Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Broken Games and Reviewing Games - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 48

Episode Date: December 11, 2015

Our impressions of Rise of the Tomb Raider on the Xbox One, why is it becoming the norm for games to be incomplete when they release, Colin and Greg explain the process of professionally reviewing video games, and there are so many way to play FF7, but which is the best? (Released on Patreon on 12.04.15) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, welcome to the first ever episode, 48 of The Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Getty's joined by the coolest dudes in video games, Colin Mojardy, and Greg. Hello, Tim. I like that. I kept that for a while. That's what I do, Tim. I commit to a face. I committed to Converse.

Committed to being fat. Committed to glasses. Okay. DC Comics. Yeah. PlayStation. Yep. Not committed to Kevin.

If you want to get rid of Kevin at any second. At any moment. Yeah, he's having one of those days. Yeah, right before we went live, you said you're having one of those days. You need to shut the. fuck up. I mean, it's just, it's a, I'm allowed to say that out of love, but Kevin, it's like, it's not so much that he talks

too much, it's that he's not quiet enough. Yeah, that is a problem. It's a huge problem with Kevin, yeah. Yeah, but I love him. That's not nice. Don't give me a finger, Kevin. You want you paid? Don't flip people off. Kevin, you're better than that. You were raised better than that. Were you? He wasn't. No. Yeah. I don't know that you were. So this is a show about video games

where every week we talk about why we love video games and all the cool things about them. You can get it early over at patreon.com slash Kind of funny games. throw some money that way. You'll get audio and video early. It's a great time. If you don't want to do that, you can wait, YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, topic per topic, day by day. Trying to still Greg's words. I love it. No, you're doing a very slow, late back. We're just here on it. Today's been a crazy day. Talking about NPR. It's fun, man.

I got my McDonald's coffee. This is a new. Have you tried it yet? Yes, I just had my first sip. I enjoyed it. Okay. It's no Dunkin. It's no DD. It's no D.D. It's no. It's no D. It's up there. Oh, I know. For a long time, I'd have mom. Shit me D-Ds. But then they started finally selling it on Amazon. Of course, Amazon said they delivered yesterday. I haven't seen hide nor hair of that. I'm telling you, man, Amazon, I love them to death. They're one of my favorite things in the world. But, they're slipping on the- They're slipping. I feel like they're Amazon now and all they're like, we're doing shit where it's like, we're giving you it before you even order it. Right. Like,

that stuff is kind of fucking up the two-day shit. Yeah. Because I've never had the mess up. And now, in the past six months, I feel like they've messed up maybe four times for me. Yeah. I'm like, I'm still okay with that. That's not that bad. of a mess up right. Sure. A lot worse than none. It's true. So that's an issue.

But yeah, I'm excited about this coffee. It does smell like McDonald's coffee. Yeah. Da-da-da-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. I'm loving it for sure. Was there more rigmarole to go through? Nah. Yeah.

Kind of point.com slash store. There's t-shirts and stuff. Those are cool. There's mugs and other things. If you're listening to this Friday night as a patron, come see us at PSX. Oh, yeah. Saturday. Yeah.

If it's Monday, you missed it. But hopefully it's up. Hopefully we'll have recaps. We will. of recaps, I'm sure. Are we going to post the, are we recording the panel? That would be the plan. Okay.

Cool. It's one of those like that's theoretically going to happen. I haven't, in all my conversations with PlayStation about our PSI Love UXOXO being the only podcast there. I haven't talked to them about is the soundboard in the back? Is that going to be easy to get off of? So we'll see. If you remind me after this, I'll hit up my contact.

Yeah, we should look into that because I would like to have that. Oh, I want, I've been saying we're going to have it to everybody. I've been lying to everyone's face. as if this is all set. And then today I looked at Kevin and I said, and Kevin will go from there because we're hoping

to do some interviews, go from there to record the panel. And Kevin looked back at me and when I saw his eye, I realized this is tougher than just saying that's going to happen. Hopefully, as professional as it's been coming together so far

with them wanting our assets and I'm not going to be running anything, I'll just call things out and it'll happen. Maybe they're taping them for us and just give us stuff on the thumb of us. That would be super good. I would like that

because then I need to do less work. And I'm a big fan of not doing. work are you going to do there? I'm the one to edit that show and put it up. Kevin will be one film in it. You're over there, nachos and need freedoms. I'm feeling I'm going to be shooting it. What's Kevin going to be doing?

I don't know. Yeah. Slow jerking it. That was very slow. I wasn't a slow jerk. That was like a normal jerk. Zero fuck's given jerk. But, okay, so do it one more time for me.

See, it's not, okay, I'll give you it's not slow, but it's definitely a laxadaisical jerk. Well, what I like, look at it. Look it like, there's no like, there's a twist at the top. Yeah. Like a fucking twist off. Oh my god. Yeah.

What you guys been playing lately? I've been bouncing around a lot. This is our first games cast since Thanksgiving, correct? Yeah. Okay, good. So I went away for Thanksgiving. And right before I left for Thanksgiving, I finished a game. And I've already forgot.

Oh, Fallout. And there's something else in there. I thought, whatever. I didn't want to jump right into what was the gun? Battlefront. Right, I was playing Battlefront. Right. It's no fucking.

That's today's topic, actually. That published today. You play in the storm fucking game. So I was playing that as a holdover because I didn't want to get into anything, right? And I also then we did less plays that were about our backlog. And I played Assassin's Creed Syndicate. And I was like, fuck, I want to play this all the way through. I like Assassin's Creed every now and again.

From what I played a syndicate, I was like, yeah, I'm in, okay. But on the docket had been Syndicate, Tomb Raider, Waiting for Just Cause, right? Tomb Raider and Syndicate we had, but I didn't want to dive into and get started and then just go away again. So went away, played a whole bunch of stuff on Vita on the flight. Shocking, I know. played through the flower. You ever heard of this flower game? Flowers on...

You ever heard of flower? You played it on Vita? Yes. On Vita, is it motion? Or is it just... It's motion, yeah. There's an... You can...

Yes, you can... I'm trying to remember. It's motion, but there's a secondary system, but it's not intuitive. It's not normal. It's still weird. Still weird experiment. Maybe like the touch pad or something.

I can't remember it was up and down touch, or if it was just sticks, but I was pitching and yawn. But it wasn't... I was like, oh, good. I don't have to use the motion because I don't want to be this guy in the plain seat.

Yeah, that's weird. And then it was still like, oh, the motion's the way to go. Also played, um, what did you think of flower? I've played flower before. Oh,

this is like my first time in a long time sitting down and like, I'm gonna go through every one of the flower worlds or whatever. Yeah. It was fun. It's still the same thing of just like, I wish it was a little bit more precise. You know,

I know, I know, it's supposed to be relaxing. I, you know, I mean, I was working when flower came out, obviously. I covered flour from the genesis

from the seed. From the seed. Yeah. And, uh, I understand that's the whole stick or whatever of it. It's just like free flowing, but for me, it was kind of annoying. Especially later when you're like bashing buildings and stuff. And it's like, well, go back and bank out and come back and try to get it.

But it's fine. It was fun. It was good. I love flowers. But it was one of those things where I was like, looking at the trophies. I was like, hmm. And then I was like, nah, you know what? No, I don't want to do this one. And I want to, I got to look it up because I played a game that I hadn't even, I didn't even know was out on, uh, slip, slip under my radar in terms of it.

And so now we got to, what have you been playing Colin where I look this up? Nothing. Okay. Damn, I thought that would feel more time. You had a very uncalling, but also very calling Thanksgiving break. Yeah, I just didn't, I haven't felt compelled to play anything, so I haven't. I haven't played a game in like two weeks. I think I messed around with fallout a little bit at some point.

And again, and then I booted up just caused three yesterday to start playing it. But then I got distracted with other stuff. Then I started playing it and realized I didn't really like the control scheme. So I kind of have to get over that. And I don't know, I'm just in one of those positions, I think all gamers find themselves in every once in a while, which is I just don't, I just, there's just nothing out there that I really like, that's really, really driving me to play. So I've just been like watching TV and reading books and trying to socialize with friends or doing whatever, you know, other things that are that are out there. But I'll get back into it.

I'm sad in hindsight that I didn't play anything because I feel like I wasted quite a bit of free time. You didn't waste it though if you enjoyed it. Yeah. When you try to, I've done it. You've done it. We've done it. When you try to force yourself the game, oh, I have to play this for review or to be able to talk about it or whatever. It's not the same.

It's not the way to go. Yeah. The game I was trying to say is I played actual sunlight. Have you heard of actual sunlight? No. It's one of those. I like to jump into the Vita store so often dig around, try to find something when I'm going on a trip.

Found actual sunlight hadn't heard of it. And it's a game all about killing yourself. It's a super depressing look at being depressed and what this is. And it's kind of is, it's like, you know, from a very honest place of the creator. It's one of the indie games, obviously, of the creator who makes it. he does a couple things where he even breaks the fourth wall. Like you come out of your apartment one day, all depressed. And it's like little 8 bit sprites or whatever moving around maybe 16 bit.

It's little guys. You know what I mean? Like they look remind me if you remember, of course, the big headed Ghostbusters game on a game boy. That's what we're dealing with. But you come out and there's two like you're, you walk around, you interact with things. But like, you know, even if you say hi to the person at the coffee shop, you click on it, then you get like, you know, what's happening in his head and stuff. And how depressed he is and how fucked up his life is.

And this is the, blah, blah, blah. And so there's this one. it's a young couple and you walk up to them and it's it's like a paragraph of text from the author being like hey if you're depressed teen depressed young 20 something this isn't you this isn't your life this is this guy in his late 30s who's depressed you know it's all these really heavy themes heavy heavy themes in this interesting thing you're going through and having it's i guess it's weird because you're moving around and interacting with objects and stuff but it's really all told through text you just get there It's like, it's all this text.

And it's not just like a conversation every time. It's like you're reading a story about how depressed this person was. Super interesting, different. You know what I mean? I didn't know what I was getting into other than like it was supposed to be depressing about suicide. And that's exactly what it was. And so it was interesting. It sounds weird.

It was interesting because this is like real people struggle with this kind of depression on this level and they actually go and take this side out. And so it's interesting to play through it and feel those emotions as that character. but not obviously on the same level. You know what I mean? But it was a fun character experience of going through and playing and feeling like, you know, when you meet people who are depressed

or people who are a bit more inward and stuff to have a look at what that's like, you know what I mean? Because we've all been depressed. I've never been depressed on that level, of course. Yeah. But it was interesting. It was a good case study,

interesting, about an hour and a half on Vita. And I'm sure it's, you know, probably PlayStation 4 as well. But of course, if it isn't on Vita, I don't play it. Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? That makes sense.

Then I got to Chicago and still was like, I want something to get lost in. Like, you know what I mean? This is where I keep talking about, like, uh, I'd love a Western RPG. I just came off Fallout right, but I would love just a Western RPG on Vita,

where I'm just going around, I'm taking Quest and doing this. And so I was toying around and, and finally I looked, I was, you know, I did the Google of like, best RPGs on Vita.

Like, tell me what RPGs are on Vita that I haven't reviewed or aren't from my time period or whatever kind of thing. You know what I mean? There's obviously, everybody's persona. I'm like, wait,

I've been saying persona for a long time too. But then eventually when I was going through, Chrono Trigger popped up. I was like, oh, I saw you tweet about this. Yeah, Chrono Trigger's on there, and I've never played Chrono Trigger being a dumb Sega kid or whatever. And I was like, okay, cool. So I got that, jumped in, not at all deep into it, maybe an hour, hour and a half. You know, I got the frog.

We're going through a door I just opened up off the organ. I'm pretty stoked about it. What's on the other side? But I'm enjoying it. You know what I mean? And that was the thing of like, I think I might be just in that mindset where that's going to scratch the it's supposed to. Because if you remember in the lead up to Grandia 2, not Grandi A 2, I apologize.

