Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Controversial Gaming Opinions and Ghost Recon Wildlands - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 105

Episode Date: February 3, 2017

We talk about playing Ghost Recon: Wildlands, the future of Xbox Scorpio, reviews Tales of Berseria, and give our most controversial gaming opinions. (Released to Patreon Supporters 01.27.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of Confining Gamescast is brought to you by Sherry's Berries. There's no one quite like your Valentine. This year, treat them to an unforgettable gift that's as unique as they are. Don't tell her, but I'm definitely getting G of some of these babies. Sherry's berries will deliver your gift fresh and on time, guaranteed, or your money back. These berries are decadent, fresh, juicy, and sweet, and most importantly, shareable. And you can choose to get them dipped in white, milk, or dark chocolatey goodness. With Valentine's Day right around the corner, there's only one way to get freshly dipped,

strawberries from Sherry's berries starting at 1999. You visit berries.com. That's B-E-R-R-I-E-S.com. Click on the microphone in the top right-hand corner and type in GameCast. That's Berries.com using the code GameCast. Help support our show and get some sweet, sweet, sweet berries for your sweet-sweet-sweet lover. What's up, guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 105.

Oh, God. It always surprises me, but I guess it shouldn't at this point. Because we do every week. Yeah, but it blows my mind. P-S-I-Love you is on what? 71. Holy shit, man. 72 next week.

Nuts. Yeah. We've been doing this a while. Just keeps going. Bought all this with it. As always, joined by the coolest Tuesday in video games, Colin Moriarty and Craig Miller.

To that point, yeah, today on the morning show, we watched, we gave away Towerfall Ascension, thanks Xbox. And we watched our less play of it. And it was so jarring to see us in the living room, Portillo in my lap,

like us all just sitting on cautious. I like that kind of casual. I do too. I still say we will look back. back one day at those quaint times and have a buried nostalgia about the more innocent times. I agree. I think we will too. But that was the thing. Like Nick was over when Nick came over the other day before dinner and we went out and he's like, I kind of missed this place. I'm like, no, we are not there yet. We are not there where we miss the coming here and working. Yeah. I don't know.

I think that these are the quiet times. These are the times when we'll look back on. Yeah. Remember it was just us with our cool toys? Yeah, I don't think. Like, I was looking at the at our cool spot let's play that we did back in the day. Yeah. I don't know why. And I was like, man, I'm very thin in that video. Sure. And I just realized now like this shirt, it like, it's like three times smaller than I I guess it used to be. Like I feel like you did.

You washed it wrong. Look at that. Yeah. What do you mean? How do you feel like COVID? Cause the shirt's tight? Yeah. I mean, maybe you just maybe you've been, maybe he's working out though.

Maybe you're just gaining the weight. No, well, I'm losing the weight now. Are you know? Here's the thing about you. You see, you look back and you say you look skinnier. And I agree, of course. I'm not blind. But what I want to say is that you look at,

look more well-rounded now. And that's not a fat joke. I mean the fact that, yeah, you were skinnier back then, but you still kind of looked like a kid putting on your dad's clothes a lot of times. And now, now you look like, Tim, you got this good beard, you got this good hair. You got a good, you got a good dick. You got that good dick. I mean, specifically where you guys are sitting, we sit for PS, I love you. Yeah. And I go and look at, you know, look at that every so often. And I'm like, I'm getting a little plump. And, uh, oh, here we are we, is the pendulum swinging back to Colin trying to be fit? So what I've decided to do this week is, is, you know, is go back to working out.

And yesterday, I worked out for the first time on the elliptical for 30 minutes for the first time this year. Yeah. And couldn't stop coughing when I got off the elliptical and was coughing sporadically for hours. I was at the diner like an hour and a half later

eating my rice of eggs. And I like, you know, take a deep breath and I'm like, and I'm coughing and I'm looking around. I'm not sick. I just, I'm just fat. And, you know, a little easier today. Just got to shave about five pounds. because I'm looking more pregnant than usual.

Okay. You know? And, uh, not positive. Sure. Not a positive development. So I sympathize. It's easy to eat. And it's also fun to eat. I agree.

I agree with both those things. Sometimes I make, you know, just a cup, actually two cups of rice. A couple sausages. Yeah. Maneas and ketchup all over it. When you say sometimes. How many days a week you think that's happening? Less than one time a week now.

Back when I was, uh, more, had home more often. Sure. Multiple times a week. That was. That was an option. Okay. So. Yeah.

Life's hard. Food's good. Food is good. Food is good. Yeah, I gave up the soda. It's hard. Oh,

wow. A couple weeks. Yeah. That is good. That is good. That is good. They say that you lost 13 pounds later, you just cutting coke out?

I mean, no, I've also been eating healthier. I've been thinking about what I eat. That's really all that it is. Yeah. I think about what I eat all the time. Gia being,

are you, are you, did it happen or is that a preemptive strike? I'm like, I will buy you a water bottle. I will buy you a water bottle. There's got to be an Mega Man bottle. I'll buy it for it.

What about Gia? She's, now that I live with her, she cooks and stuff. Oh, that's like, like she's, she's very healthy. So what are you guys doing for dinner tonight? She's tiny. I don't know. If I was that tiny, like by nature, man, I would be a bowling ball. You know what I mean?

Like a fucking small head. Why have a huge head, but a head and on the house on top of it. Comparatively. But, uh, no, they say if you just cut out sugary drink. one Coke a day, you lose a pound a month organically. So that would be 10 to 12 pounds a year. Just based on cutting off the coke. You've done this too before, though.

I remember an IGN. My metabolism's changed since then, though. I'm not the spry young chicken that I was. You're what, 26 now? No, I'm 27. And it's just things don't work the same as they used. Sure. Dick ain't getting hard like it used to.

Everything's just like wrong, you know? But no, the shirt though, it's from insert coin. And so it's large, but it's like a European large. Oh, no. And so I'm like, they have different ass rules. Yeah, they do. Because all my shirt, everything I wear is large. But it's like this is not, does not fit me like anything else.

Same thing we always talk about. It's like the shoe sizes don't make any sense. You go outside, it's 15 degrees. That apparently is somewhat normal. I'm like, I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. What is 15 degrees and what is 80 kilometers? See, now that's the biggest thing of dating a Canadian now is the fact that I thought

it would be the language barrier. You know what I mean? Jen speaking all the French or family speaking on the French. We have common ground. Everything's fine. But the one, like, because I know a few French words enough. And then they know a few English words. we're all doing fine.

We have conversations. Love the family. We love her. But like the real thing is the temperature because neither of us ever know. She'll ask me what's the temperature in New Orleans. And we're going, I'm like, oh, it's going to be like 56, 65. She's like, I don't know. And then she'll do the same thing.

I'm like, it's 14 degrees. I'm like, is that good or bad? Like, I don't know. Man, that's a solid point. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the kind of funny games cast. Each every week we get together to talk about video games, all things we love about them.

Once again, this episode brought to you by Patreon producer, Stephen Inzler, aka the homie the homie yeah da bomb as no one would say because nick's a fucking old ass motherfucker you're that nick nick you feel it old today you piece of garbage yeah it's been forget it nick forget it um anyways love you guys it's been it's been a while it's actually been a week no it hasn't we recorded because the resin evil um on friday thing we recorded that on was it friday was it was yeah i feel totally thrown up i feel like we just did this yeah but it feels good it does feel good i thought that episode was good. Based on the topics we have for this one,

this episode should be good. I think this one's going to be great. And if you want it early, by now you would have either done it or not. You can go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games to get the show early or you can get it later on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. And little public service announcement, the kind of funny morning show, is now also available

on iTunes and podcast services across the globe. Tweet on me if you have any issues with that. We're still working through all the kinks of it. But there's RSS feeds. They exist. The show will go a new episode, a new podcast every day. So that should be fun.

The garbage truck rolls along. Yeah. And now into your ears? Years. Now into your ears. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. You'll be listening to us watching YouTube videos and you're going to have a great time.

So now eight minutes into this video. First topic is ghost recon, wild lands. Wild lands. We got to play it again. Right. We first played it at E3. Yep. Last year was me and you.

Yep. We went to do our little demo and like it was fresh off the, not the announcement of the game, The game was announced, I think their first like prior E3, but remember it was just a trailer. And it was people falling out of. And airplanes and ATVs and we're like, what the fuck is this? Yeah. All right. Cool.

Yeah. And then last year we had to play. We did the little demo. But at the E3 press conference for Ubisoft that lasted 10 years. They, they did their let's play of it. Like let's play trailer. And it was just like the most obnoxious thing ever. Right.

Cause. Right. Yeah. Tango. Whatever the hell. And like, I got your back. I got your blue. I got your blue boy.

Yeah. And like they're doing the whole thing. And it was just like, no. ever's going to actually do this. And we went to go do our little let's play appointment. And we had a team six like people around us or whatever. And they like reenacted it. And it was really fun. Well, no, it wasn't. Remember that's what I, that's what I always go back to for that E3 that you're talking about. Because it wasn't a let's play right. It was just a reacts video. But when we sat down, when we sat down to play it was you, me and two other games journal types,

you know, people. And then we had or no, there was one guy playing from Ubisoft, the debt, one of the devs or whatever. He was ghost one. It was ghost one, goes two, goes three, goes four. And we all did just talk like that. And we all did just talk like, that because that's what you see your other people as you're like all right goes to i see you over there like you got somebody coming at you and like the it did look totally it looked corny as fuck during the press conference of people doing it but when we sat down to play it yeah hell yeah we were doing it yeah yeah it was fun as hell it was great yeah it reminded me at the same year the um playing is it see of thieves the microsoft right yeah where it's like i thought that game looks like fucking

garbage and even even now i'm like i don't understand why people are excited for a lot of people seem to be really excited about the game we played it and it was fun as hell at e3 but that's because everyone's talking like pirates around us and shit. At home, we ain't going to be doing this shit. No. Maybe for a let's play with us. But in general, normal play, I don't see that happening. But with Ghost Recon, I do see that happening.

It's just like, it's addicting to kind of get into it. And so being able to play it again was exciting. We had to do it with Kevin and Nick. So we had a whole little four player squad that was all our own. So Kevin, turn on your microphone. You're going to be part of this one, I bet. Yeah, four players of our own. And it was the same thing, though, where there's that moment in video games when

you're playing with a crew, and especially when you just start, because we're being dropped into this game of running through and not being able to remember if you're Ghost 1. And like, you know, it takes while to get going. So it is easier to yell out, hey, ghost 1 or who's that or whatever, and go. And so we were talking the jargon. Although I feel like we performed way worse, way worse than we did at E3. Oh, no surprise. We had Kevin and Nick who knows not to shit talk. Go fuck yourself. That's offensive. Kevin, but Kevin, his whole goal is to make an entertaining let's play video. I fucking nailed the shit out of. this week on YouTube.com

slash kind of funny games. No, the shut out of what? Making it an attention. Like, Nick would be like, all right, let's count it down. Three, two. I'm like, I shot. Was that not the right time? We did keep failing this one very specific section

where all, I would, like, I reshoot the one thing. I'm going to go, you know, run over here. Oh, there was one we fail that we have. I'm going to run over and capture this guy. That's when Kevin started just shooting whenever he wanted to. And then the other one, yeah, where we had to abduct this one dude, but he kept getting shot to death because Kevin was shooting way too old. No, I didn't shoot him.

