Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Danny O'Dwyer (Special Guest) - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 113

Episode Date: March 31, 2017

No Clip's Danny O'Dwyer comes to the studio to talk about the games we're still getting before E3, what he's been playing, and the amazing story of Seb -- a teacher who played so much LittleBigPlanet Sumo Digital gave him a job. (Released first to Patreon Supporters on 03.24.17) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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What's up, guys? Welcome to the first ever episode, 113 of the kind of funny games cast as always I'm team getting he's joined by one half the coolest dudes in video games Greg Miller hey what's up I need to figure out what to do with that yeah yeah I don't know

I don't want to RIP like Colin will always be the second half yeah you know yeah it's like when you it's like when you when not me of course because I'm a dude I'm a manly man but like when you have like you know in grade school like when the girls had their best friends forever and they'd have

the little hearts that came together the lot of the things not that I ever had one of those don't I get I didn't have that penguin that turned out to be a girl's toy either. But it's like one of those things like that's what this is. You know what I mean? Yeah, I get what you're saying. But a good friend, Daniel Dwyer. You should maybe for the guests, you should like have like a second thing on a, hey.

Hey. No, cheers. I've never had Dennis before. Well, you know, I figured I bring some over. Seemed like a good time for an old drink. Too dark for me. It hurts my head. That's why I didn't do it.

I apologize. I didn't mean to insult your heritage? No problem. Okay. There's a lot. Have you never had one either, Kevin? No, I have. It's a lot of.

It's a sensation. I love this fucking show. I love this goddamn company. That's what it was. No, I've had Ginnies before. Guinness, you've had guineas before? Have you? Yeah, you had some of that Gettys.

Gennys. I can't say it. Whatever. I've had that shit before and it's great. Especially with the pizza, but now it's, I think it's the. It's malty. Yeah, it's the. Show your tongue again.

Show your flavor. So, Kevin, we went to Ike sandwiches today. Oh, you give you the green apple pop on the way out. But Kevin always exchanges it for a blueberry blow pop. And then his entire mouth, teeth, and tongue are blue. But now it's just down to it. Dude, if you drank some Guinness, your shits are real dark. Oh, really?

Yeah, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You got those Guinness shit. That is exciting. So, Danny, you were joining us again on the kind of funny games cast. You're one of our earliest guests. Sure. Really?

Going back to the old days of the old studio. Back when I worked at games spa. Oh, yeah. So it was a long, long time ago. And I remember who's doing it's no clip, though, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just making sure.

He was on Game OverGravs. He might have been on a gamescast as well in addition to. Okay, I apologize. The reason I remember doing the intro and saying the coolest dudes in video games and I included you as well. So you did get the honorable mention that you are also one of the coolest dudes and I stand by that. That means a lot from somebody wearing a saved by the bell shirt.

Yeah. If there's anyone that knows cool in 2017, it's this guy. You gotta keep it genuine. Like the open shirt, Nick was giving me shit for it. Yeah. I think Nick gives shit, but it's the type of thing where he's like, I'm only given shit because I actually respect it. Yeah.

So he's not sure if he's supposed to like it or not. So he's like judging me, like he'll make fun of me to see if it's cool. Right. And so, you know, you only do it with this. What was that cut? I was going to say, Kevin's been playing fast and loose with the cutaways and the weird things here. Things that we're not noticing. No, no, no. It's just earlier today, I accidentally pulled the knob down.

What's wrong with your mouth today? Oh, this is Kevin every day. What was in that lollipop? Did you buy that lollipop down in Dolores Park? That's a different type of lot of love. What? Let me see the cut you just did. No, I'm just saying the knob.

Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah, okay, do it a little slower. Yeah. Whoa! I like that. Right in that bar. Here's a question I had that came up on the morning show today. And it's not an insult to you.

Is this a fashion choice or a function choice leaving it open? This is the fashion choice. That's what I was saying. Like, no, no, because it's the 90s style with the shirt. Yeah, but I'm saying like when I, I would leave my button downs open growing up because I was fat. I didn't want the shirt to be tight and show how rotund I was. The same reason I do to this day. Yeah.

Yeah, no, no, it's not that. I get. I want the answer to say. Yeah, he says it's fashion. He doesn't think it's... No, it's the fashion. That's how you do this with this shirt. Come on.

It works well. No, you're great. I'm not trying to get away from the fact that I'm fat, but that's not why I do this with the shirt. This is not where we're going. I'm not fat shaming anybody. We just, we blue tongue shamed Kevin, Nick. They can't even hear you. You used to be...