So we get into, right? Coming out on V-D-Pia, Jared Petty was hyping me up for it. Everything he said sounding so great. And then I got it, played it, and just, it's like, oh, okay, cool. And put it down and never got back to it. You know what I mean? And so now I feel like I'm in that thing because there's still a couple more travel situations

coming up where I'll be on planes going around and seeing Christine's folks and stuff, where sitting there with this game on mute and making my choices, new in battle sounds like it'll be perfect. So I'm looking forward to that as my game on the go. That's exciting. I'm excited to hear what you have to say about at the end. Good game. Don't spoil it for me.

I won't. I time travel again. I'm not, I can't, I can't be trapped this far at the past. I'm gonna get out of, I'm gonna get out of the past for sure.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I've been playing a lot of battlefront just like here and there. Yeah, I just think it's fun. Like it's totally, I agree with you 100% is fun.

Whatever, but like, I'm loving it and like, my roommate loves it too and like, we just keep trading off like matches just playing. Oh,

you're not doing like split screen together? No, we tried and I mean, it's cool. Yeah. But it's, with the game like this where it is so much,

about the graphics and the like the look and the feel and stuff like having it one screen really it's nice gotcha so we're just straight enough on that um the the biggest thing though is i tried playing the walking dead telltale game oh yeah so recently i got really into it to walking dead all because of greg after years but also my girlfriend who randomly started watching the show which makes no sense but she got really into it she loves good teet television so i read i read all the comics i'm caught up on that i'm like i should play these games like at this point like i should go back and do it i played this Game of Throne game for Teltale, but I never did Walking Dead.

So I tried playing it with her, but I wanted to have it that she plays. So I didn't want to touch the controller at all. Just have her do it. Because she never plays games. She's never played a game ever. Except for like a mobile ship. And oh my God.

That experience. She loves it. Like we only played one and a half episodes. Gotcha. That took like four hours though. Like it took so long to the point that it was like, oh my God, it's frustrating. But like even now she's like,

I can't wait to come back and play. That's awesome. That's really cool. I'm thinking about it. What happens to Clem? I want to know what happens to Clem. I want to know. But it's just funny because like seeing a gamer or seeing someone that doesn't play games, play

games is like there's certain things like how do you not get this? How does this not make sense? But it just doesn't make sense because they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Right. But it's like she'll get the movement down. But then the camera, it's like. For those doing audio lists and he's jerking around. It's really slow and jerky.

And it's like every single chance that a zombie attacks her to the camera. could kill her. She's died. It's over multiple times. And it's like, it's funny watching it. Like, oh, man, she gets super into it and like super, like every single choice. She's just like, thinks it means the world. Does she pause it or does she like actually make the choice before it expires? Oh, you can pause it? Yeah, you could hit like PlayStation button or hit start, I think, even to pause it and then be like, oh man, what are we going to do? Oh, yeah, no, no. I mean, that would explain that to her. Probably break her brain. Sure. Well, no, it's, part of the fun, right, is the meter counting down. Like, fuck, I hate this guy, but what do I do? What do I

say. Yeah, it's cool, though, but I've been really enjoying that. And then I dabbled in the rise of the Tomb Raider. Ah. Because is what this topic is about actually. Oh, well, I'm not done. Yeah. I came back from Chicago in my V to Escapades, played Rise of the Tomb Raider, beat Rise of the Tomb Raider last night.

Then, I jumped into Just Cause 3, played some of that, and then, or actually reversed those in this order, not that it all matters to you. We jumped in and did more of the Arkham Knight D.L.C. There you go. Sorry. He had a real busy fucking time. I did. Well, I came home. And then it was like, I got to play Rise of the Tomb Raider.

And I was also ready just to chill out and be left alone. Not that I didn't enjoy home, but you know, you got to talk to people. Yeah. But so, like, Saturday and Sunday pretty much played Rise of Tomb Raider as much as I wanted to. Beat it last night. And then I was like, cool. Now I can get Just Cause 3 in so I can have something to talk about today. Just Cause 3 did that normal bullshit where you put it in.

It's like, I'm loading it up. You're like, oh, great. It's load up. You're going. It's like, oh, now I got installed. I'm like, I just want to play something. Jumped out and did the Catwoman Robin Mission in Arkham Night. and then went in and started chipping away at like the car challenges that have been DLC added

in the combat rooms that have been added. Okay. I want those trophies. I don't like, I hate Colin will feel me on this one. High five preemptively. I hate when you have the platinum trophy, but then they add the DLC and it drops like, now you have 76% but you have the platinum. That can't stand.

Yeah. Uh-uh. Yeah. Damn, that's some shady shit. That's a good move to get me to go back. Except for a DC Universe Online where I have like the platinum in 15% of the trophies because I've added so many goddamn rate trophies. All right.

All right, so the topic for today is Rise of the Tomb Raider. I want you to give your thoughts and impressions on it. Now, people keep getting super upset about the way these videos are headlined where they're like the headline is... Oh, I saw it today. Don't be click baity. And we keep getting that. The back it's why you need to play playing game. Sure. I saw the backlash.

I hear you. I totally get it. So I changed it to why you should play instead of need to. Because need, I get a little aggressive. Yeah. And like people, if they're going to be upset about it. it. Really all it means is it's us discussing the game. Why you may want to play. Yeah. Why you may or may not enjoy Rise of the Tomb Raider. So that's the thing is like people are just getting super

upset and it's like you know what I'm. Trigger warning. We're going to give you an opinion on this game. Right. So I'm trying to adapt and trying to find something that like works. Yeah. So from now on for now, I'm going to try doing should I play Tomb Raider. Okay. Won't they, will that be accused of being Clickbait as well? I don't care. I mean, that's what I'm saying. Well, no, I think it's just part of like when, at what point do we just bite down and say we're kind of funny this world right let's let's let's let here we go collins off leash let's talk about the bull dog is in the cat house in the cat house meo the battlefront I was really confused I went back and I just yesterday I looked at the battlefront uh YouTube video that we did or whatever for you know for this show

and you know like a three to one like to dislike ratio which is pretty a little high I think it's the worst that we've ever yeah and and I was like okay people are basing this there you have you can't Ignore a lot of this, Tim, because it's a lot of bullshit in the sense that, like, anyone who actually listened to the video knew that, like, I was not impressed at all with what I've seen to the game and that I think it's a waste and all this kind of stuff. So people that were, when you read a lot of the comments, you can just really tell who, who actually watched. Saw the headline clicked on it. So, like, so just, you know, like, don't let them change. I'm not basing that just off the Star Wars thing. I'm basing it also off all of the, this has been an ongoing process.

Yeah, it is, but you have to understand this is, you know, it's a small group of people complaining about things. And, you know, I'm just. saying you got to kind of take it in the context. Title this one, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Game of the Year, Nip Slip Free iPhone. I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just saying, I'm letting you guys know that I do pay

attention to this stuff and like, I get it. But yeah, it's one of those things of just like, it's, again, when I title it, why you should play this. Yeah, you were talking down about it. We were also talking about what we did like about. I'm not saying it's a perfect game. And that's why we're not saying review because we're not like, it's just saying

here's the things we like about these games. but well I think what I'm saying is that it's there is a balanced discussion about it the comments I think were like completely out of control on that video and we're quite indicative of a group of people that didn't watch the video and I'm sure the analytics will play that out too so so I'm just throwing that out there because I was quite disappointed actually with the response on that video just in the sense of like what's wrong with everybody

like why can't first of all why can't you embrace a game that you like why does it why does it have to be so cool to hate a certain game I think battlefront's super underwhelming from a, you know, that's why I've not messed around with it in the sense that it's, I want to play a campaign, I want to do all these things, but I don't care if people enjoy it. It's the same thing. Like, I'll shit on Clash of Clans all day, but if you enjoy the game, you know, whatever you want to do is fine with me. I just don't understand why people get get off on, well, someone likes this game, therefore thumbs down, therefore angry comment, and therefore paid off. Yeah, EA totally paid us for that battlefront, uh, that battlefront video

in which I told, I said it was a half-baked casual game that is missing all these things that I want. Yeah, they were, they really got some bang for their buck on that video. Yeah. We'll see the real trick is they paid us all to argue about if Dead Space 1 or 2 is better. They drum it back up. Yeah. So that people buy Dead Space 3 get it through that $6 million mark, make a Dead Space 4. Oh, my God.

So there's lots of layers to this, but Tomb Raider. I played and beat Rise of the Tomb Raider. Really enjoyed it. Here, at the end of it now, now that credits have rolled and everything else, I feel like it is very much the same deal with the original Tomb Raider game. You know, reboot. You know what I'm saying here? The PS4.

Yeah. Xbox one. No, that would be definitive edition. It's so confusing. The goddamn Camilla Ludington, Tomb Raider. PS3, Xbox 360, and then PS4 and Xbox one. Amazing gameplay. Totally awesome.

Has it hooks in you. Has it hooks in you. Forgetable story. Why am I moving? That was my thing with your last Tomb Raider, right? Of like, people are dying and getting picked off and da-da-da-da-da. It's like, why do I care about any of these guys? Like, who are these people?

You know what I mean? And then you jump into this game. And from the get-go, you're with a guy, or not from the get-go. but in the beginning of the game you're with that guy, right? And you're going through. And it wasn't for a while that I was like, oh, he's from the last game. I don't really, I don't, I assume, okay, sure, whatever.

He's from the last game. You know what I mean? I played in love with the last game and don't remember this dude. And I have a feeling, like, right now if you're asking me, how does this, what happens in the first Tomb Raider, right? They get stranded, the island's all fucked up. And there's like a ghost at the end that does something. I don't recall what her deal was, but there's a ghost that does something.

Am I wrong? You know it for you get to the end and there's a ghost or whatever and you put her back in her trap and everybody's happy Yeah, I don't like I'm okay, whatever and I have a feeling if you ask me a year from now what this Tomb Raider is I'll be able to give you more of like well, it was this guy that and it was this like I can give you all of that But they're doing this whole thing where they was like there's like this overarching group of bad guys organization that's clearly going to be the next game and it's like I just like exploring shit you know I mean like the best parts of and that like that all sounded a little bit negative I know the best parts of of the Tomb Raider are just exploring and hunting and upgrading and going. Combat isn't its strong suit, I don't feel like, and they don't shove it down your throat until the end.

At the end, they do the traditional video game bullshit of like, all right, you just got to get up this one last peak. So you're going to go down this linear hallway and there'll be three waves of increasingly harder enemies. Then you'll get here. There'll be a boss fight where harder enemy is just like, all right, guys. This is not why I like this game. You know what I mean?

Everything up until here has been fantastic. I'm, you know, the biggest, like, disappointment for me, and this is just, this is one of those things of this is a meta disappointment, right? Is the fact that it's not on PS4 because this is a game I would have platinum. I don't care. I don't know what my achievement score is. I don't, that doesn't do anything for me, right? So I'm not going to 1,000% this.

If this was a PS4 game, now that I've beaten it and rolled credits, I would totally go back, find the other tombs, upgrade all my weapons, da, da, da, da, da, da, that's just a great thing. That's a Greg Miller block, not a knock against the game block. You know what I mean? So if you're into that, that's great. But the way it ends then, it does end for me with that, like, bad taste in my mouth. I'm like, ah, that helicopter fight, that was kind of frustrating.

Like, why was it like that? And why did this happen? But that aside, that tiny little bit at the end, everything else is so much fun to go do. You know what I mean? It's exactly what I loved about Tomb Raider expanded in the, all right, cool. I've killed this thing. And I've got this pelt. So now I'm going to do this.

And then, oh, I'm so much closer to getting. More arrows. I just have to go out and find this exotic beast and do this, that, and the other. And it's fun. It's great. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, my favorite thing about it is that it's more uncharted style gameplay.

And I don't think that enough games do that. And it's especially not well. You know, like we got third person action games and shooter games. But like, that's kind of its own mini genre where it's like this linear-ish story-based, like thing where every single moment the character looks like it's about to die. Like, it's never just like things are slightly. adventure as they say yeah exactly it's just like they're they jump across the cliff and the mountain behind them of course they're gonna fall and yeah it's like down and that it's that moment to moment like pulse pounding there is no sense of pacing it is just go go go go go go go go

go and like I love that I like that it is more and I feel like um you can't take those comparisons too far though because they are different games yeah it's not like you can because I've seen a lot of people like saying oh this is better uncharted and it's like it's way different than it's You know what I mean? That's the thing of like I, like I'm saying, my favorite parts are like when you get to a new base camp and you're going through and unlocking these areas. And then, you know, it was like an RPG where there's the side quests around you, right? Like here's my main objective, but this guy's giving me something. So I'm going to do that.

