months, there's just going to be Nintendo news. And they've seen a bunch of different changes over the last couple of years in terms of directs being their more press conferencing type thing. If we're going to announce a whole bunch of shit over this hour,

they've kind of turned into, all right, this is a direct about Smash Bros. This is a direct about Mario Kart. And they've really dive deep into those things. But the problem is because Nintendo Direct used to be this other thing, everyone kind of expects major announcements all the time. in Nintendo Direct, we're getting Metroid. We're going to get F0.

It's like, no, you're not. Like, stop. You're going to get arms release dates. Shut up. You're going to get a couple. You're going to get release dates. You're going to hear about a bunch of like smaller titles. And you're going to get Amibo news.

Yeah. That's the, amoebo's been like the one constant of the Nintendo Directs for the last year. And seeing the new direct they just did a couple days ago, I'm fascinated by the new style that it took where, because this was the first direct with Cozuma, I think his name is. because before it was a water and there was a very distinct style of how he'd present the information and was really goofy and stuff.

This was way more like news update where there was actually like headlines behind him that you could see like here's all the announcements for Tom out today. And it was a different tone of it's going to be rapid fire. We're just going to announce a bunch of things. And it reminded me of PlayStation's press conference last year, which was great.

Games, games, games. Games, games. And the problem with it is it was a great direct. announced like 20 games coming to the Switcher 3DS, gave a real in-depth look at Splatoon 2 and at arms, gave release dates for those.

It answered a lot of questions that people had about upcoming Switch titles that are coming very soon, like pre-E-3. But then, of course, the reaction to it is like, why they even fucking do this? They didn't announce any of this other stuff.

But it's like, it was about Splatoon in Arms. Sure. Right? But here's my, my counterargument to that is just the fact that you now got to deal with the fact

that you got to educate people like me on what this is. You know what I mean? I mean, I'm a student in the game. I've paid attention. I know what Direx are and you talk about them all time. But I think that Switch is brought in so many people and so many sleeper. People who didn't give a shit about Wii U. so they didn't give a shit about Direx.

They didn't care. That now you're there. It is. You're thinking it's going to be a PlayStation announcement thing. It's going to be some kind of thing. And that's why I would go back to, man, I want to see another one with puppets.

Because now that I give a shit about the games and I'm going to play. I'm like, all right. Yeah, I love your system. Give me some puppets. Give me some weird-ass Nintendo shit now. I don't think that people who would maybe be considered a casual Nintendo fan if they, you know, skipped the last version of Wii and they just got back into Switch because of Zelda.

That do they really care about what Nintendo was talking about in their directs anyway? I mean, are they even bothering to watch or read those headlines? I mean, if you're, if you just bought a Switch, I think you are right? Because you're like, man, I want to play more things on this. What am I going to play on it? I mean, I think the most people are going to. GN afterwards and looking at the like what happened in the direct they're not actually watching it I think the people watching the direct are just the like not casual game fans the hardcore game

fans that are like people that listen to podcasts and you know kind of indulge in all that stuff and what I was saying like the point that I was trying to make is it's interesting to look at Nintendo directs versus the uncharted lost legacy reveal where both are we're just doing one thing like that was for uncharted whereas this was four arms and spiltoon but because it was under the Nintendo Direct banner, people didn't receive it the same way. They got angry that they didn't get Metroid, you know, even though all it was was just an info dump. It was a PlayStation blog post about those two games, right?

And as a fan, I enjoy that we did get a lot more than I expected. I thought it was just going to be those two games. But then the other side of that is it was a bunch of stuff that I don't care about. And like, I don't know who cares about. But I don't, I enjoy that they at least put that information out there and that they announced those games and do kind of celebrate them in a way. Otherwise, like, I wouldn't know about a lot of the, like, the Kirby games coming out or whatever. The Hey, Pickman 3DS platform.