I blew up the car. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. There was multiple ways you fucked up multiple missions. Neither of the times that I blew up the car did it kill the guy. It was one of those perfect examples of Kevin trying to piss Nick off, which is, you know, it's fun. It works so well. Yeah, it worked really well. But the let's play, I'm really proud of it for Kevin.

You've been working really hard on it. It's one of those, the let's plays that we want to do where it cuts between our face cams and the different edits. Four different feeds, four different cams, yeah. And it's taken a long time to edit it because this is why we're trying to hire a new editor. Yeah. Hour long and it's a beast, but it's worth it in the end. Kevin thinks it's one of the funniest things we've done. I'm enjoying the shit out of it.

Yeah, so that's good. So get excited for that. Get hyped. But yeah, playing it was super fun with them because it's like, I mean, yeah, there's things like goals to do, but it is fun to just kind of fuck around.

Like, I like it because this game kind of feels unnecessary. Like, I feel like we don't really need a ghost recon right now. Okay. Like, there's so many different franchises coming out, especially when it comes to Ubisoft. Yeah. They're kind of hitting,

all the targets that we need and now that they have the division. And I just feel like this was a game that especially when it was first announced, it was kind of like a, okay, you know. Oh, for sure when I got first announced, that's how I felt about it. Until we went and played it. But that's my thing. It's like we were kind of stoked about it. But like now it's weird because it feels less like a ghost recon game and more kind

of like a best of Ubisoft experience. Okay. Again, that's based on my limited experience. Sure. Two, two, well, you probably two hours total, maybe two, at three, if you can include you three. Yeah. But it's kind of the open world, do whatever you want to have fun aspects of like a far cry with the co-op nature of the division. Sure.

With the ghost reconness of ghost recon obviously. Yeah. But it's, it's just a lot of fun. And, you know, they're obviously touting all the, it's the biggest world ever. And there's all these, like, however you want to play, you can play. And it's all the typical marketing mumbo jumbo. But when it is at its best is when it was just the four of us being like, all right, cool. here's a waypoint, let's all meet there, and then we'd go.

And then it was like, all right, do we want to go down this way on motorcycles or do three of us want to get in the car and go? And like, no matter what it was, there was chaos and insanity. But it always felt like you weren't lost. I think that's a big problem in co-op open world games is if your team kind of leaves you behind, it reaches a point where you're like, well, I guess I'm not doing helping them out for that part of the mission or whatever. But these missions seem to be designed around areas that are easy to get to.

and because of how the map works and because of the waypoints and shit, I always knew where you guys were, even if I wasn't near you. Sure. And getting to you was never that much of a pain in the ass because there is enough vehicles around that you could jump in a helicopter or whatever it is and get over to where you're needed. And it was just,

it felt satisfying. What I'm interested in, and I was going to say concerned about it, but I guess more interested in is when the game's going to come out, what it's going to net out to be in terms of tone. because what I like the most about it being a single player guy who enjoys like I'm playing the division again right now what I enjoy playing that game and jumping in right but I felt like you know especially end game wise division when it initially launched was really hard to play

by yourself after a while um this one they're touting from the beginning right it's you can play the whole thing fucking single player or if you want bring in three friends and it's not you know when I was talking to one of our other friends about it and he was asking those questions the first thing he asked was like well is it is it open world do I see other people on the map and I'm like, no, no, no. You don't, there's not like, even when you're in your squad of four, there's not four other, you know, you see dozens of ghosts running around or other people. No, it's your, it is your world that you get to exist in.

And I like the idea of jumping in on one night, going and running some missions and then you popping in or Kevin popping in and we get up and we get and go. And then you join my world or I join your world to double back and help you on other stuff. Of course, I have questions about how leveling is going to work. Are you coming up to my level if I'm way ahead of you or am I going to break your game like the division does, stuff like that. But what I'm interested in is the fact that, playing the game and even watching trailers for it,

it's, I don't want to say serious, but it's got to, it feels way more serious than a far cry. And it feels more serious than a division even. Because the division is, you're in New York, you're getting different gear sets,

you're putting on goofy outfits and running around shooting people. And like, there's the cleaners who are walking around and flame throwing everything and there's bosses with tanks and stuff to shoot them. And granted, we're just jumping in and out of little things here.

But it is that I am the military dude, bro dude. I don't have the beard like, you know, the old Medal of Honor guys or the sunglasses and like they had some goofy outfits but it didn't feel like I'm ever going to be in less like really colorful awesome outfit I'm always in some kind of fatigue some kind of thing the goofiest of us was definitely Nick sure and he just looked like Val Kilmer from heat he kept saying that's all he wanted to do that's all he was his whole goal

of building his character Colin I loved heats because I loved heat because it was two cassettes when you rented it oh yeah yeah you knew your money's worth no I will withdraw from this conversation thank you well I want you thinking your questions for wildlands Kevin was a mr. cat he was just in a gilly suit he just looked like a bush with sunglasses on. Guys, I want to be able to hide. No, I hear that. And I looked exactly like me.

So then it's us jumping in and having a good time and being goofballs with it and doing crazy stuff. Like my favorite part of the thing was when you were like, why is the helicopter banking ride? I'm like, oh, I jumped out of it. You had a gun as this helicopter went down. I'm like, oh, you got to bail out right now. You're going to die.

And so like there's that thing, but it wasn't, the game didn't feel like it was making those beats. The game still feels like it's trying to be a serious where this military thing. The goofiest thing I thought was, being able to spawn a vehicle whenever I want to, and that's something you unlock later on. So I'm not sure if it's going to balance out

where it's like, all right, cool, I'm playing tonight by myself. I am going to take down this drug lord that's taken over this, you know, a whole area. And the map's huge. There's so many, I like their boss structure. I like everything that's happening. But is it going to be that cool,

you guys are hopping on and we're going to have fucking crazy time. Let's all use oozy's and drive in on motorcycles and see what happens. Or is it going to be, all right, cool, everybody get down. I'm bringing my sniper thing. You're doing this. You're going to go up there.

And we all try to do a coordinated. take down. And like, is there going to be different, I'm sure everyone will play it differently, but will I find different groups to run with? Will there be nights of craziness or will there just be always serious? And it's like, yeah, the tone of it, I'm not worried about the gameplay seems fun. I'm, I'm still super stoked to get into it. I just weird, it's wondering how that's going to net out. No, that's interesting. And I actually agree with you about the, the tone of it, because, you know, something like Fire Cry is, it's still dealing with drug lords and things like that, but it's a bit more comic book. Right. Whereas this, these are the drug lords. Both of them can

have skull tattoos, but one of the skull tattoos is a little bit more lighthearted and like, they have a skull tattoo. So that's, you know, it's almost a parody of itself. Whereas these are scary skull tattoos. And that's the thing like, when they showed us the presentation, they gave us that trailer of the main villain in it with his giant cross tattoo. And like, he's running his hand over the thing. And like, he's talking like, this guy actually seems kind of scary. And not only that, I kind of feel for him. I really hope that when I'm playing this game, I'm getting more of his story. And I am like, I understand where he's coming from. That's cool. But or is it just going to be run to this place and shoot this thing? Because the, like,

stepping back and objectively looking at what we're doing in there, the way I would describe the gameplay in the world is it's just cause with the color removed a bit, with that character removed, that cartoony removed. See, for me, it's just cause mixed with Metal Gear Solid 5. Because I think the gameplay, it is Metal Gear Solid 5. Sure. Where Metal Gear Solid 5 is single player.

All the missions are variations on, here's an encampment, try to find a way into it, and either take this person out, take out this person that's there, or find some data files or shit like that. And I feel like GhostryGuns is the same thing, but the co-op nature of it really ups the ante. And it's, I love that. Like it just made me realize how much I want a multiplayer, like co-op,

Metal Gear Solid 5. Good news. But not survive necessarily. I mean, who knows? Maybe that game is gonna be fucking awesome. But it's, I don't want, like the zombie shit already. I'm like, no, that's not. not what I'm talking about.

But like a Peace Walker. Sure. You know, like a Peace Walker-esque, MGS5 is awesome. But I think that this is, it does have that kind of just cause aspect to it. The metal gear doesn't have. And that's where it gets weird getting mashed up. And again, we're a bunch of clowns jumping in at E3 and now this thing. So I haven't been playing for hours.

And that was the whole thing too for the demo we did. They were like, all right, cool. There's a single player chunk we're going to do. And then you guys get to jump into co-op. And we're all like, let us jump in a co-op. Like we're all here. We want to do this. We have a limited amount of time.

We want to make a funny let's play. we can just get in and do that. So it was that whole thing of like, man, this seems really hard. And I jumped out of the map. Like, oh, we're in five skull difficulty. And like, that was the co-op thing. But if you knew how to play,

I'm sure it would have been more balanced. My concern is always going to be like, a sneaking co-op metal gear sounds fun. And Peace Walker was, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't like as in depth and AI thought out as well as MetalGersaw 5, right? So how annoying is it going to be if I do want to go through

and stealthily do stuff? But Kevin is firing off a shot. And then it's because that's what it was, right? We're like, we'd be coming up and then somebody spotted and then it's machine gun fire. And it's like, fuck it. I was running out trying to do everything. I mean, that's it. I think that is where the game.

That's where the co-op shit comes into play. And it's one of those where I think that that, I think it can have a foot in both and it can do it successfully. It's like what I talk about with watchdogs all the time where watchdogs too I played in my solo playthrus. We're constantly like, cool, I'm going to sit on the outskirts of the mission area, send in my drones, do all the stuff. They'll never know I was here.

And then when Scott Lowe and I played it was, I'm going to slam a van into this place and shoot you all in the face. You know what I mean? And that was fine. And it was a different experience, which is interesting. So as we unlock better weapons and understand the gameplay mechanics, it'll be interesting to see the balance there. Yeah.

Yeah. You got any questions, Colin? No, not really. I mean, I saw the, you know, I've seen footage of it and then there's a new round of stuff kind of coming out now. I think the game looks great. And I'm glad you guys, I'm glad you guys touched on the just cause thing because that's the vibe I get from the watching the game.