And now this has opened up these new points of interest. So I'm going to go do it. And like they did this thing where it was like I was 100% in each, the first three or four areas before I was like, okay, let's, I'm on a roll now of this story where I'm just like, nope, I'm here. great. Let's get everything here. And that's not uncharted. You know, the uncharted is point A to B to C to D. Yeah. I mean, I personally enjoy that type of gameplay a bit more. Yeah. It's more my pacing and style. But you can ignore that. Oh, yeah, no, for sure. And that's the cool thing. I remember in Uncharted too, there's the moment we get to the village. I thought it was going to start doing that. Yeah. I thought we were going to get things. I'm happy. Didn't. Excuse me, sir.

Can you find more of my chickens? I got to get out of here. But the game is beautiful. Like that's something that I'm just like, I'm like, it's like, holy shit. They are pushing things. with this and it's very much. But what's weird for me and Colin pointed out too, so I'm not crazy, is the fact that the game is beautiful and it's moment to moment gameplay stunning. The cutscenes don't run well. The cutscenes pop up and they're like framey and like the, they're not done in engine, which is weird.

You know what I mean? And like if you watch The Last of Us or something, like you see just the same models moving in and out. So it's fine. Whereas here they try to do more in the cut scenes which make it look worse overall, which is a really weird thing. I didn't really notice that. But I mean, thinking about it, that does.

Like next time you're in a cut scene, just watch the way they move and animate. Unless it's my Xbox dying, it's framing. I mean, no, it's one of those things that didn't stand out to me. Sure. But when you say that, I'm like, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The one thing that I really, really dug in, and I imagine this is a design choice that they were behind and understood at Crystal Dynamics is that in Tomb Raider, you start this thing. Laura wasn't meant for this life.

This wasn't what she was out to set to do and kill people, right? So she is like scared, cowering, a little bit, you know, shaking, you know, shaking, all this different stuff. That is non-existent in this game. Like she is for, oh yeah, yeah, right. I survived the island with the fucking weird ghost. Yeah. I'm out to fucking murder people if I have to.

You know what I mean? And that's where like I like, I like the combat more in this one because I felt like up until the end, there was a lot less uncharted gameplay of slammed up against a rock shooting people. It was like, I'm moving to an area and if I want, I can go in guns blazing or I can really be stealthy. And I was stealthy every time and I'd go through and choke people out and kill them and, you know, poison grenade or arrow people and all this different stuff.

It was like, I felt powerful. I felt like I was, they were in my world now. And even later on in the story, there's a, you over here a conversation. If I don't, it's not like part of the story. You know how if you listen to guards and let them talk. You overhear a conversation of like, there's this one guard and they're like, this is your first time working on one of these operations? And he's like, no, I was actually on this island a while back where the croft woman was.

And I don't know how she got out of that alive. And it's like, yeah, right. Fuck, I have history. You know what I mean? Like, these people should be scared of me. Well, what's cool about that is, and I got this feeling, but you're talking about the secret organization or whatever, like, really drives at home where the franchise now kind of reminds me at James Bond, where it's the Daniel Craig James Bond movies, where it's like,

you're not really expected to know what happened in the previous one. They'll tell you what you need to know. And there is like, oh, there's this bigger thing out there. But it's more just have fun. Just go, like, it's about the character. And it's also similar that Daniel Craig in Casino Real was becoming James Bond in the same way that Laura is becoming Laura Croft. And now this is kind of the more, I wouldn't say quantum of solace, but I would say more like

the skyfall of it. Right. That's cool. Yeah. And that's the one like, it's weird for me that it's like the universe of what I normally think of when I think of a game and character progression where like the game would tell me through the cutscenes and the story that she's getting stronger and da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

And this is what's happening. Whereas now the story is there. But even like your motivations are a bit shaky, I think, where you get to the end and no spoilers. There's no choice to be made, but like Laura has a choice in her cutscene. You know what I mean? Like for her to make. And she makes the one choice.

And it's like, okay, should that affect me more? Should affect me less? I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, I don't really, whatever. Cool, you did what you had to do kind of thing. Whereas, like, I feel like from playing with, playing asser in the game and seeing the way people are afraid of her and how I took her in. and she never, ever was like, oh, my God, what am I going to do?

You know what I mean? There's so many bad guys. It was just like, all right, cool. And just fucking choking people. Yeah. So the tombs were kind of one of the big selling points of this game going into it. Like, do you think that they lived up to the hype and were fun? They were fun, yes.

I guess what's the hype? When people were saying there was going to be tombs in this game, and again, this is the luxury we have, right, where I was radio silent on this. I didn't want to know about it. I'm like, oh, more Tomb Raider, totally in. We went and did two let's plays with them, right? I wasn't on one of them.

And the one we went to, we showed up late. We played a little bit to get the controls, and then we did that one area. And I was like, oh, this is a really cool hub world. Jumping into the tombs, I was expecting them to, like, I feel like when I'm thinking of tombs, like the way I was thinking we were getting into, I was thinking like, Assassin's Creed 2-ish,

where you'd find those secret areas, to go in to get better armor or whatever, and it kind of went on a little bit too long. I always felt like they were fun and it was cool and like I would do that again, clear the map before I went on the mission. I was expecting these to be too long. These are, I thought, really tidbits, they're smaller than I thought they'd be. You know what I mean? Like, I thought these tombs would be something that I'd jump into and be there for 45 minutes

trying to be off on my side. It's not that at all. It's like 20 and you get in there and it's logical where you should go and what you should do. Like I think back to original Tomb Raider and I'm talking about now, you know, fucking really pointy Laura Croft, right? And I remember playing that game and getting to puzzles and be like, what the fuck do they want me to do? That never happened here.

You know what I mean? Which I like. I like the fact of this kind of action game. I mean, it reminds, they remind me of the Prince of Persia games two jans ago. My God. I can't believe they're not last time. Yeah. That trilogy where it's like you enter the room, the camera kind of swoops around

and shows you where you're supposed to go. So it's less of a puzzle and more of like a, here's what you're doing, figure it out. Yeah. And I enjoy that more. And one of my biggest critiques of Unchard is I don't like the puzzles. And I think they're a little too just like they're unnecessarily complicated and way too simple at the same time. Whereas these, I'm like, I like this. It's fun to do.

Exactly. I'll agree with that. Back to your point. Like I don't hate uncharted puzzles. But I do understand what you're talking about where you're like this. You're barreling down a hill. And then there's this hard stop of like, what the fuck do I do here? You know, move these things around, twist that.

And like, this is not bad. This is you walk in. It's like, all right, platform over there to do this thing. Slam that into the ice block. then try to how do I balance the weight here oh okay there's action

to the puzzles if that makes sense but they were fun no like but like for me it was like it totally nails I always talked about it

with the original Tomb Raider the fact that it nails being a video game it's unabashedly a video game you kill something and you get the nuts and bolts and you're like okay whatever I got resources

and I get to build something better same thing here except now I feel like it's even more of a game where you hit the pause button it's like here's all the shit you have to collect here's how much

it you've collected here's where it is if you get that then so like i was walking in and everywhere i'd go every corner i would turn like boom survivor sense and see what glows yellow and then try to go get it and investigate and then come back to base camp like what did i need to build something all right there it is did do you like yeah i thought i think it's you know i i remember when it first got put in the the last tombwriter and it was like one of those things of people like what is that one it was like oh cool and like here it's the same way and i feel like there's more to collect there's more to do it felt like There was more to build out and stuff. My one knock, I guess, is that, like, when I was getting the skill points,

which at the end just come, like, fucking water. Like, I was, like, I'd get to a thing and I had a five ready to put in. When you were doing it, like, tier one and two skill points, I feel like after I put in the first five, I was kind of like, yeah, the rest these suck. You know what I mean? And I didn't really pay attention to the fact that putting more in and would unlock the third one. I wasn't, I was like, whatever, these all suck. I wasn't going down to see what three was, where three is where it's like,

oh, that's really cool. So for anybody at home, getting ready to play this, make sure you go and investigate tier three and then just dump the scale points into whatever you need to get to three on whatever one you want to go to. Because once you did that, I was like, oh, awesome. Now I'm even more badass where I don't even have to aim my arrows. I just pull them up and zoom in and it automatically locks the heads and shit. I was great, okay, cool. Any closing thoughts on it? A lot of fun.

You know what I mean? I, you know, Colin came out early and was watching me play it and stuff. He's like, well, how is? I'm like, it's climbing my list of games. I would say it's in my top 10 for the year for sure. I think it's some people were talking to me online about it after I was like I beat in a game of the year for sure

and I was like an argument could be made I don't think it's mine I think it's definitely in the running for like my favorite games of the year tons of fun with it like I said I think the points I need to give it are the fact that I would have easily sat there

and platinum did it you know what I mean I would have sat there like I did with fallout or like I tried with Metal Gear where I would have come back and done more and more with it like there is more game there than I played and I enjoyed what I played cool second topic of the day

why are games so broken Colin I'm going to let you kind of like lay out the land for this one yeah I think that we've hit a somewhat of a critical mass with the nature of the way games

are being launched and the acceptance in in gaming society is aware that this is kind of the new status quo and this is disturbing to me and it's different than the way games used to be released. Now, games used to be released in a vacuum. If a game was broken in any way,

then a game was broken forever. And there are examples of games, even back on, you know, back a long ways that were fundamentally broken and, and, and, or ways that you could break them fundamentally. And there were clever workarounds to make sure that you were never stuck in a game or anything like that. Mega Man 1 always comes to, to mine in Wiley's Castle. There's a place where you could conceivably get stuck unless you realize you could go back down a ladder and get more energy that you can like then use to try again or whatever. So there's like these little workarounds that make a lot of sense. But now we have games that are just busted in fundamental ways when they're launched.

And it's just becoming concerning to me, especially in conjunction with increasingly unreasonable season passes that are, you know, we're launched in conjunction with games, as well as, you know, the fact that, you know, I keep arguing that games are cheaper than ever and they are, even at $60. They're way cheaper than they used to be in real money. but our game's also not more ambitious yet launched in a more unsavory state almost over and over again. And what reminded me of this was just reading about Just Cause 3 before I even put it in my own machine to play it about how like fucked up it was for a lot of people. Give me a recap. I've seen a lot of tweets about it.

People complaining for me it was the initial load was really long. Yeah, the load times are absurd. The people were just having a lot of technical. I don't know if it was digital founder or something. Just having like significant dips and frame rate like really bad. consistent frame rate, memory, you know, memory leaking and like a lot of different kinds of things that I'm like, like, how can you possibly launch games in the state? It reminds me of Arkham Knight with, on PC. I'm like, how can you possibly release this and not, and expect

anyone to believe that there was no inclination anywhere in your QA team or at your studio that the game was fucking broken, you know? And I think that I don't know if it's the developer's fault as as much as it's the publishers. It's unclear because we're not there. But I just, for every game that's that's, you know, launched and it works fine and there are no patches or no necessarily necessary patches. I think of even a game like Until Dawn works, right? But for every game like that, there's a just cause or there's an Arkham Knight or there's a, like, and I'm like, maybe we're becoming a little too lax as a community with accepting day one patches and accepting games going gold when they aren't ready. And publishers being really beholden and their

developers being really beholden to these release dates. And launching games that are just not in a good state. And it's disturbing to me and it turns me off a little bit now when combined with again the very greedy nature of season passes and the very

kind of suspect nature of like why games aren't delayed more and why there's so much shame in taking a little bit of more time or why a company has to crunch to go gold and then crunch again to get a patch ready for day one. Why is that acceptable to us? Look at

Tony Hawk's a great example of this. The rumor was that they were going to lose their license and they had to get the game out, but people paid for that. And they just launched a 7 gigabyte or something patch for it. I mean, there was the day one 7 gig patch and now there's another 7 gig patch

that has a bunch updates and shit. But that's like, at this point they're just like, what can we give you? So now you can be Ninja Turtles, which is cool. Okay. So to me it's just, it's a bit of a rambling kind of complaint, but I know a lot of people out there probably feel what I'm saying. It's... Everybody does.