So you like the directs who would you prefer a more flashy kind of announcement? See, no. I think that the direct, I think what they did with the Nintendo presentation, the Nindis thing last month, which wasn't a direct, but it essentially was, was brilliant because they took out the direct name. So people didn't go into it expecting a press conference. and they got just 15 looks at games coming to the Nintendo Switch and then a screenshot of 60 logos of, and here's a lot more, right? And that felt satisfying to everybody

because they didn't expect Metroid there. They didn't expect these big announcements. Whereas when you direct means something. You're saying to the wider gamer audience, direct means fire emblem and smash and we're going to get a big, big thing. Yeah. And so I just think that had they just called this something different, They just called this arms and splatoon presentation.

I think people would have not disliked it to hell and all that, right? So I do think that Nintendo has a bad style of putting the stuff out because they are so traditional in what they're doing, even in the last couple of years of being really innovative in how they're putting the information out there. They're just so stubborn in standing to like going off the beaten path and being like, we're not doing the E3 press conference. It's like, well, you need to think about how you're delivering the message otherwise. Well, their last live press conference, no thank you. Just do directs from now. That's fine. Yeah.

What did you think about Xbox using a single outlet to put out the big news about the Scorpio specs? So weird. It was, I mean, it's different. No, that was the thing is like, don't remember wrong. I'm not saying it was weird in a bad way. It's weird, like that cool kid in your class who sits in the back and wears those like long black shirts underneath the white t-shirts. And they draw and they got the hair over there. And they make you feel things sexually.

I don't know what is. Is it hitting home for you? Were you that kid? Yeah, right. No. Kevin can't wear layers. No, it was weird, but it made sense. And that was the thing of the announcement of like,

wait, they're doing what? They're doing it over with. And then it was the idea of, well, oh, those guys know what they're talking about with this. They're going to be able to speak to it a way that kind of backfired on the PS4 pro with, hey, I'm a huge PlayStation fan. I don't get what I'm looking at or why I would buy this thing. What's a tarot flop?

Exactly. Oh, so many, there's so many tarflops in all these things. And I you're totally hidden on the head there where it's just like the going to digital foundry they are the guys that know what tarifflops are. Yeah. And the people going to that site give a shit about that stuff. So for Xbox to make that debut there, talk about all the nerdy specs and like have these people give the thumbs up. It be like, yo, no, this is good. Yeah.

It's like that's what people like me need to hear. Yep. Not some dude like Andrew House coming out and talking about all the stuff where it's like, okay, well, I don't trust you telling me that it's good. You don't trust Andy House? Not what he's telling me about like taraflops and shit that I don't really understand, you know? Whereas these digital foundry guys, I know that that's the same care about. Mark Serney, I'll give it too. Oh, you're going to trust?

Okay. He's the chief architect. Remember, he's the one who said knack was good too. Yeah. Hey, don't hit on. Oh, NAC too. Lord and savior. Mack?

Mack? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, I thought that was a bold move from Microsoft. And I'm very, very interested to see if we do see Scorpio before E3, because. because I think that this might have been the pre-E3 thing that we saw. And then E3 being, it's kind of like debut as a system. Yeah, we probably won't see the box on stage until E3, if even at E3. I hope we do.

Oh, we will. If it's coming out in the fall, you're going to see the box of E3. You think so? I do. Okay. They're still sticking to this fall in a hard way, not in the, like, oh, persona 5, still coming in 2014 or anything. Wink, John Hardin, you piece of shit.

It's not John's fault. Back then it was. He's gone now. But I heard it was the one. They were like, can we release this? And he said, no, delay it five times. And they're like, but we really want to release it. It's done. And John Hardin was like, no.

And then they finally overthrew him and got them out of there. These are all lies about a PR person. You probably don't know. But yeah, it's very interesting that all three guys have such a different ways of going about this. And it's funny that, like, PlayStation's the most traditional, but the most successful, it seems, in getting the information. out there and having the most people talk about it. I mean, what's interesting about it is I wonder,

and I don't have the crystal ball, I don't know where the timeline would diverge. I wonder how much longer PlayStation can continue to be successful like this. Because the thing is, PlayStation came out and knocked it out of the park with that PlayStation 4 event. Here's the games. Here's what we're doing.