I think it's totally just cause. And it's just a multiplayer just cause. and the fact that it brings up that zany fucking anti-hero kind of shit going on if you want it to in terms of cooperating with your friends being kind of foolish like they were and you know the corniness of the Ubisoft presentation at E3 which I thought was

like over the top corny but the one thing I'm excited about is that again they are saying it's a different studio but they're saying the game can be played by itself and there was skepticism about the division I thought the division was a great game and I played it for 40 hours by myself and it was awesome

playing it by myself and I think that even though kind of broke the narrative a little bit. It made the game, I think there was a special experience to have played the division by itself, by yourself. I think that it's eerie, man versus the world kind of shit,

man versus the city kind of shit, you're a lone wolf. I think that kind of stuff's exciting and fun, and it worked in the division. And the skepticism around that, even Greg's skepticism, and even my own skepticism about how it wouldn't work that way

or that they were full of shit, they weren't. They told the truth, and I'm sure that there's a segment of people that play the division by themselves. I'm sure it's not a massive segment, but there was a segment

an important segment that played it by itself. Third bestselling game of the year, by the way, last year in 2016 was the division. So with this, I believe them. And I am looking forward to taking down those maps by myself. And I think that that will be fun and difficult. It reminds me of, again, another Ubisoft game, Rainbow 6. When I played Rainbow 6 3, when I was young, single player offline. I played it online too.

But when I play offline, I'd kill my whole squad and play it by, like at the beginning, just cap them all in the head and then do the maps by myself because I thought it was more fun and way more challenging. You're so calling. And so I'm looking forward to doing that with Wildens. I have no interest in playing this game with anyone, and never will. But we'll definitely engage with it. Because Ubisoft, again, has that special something in a lot of their games that I think that speaks to me. I mean, the games that I've been pondering lately going back to, if I had the time, I'm not going to,

because I think we're going to get Neo pretty intimately, then Horizon will I'm sure be here in the coming couple of weeks. And then, you know, we're going to get Mass Effect and all that kind of stuff is, I've been thinking about Far Cry 4. I've been about Far Cry 4. I never beat Far Cry 4 and I never beat Far Cry Primal. So there's something about their games that I like and I'm excited about it. But I don't have any specific questions because they've kind of answered the one question that I, that I'm curious about, which is, is it really playable by yourself? And the answer is yes.

Yeah, that's your world, which I like. And I like the idea of cool, this is my map and I'm slowly exploring it. And if, yeah, there is a mission that ramps up in difficulty or a mission I want to farm or a mission to play on hard to get this piece of whatever loot gun, whatever is how it's going to work out, then I can go get friends or vice versa. Like that's because that was always the thing with Peace Walker, right? I remember the review event when it was on PSP and stuff. And when I was going back and just playing more of it or whatever where people were like,

I can't get by this boss. Will people come help me? And like, yeah, sure. And we all just jumped in ad hoc and went in and took down this boss and then left. That's always fun to do. And I think, you know, one thing that you can't overlook with wildlands, which I think is important and I think it's relevant. It's two things.

Number one is that Ubisoft seems to have a dedication to making their games better. And I'm not saying that in a very PR-ish kind of marketing way. They really do. And it gives their games long tail. So with Rainbow Six Siege, for instance, Siege sold okay at the beginning, but actually more people were playing it months later and actually maybe even a year after launch than were playing it around the launch window because they kept supporting it and stuck with it and brought people into the fold.

And the same thing with the division, the division sold way better than I think anyone did. With the exception of call of duty in battlefield, the division out sold everything else that came out last year. That's crazy. I didn't know that. It's like mind blowing. I mean, it's, well, that's that thing about it is like when division was leading up to it And when it came out, that was the shit.

Everyone was playing it. And then for various reasons, people left. Like I did or whatever. And I left because the end game was just like, I do not want to do these same missions over and over again. Like I'll never forget signing on and tie was, I've been doing this for six hours because this is the best gear spot. And I'm like, I'm not running the same mission for six hours straight.

Thank you very much. Yeah, that shit's boring. But to us, but to other people, I appreciate it you like to Luke grind. I mean, I do it in my own games. I grind levels and fucking nerdy RPGs all the time. But I like that they stuck with it, the third, you know, the survival delcies out now, people are going back, you jump back in. So what I'm saying is that there's reasons to be optimistic about the sport of wildlands

and the long tail of wildlands, because I think with games like this, whether it is the division, whether it is siege, whether it is a game like this, to become good at it and to be, or destiny or anything like that, to become good, which is not a Ubisoft game, I know, but to become good and to become immersed in it, you really have to dedicate yourself to it. And there's only certain amounts of room on the market, as I've said many times for these kinds of games, yet Ubisoft keeps putting them out in significant increments that I think is smart. In other words, giving your game like 12 to 18 months to breathe,

then assuming that you'll keep a fragment of that audience and then kind of tantalize them with something new is actually a pretty interesting cycle that they're on. And I like that they've taken their time. This game's been in development for a long time too. So I'm excited about it. I think it's going to be cool, and I'm looking forward to playing as the lone wolf.

To your point, what's interesting about Ubisoft and I would say Activision with Destiny and a whole bunch of the other games like that is that there is quietly a baton, it feels like being passed, where it's like I'm jumping into, I'm totally re-obsessed with the division. division right now into the point of like what drove me away but why people are back is the fact

that now it is there's a million different missions and a million different ways to play and it feels super rewarding it's the opposite of DC Universe online where I was talk about where you know I put 800 hours into DC Universe online but when I come back it was fuck I got to run these raids and run these things and I could do these solo dailies or whatever but they're giving me so few of the marks I need to get the next gear set that it's not even worth my time I need to do these raids with other people and find it whereas division isn't that at all I'm playing with Fran, of course, because me and Fran, division bros. And I like running through the, you know, stuff with him.

We're doing the survival stuff. But I can go play survival alone, or I can go do the daily hard missions, which are giving me enough stuff that when he's coming on, my gear score has gone up and all these different things. But the baton I'm talking about is the fact that when I left the division, gear score wasn't a thing. The different tiers of difficulty for your world weren't a thing. I think there's five or six now.

I'm on three. And they're showing you where you're maxing out. So there's so many people who, first off, dropped out. and have been asking me this week or this week while I tweet about it. Like, is it really worth going back to you? I totally think so. It's a different experience. There's so much more content to do. There's so many different things to do. It is rewarding where I'm going out and I'm getting better guns every night. It's not like I'm building up trying to get to like the, you know, the Gallagorn. I think it was in destiny that I always talked about. Like I'm getting awesome guns and switching them in and having a great

time doing that. I'm being rewarded playing and I'm going like gear score score. But then there's the people who already hit the max gear score and have bounced out to do something else, but are excited for, you know, update 1.6 that keeps getting talked about that's coming up soon and the new DLC that's coming with that. They're doing a great job of, all right, cool, here's this update, here's survival. You're good, you go play it for a week if you're a hardcore division person,

get back to whatever the top level is and then you go away, and then there'll be another thing. But when you go away, it is, all right, cool, go play destiny now or go play whatever. And they're not saying that obviously, but it is that thing where there's a way for Ubisoft, who is killing it with this kind of stuff, to have this going and Wildlands going and Rainbow Siege going

and have everybody like, okay, ebbs and flow. If you're into all these games, there isn't going to be that. There's going to be weeks of it, but not months of it where you're like, fuck, I have dailies to do with everything. And I'm so close. You're going to hit out on what that content is and be able to take a break and come back. I feel. Yeah.

There you go. Ghost Recrecon Wildlands. Make sure you check out the let's play over at YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. We'll be there sometime this week. And the game will be coming out March 7th. So that's pretty. Right around the corner. Pretty soon.

Got that switch in the way, though. Switch up your experience. Next topic. I want to talk about Scorpio. Yeah, you do. Specifically, I want to talk about what it needs to do to succeed in the market that we have going right now. Now that we know what the switch looks like, now that we know where the PS4 Pro falls. Yeah.

What does Microsoft need to do to market this thing correctly? What do we think that they'll do and all of that? This kind of jumps off as the day that we're recording this. There was a whole bunch of leaked things of digital foundry. Oh, yeah. Terraflops and all that stuff. Yeah. But that on the morning show, you and Nick kind of watched the original pitch video from Lester's E3, where they announced the Scorpio and talking about it. And I heard it just from the other room. But it was like, there was a lot of things being said. I was like, man, I don't, I don't even remember them saying that. So it's kind of the jumping off point. Yeah. Well, I mean, for me it stems from, because this isn't about the news. The news is out there. We're in a reference a bunch of it. But for me was, I don't think the Scorpio we're going to get shown at E3 and then supposedly released in holiday 2017 is going to. to be what they pitched anymore. I think they're going to change course on this. And I think

they're going to change course on it because of what's happened with PlayStation 4 Pro. Because what you're talking, the news today, right, was twofold and not necessarily related. I'm not, because it's a GAF thread where one of the developers of Oriene the Blind Forest chimed in. And then it was Digital Foundry dropping these white papers or whatever, right? You read all this stuff today? Well, I saw the, the Digital Foundry story. And then I saw the, the post on NeoGaf that then turn into a story or whatever. Exactly. So the whole digital foundry thing here is these white pages, right, which is the document they gave to the developers or whatever talking about

this. What's important is that it was dated just after the Scorpio's E3 reveal. So I think this, what they're talking about here is still based on what happened there. And like, here's what we think we are. Here's what the market we think we are. And I think they probably changed. Because what I've always thought is the most enticing argument made. And this is, I think Colin probably coined it right after E3. And we were all talking about it and all thinking about it. Colin put it really succinctly, right, is the fact that they've lost this generation. Xbox one has lost a PlayStation 4. Xbox 1 has fantastic games.

It's sold really well, but when you compare it to a juggernaut of PlayStation 4, they can't make up that ground. And so they have to concede the ground, as Colin said, and move on to something else. And that's what Scorpio gets to be. And so when they started talking about it, it really did sound, and that's what this whole document is, that you're right after the fact.

It sounded interesting, but here they're talking about the fact that, again, it's, you know, not, they're talking about not running it in, native 4K necessarily. There's references to it, right? But it's talking about how to, you know, this is all so technical and above my head and pay grade that, you know, we're not going to even pretend to go into it. But they're talking about upsample this. The six flops, of course. The second major technique it advocates is sparse rendering, which is better known in the post PS4 pro era as checkerboarding. It's doing the same thing, right? So not only does Microsoft advocate the same technique for Scorpio, it also cites the same impressive work Ubisoft did in

Rainbow Sixth, which to the point where it's the exact same presentation shown to me, the reporter for Digital Foundry by Mark Cerny a few months back is referenced in the white paper. So it's one of those things where a lot of people took this report today and were like, fuck Scorpio. It is just the PlayStation 4 Pro, a little bit more powerful, but it's doing the same thing and da-da-da-da. But then it got interesting, I thought, when you take that into the context of this is where we were at E3, and then the comment from Thomas Mahler, who worked on Oriente the Blind Forest on Gaff, where on Gaff, Windforce asked, is Scorpio their PS4 Pro or a new generation?