We should expect more. And I don't think we're getting quality products anymore on a technical level without, you know, bogging down our hard drives with 20 gigabytes worth of updates for games. And it's just insane to me. And it's not like it's becoming a bigger phenomenon, but it's not necessarily a recent phenomenon. I used to kid around about how you couldn't even fit Killzone on Vita with like an 8 gigabyte memory card or something like that. Like there was so many patch. The patch I think was bigger than the game.

That's true. And I'm like, like, what's going on? Why are we, this wasn't possible back in the day, so it didn't happen. Yeah. Now it's possible and it happens all the time. And I would rather it be the exception to the rule than the rule. And that's what's happening is that, you know, I go through my game sometimes and I just click, you know, the options button and I look at the details. And I was going through my cross media bar or whatever on PS4.

And I was like, the only game on here that doesn't have a patch is Mega Man legacy collection. A series of games released in the 80s and 90s that there's no reason to patch. You know, because they work fine with the exception of the slowdown and stuff. So, but then you go through, like, Witcher and you're like, Jesus Christ, how many updates are going to be on this game or Arkham Knight or or anything like that? And I'm like, ah, just, it's just, it's, it's disappointing to me.

I mean, those are different things, though. You know, like, updates to games aren't bad. It's the, yeah, I was going to say, like, required updates and the, to make it work. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because Witcher stuff was, and I'm sure I'm wrong. I'm sure there's been. Witcher stuff since has been to add things.

They've tweaked combat and the early patches were not for that. Okay. And the early patches for any game are not for that. The early patches for the gamer to be like, fuck, everything's fucked up, everything's fucked up. But how big were the Witcher patches? I mean, like, they're big. I mean, they're big patches.

Batman, of course, was like for sure, obviously. But size isn't really relevant either. It's the nature, like, why can't we expect that, why can't we expect that a game is going to work when it launches? Unless it's a problem. Yeah, Nintendo, Nintendo is the one, you know, we've brought. up other end before and which was the only game that really bit him in the ass during the patchless period um but they can even patch but they can patch their games now and and there there's

just seems to be not a lot of attention paid to um i don't want to say quality because i don't know if that's necessarily it these games are fun it's just that there's not a there's not a lot of attention paid to like finishing the game you know like it's like what state can the game get in let's get it on a disc and then you put it on your machine and then PSN or Xbox Live will send essential updates to your machine that should have just been on the disc to begin with. And I used to kind of fight against this. I really come around on a lot of this stuff

at watching the nature of the evolution of the industry where back in the day I'm like day one DLCs, I still don't have a problem with DLC per se, but day one DLC is not a big deal. Season passes, don't buy them if you don't like him and stuff. But now you see things like with Arkham Nights season pass, which I know Greg likes, but is completely ridiculous to me. And like the passes that are worth

more than the game and like a game like Battlefront getting all this content like that you have to pay extra for when the disc is kind of barren and I'm like, you know, I understand why people are upset and it's starting upset me and I don't even fucking play half these games. So, I just wanted to bring that up. Yeah. I mean, so, like, what are the big perpetrators of this? Obviously, we have Assassin's Creed.

What was it called? Syndicate. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, unity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was Unity. There was... So you're talking about what are broken games? Yeah, like, what are the big ones? Because, like, we got Tony Hawk, we got... PC Batman? PC Batman. And then now we're hearing about Just Cause. But is the Just Cause in that same...

same realm as all those other ones? Because those sounded bad. This just sounds like there's technical problems here and there. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've not, I mean, I heard that the game was in pretty bad shape on consoles. It was fine. Yeah, it was fine on PC, but I heard the game was in pretty bad shape on consoles. I think that, well, you're naming the perpetrators and their big perpetrator.

Drive Club was fucking busted. Yeah. You know what I mean? Busted. Just totally busted. Master Chief Collection busted. Did not work. And then people run to the,

the stores and buy 3-4-3's next game or we're going to buy Evolution's next game and not remember that Evolution got another year to work on Drive Club was supposed to be a PS4 launch game they released it a year later and the game was fucking broken and everyone's like well, video games

and I'm like no no no like we should expect way more because when Naughty Dog releases on Charter 4 I bet you it's going to work I mean that's one of the studios that I think is going to release a game or Gears 4 I have confidence that maybe this game is going to be fine on its own But for every one of these games, you get, I just, I understand the fatigue out there about this issue because I think that it's, it's a little bit of stressing.

We grew up. We're not young, you know, and we grew up in an era where games had to work. And they might not have been as ambitious. Some of them were. Like Grand Deft Auto 3 is an ambitious game on PS2. We came out in 2001 and it fucking worked. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's the interesting thing is it's like you're bringing up the ambition.

Like, a game like just cause 3. I'm willing to, to an extent, like, be like, all right, there's going to. to be some technical problems and stuff because that gets fucking crazy. It's like you can do whatever the fuck you want and attach this to this and tether things and blow shit up and whatever. It's like, all right, as long as it works and like, well, I'm into it. But it's like that only goes so far, you know, and like for these games where it's just straight up doesn't work.

That's not good. No, I do think that we're just starting to find that we're starting to find ourselves in between a rock and a hard place. I think with publishers where the expectation is that we're just going to deal with it. Real quick now, to your point where you're talking about, you know, people rushing to buy 3-4-3's game, da-da-da-da. We did see Assassin's Creed syndicate dip this year on day one, and people did attribute that to the fact that Unity was so fucked up

that people wanted to see what happened here. We did in Halo's numbers dip too. The, you know, to the point where GameStop in their financials said how, like, Halo 5 sales and Battlefront sales, I think, were unimpressive or like didn't reach expectations. So people are starting to learn, but it doesn't, it's, it's, these are little, like, dense in the armor, right? Sure.

They're not, 3-4-3's game was profitable, and I don't wish anything against 3-4-3. it was just an example of, or Assassin's Creed, where it's just an example of like, are we rushing games? Are we expecting too many games too soon? Are we, it's not the gamer's fault. That's the only thing that I know for sure is it's not the gamer's fault because they've been trained to expect an Assassin's Creed every year.

They've been trained to expect that they're going to get a Halo game that really works. They've been trained to expect what dice really botched their last game. But this is a great example. But battlefield, the last battlefield was fucking broken too. Yeah. And for some people, it was broken like in perpetuity. You know, I remember people talking about that like that. It's not fixed for some people at the time that I was still bitching about it, which was a while ago. But there's a short memory in the industry that I think we have to buck.

And I think that the gamer has to understand that they, they deserve and are worth more than continuing to give $60 to publishers that release these games in half-ass states. And then just patch and patch and patch and patch until the game works. And I start to understand the kind of the mentality on Neo Gaffin in some places where it's like, I'll just wait to look at. the game's $20 or $30. Like, fuck this shit. You know? And like, that's our mentality with a lot of people

where they don't buy anything. Wait for the game in the year. They literally don't buy shit when it comes out. And I'm like, man, how can you resist playing, blah, blah, blah? But then you understand,

well, when you play a game like Fallout 4, which you should expect is going to have a lot of problems because that's kind of Bethes MO and like their game is huge and there's a lot of different ways it can break and all that kind of stuff.

And I don't really hold that against them because I do think their games are quite ambitious. I think that they're kind of the exception to the rule. you can't really blame a person for saying like well everyone that bought fallout for the five million people that bought it day one or whatever you are all the QA testers I'm going to sit back and wait three months I'll buy the game for half the price you paid for it it's going to work a lot better than you paid it then when you played it makes a lot of sense um so just cause was one of those games that just cause that up in me where I was like you know just reading about it I haven't played the game nearly enough to have to have to have experienced anything myself but when people are complaining like when there's explosions and a lot of shit going on on the screen which is what just cause is all about and then the game just halts, you know? I'm like, well, that's a fucking

problem, isn't it? Yeah. So, I just wanted to bring that up. It was something I approached you about it because I know a lot of our viewers out there are really quite passionate about this as well. And I think that it's like putting weight, it's like encumbering someone over and over again with a lot of bullshit.

Well, yeah, the season past kind of sucks, but you'll buy it. And like, yeah, the game doesn't really work very well, but, you know, give us like a couple months and we'll fix it for you maybe. And oh this game ate your save well you know sorry about that and oh you know this game runs at 15 frames a second sometimes well my apologies for that and oh the servers are down for a month on this game well you know we tried our best we did our you know two week before launch beta um to

try things out it's just like after a while just i look around i'm like you know what fuck this you know like like i'm becoming one of those guys where i'm like you know like almost like very Jim Sterling, like, I have a lot of respect for because you've been saying this shit for a long time. Do you think that it's online has made things worse rather than better? Because what you're talking about with like saves getting eaten stuff, like that's not new. I remember when Killzone 2 would fucking reset for no reason. I was almost general. It's a personal warrior within. Right. It's, fuck. No, there were problems with the first Metal Gear, if I remember correctly too. There like there, there are games that you could fundamentally break back in the day. Absolutely.

And the internet allows those things to be patched and fixed. They have a metal gear five, Metal Gear Solid 5 where there were ways to break the game They had a really patching. We were talking about other M where like you had to send You had to send your memory card for your Wii Into Nintendo like that or for your Wii in Nintendo so they can fix it I'm like well that's not the ideal solution either Has it made it worse? No

Because the internet is a great thing It's a great disseminator of information it's a great fixer of problems The question becomes like when is a game really done? Is a game always released now in beta? Is a game always now just launched and we have expectations that it will be broken. Why can't we put a game in that's supposed to run at 60 frames a second and it just runs at 60 frames a second and the online just works? I refuse to believe that these problems are as complicated as they seem. Like I, we don't develop games and we have a lot of game developers that are out there.

And I've talked to people about like, well, let me talk to you about why we patch and bubble bottom. I'm like, I fucking know why you patch. The question is why is the first patch you release not a massive update to the game, but a patch that makes the game work? No. Do you think, I mean, from an outside of perspective, right, it's got to be from publishers. It's got to be that there are millions of dollars and invested in this PR and this date and now you got to hit it. That's why you can't delay it, right? It was easier. I feel bad for them. I feel bad for, I feel bad for devs. We know a lot of them and they crunch and they work really hard and they don't see their fucking families. We know people that have gotten divorced because of

their jobs. We know people that have, you know, had family problems because of their jobs and all sorts of things. Like they put it all on the line. It's not their fault. I do think it is the publisher's fault, but there has to be an expectation that, that, you know, literally the only thing that these companies care about is money, that's it. I'm sorry, and that's fine, and that's capitalism, and that's the way the market works. No one's making a game for altruistic reasons. They don't care about, you know,

hurt feelings if you're going to buy the next game. You know what I mean? And I think that this is what I said about Mass Effect 3 and why Andromeda is going to be this big hit, because everyone's going to forget, you know? Everyone that was on their high horse about Mass Effect 3 and how bad it was will buy that next fucking Mass Effect game is sure as shit. You know, and

it's because we don't have the fortitude. I don't have it. You don't have it. You don't have it. don't have it. You know, a lot of people out there don't have it. Like, where it's, it's a company like really fucks you and they release a bad product and you see the name, like with Arkham Night, you bought Arkham Night on PC, right? WB. And then a few months later, Mad Max comes out, which is a great game and I'm a game that actually works pretty well, in my opinion. And you see WB on it again. You're like, well, I'll buy it. You know, it's just as an example. So I think that we just have to look at, we have to find a new way to look at the industry and

look at the way the games are being released and demand more because it's becoming a bit of a joke in my mind. The exception of the rule is now when a game works. Yeah, that's a bad place to be in. That is the straw that broke the camels back for me. When I look around and I'm like, okay, all these big releases launched and maybe half of them don't work right. And that's not good. That's just not good for the industry. It's not good for for gamers. It's not good for the platform holders. It's not good for the developers. But if the status quo is remained and the money keeps full, it's just not good for gamers. But if the status quo is remained and the money keeps flowing in,

then you just get the same shit over and over again. And maybe, and maybe syndicate selling poorly, or not poorly, but selling worse than Unity, we'll send a message like, maybe we don't need an Assassin's Creed game next year. Oh,

that won't happen. Why don't you relax? It's the same thing with Watchdogs. Watchdogs was in a bad shape, right? Like Watchdogs launched it. It was underwhelming to a lot of people. I played it for a few hours and I'm like, I'm done.