Here's, you know, the E3. Here's a funny video with Adam and Shoe about how to share. I'm like, you guys are on another fucking level. You are insanely. You are destroying this. And then since then they've started to go back a little bit towards the PlayStation 3 era of like not making the crazy bad decisions being assholes about it, but being quieter and not promoting the Indies as much. And here are the AAA games. And then

we get to PSX and PSX is normal where it should be. And I think that's the balance. That's the sweet and the sour. But like Xbox, you know, this week being like, all right, cool. Yep. We are now instituting digital refunds. You know what I mean? Like, oh shit, that's fucking fucking all. Okay, we have fixed backwards compatibility. Oh, that's really cool. All right. Game pass. Here's the ability to fucking order your custom controllers. Like all these little things really are goodwill pro gamer choices in a way that PlayStation we're all still like, all right, it's not cute anymore. Can we change your names? Like that should be something we should do. And I'm not saying that that stuff's the Achilles heel, but it's interesting to see Xbox slowly but surely

build up all these pieces of gamer goodwill in terms of the fact of I don't know if it's Scorpio or if it's something else or it's the next generation, if there's a full generation or however this is all going to work from here on out. But I do feel like Xbox in that team really is setting up these dominoes. And I don't know if they'll ever fall. because PlayStation's so far ahead with PS4. But if PlayStation does continue, it seems like they're going back to being quieter where it seems like I'm seeing more from Phil Spencer now,

like, you know, his post today about the Scorpio. Just, hey, all of a sudden, here I am an Xbox wire. All this information about Scorpio, we'll see 83 when we show it. And like, oh, well, Scorpio will be 83. Like, okay, great, that's cool. And to see them getting out in front of it, it's just interesting. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, the last thing I want to say about Nintendo is, I think the solution, because I was bitching about the problem, But I do think the solution is focusing more on directs about specific games. And this could have been two directs or even just one direct that is very clearly called Splatoon in Arms and keep Nintendo direct as a thing that people expect it to be. If you're going to announce the Metroid and you're going to announce the big games and it's more of like a press conference, come out with that. Otherwise, the people are going to be upset about Splatoon because they didn't want to like it anyways, even though Splatoon is a hit and people buy it. And more people are going to buy Splatoon 2.

I bet Splatoon 2 outsells Splatoon 1. Oh my God. It'll be its lifetime. But the thing is, Platoon 1 sold super well for a Wii U game, but even at 5 million, like almost 5 million. Like that's... I had no idea that sold that money.

Yeah. The people who love Splatoon love Splatoon. Splatoon 1 on Wii U is like 4.7 or something like that last I checked. I'm sorry, what's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Morning Show for April 13th. One of your host Greg Miller alongside. Kevin, what do you do it? The LC doesn't even know what's happening back there anymore.

Whoops. I love you, Kevin. I think that, like, Nintendo was a bad job of telling people that didn't know it sold that well that it did, you know? Like, people, they just kind of expect that, like, oh, yeah, it's Splatoon. What's happening? People are you like that. Kevin's fixing everything.

Don't worry. Kevin's on it. This is how it happens sometimes. Garbage truck on fire. But arms is another example is when you see arms next to, like, in a press conference, like when they've revealed it for the first time, it's a fucking joke. And people are like, what the fuck is this shit? I want Metroid.

Yeah. You know? But Arms could be a hit. And it could be another Nintendo character-driven IP that people really like, like Splatoon, if they play their cards right. Why are you shaking your head? It's not going to be a hit. That's what everyone said about Splatoon.

And $5 million on the Wii U, which only sold $13 million is pretty good. I know. Right? Arms ain't going to do it. I mean, even looking at PS4 game sales. Like, what's the top selling PS4 game? Uncharted? Which is that like $8 million?

Digital or? retail overall. And we're talking about an exclusive. Are you talking about first, can it be a third party? Doesn't matter. Either way. It would be probably call of duty then, wouldn't you? I think so, right?

Yeah, I don't know if it's an exclusive. Exclusive would be uncharted. Nothing got sold more than $8 million. What's, uh, Horizon's off to rate a crazy start though. Yeah, but Horizon. I'm just talking through the math, Tim. Horizon hasn't sold as much as a notable thing. I understand.

I'm just saying I was talking through the math. I wasn't make the real argument. I could look it up really quick. Andrew Renegan will look up. What's the best selling PlayStation 4 game? Oh, dang it. If Colin Moriarty was here, he would say it immediately. He would have it all.