I'm super confused. Thomas said, all consoles are now X86 PCs and the architecture will remain the same. That's why Sony was able to quickly iterate on the PS4 and make a beefier version of it. Scorpio is a next-gen machine with the added benefit that all of your old games will still be compatible. From this point on, similar to PCs, you'll not lose your library when you buy a next-gen system. I guess since Neogaf is confused, Microsoft will need to do a little work to make it clear to everyone, the Scorpio isn't just a half-assed upgrade, parentheses, which the PS4 kind is,

end parentheses. Yeah, I'm sorry, PS4 Pro. But a full-blown next-gen machine that's not just backwards compatible with your current library. This then got us into the conversation on the morning show about the fact that in the E-3 conversation we had

that how is the Xbox Scorpio going to run all your Xbox 1 games, but they made a big point of D-3 that, you know, you can play the Scorpio game, the games we're putting out are on both consoles and there's all these different things and it's this ecosystem, it's this family of Xbox

where you can play everything. And it's like, well, then what the point is the score of the fucking Scorpio? Which again is, what's the point of PlayStation 4 Pro in a certain respect? Because it looks better. We're uprescing to 4K and doing all this different things.

I'm making the hypothesis today on the games cast that this is what they thought the Scorpio was going to be. And what they were moving forward. Then they saw the reaction of the pro and they saw how excited people were about what they thought the Scorpio. was going to be and that they're changing the Scorpio to be the next gen machine that Thomas is

talking about. Yeah. Now the reason behind- Which is what we've been saying for a long time. The reason behind that is the fact, I thought this is interesting too. This is from the no video around rooster teeth they were talking about, or you know, nose channel. I don't know. It's roostertee's property. Ashley pointed out in her new story, right, that the Scorpio landing page originally got changed, when it was up there after the pro went live, got changed to the first and only console to enable true 4K gaming and high fidelity VR, right? That's how they were describing the Scorpio. Since then it's been changed. Now, she was using this to key in on the 4K gaming, but maybe that's not really true.

Maybe it's just like the pro. I think it's much more interesting here in terms of this. Now it says, the most powerful console ever featuring six terraflops of graphical processing power, true 4K gaming and compatibility with Xbox One games and accessories. For me, it's that last line. Compatibility with Xbox One games and accessories. Not everything is compatible in this family anymore. This new machine that Thomas, is saying is next gen that is more powerful, that is their next gen move is compatible. It's

backwards compatible. It is not, Xbox 1 is not going to be forward compatible with this. That's not what we're getting into. I also thought it was interesting. They dropped high fidelity VR from it. I know that's been the thing back and forth, Oculus that, blah, blah, blah, but that's not where they're going anymore, right? They're talking about the most powerful console ever, six teraflops of graphical processing power, true 4K gaming and compatibility of Xbox 1. Yeah. I mean, this this all adds up. I mean, like just thinking, we haven't talked about Scorpio for a long time, but immediately, even on our games cast, right after E3,

we were talking about how, like, this is the Xbox 2 or whatever. There's no way this is just going to be an incremental update with the way that they're talking about it. Now, my thing is, does it come out this year? I don't think so. I think you have no way. No way. I mean, if anything, it's like, does it even come out early next year?

Does it not come out until end of 2018? I think that's the most likely thing that we get for this. If it's end of 2018, it's a full year delayed, then I think it's exactly what we're talking about. here where this was what it was going to be. And they saw the reaction of pro and they were like, nope, we can't do that. Again, it goes back to what I've been saying forever about the PS4 Pro and with the Xbox 1S where it's just like those are, their new versions of the same system that give different

functionality people that want it. Like the Xbox 1S has the 4K, you know, the ultra HD Blu-Rs and all that stuff and has HDR. And then they added HDR even to the normal PS4 pros or PS4s. But PSP4 pros are for enthusiasts that want to have the option to have the higher frame rates or better resolution or whatever going for them. But like Scorpio is a totally different beast. And for them to even pretend like all the systems, all the games are going to be backwards

and forwards compatible, it's like that just doesn't make sense for how people buy games and how consoles work and all that. But it then reminds me of things like the 3DS and new 3DS where it's like there has been examples of new hardware that's the same hardware that limits it. And Nintendo's done it before even with like Game Boy and Game Boy Color, where majority of the software library works on both. But then there is the new 3DS exclusive games or the Game Boy Color exclusive games. This doesn't sound like that.

This doesn't sound like there's going to be, I mean, if I were to bet, I don't bet that there will be Scorpio exclusive games. I think that there will be Scorpio games. And it is just going to be that move on. that will be ports. It's going to be just like we've seen for the last. Well, yeah, because I mean, I think, and I think that's what they realize, right? Because I think that's the whole thing, and especially from Microsoft's corner,

we're talking about what Scorpio needs to do, right, to be, to matter. And to matter, it needs to be their next system. It cannot be iteration. It cannot be a little bit better because PlayStation had trouble with that messaging. And for me, I mean, my same argument that I apply to PlayStation, I apply to this, but then I have a new bullet point for it. I'm just like, I turn my Xbox one on three times. a year.

I mean, not including when we Skype call with it or do whatever with it. So actually play exclusives and play things that I can't get on PlayStation or somewhere else. Why would I ever jump the, why would I give them more money to do that, right? But if it was the fact of, okay, cool, it plays all your old Xbox one games. So I'll get any exclusives that comes to Xbox one. But it's also going to give you for the next 12 to 18 months games that are only on Scorpio until there's a PlayStation 5 until there's like this thing. Yeah.

That's where it gets fascinating. Man, it's so funny that we've come so far. in gaming technology that we went from backwards compatibility being a given to being taken from us to now coming back as being an exciting thing. It's just like that's just ridiculous. But that is exactly what seems to be happening here. I think it's complicated. I think when they announced Scorpio, I think that they were announcing an idea.

And they probably, and I'm sure Microsoft's a big company, R&D, lots of different things. They probably had multiple consoles. And they were trying to figure out which way to go forward, understanding that they're competition was planning something, what might be similar, might not be similar. I think it is fairly obvious that PlayStation 4 Pro has not lit the world on fire. The only evidence you need to know is that Sony doesn't talk about it. So the first time I had ever seen anyone from Sony to talk about it was some random guy in Singapore saying how they're trying to manufacture more of them.

But from what I've been told from multiple people, they're on store shelves, wherever you go. So it's not like the thing's rare. So this is a niche device for a wider audience, a 55 million or so group of people. that own PlayStation 4. I think Microsoft looks at this in a different way, which is the Scorpio, I agree,

the Scorpio as an incremental step is a mistake because Xbox is already losing. So now you're dealing with a much smaller group of people. I mean, the latest estimate I saw was maybe 26 million Xbox ones in the wild, which means that they're losing by more than 2 to 1 to PlayStation, which is bad.

Now, 26 million units is very respectable. That puts it in the same league as the original Xbox. That puts it in the same league as GameCube, and they will still sell millions more. so it'll end up in the 30s. It'll probably end up around or pass N64, which is fine on that kind of pantheon of console sold. But I think that they probably chose a path. And I think that there's multiple reasons why they probably chose it.

I think one is that when they were talking about the idea of Scorpio and when they were talking about what was going to be in and what it can do, my assumption is that they were aiming for a late 2017 release in the hopes that a lot of the components would become cheaper. Because the rumors were when people were talking about this is like, this sounds literally like an $800 machine. Like this isn't something that's even possible for the mass market. And they probably looked at that and you're probably right. And the other thing is that, and as we talked about, not necessarily unique idea, but that they lost. And it's time to kind of move on.

The thing that I'm concerned about for them and the thing that I think is going to start getting super muddled and maybe it's just my organizational OCD mind is that now the generations are just totally fucked up. Because now, now Switch is coming out in a month. PS4 has been out since 2013. Xbox 1 has been out since 2013. PS4 Pro is an incremental device. Scorpio sounds like it's going to be a new console

because I believe much more than the white paper, I believe the person who has this clearly is, you know, the people at Moon Studios or whatever, that's what the studio is called, right? That made Ori. Those people are in the second party. They have the device, I'm sure. And this is the current information.

Right, exactly. So I totally deferred to him. And he's being very, it's not, it's not cagey. It's not ambiguous or nebulous at all. He's saying it's a new console. It's a new generation. It is a backwards compatible system. So what I think is going to happen is akin to what you were saying is, let's say that there's a new Halo game next year or something like that.

It'll be on both consoles. And it'll be similar to the PS4 and PS3 jump when Call of Duty Ghosts was on PS3 and PS4. Or switch with Zelda. Exactly. And then they're going to, and that will be done specifically because that doesn't need to be done. Because the Scorpio, it will be backwards compatible, but it has to be done because of the way they communicated what the console was going to be. And they did say straight up, this thing is just in the continuation of Xbox One in so many words. And the games will all be available on it.

But that's not possible because to your point, what is the point then of doing this at all? It's just going to, you're always going to be held back by the lowest common denominator, which is why the PS4 Pro makes no sense and why I think Microsoft is seeing that. And seeing like, this is a new push. The problem becomes now that everyone all, well, not really so much Nintendo, but the two competitors in Microsoft are Sony in my mind are now going to be watching each other somewhat tentatively. And somewhat timidly, because now they're going to be so far apart and space so far apart with these consoles that Microsoft has to be very careful about not putting this thing out too soon. Because now PS5, which is certainly R&Ding right now at Sony, my assumption, PS5, fall 2018, I think is a safe bet.

And we'll be fully backwards compatible. Again, safe bet with PlayStation 4. And probably, they probably go way down the rabbit hole and making backwards compatible with everything, at least digitally. And that Sony has done on the PlayStation Network, for instance. So, why can you play PS1 classics on the PS4? No one fucking knows. And I'm sure that that's going to be a problem that's nipped in the bud there. But if Sony now has a chance as the winner of this generation to look at what Microsoft's doing and be like, we're going to beat you now, we'll use our own dynamic economies of scale to buy cheap parts and make a better and more dynamic machine that's going to make your machine look really bad or at least subpar or at least not as powerful.

That's a mistake for Microsoft. I think Microsoft should hold on as long as possible before releasing this console. I wouldn't you. They need each other. I think that's the most important part is why I mean, when you look at the switch, like the biggest point of. feedback from the general consumer, not from the Nintendo fan, is where's the third party support? And the third party support only exists in the way that it does for Microsoft and Sony because they both have each other to exist.

And the third parties know they can sell to this large audience of both consumer bases, right? And so if we are now creating a three-tiered system, it's going to, there's going to be a clear winner, a clear loser in terms of the HD twins or whatever. And then there's going to be third-party exclusives where it's like, well, call of duty is best. on Xbox and Battlefield's better on PlayStation, for example, whatever. And they were going to have to double down that way. And it's going to get nasty. And I don't think that it's good to create a system where the exclusives matter to a point

with the third parties where hardcore gamers need all three systems. I think we're in a good place right now where you're really okay with one or the other of PlayStation or Xbox. And if you like Nintendo games, get the Wii or the now switch, you know. but creating a divide between what the Xbox and PlayStation is, I think it could be very detrimental to third parties as a whole, which means the gamers are going to get fucked. Yeah, I agree.