And maybe that, that was definitely sound to Uber where I was like, let's go dark again. We don't need, you know, I'm sure that they want to, to watchdogs two out way quicker. You know? Yeah.

So there are signals in the ether, as it were, but I still think that we need to demand more. And people, and this is where I think the indie games and the salvation that a lot of these games kind of give gamers that really like playing games, because a lot of these games do work. Yeah, but that's like the opposite side of the spectrum, right? Where how many indie games do we know that have been talked about for years and just don't come out? Because now they don't have anybody on their back to make it in the day.

And I'm not saying that's better or worse, whatever. I'm just saying they have the opposite problem, right? Where Jonathan Blow and the witness are like, it'll be done when it's done and it just keeps going. Yeah, I mean, where the fuck is Bastion Vita? God damn it. Yeah, I mean, there's a point to be made there, and I think you have a good point.

But I also think that I don't have a concern that when bashing comes to Vita, that it's not going to work. Sure, no, I'm with you. Orge comes to Vita or volume comes to Vita that these games aren't going to work. And I think that we just, and there are developers that launch games from big publishers, like House Mark's games work.

I'm not saying that these are as ambitious as a naughty dog game or a 3-4-3 game or an IDOS game. Be fair and set the record straight. Dead Nation did not work either time when it came out with for us. That's true. I'm just,

and I'm not, that was a, that was a, that was a, that was a, that was a game-breaking, game-breaking bug in both of those games. If you had a maxed out friends list.

Much like Tetris Ultimate at the moment. We should be, we should be fundamental in the QA packages to these companies. I don't know why, why they don't test these things. Like, or test units that that just occupies your friends list.

Nonetheless, yeah, it's just a little bit of a rant. I wanted to have a little bit of a rant. I like it. You're allowed to do that. Big fan of that. Because I just,

I feel, I feel a fatigue amongst our people that's growing and growing and growing. And it's hitting critical mass, I think, with a lot of people.

And I certainly have observed it. I'm certainly feeling it myself as someone who just, it's like I feel like we talk about the Second Amendment sometimes, right? And they're like, why you so passionate about the second amendment? And I'm like, I don't know.

I don't even own a gun. I just feel like I feel like I can look at this from an outside perspective and give you some insight onto it. And it's the same thing with this. It's like, well, why do you care about Arkham Night? Why do you care about the Arkham Night season pass? You played the fucking game and you're going to play it again. I'm like, because I feel for you. You know?

And so it's a similar thing where I'm just observing a lot of this stuff from the outside. And I'm like, well, this doesn't seem right to me. It doesn't seem like people are being taken care of anymore the way they used to be. and you can understand why a lot of people are just upset at publishers all the time and why I kind of respect when a game like DeiSX or Mirzette or I think it was Mearset where these games are delayed. Sometimes indefinitely, you know, but like J.SX's getting a six-month delay means that that game might have been, there might have been something wrong with it, you know,

and they know that they can identify that a patch is not going to fix it. And I wish that if we came to uncharted is going to come out apparently in March, I don't believe it. If they get to like mid-February and they're like, listen, like we really can't hit the date. Like, have the, they can get away with it, I'm sure. But everyone needs to have the courage to say, like, the financial courage and the fortitude to say, like, it's not ready to go.

And so I just wanted to talk about that real quick, but I don't know if it makes sense anyone out there. Oh, it does. It makes a lot of sense. I feel for you guys, because I'm feeling it too. My only concern sometimes is that you amplify it. You know what I mean? You talk about people not having the fortitude to boycott Andromica. Andromica.

How you doing? Let's go to Andronicos. the next mass effect, right? Because they were so mad about three. But then I think it could also sway the other way that it's just like the outrage over three is really just internet hyperbole. You know what I mean?

Like you talk about nobody having the fortitude, right? I didn't buy a dreamcast. I was like, I'm finally done after the Saturn, right? Like those situations do happen. And granted, that was a different time. But there is so much. Well, that was me with the Wii. Yeah.

There is so much hyperbole on the internet. Sure. I don't, I sometimes worry that when you're like, I feel you, I hear you. It is just the people who are saying it to say it because either everything is the best thing ever It's the worst thing ever because that's the internet Yeah, there's a little gray area

But that's a little different That example and I think you're right That example, it's the same thing I did with Nintendo You did with Dreamcast, I did by a Dreamcast 999 But I don't regret a minute of it But I didn't have I didn't have the Saturn Which was abysmal

So yeah, you're right in that sense But I admit fully that I don't have The fortitude either So it's a problem that is endemic to all of us, I think, as consumers of video games, as video games isn't a passive thing. It's a, it's a, it's someone, something that someone does with money. You buy, buy, buy, buy, and you play, and you play, play, and you buy, bye, buy again. And that's the way it goes. That's the cycle of any market like this, any entertainment market. And so when I was really

mad at Capcom for canceling Legends 3, which, or really more Mega Man universe and other these games. Well, I bought Mega Man Legacy Collection. You know, I was all over that fucking game. Because I was excited about it. So I get it. But does that show, yeah, but does that show then, like, what your anger or outrage was, right? There's checks and balances. I, you know what I mean? Like, I think of, like, the scales. And so they,

yeah, you're mad at Capcom. How do you express that? You know what I mean? Is it a letter to them? Is it boycott in the game? And then it really comes down to how angry you are. Well, it reminds me of a pool. It reminds me of what's necessary for big political lifts, right? You need to hold hands at some. point and sacrifice something you love or something that you care about in order to affect change. And it's hard to do that.

It's really hard to do that. I'm not saying what I'm not saying what I'm talking about is a heavy political lift. We don't see many of those anymore because, you know, we don't have politicians with any balls. But what I am saying is that for us to make change, we have to look in ourselves and be like, well, maybe we are the part of the problem too. And that to affect change requires broad consensus about how to move forward in terms of dealing with games that are broken and dealing with publishers that you can't trust or dealing with developers that just don't release good games. But we are inherently selfish with our own desires to play.

And so it conflicts with the political will, as it were, to make those changes. And I'm as guilty as anyone. You know, but I'm just, but I'm making an observation that I think is quite prescient about where we are right now. And I hope people out there like it resonates with some people out there. Because I agree with you like, yeah, the mass effect example might be a small minority, but it's not a small minority of people that are going to put just cause in according to, you know, whatever videos I saw and whatever chatter is going on and are not going to have problems.

But will they remember that? Yeah, that's the question. Ladies and gentlemen, that topic brought to you by tipsy. Elvis. Kevin, I need some props. Can you get me the props? Kevin was super prepared for this. So tipsy elves is- I'm not a lot of insult to you? Get out of here, you sticky bandit. I asked him about it. Yeah, and he said, yes, I do. No, he did. I don't fucking, I have no clue. No, I said I need them to show not to wear.

Anyways, so this right here, Christmas holiday sweaters. They're awesome. This one, Greg Miller's. That's mine. Yes. We got the baller Santa slash... What is it? What's going on down there? Centaur. We got...

Oh, okay. Mine. The beautiful deers making that sweet, sweet sex. Making that sweet, sweet sex. We got Colin Moriarty's Gingerbread Man, Ninja Turtles. Big fan. Big fan.

And, of course, we got my personal favorite, Nick Scarpinos, Felice Navi Dog. it's a dog. Now Colin, can you tell me what this is? Shark Tank. And who is on Shark Tank?

The people that made these sweaters? Yeah. I couldn't believe it. I was back in Chicago watching Shark Tank and Tipsy elves came out. I was like, what the hell? That's what's really cool. So they were on Shark Tank and it was successful and all that. So here they are now sending us sweaters and stuff.

If you guys are looking for Christmas and holiday sweaters, not even just Christmas, holiday sweaters. They also have like college apparel and all that stuff. and they have a bunch of official merchandise from that new movie with Seth Rogen that's coming out the night before yeah night before I think yeah pretty funny funny sweaters and all that stuff you should definitely check it out

go to tipsy elves.com and entercode kind of funny games to get 20% off site wide pretty cool they also have college things yeah a lot of kids have been sending me Missou they have a Mazoo Center like damn yeah they have a bunch of weird stuff what are you gonna say Tim just said that but I didn't say a Mizzou sweatshirt. That's what I want

to point out. They do. They do have a Mizzu sweatshirts. They also have onesies. They have really cool onesies. Are you going to get a onesies? I was talking about onesies. So you said holiday, do, do they have anything for my Jewish friends out there? They do. They actually I would love, I would love like a star David or a menorah. They had those on chart tank. Yeah.

I would love to get it. It's like, it's a badass. It's a big ass star on it. I like, I like to rep Israel. Yeah. Cool. Again, guys. That's my tipsyels.com.com and use the code. Kind of funny games to get 20% off sitewide. All right. Third topic of the day.

We get a lot of questions about this. And I actually personally want to know your guys' thoughts on this. How to professionally review games? Because a lot of people out there, you know, they have their thoughts on how games are reviewed and this or that. And everyone has their own. There's not a right or wrong answer to any of this. It is all just its opinion. That's what the point of this is.

But you guys professionally reviewed games. Right. How did you go about it? What's the difference between how you feel about it versus somewhere like an IGN? How has that changed over the years? How do you review games that are consistently like online worlds and all that stuff? How has that changed? It's constantly changing.

And that's the problem. Not the problem, but for this question and why people get so offended about it. I feel like to go back to it for me, there was a moment in time at IGN where we had been on the 100 point scale, which meant, you know, your 7.1, you're 7.2, you're 7.2. We moved to the 20 point scale, which meant 7.0, 7.5, 8, so on. And then we decided to, and I say IGN decided to move back to the 100 point scale. And I fought valiantly in my own mind to not have that happen. And my problem was, and this is where I think we get down to the problem with video game reviews,

is the fact that the 100 point scale to me meant that this was scientific, that this was, there was a rubric that we all did and you'd sit down and you'd put in these numbers here there and you'd come to this score. You know what I mean? Whereas I always thought the 20-point scale, now known as the Orioration scale, was better because it would be like, this game's a 7.0, this game's a 7.5,

and you can then put those into buckets and then argue about why this 7-5 is better than this 7-5 or da-da-da, if that's what you want to do, which is fucking weird, but that's what the internet wants to do, right? But for me, when I first started at IGN and it was 100-point scale, right? I, there's a distinct,

I hope I don't fuck this out, I don't think I will. there's a distinct sect where, okay, yeah, I reviewed Uncharted, Drake's Fortune, gave it a 9. I reviewed Infamous and gave it a 9-1, and then I reviewed Arkham Asylum, and I think gave it a 9-2 or a 9-3. But I think, for sake of argument, 9-2, right?

And the way I came to those scores was, I thought these games were amazing, and I think Infamous was a little bit better than Uncharted 1, and Batman was better than both. That was how I did it. Now, that didn't cross over to Eric Brutvig, when he was reviewing, he wasn't paying any attention to what I did as far as the points, whatever. Damon Hatfield's on the record is only ever giving point zeros or point fives.

You know what I mean? Like that was like this thing that you went through and did. And it was just how you came down to it. Because it was, I mean, like, of course you talk about like night and day differences where IGN is now, or at least when we left IGN. God only knows what they're doing now versus where it was when I started. Because I always tell the story of when I first started, wrote my first review, finished it, walked over to Roper.

And I was like, hey, Roper. my reviews done. He goes, all right, publish it. And I was like, do you want to read it? Is there a proof? Is there a copy editor? And he's like, no, I just put it up. I'm sure you read it.