But he wouldn't really know. He would just say it. And we would all be like, oh, must be right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. And I want to also want to make sure that Splatoon sold as much as I. You can check that too. I'll talk the audience.

Hey, everybody, it's me, Greg. How you doing? I don't say anything. It involves numbers. I don't have to check him or do math. If I had another dart right now, I'd call Andy and shoot at his face. now for the record I was shooting Tim's chest that time that it went right by his eyeball

so this is a very dangerous toy and that's why it's in the knockoff. Uncharted for our Thiefs and sold 8.7 million copies followed by Horizon Zero Don at 2.6 followed by kill zone shadow fall. So we're talking about exclusives or we're talking about like just games and those are just exclusive okay okay okay but granted there's a lot of third-party games that sell super well grab the doddole call of duty Assassin's Creed like all it does start going GTA might be the highest selling. Well, GTA 5 is the highest selling.

Game. Yeah, yeah. But I imagine everything. All skews are. Yeah, it was. It doesn't matter which. Always on top. Yeah.

Okay. Well, there you go. What are you got for Splatoon? Splatoon, 4.76 million. There you go. But that impresses me. Oh, no, totally. Granted, Horizon's only been out for a couple months.

A couple months. The whole month. The only thing you're, what you're talking about here is the interesting part of I think Splatoon is going to sell incredibly well at launch because more people are excited about their switches than they were their Wii use but the problem is yeah lifetime how many Wii use are in the install base

you know but there's not five million we or switches out there from the buy the fucking game on. Yeah so that's why the lifetime thing Lifetime makes sense once there's bundling. But even like first week sales and stuff like that would be interesting to see I think. Yeah and for arms as well and arms comes first

arms has a release day now of June 16th so if you if anybody out there buys arms I'll break your legs. What? I just thought it would be. funny, but ours isn't going to sell. Let me know in the comments below if you're excited for arms. And in about that, it's about

I'm saying it could be a hit in the same way that Splatoon was, because everyone had the same reaction to Splatoon that they do to Arms. No, I disagree. What? Yeah, I think more people were outward about how much they loved Splatoon than they have been about arms. You're talking about after it came

out. No, I'm talking about like people like games critics who played the game in advance of its release. Everyone I know that played that game came away liking that game. But a lot of people I know have done nothing but make fun of arms. That have played it?

Yeah. Really? Yeah. See, I don't buy this. I don't buy this. Remember this is a guy who like snipper clips. No, no, no, yeah, exactly.

I'm not saying arms is a bad game. Yeah, and I'm not even saying, I'm not even saying, I remember being at IGN, when the direct happened and they announced the platoon, laughs, groans, everybody was just like,

are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, the squid jokes, yeah. The whole, the whole thing. And that was all Sputonelian. Frank Merellabella, He thanked himself. He did. He did.

But then, yeah, of course, the people that play at love it, but that's what Nintendo fan boys do. True. True. Right. But anyways, final topic, as always, brought to you by you. You can go to kind of funny.com slash gamescast topic and leave your topics for all of us. And also, thank you to all our Patreon supporters.

Kevin just gave me the beautiful motion, which tells me to lift it up. And thank you to Tom Bach for being the Patreon producer on this show. You guys can support us. Patreon.com slash kind of funny games. Thanks, Tom. Tom was on the show. Tom was on the show and he killed it. He was great.

Fantastic. Fantastic, man. All these questions are for you. Ooh. Okay. Let's start them off right. Prith Vanek says, as you are the biggest mass effect fan I know, is Mass Effect andromeda worth looking at even though I haven't played games like Zelda yet.

Yes, absolutely. I have said at length that does have a ton of problems, but at its core, it's still a really great game. And while I have been frustrated by some of it, technical issues. I'm still going to go back eventually and play it again. I just am not immediately enticed to go back as I have been with previous Mass Effect games.

And I think that is in part two reasons. One, I want to wait until all the patches get in place. And two, there's just a lot of really good stuff to play right now. Too much good stuff. Yeah. Yes. If you like Mass Effect at all, I highly recommend going and playing it. Andy.