I think that Sony seems to be playing this is the smartest right now, even though I think PS4 Pro is an unnecessary stumble, and again, you know, they would be talking about it more if it was selling. And I'm sure it's doing fine, but how long did it take them to announce that a million PS4s were sold in the United States on day one? It took them one day to say that. So if PS4 Pro was this thing that was lighting everything up and Microsoft could look at that because they have, I'm sure they're fucking birdies chirping in their ear too.

And everyone knows what the other hand is doing. Right. Like then then they would be going a different way. Again, the dude, the ory dude saying that this is a new console, again, it creates a whole series of frankly endemic problems to this particular industry that could cause issues for them. And the only thing that he's saying, which I think, or the one thing that he says, which is positive is that it's all based on the same architecture. So porting between them should be at least easier than porting from Zelda Xbox 360, for instance, on the PlayStation 3. But you are going to deal with these different, I guess just a variable group of sliders, basically, they're going to have to be dealt with for all of these different games. You're creating more work now.

PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox 1, Scorpio, PC. Now there are going to be five skews that these guys have to deal with. The thing is Switch as well, if I'm not incorrect about this, and I might be because this is the tech stuff, I don't know at all. but the architecture's on about the X86, or whatever. Isn't that also what the switch is on? I don't know anything about that. Yeah, I'm checking free. But so possibly six skews.

This is going to start to piss actually the publishers and the developers off. And so I think that they're probably going to get that feedback or I assume that they're getting that feedback. I'd be interested to see what feedback Sony is getting on pro. What kind of patch response? Some of these games, like for instance, to go back and patch Tomb Raider, for instance,

which a game that didn't even sell that well on PS4 at all, is Crystal Dynamics? Like, that was a complete fucking waste of our time. that was a complete waste over resources. This is all important data for them to garner before they make any moves. So I'm with you. I don't think Scorpio's coming out this year.

If it comes out this year that it is more akin to PS4 Pro. And I think that's a huge mistake because they've already lost. And you're dealing again with a group of people that is just much smaller and much less interested in buying a new console. Plus Microsoft is actually sending mixed signals with Xbox publishing in the terms of like,

well, all our games are now on PC. Now all of our games are going to be on Xbox one. Now all our game is going to be on Scorpio. It's just a confusing kind of message that I think is actually not positive for Xbox as a hardware brand. very positive perhaps for Xbox as a publisher of games but they're not going to cede that ground to Sony

so like they're obviously going to keep making consoles they should the Xbox one is a very respectable piece of kit so it's like I want to see how this all shakes out but if I were if I were them I would wait as long as humanly possible and I would launch this console in the fall of 2018 which is when again I think the PS5 is going to launch

so because these guys have to make a move and to placate the developers and the publishers switch does not use x86 what does it use ARM arm. I don't know what that is exactly, but yeah. There you go, something different. Don't know how I was on off.

I mean, the big thing is too, just, I mean, like it's, it could go either way too, because you figure if you're a third party, how much work do you want to put into an exclusive skew for just Xbox Scorpio, right? Like, if PlayStation 4 is what's moving all the units, you're going to do all that. And if this, if Scorpio comes out and doesn't set the world on fire either and does respectably, well, you're not going to go out of your way to fucking make a different skew. Yeah, you'll upres the graphics and be done with it. Yeah.

We'll see how it all shakes out. It is interesting that Microsoft seems to be scaling back game releases, or at least investing in different ways and canceling, you know, removing, for instance, Lionhead from the docket, pushing Phantom Dust away, canceling scalebound. This might be a way to clear the docket of games that are just not going to sell units in order to kind of, you have to still placate the audience that's there. And there's a significance Xbox One audience that's buying games. But at the same time, similar to what I think we saw with Wii U, they could be being like, what, like Crackdown, for instance. crackdown has been in development for a long time, but could crackdown be a Scorpio game? Could it be a cross-generation game?

What does the word generation now mean? Like this is, this, the generation structure was really broken first by Dreamcast. And it, but we, it wasn't, it was the exception to the rule. It wasn't really the rule. PS2 came out in 2000, Xbox and GameCube came out in 2001. Xbox 360 came out in 2005, we and PS3 came out in 2006. Xbox 1 came out in 2013. PS4 came out a few weeks before it, I think, in 2013.

So now we're going to have this whole fucked up. I don't know how this plays. I don't know if it matters. But I think it probably does. See, for me, I do think that Scorpio is the next Xbox system. And I agree with you that I think the longer they hold off to that window of 2018 holidays, I think is best for them. But I do think that there is a chance that Scorpio, I don't think this is going to happen. But I think that if it does release fall this year and it is just a PS4 pro, they don't

called Scorpio, it's literally something to the equivalent of Xbox 1 Pro. I don't think that that's such a bad move. I think that at least then they're not saying that it's a new system and they are allowing themselves to just give you more options because I disagree with you about the PS4 Pro in the sense that I think it's awesome for people that want it. And it's like, it doesn't need a light that we're on fire because it's there for the people that care about 4K and care about all those things.

And I think that there is an Xbox One audience that is equivalent to that. And I think that at this point with Microsoft, them losing and all of that, There's many decisions they can make. I think that the smart decision would be to move on to the next console and not have a approach because why waste the energy on that at this point? But they made such bold claims with the Scorpio that do they want to risk upsetting the loyal fans that believe what they're saying? And if they were to release a PS4 Pro version that is the way the strongest thing we've seen thus far, it's going to be a lot easier to do that this year than it will be to create a whole new system that's backwards compatible next.

year. Right. Well, two things. The one, yeah, the pros for someone, and I'm speaking more from a bird's eye view in terms of there's something for everyone. The question is, is this a wise course of action for the industry? Was this a wise course of action for Sony? And was this a wise investment for them? Or should they have just not done anything at all, which is my take, and brings you to an alternate outcome for this, which is that Sony looking at PlayStation 4 outpacing still most of its other hardware that it's ever released and still in the, in the spectrum of PlayStation 2, do they just go, we're not releasing anything for a fucking long time. We're letting this thing go and go and go until 2020, for instance. In which case, this gives Microsoft an

opening to do either of those things, which might be what Microsoft is banking on, which is to say, like, we could release an incremental console, which is still going to be more powerful than PS4 Pro, because Sony is selling so well that they don't need to do anything, or we release a new console, which will dwarf in power the PlayStation 4, which will hopefully take wind out of its sales and force Sony to push ahead what its plans were. So this is a dynamic, this is a dynamic situation, but I would endeavor to say that Microsoft has lost, we all know that. Doesn't mean that the console's bad. Doesn't mean that there's no value to be had there, but that it is imperative on them to make the move first.

And the move that they make first is going to really illustrate maybe perhaps the next decade in the gaming industry because Sony's going to have to be very reactionary to this. Nintendo doesn't seem to care what anyone's doing. But it's an important step for these guys to take one way or the other, and I'll be watching with great interest to see what Microsoft does. because I think, again, I think it will paint the entire landscape based on their reaction. And they are a wily company that knows exactly what they're doing. The Xbox 360 was, the original Xbox was no joke as far as a console.

It was ahead of its time in a lot of ways. I'd say the same way to think about the Dreamcast in a lot of ways. These consoles were actually well ahead of their time. The fact that the original Xbox came with an Ethernet port was an incredible step. You know, you had to buy an attachment for PS2 and GameCube to do that kind of stuff. And the Xbox 360 itself was ahead of its time as well. The Xbox one read the T leaves, the digital T leaves, I think, in a strange way that hurt them and their communication hurt them. But this is a company, I guess what I'm saying, is that they can pull shit that will be very dynamic and very interesting to a lot of people.

And I wouldn't underestimate whatever this console is. I wouldn't underestimate it at all. Phil Spencer is not Matric. It's not Don Matric. And they have something to prove. And I think they have a fucking huge chip on their shoulder. Because I think the, I don't think the Xbox One's performance. is equivalent to the power and the usefulness and the draw of the console.

I really do think they are paying for the way it was introduced still. And I think they know that. I think this console probably could have been in the 30s or 40s in terms of millions sold if it wasn't rolled out like that. And I think that they are mad that that happened. And I think they will have everything buttoned up and ready to go regardless of which direction. They're going to come out with a very PlayStation 4 approach because that's what they have right now. It's just quiet about it.

But they are all about games. And when this thing, it gets announced, it's not going to be. TV, TV, TV, Call it, it, it's going to be like, here's why this is the gaming machine you need. And guess what, guys, it's got all these new games on here that are exclusive to this platform, Scorpio, you won't find anything else here, and everything that's still coming out you can get.

So if you didn't get an Xbox one, if you missed all this great content, get on board now, we're packing in all these different things. This is what's happening, blah, blah, blah, blah. There you go. Any closing words? I think the tagline should be, come home. They're taking back this generation. Come home.

I like it. Next topic. Greg, yeah. Last week, you brought up a mobile game. I did. That you were like,

Tim, you got to play this thing. Yeah, I got in a normal lost phone. I picked it up, got my code just before we started the games cast and started in,

and within two seconds. I knew this is a game you'd like, because you and me loved Emily's way. And we like narrative adventures. And this is a narrative mystery told through your phone, which talking to a developer friend the other week at brunch, I guess is a very popular thing on mobile phones,

but we don't play mobile games. So I would never know that. Um, yeah, what do you want to know about it? It's great. I don't want to ruin the mystery for you. What's it called? A normal lost phone. A normal lost phone.

It's like a who's on first thing. Yeah, but what's the game? Sorry, it's called a normal lost phone game. A normal lost phone. Normal lost phone. Yeah. Yeah. It's what?

Out the 26th iOS, Android, PC. Don't need to play it on a phone. Okay. However, I highly recommend to play on a phone. So when you play, when you play it, so give me the pitch of the game. The pitch of the game is you, you, the player, have picked up a phone, which is now your your phone, but you pick up a phone. and you need to figure out what the hell's going on.

Because you pick it up and you're out of minutes so you can't call or text anybody back. Like it's a prepaid kind of phone like that. And you see Wi-Fi's, but you don't know the passwords for them. So you can access anything offline on the phone and then you have to start piecing together what happened because this phone's just out there.

And the first thing you do when you open it is, it's like, you know, there's four new messages from dad. And you click, okay. And the last four messages are like, where'd you go, Sam? Hey, well, we're really worried. We're going to call the police what's going. on.

And like you need to like, so like you know, you pick it up and there's a sense of something's gone wrong. Sam is in danger or missing or hurt or has run away. We need to piece together what's going on to try to solve it. So it's not that you're just snooping to snoop. You're snooping to try to. Is there any nudes? Can you find nudes?

I texted you the one thing. Sam is, you know, in high school. Mm-hmm. I believe he turns 18 in this game maybe. I think they're right. I should have written that down probably. But 18. he's an adult.