And I was like, oh, fucking Jesus. Coming out of a newspaper where everything was like, you know, it was like four gatekeepers before anything even got remotely to the front page. It was like crazy. And IG, not that way anymore, right? Dan Stapleton now in charge of reviews, at least when we left, he still is. But when we left, you know, it went to him. This one happened.

So that's the thing is like. Like, we were at IGN long enough to see it change, change, and change. And then by the time Colin and I were getting ready to leave, right, I feel like we were so done with scores. And so, because like for me, the way I scored games was I'd finish a game. And in the beginning, I would take notes here and there or whatever, blah, blah. And then I found myself never referencing the notes. And so I would, I stopped doing that.

And so I would review games and sit down. And what, I would sit there and go, all right, what was the best moment? It was the most important thing. What's my takeaway and then start the review there and go down? You know what I mean? What's the big thing? What's my big idea about this review and go from there and tell you that thing? And so, you know, as we, that evolved and everything else.

And I feel like it was more embraced at the company to talk about what your opinion is. You know what I mean? This, that, and the other. You started getting it where I wasn't telling you how many multiplayer maps were in it or how many characters were supported or da-da-da-da-da-da. And there'd be comments asking for that. And it was always like, I get that, but there's 12 other. reviews out there right now at embargo they're telling you that you know what i mean like i'm gonna go in

this direction and do that and sometimes it was well received and sometimes it was dead space too and that's how it was you know what i mean and it's this interesting point of it i guess convergence right now i feel like where as we were breaking away and then broke away right like i think everyone was starting to wrap their head around what a personality was and how this works and what is a critic and how this you know, da-da-da-da. And so now people watch our reviews, right? And like, well, when we put something up, like my Metal Gear review, and it's just me rant to get the camera for 30 minutes, no score or anything. And they're okay with that because they finally understand that they can go elsewhere and do it. And for me, it's just, again, the industry and us as fans aging, right? And the

fact that now when I got to IGN, right, my examples for reviews were EGM and there are multiple opinions, IGN, GameSpot, GamePro, and Fun Factor. And like, you know what I mean? It was numbers, whereas now so much of its video that it is opinions. So I think we're in a better spot. It's evolved to that point. And I think people get it in a way that like, cool. Greg and Colin won't agree about every game. But I know that I'm more in Collins can't because he likes games, X, Y, and Z.

But I know I agreed with Greg about action, adventure games. You know what I mean? Like you can take that kind of information away from it, if that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. That was ranting. Sorry. That was great.

Colin. I think one of the things that Greg didn't touch on, because I think we have a lot of us same opinions. on this. I mean, first of all, review scores are fucking stupid. I want to, I just want to reiterate that. Numbering reviews is fucking stupid. And I, and I don't understand why anyone does it. And I don't understand why anyone would like it or why they would want it. The problem with it is that reviews need to be read through the lens of subjectivity. And when there's no cross-referencing of, of scales between outlets, the numbers become meaningless. That Metacritic becomes meaningless. when Giant Bomb gives something three stars, that isn't a six. You know what I mean? And that's not a six on IGN. And so when you like fuse all these numbers,

you're like, well, blah, blah, blah, blah, gave this game a seven and blah, blah, blah, gave this game an eight. I'm like, they might actually feel the guy that gave the game an eight might even fucking like the game less than the guy that gave it a seven. You know, like Eurogamer, for instance, is like notorious for really low scores. But their scoring rubric seems to be way more reasonable.

When they give a game a six, it doesn't mean they hate it. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's something we always worried about at IGN right or people would be that you weren't we weren't exploring the scale you know what I mean that everything was seven five or above and yeah then eventually eights or whatever and like I remember when Dan came in he's like I want nines to be harder to obtain let's talk about what that means and stuff

like that but yeah if you gave a IG in a game of five that didn't mean it's average it's run of the mill like the word was met and like for me that was always the thing I didn't like the scores so I would sit there and go what did I think of this game I did I think it was outstanding amazing good you know what I met all these different things But like, yeah, saying a game is men, it's a five means, oh my God, it's so close to being bad. You know what I mean? It's like, well, it's also close to being good. Like, you're now, we're boiling it down to where it's like, that's too easy.

That scales too small. Yeah, I think that it's just the only thing you can take away from reviews is what's said in the review itself. Like, the wording is so important. And the way people, there's no objective way to review a game because I always say gameplay is king and I mean it. I fucking mean it. You know what I mean? Unless there's something radically different about a specific game, like journey or something like that. The way the game feels to play, that's why we play games.

And that's always most important to me. Greg might not agree. In fact, like Greg might look at the last of us, which I gave a 10 to because of how it played and its narrative. And Greg might give it a 10 because of his narrative and then it's gameplay. And those are two different reviews, even though they came to the same arbitrary number. So what I'm saying is that I think that some of the impetus has to be put on the outlets. But some of the impetus also has to be put on the desires of the consumer and the reader and what they want. And we assume that they want scores.

But I don't believe that if we trained their minds to think differently in a less reductive way, that they wouldn't want to just sit there and have something a little more thoughtful put into these reviews. Because ultimately, it does not matter what you say as long as the numbers on the bottom. You can see those metrics pretty easily. Yeah. So like, but that's because that's just what we do. There is no other way to do it. Well, I think people, I don't agree that like if we changed it, that it would change. Like, I think that, you know, like, what we do is changing that and people are coming to us.

But take it out of just video games. People like rating anything, one to ten or one to five or one to 100, whatever it is. Like, grades even, you know, like, you need that. Like, that's the same shit with school. It's like our school's just not going to grade you. Like, that's. Well, no, I mean, because I think that there's, that's different in the sense that it doesn't matter what the other school is doing. You know, I mean?

Like, if you get an, if an 90s and a minus at your school, then that matters in your district. And then maybe when you go to college, it might be a little different. But when you're saying like, okay, what's the metacritic score of a game and the different weights of outlets or whatever? And then you realize, like, you know, when one up used to give scores and they would give letter scores, whatever, then they had to be translated in the numbers. But they were not, they were not equivalent or symmetrical with the intent behind the number or behind the letter all the time. There's just a major problem, I think, with scoring. like the proof should be in the pudding. So read the fucking review.

You know what I mean? That's like what I always say is like you can't possibly know how a person feels just by boiling it down to a number. And I fought for a long time to get rid of scores when we were at IGN. It was a fight that I fought by myself. But it was something that I was like, you know, why don't we buck the trend and try something a little different here? Where we can focus on the content of the review just like we would focus on the content of the game. And you'll find much more enlightening things about a game when you just read, what a person thinks about it.

And there's no score at the end. I would have loved to have been able to review the last lesson. Not put a score on it at all. You know? 10 made the most sense to me for the score. But I would have loved to just wrote, you know, 1,500 words about why this game is so fucking fantastic

and maybe some of its little problems. And then let people make their own decisions because they might see, while Colin really likes the narrative and that's what I'm really playing for. So I'm going to play the last one. And some people might be like, wow, the multiplayer is really surprising.

And I didn't realize that. And how is that reflected in the score? I have no fucking idea, but I don't even care about the content of the campaign. and I want to play the multiplayer. It sounds really good. I just think that a lot of nuance has been lost.

So I think that reviews are in a better place than they've been, just in the sense that it's like an upside down pyramid. Reviews used to be like in gaming press in the 80s, very marketing heavy. Nintendo Power is a great example of that. None of us even knew for years. I mean, it was common knowledge, but as kids, we didn't know Nintendo.

Own Nintendo Power. I mean, it's like... We didn't see the problems with it. Right. We didn't see the problems with it. And frankly, I'm not so sure that there were, major problems with it, right? Like they didn't,

I remember them shitting on games all the time. It wasn't like they, but it was, there was definitely a conflict of interest, but we didn't know. And then it kind of like got out, out and out, and then you got like the unofficial magazines,

right? So you got like, well, you had at EGM and Game Pro and stuff, but PSM was really the first example of a magazine that I was really into, which came out in 97, when I was like,

you know, it was, I think September or August, 1997, their first issue, um, around when Final Fantasy 7 was coming out. And I remember being like, this is an unofficial, totally unabashed,

They can say whatever they want. Yeah, and that's where we go. And then you've got the internet age and all that kind of stuff kind of concurrent to that. And then we've gotten a place where, like, there are shitty fucking reviews out there for like every game. It's like awful reviews. But there are really great reviews, too. I think Jim Sterling is a great reviewer. I think that there are good reviewers at the big outlets.

I think to the point of having a fair, reasonable scoring rubric, I think GameSpot is one of the great outlets that does that. When a game gets a nine everywhere else, they give it a seven. But it's not really reflected. It just as an example, they don't always do that. But it's not really reflected in the, you know, the score that means. something to them to give a game a nine. Maybe that's thrown around a little bit more somewhere else. But this is the problem with reviews and why I like the words matter, not the numbers.

Because the words mean something. Words have fucking definitions. If a game is, you know, runs at 30 frames a second and has a story that lasts 15 hours. Well, that's a fact. If a game gets a nine, well, that doesn't mean anything to me. So that's kind of where I stand on reviewing. But I do think that it's both sides that there are problems with both sides. There's a problem on the, there's a problem on the,

on the, because I agree with you in a sense that people like to score things and stuff, but I don't agree that if people had a different solution, which they don't, that they wouldn't like it better. You just have to give it to them. And it's not really, it's not really been tried. Yeah, I mean, I just think it's one of those things where it's like, not to say that something else isn't better. Because, I mean, I agree with you.

Like, that's why we do things the way we do. It's like, I believe in talking and hearing things. I believe in writing and reading things. You know what I mean? What? I just love that quote. I believe in talking and hearing things. No, but that makes sense.

I know it makes sense. But out of context, it's brilliant. Yeah, okay. Well, in context, it makes sense. I'm not that stupid. It's not that you want. But the number scale, I think that it's not so much better than. It's just that people like that, you know, and it makes sense, like, across the board,

even if you're, you're totally right. Nines are not equal. But to everybody, one to ten means something, you know? So my question going off that to you guys is, did you, when you were reviewing games, how would you let other, like all of this, all the shit that we just talked about affect your score? Like, would you think about what game spot's giving in?

Would you think about what anyone else that I generally do? And that was the whole thing is like, you know, there's a Facebook group for, at least in our day. I think it's still going. Oh, it's still. Yeah, where, yeah, I'm sure. It's top secret.

Yeah, where you can, like, all these reviewers are together, right? And usually it's used for, hey, I'm stuck here. I don't mean to be an idiot. And somebody like, oh, I did this. Or, hey, can we get a multiplayer match? Da-da-da-da.

But like, if I was, reviewing a game, I would avoid that like the plague. I didn't want to know what anybody else thought. I always loved the idea of coming out and seeing what everybody thought it once. To be clear, that that group only really exists for that. Yeah. But I mean, I don't even want it. I don't even want to say mission three is frustrating

me right now. How do I? I don't want to know that. You know what makes sense? I'm not saying it's collusion in there where they're like, I want to go with a nine. What do you go? No, no, yeah. No, that doesn't happen in there. But I've found that group very useful in the past for a couple reasons that have helped people more often than not actually in there as well with like, I think the last game I even helped anyone and it was like Metrico.

So that was a while ago. Yeah. But yeah, it was useful. It's like a way for reviewers to talk to each other without, you know, so they can, because no one out, there's no review. There's no, uh, walkthroughs. No one knows what the fuck's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, so, yeah, I, so I would approach a review, you know, you have to be thorough. You have to be fair. Uh, I was always so shocked about, um, the propensity of some people to not finish a game or not, not necessarily finish a game because I, I've reviewed games that I didn't finish. If I played for like 40 hours or something like that, I'm like, all right, I'm good. but like where people just barely touch a game and then their trophies or their achievements are like you know people have gotten called out for that in the past and that's always shocked me that like you have to give a game to be very fair to be very thorough um you also to be very fair to be very fair amy is a good example amy the lowest score i ever gave a game i gave it a two and uh it's one of the worst games if not the worst game i've ever played it for however many hours i can't get past this one part's it's not fair and my review is about how like i refuse to play anymore of it's fucking game's fucking trash. And I said that, by the way, in a very honest and forthright way to educate the consumer.