Andy Cortez. Give me the dart. Can you go get Andy Kev? Yeah. I need his feedback on this because he is the second biggest Mass Effect fan, I know. I need you. Whoa, calm down, Chief. Bring that hair over here.

Andy, so you are, she's the number one Mass Effect fan. You're the number two Mass Effect fan. As the number two Mass Effect fan in the world, have you played Mass Effect Andromeda yet? I'm about six hours in right now. And what are your thoughts now? Well, you know, I want to, to start after the patches went through.

And also, like, I had Zelda going. I was like, I don't need to start Mass Effect right now. Sure, sure. What do you think of six hours? Andy Cortez tweet about Mass Effect before Andromeda came out, and this is his response. That's what happens when you fuck your game up. Whoa. Whoa.

Oh, my God. There's so much happening. To think about Mass Effect is there's, I know you've got a lot of questions there, but everything you love about BioWare and the Mass Effect series, the camaraderie with your crewmates and the loyalty missions and the, the really great blend of serious content with, you know, humor mixed in. All of that's there. All of it's there.

And, you know, the multiplayer is back if you really like the multiplayer in Mass Effect 3. And it's, you do have to kind of trudge through some murky stuff to get to the good content. But, you know, it's worth it in the end. The thing I was selling them, I think when we did that initial impressions, I think I made it 12 hours before I switched over persona. And it was that I like what's here. I like the core of this game. I like Ryder. I like the path finder.

I love the idea of Andromeda. And I do like the group. And like, you know, one of my favorite memory so far was just reading the crew's initial emails to each other in their like thing of like them bitching about everybody. You know, who was doing what inside of the place. And it was like this. And it was like, this is why I'm going to come back. Because I do like this. And it wasn't that.

Oh my God. The animations in this. It was just like, you see all that. And it's just like, oh, this doesn't feel like Mass Effect. Because Mass Effect always was so polished and so great and so enthralling. in terms of like I've never pulled out of the experience. I feel it all the time. And initially I'm like,

okay, this is good. It's just not great like I expected it to be. And so that's why I was able to put it down, but why I totally intend to get back to it. The hashtag, and it says, how are you so good at amplitude? Like seriously, that shit is unnatural. Oh, the hashtaginus.

He's great. That's just years of practice, hours and hours. As you know, like it's just, it's starting over if you make a single mistake. It's like the start. restart, you know, like pause, restart, pause restart. Yeah. If you make a mistake, if you want to get, you know, that like 90 to 100% accuracy,

you got to stop and quit and start over when you make a mistake. He's got to get in that zone. Just feel it and not even look at the screen. You're like, what's happening? Yeah. You do have to kind of get to a higher mental state to really kind of like let the rhythm flow through you. Lose yourself to the music.

We still need to do the let's play. I mean you. We do. I would need to do a little bit of practice. I haven't played in a while. I don't like the multiplayer though. I don't do all that stuff. We'd have to do some like a score-based thing.

Yeah. I think the multiplayer in a rhythm and music game like that is so hard to get right because even the tiniest bit of leg will throw off your accuracy and your ability to beat match properly. And while harmonics is excellent at, you know, their rhythm and music mechanics, they mean they can't account for internet problems, right? Yeah. One day they should figure it out for Amplitude 2.

No, I will say the new Amplitude doesn't have multiplayer online. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, even the local though, like it was always too much for me. It was like, because I played with you once at a preview event long, long ago. And it was just like too much going on where I'm like, I just want to play. Like there's already enough going on in amplitude. Yeah. Where I'm like all of the like the weapons and attacking and stuff.

Yeah. It's too much to handle it. Yeah. It's fun, but I'm more of a single player guy when it comes to that. Endigo Skybourne says, since you spent such a long time at game trailers, would you consider doing something with the easy allies guys? I would love to.