Things are happening in his messages, all right? Don't go digging for it, but you got to do it because you got to figure out what's going on. He's got his girlfriend, but that's the whole thing of like, there's all these tantalizing threads, I feel. So you start off and the first thread is like, oh, fuck, this guy's missing.

What the hell's going on? You know, what's going on in his life? Which makes you then dial back, you know, at least for me, dial back to the top of the messages with his dad and then read all the way through. And like, it's just dad being dad doing dad jokes, whatever, talking to him about this, talking about his birthday party,

talking about the girlfriend. talking about this, blah, blah. And then you, like, notice, like, he's being dodgy about the girlfriend. Like, what's going on? Okay, cool. Then you jump over to the girlfriend's text messages. Do the same thing. Start down.

You get the thing I sent you. Yeah. But then, like, oh, fuck, this didn't go the way. And you do that and you, you know, the text messages has mentioned multiple people, so you're jumping back into other texts. And the way they did it with, I thought was inventive was it's the idea that the phone's newish. The game's taking place in January, right, the end of January.

But, like, he got the new phone in December. So he sent out like a mass message of like, hey, my new, this is my new number, everybody. So people have responded back and like there's tons of throwaway text messages. Like, oh, hey, cool. Thanks so much. Blu-bullshitting around that don't have any to do the story. But it's you having to sift through them. But as you follow the narrative from dad mentions girlfriend, girlfriend mentions this.

And you start trying to piece it all together and tie it in. It's like, oh, okay, cool. I'm getting a sense for this. And then it becomes like from these messages, how do I figure out how to get onto the Wi-Fi? And then I get on the Wi-Fi. Okay, cool. he's got this email that's like half done. What happens if I send?

And like you start making all these little choices and little decisions that are then, okay, cool. He's got a dating profile. It's password protected. What's his past? You know, you start trying to figure out what the password would be doing those different things.

Yeah. And like what I, when I knew it was, I thought really well was like, or I knew it was really good is that we were playing it on Friday. I was playing on Friday here. Went home,

wasn't feeling that well. I was playing something on the console. I was like, I'm gonna get ramen. I'm gonna, I'm feeling sick. I'm gonna go do that. And went there to the Rama shop by myself and sat there and just was on, on my phone the entire time, but it wasn't my phone. You know what I mean?

And it was that thing of like, I'm scrolling through his text message. Like, oh, that's, that's probably the past code to this. And I would hit my home button and jump back to my apps. I'm like no, fuck, God damn. I'm in a virtual face. It looks like a phone interface. Sure. Entirely.

Yeah, yeah. No, no. Yeah. Here, I'll show it to you right now. And that's the whole thing. And I personally had never, they're called, I guess, phone simulators or whatever. I've never played one of those before. You know what I mean?

And so I guess they are popular. But yeah, like you're now in Sam's phone. Interesting. So you can click on any of those apps and then click the little diamond button to go back to the home screen on Sam's phone and figure it all out and piece it all together. Oh, this is really cool. But there's photos, you know, a calendar. Like you get to play this. And it's, you know, not hard.

You know, it's meant to keep the narrative going. Yeah, yeah. There's soundtrack on there. Have you beat it yet? Yeah. Yeah, and that's the thing. It's not super long. Yeah.

So Emily is away about an hour experience, I would say. Is this similar to that? It's hard to say because I broke it up. You know what I mean? I would imagine. Yeah, probably. Maybe a little bit more. Maybe.

I mean, Emily away, I think our last play was like 45 minutes, right? And I think even there, we could have made different choices to have a different ending. Whereas like this one doesn't. Now the flip side is that this, I think is $3. You know what I mean?

Like you're not. I think Emily Wways away was more. Maybe it was pay as you, whatever you want it to be. but I think it was, yeah, I think it was a free game. It's one of those things where this is, for, I don't feel, I enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed the ride. I felt smart when I figured out things.

You know what I mean? Were $3? Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah. And I thought, it was, it was a fun adventure. It was a fun story. I think based on what you know now, if that sounds interesting, go get it. Don't read into it.

Don't, you know what I mean? Because like, even the email that was, hey, here's your code or whatever. And like, the way they described it, I was like, oh, well, I'm pretty sure I know what happens to him. You know, but it still was of getting there And it was like the whole I know something I think I know the ending

But I'm not sure the journey Like I don't understand Because there is that like you know The messages that go from totally friendly tone To like I'm pissed at you And I'm like way fuck why And I need to figure out By looking at the other messages

And figuring it all out how that happened Very cool. Yeah Very cool. Colin sounds like your type of game Oh definitely well actually sounds great But it's on a phone so I can't play it When it comes to Vita I'll certainly turn inside

You love it. Yes So Colin A normal Lost Vita. You've been playing a very calling game. Yeah, Tales of Bersaria. Tales of Bersaria. Which I think is the 16th Tales game.

Something like that. I'm a huge Tales fan. Surprise is newer people that are new listeners or newer, fresher listeners. Maybe even people that just joined us with kind of funny when we started. But I've been a Tales fan for 19 years and I've played most of them. And there are, I'm a big old school JRP fan. I've kind of fallen off because I think the Japanese role-playing genre is largely trash now, and I don't think

anyone really dispute that. But there are three marquee franchises, a varying popularity that I think are regular kind of franchises. Final Fantasy, it's Dragon Quest and it's Tales. You don't know, persona? Well, no, persona's not regular.

I mean, persona, it took them persona four came out in 2008, so it's nine. I don't know your definition. It's a sequelized numbered series. I don't know if that counts. It's not been nine years since. Gotcha. Since the last one. I'm saying like, you're talking about the ones that come out with great frequency. There's a Dragon Quest game,

although Dragon Quest not as regular, but yeah, Persona 2, whatever. But in terms of those three franchises, I think Final Fantasy changes too much. I think Dragon Quest, for a lot of people,

is very familiar kind of comfort food, but doesn't change very much at all. And I think Tails is kind of somewhere in the middle where it's a very familiar game to play, but it, and it's come a long way since it's like chibi roots with Fantasia and Destiny. But has like a structure

that makes it very familiar. that makes it feel like a continuation of the old Tales games, even though like Exilia or something like that, or even Legendia or something where you know what you're playing and you know what you're getting into. And so when you play the game, if you play Tales games before, then it's very familiar.

The difference with this Tales game compared to others, and I think Zesteria, which was the last one, is another example of this, is that they're trying to really change things and make it more dynamic. And I think that they realize that to a degree, the games are becoming very samey.

for some people. They still have a very hardcore group of people. There's a Tales Festival every year in Japan that Namco tried to invite me to like three different times that I couldn't go do.

You gotta go, bro. Now they got this cat in the hat. Come on. Yeah, the cat in the hat character is there. Not as cool as Rollo from Exilia,

who was just a cat. Didn't have a hat. Just a cat. Well, they don't want it to be too samey. Yeah, exactly. You put the cat and hat a different story altogether.

It's a little different. The cat in the hat happens to be a mollick, which is a, it doesn't matter. The, uh, so,

All right, so Brazaria for Tales fans because no one else will probably care. The combat structure is a little different. You're not using arts as heavily. You're using a lot of combat combinations. The game's always had a fighting game kind of genetic code, but the combat's a little different. You can set up different combos there,

which is not necessarily unheard of in a Tales game, but it's much more physical, I guess is what I'm saying, as opposed to distance fighting. Which is, again, if you're playing symphony or something like that with Lloyd or whatever, not unheard of, but definitely has a different feel, I think, than Exilia, which is the last major one. I don't think a lot of people played Zisteria because I think it was so different. And the other major differences is that I think that they've scaled back some systems and then

they've added some systems, or refined some systems. So the game still has titles, which are a famous Tales thing, which is you complete certain things or do certain things in the game and you get titles based on that, like a title. Like you are the itemizer. You're the Mr. Mr. Merchant or whatever because you sell things, whatever. But there's like all of these, all of these different things have all of these layers. So every art you use has a leveling up system and a star system. Every title, depending on how much you use it and what it is, has a leveling up system and a star system.

If you go to a shop and you buy or sell things, the shop owners will level up. If you refine and dismantle items, the shop owner and the blacksmith will level up. So there's all of these different systems. every piece of equipment you have can be mastered. The longer you keep it equipped, the more like its innate kind of abilities will be on you permanently. So once you master, say you have a cloak on and you master it and it has plus 5% to arts or whatever, then when you remove it, as long as you've mastered it, that's permanent. And you'll have that forever.

So there's a reason to equip everything and have you use different permutations of items. So on a systems level, it's way more dynamic than Tails typically is, which keeps you in the menus much more, which is depending on who you are, you might like that or you might not like that. I actually really enjoy that kind of shit. So I like the refining of items and the kind of equipping things and making my character stronger and seeing the permanence of it. Because what they did remove from old tales games or some old tales games is the ability to customize the way you level up. So every time you would level up, you get points that you can then go into this huge grid like Final Fantasy 10 for instance. And kind of go about your business in that way.

They remove that. So now you just have, you just level up and you just get more stamina and you get more whatever health and all that kind of stuff. So they've removed that. So in other words, they've exchanged depth there for depth. somewhere else. In terms of some of the side systems, I think that one of the cool things is you have a ship. You can send the ship out constantly to go explore the world for you and it finds items and it finds recipes to cook and it finds things that are very lucrative. It can find new parts of the map for you to explore and stuff like that. And it's kind of cool. So you get a little

icon. You send it out. It takes a half an hour in game time for the ship to go and come back and it comes back. And it's like, we found these ingredients. This person knew this recipe. So now you can cook that food. Also this part of the map's now unlocked. Your ship is then level up and you're like getting all these things. So now your ship will come back with more food. Your ship will come back quicker. All that kind of stuff. So there's another subsystem there that has been added based on the removal of some other things that used to be deep somewhere else in a Tales game. So I hope that makes sense. I think that'll make sense to the tails out there. And then the story itself, I think, is actually one of its biggest draws because it's strange

for a tales game. Usually it's like a young adventurer. Something terrible happens. He has to go save the world. In this, you're actually trying to kill the people that are trying to keep peace in the world. And I think it's kind of cool because it's way deeper than that. I don't want to get to, I don't want to ruin it because obviously you're not, that's, it's not what it seems. But in the beginning of the game, you're playing as Velvet, who's the primary character, she's a female protagonist.

For the first 90 minutes, the game seems like it's one very specific thing. You have a young boy who's kind of like a brother figure named Lafacette, who is maybe eight or nine years old, and you're being taken care of by this older kind of kind of guy, this father figure, whatever, who is like this great swordsman and stuff like that. About 90 minutes in, he turns on everyone and kills the boy and does like all this kind of shit. And then you are thrown in prison and become basically like this demon character. And you emerge three years later to find this world full of, it's the world at peace.

And it's run by this group of people called the exorcists that are, are trying to like get rid of like the blight, the demon blight, they call it and all these kind of demons around the world. and all you care about is killing the guy who killed your brother. That's it. Like, that's your only goal. You don't care. And that's why I think the story's kind of dynamic and kind of interesting.