And I had an opportunity set up already to interview the developers about the game, and they canceled on me because the review was so fucking harsh. And I did that, even though I knew that I was probably going to piss people up, but I didn't care because my, my loyalty and my job is to inform the reader. I don't really care how the publisher, the developer feels about anything I say, to be perfect honest with you. I still don't, if you haven't noticed. So, so I always approach a review.

a way that's like how can you boil this down into its essence to inform people about the things that are most important about it in the most honest way possible through like your lens that was always what was important to me too everyone's like there's no objectivity in anything people someone can legitimately look at the last one to be like I don't think this is a good looking game and I think they would be crazy but it doesn't mean that they what they have to say is invalid so you have to embrace the subjectivity of a review and go all the way in on that I think I think I think I think I think and that's why it was so frustrating when they don't have to do. want us to speak in first person anymore at one point at IGN.

Like, because, you know, different editors, different review people come in and they change everything around and like, that was hard for me because then it started to be, I didn't, my, I, it's, for me when we talk about right now and like where we're at right now and the fact that you know how Colin feels about this and Greg and this or Jim Sterling, you know to go read their reviews and listen to that. I think back to when I used to read IGN reviews before I worked at IGN and it was, IGN gave this game, whatever it was. And I think that is what, to this day, that's what it is to, majority of people.

And that's so terrifying. You know what I mean? Because how many times do we fight when we were at? How many times do we fight now about what we think of a game? You know what I mean? I can't believe you think that. And I read Mitch's tweets about games. And I'm like,

are you kidding me? That game is not nearly, you know what I mean? But for somebody to think like that's viable truth. That's when I loved the fact of infusing who you are, what it is, how it goes. You know what I mean? My example of that always is naughty bear, right?

Where my opening paragraphs, like, I've only played this game for four hours, but I don't need to play anymore to tell you it's awful. You know what I mean? Like, I'm falling through the world. This happened. But again, it's to the point of that was my thesis for that review, right? Everything you're writing is a persuasive essay.

And I'm telling you my opinion. And sure, you can probably go to this other site. And I'm sure somebody's platinum it, gone through, get done all this stuff. That's not me. I'm telling you what happened with me and why I stopped playing. Nauty. No, naughty. And then those badass motherfuckers earned all my respect when they put out a game of the year edition.

For one of the worst games of the year. What a great idea for your game now. That was one of my greatest stuff. I actually really like that game. with all of its shortcomings, but my favorite thing was busting Greg's balls about it for years that I really loved it.

It became a running joke. Yeah, so I just think that we have to figure out a way to review things better and we have to continue to evolve. Not we necessarily at this company, but just everyone in generally. And then I think also the consumer

has to like look, has to accept that they might have to look at reviews a different way too. Because if we can just be a little more open-minded about what a review is capable of and take them a little more seriously than lo and behold, you're going to get way more out of them.

The more reductive you want to look at a review, the more reductive what you're going to get out of the review is going to be. It's just that's just math. I mean, you know what I mean? It's if you take the time to read 2,000 words about a game you really care about, you are going to get way more out of that review than if you just look at the score and you're not even really sure what the score means. But what if I look at the score and it's starkly different than some other, but somebody else's score, so then I just go attack that person. Yeah, I mean, that sounds great, right? That's the other thing. And I always feel bad about that is we've all been the outlier, like, all of us in the past. I think one of the games that I was the biggest outlier on was that Castlevania 3DS game, which was fucking trash.

And some people, I gave it like an eight and a nine, and I gave it like a four. This game's awful. This is like, this game's like a wannabe symphony of the night with no soul, no, no interesting graphics, no interesting characters, nonsense. Got fucking destroyed for that review by Nintendo fans. But I stood by it. I still stand by it. Mine, I had to look up mine,

the one that I think of all the time, right, is I am alive. Because I am alive. I've played in, where you could just, well, you could just,

the guy will never attack you if you have the gun out. Wasn't that the weird? It was the post-apocalyptic black and white one. Didn't we do a video where it was like, you could like pull the gun out,

the guy will run at you. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You could get into like this AI cycle. It's really funny. And I remember being like this game is bad. It was GDC, I think, right?

It was definitely I was going to a show or something. go live on my phone. I gave it a 4 or 5 if I just looked right on the Metacritic page. It pops up on Google. Yeah, 4.5 out of 10. Went into the tunnel. No service or whatever. Came out, went right to work at GDC.

And like hours later, check my Twitter. And it's just like, bra. Like, are you fucking? And I'm like, what is going on? Like, no one's even played this game. And I looked around like, GameSpot gave it an 8 and all this stuff. And I was like, oh. And then it's just one of those things of like, how awesome is it?

That people can take the same thing and have such different reactions. Yeah. So different to it. But, like, of course, nobody wants that at a time. This is the game we've been excited for, and this is it. I want to be justified in loving this game. Yeah. So even though I don't know anything about it, fuck you.

Yeah. Dan Shue gave Luigi's Mansion a four. I think it was a four. And it broke my heart. Because the other two reviews were higher. And I was like, you're wrong. I didn't play to yet. But I was like, you can't be right about this. Yeah.

You know, we text them right now, tell him. You should be like, dude, why'd you do that to tell? I'd be like, who the fuck's did. It could have been the year of Luigi then. I like this topic a lot. I think there's more. more ways we can look at it, like comparing the different scales and the pros and cons of each one, if we were to go with numbers.

Let us know in the comments what you'd want to hear from like a part two of this or an addendum at some point in the future when we can review that. And this topic brought to you by Draft Kings. Football season marches on and while your season-long fantasy team might be going nowhere fast, every week is a new shot for glory at draftkings.com. Draft Kings is the destination for one-week fantasy football where you can relive the fantasy draft to play for huge prizes each and every week. challenge your friends in a custom league

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com. Bang. He's taken into the house. Mike Kelly shout out. Final topic, as always, brought to you by the Kind of Funny forums. You can go to Kindoffony.com

slash gamescast topic to submit your beautiful, beautiful topics for this beautiful, beautiful show. Your big beautiful kids. Oh, yeah, big beautiful. kids. So, I was going back and forth

in which one we were going to lead off with, but I kind of like this one based on the timing of this. This is from Wars Machine. What's up, dudes? Been a gamer for a long time, but one iconic game I've never played is Final Fantasy 7.

Would this be best played on Vita? I currently have a PS4 slash PS3 slash Vita. Will playing Final Fantasy 7 be enjoyable considering how gaming mechanics are today? So pretty much, what's the best way to play Final Fantasy 7? past you seven. I don't know. I mean, the

PS4 one is imminent, so I don't I don't know that I can write that one off. I think that it's, my prediction will know by the time anyone hears is I think it'll be launched during PSX. Yeah. Available now. But the trophies are live, so it's imminent. So,

with that said, I think the PS1 classic is probably the best way to go and you can play it probably on Vita. I think that that might be the best way to play it, but I don't know if you want to jump the gun on that until you wait and see what the PS4 one's all about. It'll be an identical kind of port, but you can play it on PC, you can play it on PS1 if you want to. There's like a bunch of different ways to play it,

but I don't think you can really go wrong with the PS1 Classic if you don't care about trophies. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that there's a bad version of the game out there. I mean, even the PC one, like, you know, it had its issues back in the day, but they kind of fixed that with stuff. So personally, my favorite was playing on PSP

back in the day and went with the PS1 classic. Oh, okay, yeah. But I mean, it's the same thing as Vita. So, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, you're right. I would wait until the PS4 one comes out and kind of see how that one shakes out.

But I'm a little shocked that it's not coming to Vita as well, like with the trophies and all that. Yeah, I'm not, I'm, I'm not, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't know, I don't know what Squaredenix is like, the funeral pyre of the Vita is going out to see it's, and she, he's about to launch the flaming area. Yeah. I don't know, I mean, it's disappointing, but I don't, you know, that's more QA and more like annoyances that they have to go through like certification and stuff.

So I think that they're, they've been doing for a year. So they have and there's a lot of rumors of what they've been doing. I mean, there's a lot of, there's there, I was reading things that they feel, people feel like they translated it again. People think that like there's more to this than possible. that it's not the straight PC port because some of the trophies are different. I don't know.

I don't know the answer to any of these questions. I haven't seen any of this. I didn't talk about the cross-dressing scene specifically? Yeah, well, that's going to be in there because there is a cross-dressing trophy. Okay, cool. But there's like some, people, there's some conjecture that this isn't all it seems.

There's more than meets the eye here. That, like, this might not be the PC port that, you know, there's some word that with the PS2 emulation, getting trophies like the Star Wars games, basically being straight PS2 emulators that are running trophies in the back end that maybe this is a PS1 classic getting trophies stuff like that but I don't know

I mean it's just all conjecture I don't know it could just be a download that's gonna be huge I will say to his point about the game the game holds up mechanically I think just fine I don't I don't think the graphically holds up at all but I wouldn't say that I think that it's the the character models yeah the hand drawn backgrounds the backgrounds I think are beautiful to this day we'll see the resolution's gonna be low we'll see we'll see how I'm not like playing it on the Vito

I think in that sense, it might be the best way to go. Yeah, we'll make it small. And maybe it'd be too small then. Yeah, it does run in 4-3. So I don't know. We're going to find out what's going on with this. I'm excited. I'm interested to see why this took so long.

There was a reason why this took so long. I haven't even thought about that. That's really interesting. I hope it goes well. But I will say that regardless, you should play one of these before the remake. Don't wait for the remake. I think they're going to be very different games. And yeah.

And that's it. All the time in the world. Not too. But I think it's worth playing this version for sure. Yeah. And I think Seven's active time battle is, it stands up. The Materia system, I think, is really clever. I think that the weapon accessory armor system is a little reductive.

But the material system is a really nice system. It's almost as good, I think, is like the Sper system. So certainly better than some of the other things that have come after it. So I think seven's a must play for RPG fans. I think that it's certainly not the best Final Fantasy game, but it's a, it's a classic. And it's a game that I've really come around on. Yeah. I think it's a must play even for not RPG fans, maybe not to finish, but to at least try out and see.

Because I do think that it's a good entry, I think more so than Final Fantasy 6. Yeah, six is way more hardcore. If you're not an RPG person. Six is way more hardcore. It's also a seminal game, which I think is really important. Like it's a game that's, there's really only a few third party games that were as important as Final Fantasy 7 wants to the success of a piece of hardware. And that was the first big PlayStation game. Big, beautiful kids.

Big Pugn 6-pack says, Hey guys, how long do you think the PSN will work on PS3? I've so many games still to play on that system, and I'm afraid that I'm going to lose my PSN games, downloaded games at my trophy support. Keep up the good work. A long time. Yeah, I don't think you have to worry about that.

It's not something you should worry about. And if that happens, they'll give you a huge heads up, and I bet you there's a workaround for it. Yeah, like the multiplayer games, you know, one by one are going to go away. Yeah, yeah, that game and the PSN and getting on the PSN and getting buying games. I think you're fine. you'll be good. There's too many of them out there.

Too much money to be made. And your trophies will never go away. I mean, those exist on a different server. Metro Shade says, Hey, guys, when you play shooters or any other games, do you invert the Y axis? I made my friend play Fallout 4, and she's not a gamer at all,

but I noticed every time she tried to look up or down, she'd look the opposite way. So I inverted it for her, and I asked her why she picked it that way, and she said she wasn't sure and she was just doing it instinctively. This is weird to me since I've never played with Inverted. So I'm just curious if you guys do not

and how you got started playing on Inverted, and if you ever changed. Thanks, guys. P.S., I recently found out all of Tim's old videos he did for IGN, including the Avengers Boy Band. Wow, you've all come such a long way. I'm not sure about that.

It's a lot like being left-handed. Some people are just born wrong. And when that happens, he's got to put up with them. So, I mean, you play Inverton. I do play Inverd. And I feel like nowadays you're definitely like a dying breed

when it comes to that. You've never changed. Nope, right? Wasn't there like one week or something where suddenly you kind of made sense the other way? No, it didn't make sense either way. Oh, okay.