Brandon Jones, if you are watching, please give me a call. I would love to come by. Those guys are great. And I'm so happy for all the success that they've had. And it was a really sad time being out to fly when the news came in that they were going to shut down. And I'm really glad that they were able to quickly transition

into doing their own thing because they have such a great thing. community and the game trailers audience is wonderful. I still get people who reach out to me from the stuff I did at GT and I miss it. I miss that crew a lot. They're all really great. So how much did you work with those guys when you're, because that was back when you were still in LA at that time, right? Yeah. So I mean, it was, I was splitting my time between Smosh games and game trailers for a while until I moved up to the bay and then I was working exclusively with game trailers. So I would shoot with them remotely once or twice a week. So we would do the, um, just played was kind of our, you know, impression show where I would get on with Brandon and maybe a couple other people,

whether it be, you know, Bloodworth or Kyle or any of the other guys are there. And we talk about what we had just played, obviously. Ah, I get the title. Um, but they had their content set when they came over, you know, when Defy acquired game trailers from Vycon, like, they had their shows and And Kyle had his show and they had their reviews team set up and, you know, they had their own thing going on. And I was just very grateful to be a small part of that team. And I was in the same building of Smosh Games, right? Yeah, they all were in the same building. That's crazy, man.

Have you been there before? Yeah. Such an interesting area. Yeah, because Clever is there too. So all of like the women's content that they do and then the Amey stuff and honest trailers. They're all under that same umbrella. Did you ever work with Elise when she was? Yeah.

Elise produced a mini series called Ladies in the Lobby. You can watch it on YouTube. It's like a nine episode series, I think, or seven episodes. Where it was all these different women from across the games industry talking about, you know, different topics and games. It's actually a really well-done show. She's great. She is. She's one of the funniest people.

Yeah. Her sense of humor is so dry in the best way. And she always has these really witty things to say all the time. I wish I could have gotten the chance to work with her more. She's really awesome. We got to put her on the list. We got to get her here. Elise.

Elise. Willums. Funhouse. Yeah, she's not a fun house now. I hate you so much. I fucking hate you. Never heard of.

Oh, you mean achievement hunter? I hate you. The good guys? So goddamn. They're really funny. MLS Reserve says, why is Nintendo simultaneously amazing and baffingly strange?

Japan. Japan. That's the answer. That really is the answer, though. Man, for everything they do right, they do like three things. wrong and it's just like, but that one thing was really right. Yeah.

But then it's like, oh, but those three things were really wrong. Yeah, one step forward, two steps back. I mean, they're getting there. They're one of the oldest game companies out there. And, you know, they've weathered the storm for decades of this industry. And it's changing so rapidly that sometimes when you're, you know, that established, you move really slowly. So.

Yeah. Well, that's the thing I, you know, was interesting about them. I feel like they've, you mentioned earlier, they've been marching to their own beat for so long that, like, I kept saying about Wii you and I, I mean it about Switch 2. and I don't mean it to be an insult, but like, I think Nintendo's great at making toys. I don't know if they think they make video games. I think they think that they make toys because one, two switch is a great toy. It's not a great video game, but it's fun.

You bum around. It's an okay toy. You just played with Gia and Gia didn't like having fun. That's on you. It sucked at it. It sucked at it. Everybody else who is good enjoys it. I beat her in yoga.

There's something wrong with this. Yeah. Well, I didn't say, again, it's a good toy. It's not a good yoga simulator. You know what I mean? And that's just what they are, but like, do they want? I think fans for so long have wanted them to be great at video games again. You know what I mean?

Where it'd be that switch is coming up and I hope it's this and I hope it's that. And it's like, well, it's probably not going to be those things because that's not what they've done. And I don't think they've had that. We need to wake up and change moment. I think if they, if they're like, you know what? We got to drastically change things. I think they're just going to go third party. Yeah.

I mean, they're in an interesting place. I was getting my haircut today at a barbershop. A Nintendo barbershop. Not a, not even a super cuts. And everyone around like someone's like, oh, dude, they got switches at the best buy. And like, everyone in the bar. barbershop was like, like one dude mid haircut. No way, really?

He was like, he just runs off with like the thing attached to him. He literally, he asked. He was like, hey, like, if I were to leave now, could I come back? And she's like, oh, I'm booked all day, whatever. And he's like, oh, fine. So he stayed. He didn't do it. But how close is the barbershop's the Best Buy?

It's about the Harrison Best Buy. It was pretty close. It wasn't far from it. But our switch is that hard to get? I thought that they were still readily available. Yeah. They're still really. It's just rare to find them out there.