Like, you really don't care about the ramifications of what you're doing for anyone else in the world because what you're doing at face value for the rest of the world is actually destabilizing the world. But you just want to do it because you are on a path of vengeance. That's it. That's what the game's about. And I'm about 15 hours in right now. And I was reading online, you know, 40 or 50 hours, normal tales length, 100 hours to 120 hours to platinum it.

which won't happen here. I was going to say you're going for, right? No, not a prayer. But Tales games are always really difficult to plan on, but there are people that have all of them. And that's dedication. I appreciate that. If I was younger and I had time, yeah.

If I had time and inclination to do that. So anyway, I'm really enjoying the game. I think that is it a good place for people that aren't familiar with tales to jump into? I think it is a much better place to jump into than Zisteria was, which I think didn't resonate with a lot of people. It was empty.

It was open. I appreciate that they tried to do different things. When I first played Zisteria in Japan, in 2013 or 2014, I was super excited about it because I was like, you guys were really trying to change it, but when I went and played it for just a few hours,

I'm like the combat's all off. This doesn't feel right. This doesn't feel like a tails game. And this seems like an answer to that. This feels much more like Exilia in terms of pathways, in terms of combat, in terms of open,

like it's not linear, but there's no world map, for instance. You're kind of going from section to section to section. So I think in that regard, I think that it's way more of a pure tales game. and I think people will enjoy it. I don't necessarily think this is a role-playing game for everyone.

For instance, if you have just jumped into the role-playing genre of the Japanese persuasion with Final Fantasy 15, for instance, which is a very Japanese game as well, that is a much more straightforward role-playing game, and I think much palatable to a much more mass-market audience. I think that Thales is still very much niche. It's still very corny. It's still all those things that I love about Tales. I'm not an anime fan. I'm not a fan of overt cornyness, but that's always been what those games were. And it's like putting on a glove that that fits just right. Like it always has.

It's just a really colorful pink glove. It's just a very colorful pink glove that you'd find in Akihabra somewhere. So yeah, I think it's great. I think people are out there going to enjoy it. I'm hoping for the best for this game because I think it's really cool. And, you know, Tails keeps on trucking along while we kind of wait for, you know, at least I'm kind of waiting for Dragon Quest 11. There you go.

Final topic of the day. As always, brought to you by you. You can leave questions for us over at kind of funny.com slash gamescast topic, just like my dude Super Seribis did. Super Seribus. Hey, Grimolin. I guess that's the three of us together. I'm curious.

What are your most controversial gaming opinions? You know, the thoughts you have that no one else seems to agree with. For instance, I believe that Super Mario 3D world and land are better than Super Mario Galaxy. Yeah, that's right. Thanks, Super Seribus. I do not agree with you. Super Mario Galaxy is in a league of its own, but I do agree that Mario 3D World and Land

are vastly underrated when compared to the other Mario games. I think that they are, specifically World is fantastic. I'd say that game's close to a 10. Whereas Galaxy and specifically Galaxy 2 are undeniable tens. The controversial opinions.

You're talking about World? Super Mario World? Super Mario World? The Wii one? Just catching up, sorry. Summar, world's a 10. Just making sure. Just making sure.

Undeniable fact. Not an opinion. My controversial opinions, it's weird because as I've done more and more things with you guys, you kind of warp my sense of what everyone thinks because I feel like there's the internet, there's my friends, and then there's like when I have conversations with both of you. So I feel like my answers might not be correct for the widespread thing. but Metal Gear Solid 4 and Zelda Twilight Princess. Twilight Princess taking aside the first five hours,

which admittedly are garbage and the tutorial shit sucks. There's something about like that generation in games, like around then where many games had tutorials that weren't real tutorials. There was kind of like long intro sections that had nothing to do with the rest of the game. Kingdom Hearts 2 is another victim of this. But I thought Twilight Princess was amazing and I really loved it. And it was just kind of an easy copycat.

of Aquarina of time, but I feel like that was the point. And I feel like they succeeded in that way. And I think that a lot of people look back on it. And now, especially with the Wii U re-release, it's kind of like being looked at a bit more positively, I think, than it was in the 2007 to 2009 era where everybody was just like, well, that was just more the same every time. I thought it has some of the best dungeons in the entire franchise. And I think that alone is what I kind of remember back on and think possibly about the

boss fight in particular. topping off the dungeon where you use the skyhooks and you have like the spider man style things and you're fighting the big ass burn going from tower to tower like it that to me felt more Zelda than most of the things in Winwaker which I also think is a classic but I think Twilight Princess really kind of nailed what I love about Zelda and then Metal Gear Solid 4 gets a lot of hate just because it's super convoluted and it's like Kojima just being like I'm going all fucking in. I'm going to answer your questions.

You want to know what happened to Merrill? She's marrying the guy who shits all the time. The fucking side shit joke character and we're going all in on that storyline by the way. If you didn't remember him, because he was really obscure, he's going to shit a lot in this game. But Middle Gear's solid four man. I mean, from the obvious, like the Shadow Moses moment.

But not even just that. I think the whole thing was such a good love letter to fans of the series. And it, like, I often think about replaying that game. I think if there was an HD re-release at some point. I would love to jump back in. But Metalogers Solid 4 gets a lot of hate.

And like on the internet, this is one of those things where like people are like, oh, fuck that. Like three and the rest of them are so much better. It's like, I don't know, man. I think they're all so good in their own ways. But four as an experience is technically was HD. Just saving the comments. Oh, you're right. Just throwing it out there. I know everyone knows what you mean.

Everyone knows what you mean. Yeah. They still call them HD remasters like whatever the hell it is like King of Hearts. Remastered shirt you can get away with some of them. Anyways. Cool. Many. I do believe in my heart of hearts that games overall, pound for pound, were better 20 years

ago than they are now. And I'm not saying that there aren't games that are better today than there were then. What I'm saying is that if you take the volume of games that were available on, say, in, say, 1994 across NES, Genesis, and S&S, the volume of games that were available there, then you take the volume of games that are available now on PC, Xbox 360, Xbox 1, PS3, PS4. pound for pound per capita, there are more better games than there are now. I believe that 100%.

And I think that gameplay, the purest gameplay, really, there are a few examples of pure, unbeatable gameplay. Super Mario World came up, and that's one of those examples. It will never be beaten in terms of a way game feels, the way the game plays, the way the game plays out, the perfect length of the game, the exploration of the game, the non-linearity of the game, everything about it. Perfect. And that's okay. It's like saying it's not going to get better than Thriller. It's not going to get better than Sergeant Pepper.

It's that. So that's okay. You know, it's a totally equivalent thing. It's not going to get better than certain books that came out 50 years ago or whatever. It's not going to get better than Bradbury or better than, you know, whatever. It's the same thing.

And so I think that, you know, in my heart of hearts, I think that from a gameplay perspective and from a purity perspective, I think that those games were way better. Look at all the shit now that comes out. I'm not saying that there wasn't shit then. I'm saying there's way more shit now than there was then. So that's number one. Number two, I think GameCube is better than PS2.

This is an unpopular thing. I think PlayStation 2 is the worst PlayStation console, which is another one of the most unpopular things that people have said. I think GameCube is woefully underrated, has a woefully underrated and underplayed catalog of exclusive games, and also has a vast third party library

that I don't think people really even realize was ever there. GameCube was a dominant console in my life during that era. And I know it was for lots of other people, not too many. Only sold three or than 25 million units. So there's that as well. And then I'll say that my favorite PlayStation console all the time is PS3.

And that's another unpopular thing as well because for a lot of people, it's PS2. I would go PS3, PS1, PS4, PS2 in terms of the order of the main console. Where you put PSP? Probably after PS2. You know, like I love PSB. I love them all. I think they're all great. but I think the PS3 was a great console.

So those are the things that came to mind where I'd say those kinds of things and people would think that I was crazy. I've said many, many times I think Super Mario Sunshine is better than Mara 64. I stand by that completely. But that is an overwrought kind of. That is a kind of an overall.

Like we've talked about that. So, you know, ad nauseum. But yeah, so those are the things that I think are unpopular gaming opinions that people will have problems with. The beauty of it is that there is no objective truth about any of these things. And a lot of people think I have

rose-colored glasses about the pastor nostalgic glasses, but no, it's, it's, we're not talking about, when we're talking about, like, the early 90s, we're not talking about 1979. You know what I mean? Like, we're, like, you go back and play a 2,600 game. Those games are bad. There's a few of them that are good, but, like, go back and play adventure or something like that and tell me that that game's fun. It's not.

But when you go back and play Super Mario World, and you go back and play Act Razor, when you go back and play some of these games, Mega Man X. You're fucking kidding me? These games are awesome. Those games are fucking awesome. A link to the past. For some people, you know, fantasy star two or fantasy star four, Final Fantasy Six, Secret of Manna,

chrono trigger. These are all amazing games and a great time for us to have been alive and cognizant of those games because I was so stoked of during that time. You know, that, even though I started playing video games in like 1986, 1986, 1987, really, you know, I was so fucking in it by the early 90s. So those are my opinions. Metal Gear Solid 3 is overrated. Agreed.

Half-life is boring. One and two. Ooh. It's recent, but the PlayStation Pro, yeah, come on. Now, why are you talking about this? Mass Effect, the original one? Boring as well.

Mass Effect 3 had a great ending. It was just fine. Whatever. I mean, it wasn't great, but it was an ending. It was fun. Why are we also mad? Why are death threats? What are we talking about?

Come on. It was a fine ending. What did you think it was going to happen? You don't get mad at the telltale endings. You're mad at this one. Come on, guys. Come on. Jet fuel can't melt still beams.

And then Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker is the best metal gear. Peace Walker is the best metal gear. There you go. There you go. Those are good. I like that. Good question, Super Seribus. Super Seribus.

Meat cake. If a video game hasn't engrossed you from the first moment that you start playing, and if you find it easy to drop the game for a while, except for vacation or personal responsibilities, then has the game failed? Based on this notion, do most video game releases fail? That would be like classifying all the games that didn't suck to you, as in failures.

This depends on the game. I think that the Final Fantasy 13 Apologist, for instance, that are out there. It's like, guys, it's not okay that you have to play it for 30 or 40 hours. Dude, it really opens up after 40 hours, though. That's not acceptable. But a game like, there are games that if I had abandoned them a half an hour, and I would have been disappointed. But I also think that this-

Wolfenstein. Wolfensine's a great example. Resident Evil is another great example. The new one, seven. I think that there is this weird, it's not a popular thing. It's popular in YouTube comments, but I think they're the only people that really feel this way, that, like, you have to beat everything you play.