I had, like, I had this month. It was when destiny came out. And I'm like, nothing feels right. So it was really weird. I was having a mental breakdown. And then, like, I really was like, holy shit, like, I don't know how to play anymore. And then suddenly, like, just snap back in.

I'm like, fine. It was weird. It was weird. It was weird. It was weird. It was weird. It was like, really, I was actually, like, authentically scared. I'm like, holy shit.

I don't know how to play anymore. Uh-huh. Like, something in my brain just doesn't work anymore. Like, I don't know. None of this feel. I would invert, then uninvert, then invert. And I'm like, holy shit, nothing feels right. So it's weird you say that because I have that experience too,

and I still do every once in a while, where back in the day, so I grew up with golden eye, and that was like, that's what it was to me. That's how you moved and that's how things happened. So when I made the switch over to, and I played the shit out of Star Fox, so inverted just made sense. Then, and also the way you move,

the way you would move and that, that's how I liked it. Then time spliters came out, and one of the default control options played more similar to that. where you would move forward and backward with the left stick and you would aim left and right with the left stick. And then you would, wait, no, that's not right.

You would strafe with the left stick. So it controlled much more like Star Fox. Gotcha. Where you're going left and right or forward or whatever. And you aim and whatever with the right stick. And I was just like, this is just how things play. So in Halo, I would always have to like use this. I used, I think it was inverted legacy,

Southpaw was the name of it. And I'm like, what the fuck is that shit? But I had to. And it definitely put me at a disadvantage when I played against anybody. And then one day, all of a sudden, just clicked. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense anymore.

And then default just made sense. And now I can't do inverted anymore. So now when I play Star Fox, I'm all like fucking confused and shit. But it's weird that it just happened. And I don't know, it's not like I trained myself or anything. It just totally snapped.

But now when I play third person action games like Ratcheting and Clank, The camera moving the camera like the left and right it never feels quite how I want it to like I feel like my brain Every other time switches it of if I hit left of if I want the camera to go this way or this way Gotcha I don't know man yeah the only so this is my argument first of all Flight flight games like Star Fox or flight simulators that make they don't make any sense at all playing it Unless you're playing it inverted that doesn't make any fucking sense like I'm just gonna throw that Rick right out there makes no there's no justification for not playing that's how you fly that's exactly that's always the argument I've had with people where when they're

campaigning for inverted I'm like when I play it when I used to play flight sims on my PC and I had a stick right yes it made sense that I was pulling and doing this in the in the cockpit you know what I mean I'm moving this thing but for me playing a game running around and shooting it makes sense that I just know to look up means up but like you're about to go

into your thing and I want you do but then I think I have an answer finally for why it makes sense the other way well I'm going to segment it in the two different things third person and first person now right third person Greg take this and pretend it's a camera and hold it okay yeah look up okay

there you go look down yeah I mean that's so like like you're like for third person the camera is behind you and for the camera to pitch up it must be dragged down

like that makes perfect sense to me and that's it's the first person argument that gets a little more muddled for everyone I think and that's based on

how you view the character you're playing even if I'm playing in first person I do not view the character as me I view it as a camera so the So that's where my mentality comes from now. I don't have a heritage in flight simulating or anything like that.

Like I don't know why or how I always play like this, but I do. What you just said makes sense. For me, the way I think the easiest way for me to explain it, right? Because what you're talking about is up and down or whatever. The stick in the back of the head down to look up. And I think that's just the dumbest thing because no one's ever had a stick in their back of the head. But that's the nature of the way you would play the game. Sure.

But what I'm saying is the reason it doesn't work for me and the reason non-inverted makes so much more sense is that I'm not thinking about like tilting up or down. like I'm broken. I'm thinking about the cursor on the screen and if I want the cursor to go up and even if there is no cursor imagine it that way right? I'm not even thinking of how I would move my own head or the camera or whatever. I'm thinking about a gun in the hand and I want the gun up and I want the gun down. And it's like a mouse click. I mean that's the thing is like

when and even with flight simulators like Starfax and stuff if you start thinking of it just a dual stick shooter or not dual stick shooter like a flight suit? The Geometry Wars or whatever like dual stick just like. Oh like a twin stick shooter. Yeah. Like then all of a sudden it's like it doesn't matter if it's a spaceship or

a person or whatever. It's just, there's a thing, and there's shit that shoots. So you move it and you shoot stuff. And it's just like, when you start thinking of it that way, then it should just be default because it is just moving things. Right. Because there's no pulling sticks or whatever. Want a flat, a flat, you know, geometry wars or even Resilgun, which is in 3D space,

but it is on a flat service. So that makes sense. Up, up, down, down, left, right, right. I mean, that makes perfect sense. But when you get, I understand that I'm in the minority on this. I mean, there are not many inverted players. I mean, it's like one in 10, maybe. You would guess.

And, but it, but it, It just makes perfect sense to me. And I don't know why or where it happened, but I can't play the other way. Until Dawn is a good example because until Dawn did not have inverted controls. They patched in them later and I didn't play the game. So like during the shooting segments or like when you had an aimed show, I was like, fuck.

Like I couldn't, I like really struggled, you know? Yeah. It would have been so easy if I got to just, you know, it was like up in the right. So I would just jack down on the left stick and go that way or whatever. And then I'm like in the other side of the screen. I'm like, fuck man. Like I don't know.

My brain doesn't work like this. I don't know. It would be awesome. What a waste of fucking academic resources, but it would be an awesome study to figure out what is, there's got to be a common bond between everyone that plays inverted. There has to be.

It is not a coincidence. Because I don't think it's something you necessarily learn. Yeah. Like, I think it's the way you look at the world. I really do. Like, I really do. The only other thing with that, though,

the closest parallel to it in my life has been skateboarding where there's people that, have you skateboarded, right? So you're talking about goofy footed or... Yeah, whether you're goofy or regular or Mongo. Yeah, which is, fucking weird. And I do that. Like it doesn't. Oh, that's so weird. And it sucks. It sucks so bad. And I look like a fucking idiot. What's Mongo? I don't know what you know. Mongo's when you push with your

front foot instead of your back foot. Which is so bizarre. Oh. Yeah. Because the problem is you balance. You just do I guess. Yeah. No. I mean, it just makes sense. The balancing is fine, but the problem then. You must lean back. The reason that I can't, uh, that I have problems with it is that my, I want to push down with my left foot to like when I'm to, to, to jump and shit. So it's like, I don't know, man. Well, the people that, yeah, or the people that, yeah, push and then swing around. Right? Well, that's what I do.

Yeah. So that, like, so that, yeah. So it's swinging forward instead of that. Yeah. And I've tried, but the problem is I can't push down with my right foot. Like, I feel like when I'm trying to write with my left hand. Anyways, things are. There's definitely, there's definitely.

I've known. I skated with a kid that skated like that. I think that. Do you call them Mongo? No, I called them Mike. Uh, close to Mongo. His name was Kevin. It was weird.

I haven't skated since college though, but I used to skate all the time. That brings back memories. I don't have it in me anymore, though. I had a beautiful girl deck. That was my last, that was my last deck. It was awesome. Just a sky blue deck. All fucked up from whatever I did to it.

Had a UV spray painted on top of it for Uncle Vito, which was my friend's wannabe skateboard company, which I thought was so funny. Which was named after my cousin, Uncle Vita. My cousin, Uncle Vita. Okay. Yeah, we call him Uncle Vito, but he was really my cousin. All right. You talk about my documentary, man. All right.

Final two questions. I gotta buy that deck. Rated Annie, 1998, says, greeting and salutations from Algeria. My question is, what do you think of the share button on the PlayStation for? At first, I thought it was a gimmick, but after taking over a thousand photos, I understand why Sony put this feature. I love it. I use it all the time.

Like, for me, the big game changer was finally having video for two. Twitter is somebody who doesn't Facebook. You know what I mean? What I was always doing is getting screenshots. And you look at, I'm going to toss a Vita game in here too, but same idea. But you look at Metal Gear

when I was playing under embargo and persona dancing all night when I was playing under Vita. I took so many screenshots. And then when it was finally up, I could just post them whatever I wanted to or do whatever I wanted to. And now the fact that like I can jump in

and show something cool or something broken or whatever with the video in nine seconds. I do it all time. Just did it last night with something. For me, it's always an accident. I always hit that button. I'm like, oh, fuck it.

What's happened. I didn't mean to do that. Yeah. But every time I do that, whatever happens to be, I'm like, oh, that is cool. I wish, like, this is cool that I can do this. Yeah, it's one of those weird things of like, like, I didn't think I'd use it. I thought I'd be using it for twitching, right? And then we got into all this stuff and there's more, we have more professional ways to Twitch

than that. I do it that way, use all the stuff. And then the rise of photo modes in games. Like, I've, every time I've ever heard of photo, I'm like, whatever, you know, big deal. But when they added it to Arkham Knight and I went in with the first, the 89 Batman, DLC and stuff, went in and started screen. out that. It's actually fun. You know what I mean? It's moving to camera around, getting... Yeah, exactly.

Final question. Oh, dude, what do you do? You don't give a fuck. It's a waste of a button. Yeah, it's weird that it's a button. Yeah, like, I look at the PS4 control. I study it sometimes. I just stare at it. Sure you do. And I'm like, there's just such a waste of space.

Like the touchpad. I'm like, this is so unnecessary. Like, it would have been cool to have, like, a few buttons there. Like, one would have been share, but I feel like we're missing a select button and like a menu button or something. I don't know. I just I hit it sometimes too and unmistakened and annoys the shit out of me Sure oh yeah

Final question Jason versus 22 says hey guys My question is with Battlefront out I was wondering what you guys think Visceral Star Wars game is And when do you think it will come out? Oh man it's an Amy game So it's a narrative game

I imagine it's heavily story based It's story driven that's what we're doing We're running through playing as one person Probably a Jedi Maybe somebody who doesn't know they're a Jedi But they'll become a Jedi I bet there's a Sith Lord involved I bet there's a bunch of dumb fucking aliens

that don't make any sense No Wado be there No Wado I bet too And when will it come out? Maybe the season passed don't Next fall I think it's fall 2016 That might be a little

That might be a little soon E3 Yeah Or is Disney Celebration or whatever the fuck they call That's after 3 isn't it What is it? D23

Yeah what is that Oh it's after After okay So no it wouldn't be then They need to give it some space I think that would be something You'd see at EA's conference And you think it'll come out in the fall?

Yeah. Although. Maybe spring. Although. Here we go. It doesn't make any sense. And like with, with Mass Effect coming out at the same time from the same publisher. That's weird.

I don't actually, no, I don't know. Maybe spring 2017. They got to shir-gought out the pot with that game, though, because, you know, the fucking Zykeyes is moving. Star Wars? Yeah. But no. That's the thing. It's in motion.

Isn't there? But isn't there, here's the thing. Isn't there a Star Wars movie every fall now? No, there is. Well, there's more than that. So next, next year, this year we get episode seven. Yeah. Next fall we get Rogue 1.

Next, the May after that is episode 8. Oh, shit, okay. Well, okay, interesting. But I figure, this is interesting with a Mass Effect, our wrinkle. Yeah, it doesn't make it. What do they do with, have they been saying? Have they been stressing Mass Effect 2016? Or is that something more?

No, they said that in the 3, but I don't know. One of those games has to, well, not one of the game. We don't know what in the fuck the Star Wars games coming up. But Andromeda is supposed to be 2016. See, I think it makes sense if you're, Rogue 1's next fall. Same thing? Yeah. See, wouldn't you want to stay in the same time schedule?

Have a, where Battlefront was, insert the Star Wars game, move Mass Effect of the spring? But to Tim's point, if, if episode 8 comes out, spring 2018, no, 2017, then they can fit it in that March or so in between the movies. In between Rogue 1 and Episode 8. I do think that they cannot release those games at the same time. I think it's a bad idea. They're going to cannibalize the Shadow Mass Effect if they do that. Space. There's not enough space for both of them.

And they, but they do need the shit of the pot because Visceral needs to probably make another one quickly, you know? So 2017 is episode 8. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes.

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For the big beautiful kids. For the big beautiful kids. I'll see you guys next.