Yeah. Anyway, it was a really funny conversation, but it was like, These are just normal people. Sure. I assume. Normies. You know what I mean? But everyone in the barbershop was like excited about this thing.

And it was like, whoa. Like I haven't seen that in the public since the we. Yeah. So assigned there on to something. Yeah. That was the weird thing when I went to Missouri after the announcement of the name switch, that first trailer. And I got there to my, you know, friends from college who don't play video games who,

you know, they run a small business. She works for the University of Missouri and has four children, three kids. And it was like bouncing her newborn on her. And so what's this Nintendo Switch? I was here. I'm like, how did you fucking hear about the Switch? You know what I mean? Let me tell you about PlayStation VR.

That's what we got to talk about. Gary the goal. Gary the goal. So this comes from Moore Sayan, who tweets this question at me every single week for the Nintendo game or for the kind of funny games cast. And especially when I have guests, he asked me this.

What new features does Andrea think should be implemented for the next armored core? We were talking about this before we started recording. I'm not going to answer that because there should be no new features. They should stop it. Oh, okay. Stop. My thing is, is there any Armored Core fan we can get on this show to answer this question?

One day you ask that question and it's like, yeah, it's Elise and she's just like, let me tell you. 30 minutes later. Kyle R. Williams says, what is your favorite video game of all time? I definitely don't have one all-time favorite. I have kind of like a top 10. but some of my near and dears are Mass Effect 2 obviously is one of my

like really all-time favorite games I've put a lot of hours into that. Portal 2 also probably one of the most perfect games ever created, very excellent. Biosec, wonderful game. I actually played that a couple of years after it came out.

Oh really? I didn't play it when it first came out because I wasn't that into shooters until probably like eight. years ago, and so I didn't play it when it originally came out. Excellent game. Mario Kart 64, probably the best Mario Kart in my opinion.

Double dash. It's okay. We can agree to disagree. I thought that was an excellent game. The only GTA that I really ever played to completion more than once was Vice City. Excellent game. No, last time, maybe it wasn't last time I was on the show. I got a lot of heat from your community about my comments about GTA-5, but

GTA by City, I don't know. Maybe it was like the Miami Vice of it all that I really loved. Definitely helped. Excellent game. And then of course, the rhythm of music games, guitar hero. Rock band two, guitar hero three specifically. Oh my God, I love you.

Yeah. Yeah. Guitar Three. Back off. Guitar Hero three is, it does not get enough love because it was the first Neversoft one. Right. And everyone was just like, oh, you know, it's now,

this is like the Arkham origins of the whole thing. It's like, no, man, this shit. It was really good. It was really good. And it felt tighter than the, and then the other ones. They fucking nailed it. Guitar 1 was like,

it was great at the time, but when you went back and played it, it just felt wrong. Like two started getting it really right, and then three was the sweet spot. I liked the new guitar that they put out. The wireless one. Yeah.

The Gibson looking one. I really loved that guitar. The buttons were better than the one that came out with, GH2. Yeah, the rock band guitar is never quite equal. The Gibson.

I remember buying the guitar hero wireless. The clickiness was way better on the guitar hero guitar than on the rock band guitar. Sorry, John. Don't be mad. That's true, though. That's true, John. You should have fixed that.

So that's just like a couple. I mean, if I had more time to think about it, I could think of a bunch more. I mean, that is a list, though. I want to talk about Mario Kart, though, because I feel like there's some dissension here. What are you going to pick? I don't know. That's my problem is I don't think that I have a Mario Kart that I would stick to as being the best. Like, it's funny.

You said Mario Card 64, and I went, even though I would probably say Mario Kart 64, if only for the battle mode and the amount of hours put into it. All mode. The Rainbow Road in that version is just so epic. Unforgiving. Yeah. That's what's great about it. I know, no.

I mean, that's what you want out of a rainbow road. You want to be punished. You want everybody going incredibly slow, trying to figure out when to go and when to do. Well, it's like Warrior Stadium, too, like that one jump that if you could make the shortcut, you could win like every time. And then how if you tried to make the jump, but somebody, you know, hit the lightning bolt or whatever and shrunk everybody. How you'd be screwed. Yeah, it was just so good. My crash team racing, I gotta give the shout out to because I stand by.