That, like, you have this orthodox. kind of thing to prove that you're a real gamer, you know? And I think that's total nonsense. Your time is more valuable than any of these video games. And if you don't feel like you're spending your time wisely, whether or not the game's critically acclaimed or not, then then you move on. What are you trying to prove to anyone? So it's a game by game basis. For the instance, I played the last, last Guardian for an hour and I was like, nope. And that game will never be seen again in my library, you know? Like, and but some people swear by it. So there is no, there is no right or wrong here. It's just to say that like,

For me, that was plenty of time to know that I was, I was begrudgingly going to go through that game and probably hate it and probably hate it more and more every time I fucking did anything in it. So you know your burning time though. Did the game fail then? Like, do you think Last Guardian failed? It failed for me. But I never expected that it was going to be good anyway. So, so it's, it's one of those things. There's this, there's this notion in, in game design.

It's called by many different names, but like time to fire is, is a thing that you, you know, in other. words, the player wants to play. So how long until, that's why Wolfenstein failed in this regard. We're talking about the new order, which is a great fucking game. But if you played just the first half an hour of it, it sucks. It sucks. And I'm so glad that I had to review it at IGN because maybe, well, I'm also a huge Wolfenstein fan, so I would have played through it anyway.

But if people just gave that game a half an hour, they would get a very different view of it than if they gave it an hour. And that's a fair point to be made. But the person who only gave it 15 minutes is like, fuck this and walked away forever, is not necessarily wrong to do that. It's their fucking life. you know, who are we to say, you know, you should have given it more time or you're not a real gamer because you know, you've been reading a lot about Final Fantasy 15 lately Kataku posts about it. And it's so funny reading about this game because it's all over the map.

How people feel like this game, like wildly all over the spectrum. I think it's fine. I think it's a fine game. I played it for, you know, less than 10 hours. It's good. Maybe go back to it one day. But people are like, man, I love this game, but man, chapter 13 is fucking terrible. And the ending sucks.

And it's like, that's the way you talk about a game you like. You know, so I think that's fair, though. I mean, I talk shit about the things I love. Like, I talk so much shit about Nintendo. Because I love it. And I'm most critical of it, you know? I suppose. I think that that's like, I think that there's some people,

I, the reason I set that up is because I'm saying, I don't know how long the game is. It's a chapter 13 seems like it's towards the end. But if you got to chapter 13 and you're like, this sucks, man, I want to do this anymore. And you walk away from it. That's totally valid. Well, you invested, God knows how many hours into the game.

You might want to see it to the end. But if you didn't, that's cool. Someone tweeted at me today because I was talking about Rise of the Tomb Raider how I invested all this time and in this game I am at the very end of the game like the very end

and I just don't even care anymore and it's not a reflection on the game I think the game's fantastic what a fantastic game that was it's just like I look at it in my library I look at the trophies I don't know I don't care

and someone tweeted I mean and I'm like man I just can't bring myself to care about this game right now even though it's so great and even though I'm so close at the end and I'm like I'm with you doesn't make you right or wrong It's just, and it's not a failure of the game.

It's a failure of maybe my attention span. It's a failure of what I'm looking for right now. But it could also be looked at as a success of what I'm looking for right now. I'm not looking for that. What's in my mind right now is I'm playing Brazzaria is like I kind of want to play a shooter. But, you know, two points. Yeah, anyway. Piggy back enough what you're saying, I think, is the fact that for people like,

I love Final Fantasy, but 13 sucks and the ending sucks. I think that's just what we talk about all the time is that negative criticism is the criticism we lob the most. I think you can't disassociate those. the 30, 40 hours you put into Final Fantasy that you loved and then the one bad chapter and the ending that was weak. It's similar to like when we did the inside review and I sat

down and I was like, man, and that ending was, and that's where I started. I was like, I can't believe that ending. And then we were talking and was like oh right, no, the game, oh yeah, this game's fucking awesome. But I'm still hung up in this one thing and that's still how I talk about it now. I talk about how great and it's fucking perfect in terms of game play and pacing and all these different things. And then I think this actually speaks to a topic that we did on the Game Over Gregi's show, I do believe recently, or it was just a conversation with Nick. I talked to Nick too much,

but talking about the difference between Amazon Instant, Netflix for me, where Amazon Instant, I go in, I look at the new movies, I go through and I'll take a chance on a cast I like, I'll give them my money, and then I'll watch that movie. Whereas on Netflix, when it's free, I'll jump into it. And if I don't like it in the five seconds, I bounce. And I think we're inundated with free games. And I think where it comes down to the people who see things through the end that they're not feeling in the first 30 minutes or whatever, they've invested their money. They you know you can trade it in but you can't necessarily return it based on the store Dada da da da or it's digital and you just own it and it's that thing but for us it's always like

Cool I'm gonna try this not in the mood for this and I have 50 other games I want to try and I want to find what speaks to me on this moment kind of thing Yeah, it's a very fair point. Yeah, yeah, I think for me the the failure thing's not so much the the the am I invested and do I want to play it at the exact moment that I'm doing it's more about like is it delivering what I expect it to at the bare minimum and more than that like liking it obviously then it's not a failure but like star fox zero uh for example comes to mind like i feel like if it comes down to the difference between having criticisms of something and it failing to me are if i still want to defend the thing right like have criticisms of final fantasy 15 but i'm defensive of it which i think at the end of the day means i do really like this thing and i think with star fox zero is i don't defend that uh even

though I want to, you know, and I feel like the criticisms I have, that game failed to me because it didn't give me enough good to latch on to to be like, despite the bad stuff, I still really like it. It's more like, no, I don't like it. And I think that's my level of when a game is a failure. Gotcha. Or Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is another example. I want to like this thing and I can't defend it.

Like there's nothing I can be like, but at least it has this. The most I could say about Tony Hawk's Pro Skateer 5 is at least the soundtrack was good. And that's all I had. And that's not enough to outweigh everything else about that game. They have good Charlotte on that soundtrack. They did not have good Charlotte on any Tony Hawk soundtrack. The interesting thing that I've been thinking about this very recently,

because we all use this term. Lots of people use it. I want to like it. I was talking about the switch. I'm like, I want to like the switch. I do it. I want to love the switch.

But then I was thinking, like, what a redundant and strange thing for us to say? Like, what are you doing in your life that you don't want to like? Like, or that you're not optimistic about it. Like, you're trying to like walk through your life. It's like, I want to, I want to get a, I want to have a good day. No one says, like, I want to have a bad day when I get up in the morning.

No one, like, makes a meal. I was like, I hope this meal sucks. You know, so I feel like it's like this, I feel like it's a very reductive way. And I just, it's so funny you said that because I had just been thinking about my own use of that term. I'm like, of course I want to fucking like it. Why would I ever play this if I didn't want to like it? So I can torture myself.

You have to look at things to, you know, it is subjective lens, right? Like, and it's okay for you not to like something someone else likes and vice versa. And when people are like, you know, it's one of the, those things where people are like, well, I think the last of us sucks, whatever. I'm like, okay, I don't care. Like, that's fine. I'll fucking straight murder. No, I mean, it's like, who cares? But honestly, what you're talking about, you understand where it comes from, right, and where it stems from, it comes from,

it's like battered wife syndrome of being on the internet this long. Like, if I'm gonna, if I don't, if I don't, when I walk into a Marvel movie, I want to enjoy the movie because I, because I, I, me saying that is me saying, yeah, I'm a DC fanboy, but I don't, and that's not what this is about. You know what I mean? Like, if I, of Civil War, I really like the Spider-Man part in the fight scene, but then the other stuff, I want to Captain America. I wanted to like it all, but I just can't get into Captain America.

And I'm sorry. And it's not that I'm biased. It's just my personal opinion. But I'm so used to the internet coming in and like hitting you like same with us, right? We're like an Xbox game or we don't play Xbox. And like you say I want to like it because it's not about the Xbox thing. I'm not saying the intent is wrong. We all use that term.

I just haven't been thinking about that specific term. Oh no. I thought it was an interesting point. I'm just like go through it like I go to work in the morning. I hope I have a bad day at work today. You know? I hope this podcast sucks. I hope it's like, it's of course you want the good things.

I think it's more about kind of just setting the expectations of where you're at, even to yourself, of going into it because when you're being critical of something and like reviewing something, even if it's reviewing your own opinion in your head, it's like you need to know what the standard is and what the metrics are of what you're comparing it against. And so, for example, for me going into something like with Tony Hawk and Star Fox's examples, I went into those wanting to like those, which works in two ways. In one, I'm giving it bonus points off the back just because I'm like, I'm, I'm. stoked that these things are happening. But on the other end, it's like, because I want to like it, like they need to do something extraordinary for me to be like, whoa, this is fucking good. So I think it's just kind of just setting that standard

of exactly where you're at. Switch is another example for me recently where it's more like, like, I want to like it and I was let down because I expected so much. Right, which is, I think, where I was with Switch in particular too, where, because people, you know, some people are like, how I want Switch to fail? I'm like, why would I want that?

Like, that doesn't make any sense. Like, I don't care if the switch fails or not. Like it doesn't, that doesn't affect me at all. So like, I hope it does well. I hope everyone does well. I want everyone to do well and everyone to be happy. When every game to be good. But it's, I think it feeds into this notion.

It's very, I feel like a dormant notion more and more. But a notion that still persist on those I see sometimes in comments, see sometimes in tweets, et cetera. Remember when we all just talked about video games and had a good time and they were fun and all that kind of stuff? And I'm like, no? Like, like, I don't remember that. You remember the bloody Sega and Nintendo Wars of the past?

I don't know what you're talking about, actually. Like, we, we, we, Do you go into every movie and you're like, it's just movies. We should enjoy them. It's just books. We should enjoy them. They're fun. It's like, no, we should be critical of the things we love.

That's what makes us love them. You know, like, if you can look at the last of us through a critical lens and still see it as a masterpiece, that's fucking awesome as opposed to being like, I love everything naughty dog does. It doesn't matter what naughty dog does. Then you are the lowest common denominator.

And I am not the lowest common denominator. So like, I have, we shall have expectations and I feel like, so my point in air, I feel like that feeds into that dormant, more and more and more dormant thing. As people realize, like, it actually pushes games forward to be critical of them. It actually pushes forward to not like everything that is shoveled down your throat.

And I think it's an interesting point. Maybe we'll talk about on comments right, because I've been marinating that as well about that particular things. I hate when people say that, you know, like, it's one of my pet peeves where I was like, games are supposed to be fun. Can't we just focus on the fun and the positive? I'm like, no, I can't. Sorry. Like, this is the real world.

And some games are going to be bad. Some games are being great. And guess what? If you call certain games bad because they're bad, then that makes the better games shine more. Have some expectations and some standards. You know? They just want you to be nice to mobile games, Colin.

I can't do it. I'm sorry. Even Sparkade. You were nice to Sparkade. Yes, I was. I was very nice to Sparkade. Ladies and gentlemen, that has been the kind of funny games cast.

Thank you very much for joining us this week. Until then, I love you. Kev, you got Sky Kim? No, I don't. You are a piece of shit, Kevin. What do you mean? I drew an awesome Kyle Rainer Green Lantern symbol. wanted to show the people.

Show's dead.