It's the superior cart racing. But in terms of Mario Kart, I think I might give it to 8. Like, I know that's not a popular opinion, but I think that 8 is super, it's polished to a fault. And I think with the amount of courses there and just like the amount of variety in like the characters it offers and the items, the balance of it just feels better to me than a lot of the other games. Like double dash it feels broken because of the the characters being tied to items. Like I think that it there was something about eight that there was multiple characters with the same stats that you can use. So it's a lot more fair. And again, the polish is just great.

The music's awesome. It looks amazing. I can't wait for one switch. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is like you probably aren't wrong. You know what I mean? I feel like that's the thing about Mario Kart is they get better every time because they learn from each other and they expand and they do something different. 8 just being the one that you know as much as I love card I just couldn't motivate myself to play the Wii you

And I was like I gas but I can't wait for on April 28th when I will beat the living fuck out of Ziger Right here on Twitch.tv such kind of funny games. I'm taking Sean Pitts 50 dollars and I'm taking on the rest of you keep caught talking shit all All day long all afternoon what you're gonna do when I come for you brother shout to maro card ds as well yes that was a really good one That one might be the best one well the terms of like if if you had to review them all and give them like numbered things I remember snaking wasn't it yeah snaking was a big problem that's that's true that's true that was a really good one that was a I was, but I'll never forget waiting in line for my Wii, uh, my Wii pre-order. And the guy next to me had Mario Kart and I hadn't picked it up yet. And he did the thing or, oh, you can play it with me.

And we just sat there and played. I was like, this is awesome. You can share this with three other people. They don't even need the cart. That's amazing. Nico, fug slug. Nico! Fugslug.

What was your game of the year last year? Um, last year, game of the year, uncharted hard four. Yep. Um, I know it got, you know, some, flack for some people for not being, you know, more innovative. But I mean, it was probably the most beautiful game I've ever seen before Horizon came out. It was excellent. There was a lot of games that I didn't finish last year because I was playing too much Paragon. You still are. I still am playing too much Paragon. I saw you last night. I was when I was on PSN and your Panagon.

Of course you are. I know. I got to start persona, but Paragon keeps driving me in. Yeah, it was excellent. It was a really great game. If you haven't played it yet, why not? You should play it. You're fucking up. I kind of want to go back and play it on a harder difficulty. But yeah, it was beautiful. It was great.

Final question from the day. It comes from King Bet. Have you been enjoying the tweets of medicated John Drake? It's been a highlight of 2017 for sure. I have not just been getting his tweets. I've been living that for two weeks. But luckily now that prescription is done. He is out of those medication.

He's out of those drugs. When it first started, I'm like, these have to be fake. And then as they went on and he started texting me, like unprovoked, I was like, no, this is real. He is enjoying this pain medication. There's a reason why they're a controlled substance, right? But for the people who, you know, are your fans who maybe don't know, my husband, John Drake, works for PlayStation. He, at Pax East, at Paxomania, ruptured his Achilles, which is quite a brutal injury. And it was weird.

he was just jumping up and down. He wasn't even like he was making contact with another player or anything. And we had to go to the emergency room in Boston. And the doctor immediately was like, yep, your Achilles has detached. Sorry. That doesn't sound fun at all. Basically, like the test is like, so you lay down and then they squeeze the calf muscle of your non-injured leg and your foot moves, like a reflex test. And then they squeeze the calf on his injured leg and there was no movement.

And Doc's like, that's not good. Got a x-ray. Yep, it's fully ruptured. Oh, my God. So he had to have surgery, reconstructive surgery to get it fixed. So he's now in his walking cast and on the road to recovery

and hopefully we'll have his boot off by E3. Oh, God. Send some sweet nasty love. Man, Paxomania. Claims another victim. Cursed. Oh, man. Why, Andrea, thank you very much for joining us.

Yet again, thank you for the Easter. Easter goods. Don't be a stranger. Come back more often. Hey, you know what? I'm just down the road. Let me know. All right.

Until next time. I love you.