Speak into Kevin's. Kevin, turn it on the camera and let Nick speak in there with you. This is playing great for the podcast, by the way. They love it. You gotta go closer. No. See, that doesn't play. Nick, you can go ghost stuff.

doesn't play at all. You're like clipping out too. Oh, Lord. Your tongue's not blue. So Kevin is... Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast. Each and every week we get together to talk about video games.

Sometimes. I'm blowing the cookie monster. Yeah, and blowing the... Yeah. Oh. Oh, I love that. You can get it early at Patreon.com slash kind of funny games.

Or you can get it late at YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Either way, we appreciate you. And all the things that you do. do for the community, just like our producer for the week. Salem, Gondham, all got him. Round of applause. Salem.

The homie. Is that a first name? Yeah. First name, Salem. Last name. Which trial? All got him. Yeah.

He's been doing it for a while too. He's been doing it for a while too. Since Stephen Insler was finally like, oh shit. He was his credit card on. Yeah. He was her picture of producer for like seven months. We're like, dude, this is expensive. A little bit crazy.

You're a good man though. And you're a good woman. to anybody else who want to support. Do you ever do the Salem Witch Trials mission in Fallout? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the one where it's like a death claw. Yeah.

Yeah, that was pretty fun, cool. Fall was pretty good. So, first topic of the day, I want to talk about the games of 2017 leading up to E3. So, because here's the deal. I want to set the stage here. It's mid-March at the time of this recording.

It's a real banger of a fucking... It's been a goddamn year. So, all right, we know, of course we got Zelda. Of course we got Horizon. Right. And like those alone, you could just be like, all right. Good year. We had a great year.

Go back a bit before that. Reson Evil 7. Yeah. Way better than anyone expected. For sure. We got Neo coming out of fucking nowhere. What else we got? Near automata.

Yeah. And yeah, Snipper Clips. I'm going to give a shout of the snippet clips. Share it's a good video game. I fucking loves. Yeah. Right around the time of this posting snake pass. I mean, I'm not saying we're grasping at straws.

We're bringing the little games now. We're showing us. Nighting the woods? You're going to talk about that next time. I'm not, none of us, I don't know about you. None of us were, I'm into it and I enjoyed it, but not have to go play the final version and over and over, but For Honor sold really well. Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.

I mean, Ghost Reconce and Wildlands sold really well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's killing him, but that wasn't. Yeah, people didn't seem to love that. Wildland's like, whatever, but like, Forer Honor was like, oh, God, like, that's really. Wildland's fucking fun. That's the problem, man. Well, the Wildlands is fun, but it's fun in spite of it's trying to be serious, if that makes sense.

You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it's been totally all over the place. to play it. We had, we played together and it was, it was all right,

it was fun, but I was like, man, we could have a division. I had a great time. Mass Effect. And then Mass Effect, the first dud of the year.

And even then. Who would have thought? That would be like six games better than Mass Effect. Like, I mean, see, that's the thing.

It's like, why haven't we seen anything from this game? This seems weird. And then I did play it. And I was like, oh, I played it. Actually,

and I played the PC build. Okay. Played on console. I was like, oh, this is the dot com. That's why I loved when Andy, and this was about a year ago at this point,

he just tweeted out. He was like, is anyone else starting to get worried about Mass Effect on Dramida? And at that point, it was like, no. Yeah. And what's funny about Mass Effect,

a dud, right? What, it's Metacritics, like 76 now? You know what I mean? It really is like, yeah, the animation suck. And like, it doesn't look like next-gen Mass Effect.

Like, it reminds me a lot of, not in terms of review scores. It reminds me a lot of the reception to fall at four in a way. Fall Out of expectation. Exactly. you're like, oh, it's, it's fall at 3, but better, but like, okay, and this is like, and now granted, I don't think Adramida's necessarily better than the other ones, but it is,

oh, it's more Mass Effect, I don't know, right, but it's not, it didn't push the bar. It didn't reset this thing. It didn't reinvent the real all over again, like Fallout 3 did. I always say it's the same argument Colin would make about Fallout 4 compared to the Witcher and dying light or whatever of like, this was a game clearly made in a vacuum where they went away and they worked on it and they came back and like, oh, fuck, this world has changed. Yep, this is not, like, putting that next to Horizon next to Zelda, you're like, this isn't the same thing.

Yeah. Anyway, it's just been crazy. So again, Horizon, Zelda, those are the obvious big ones. But yeah, NIR and Neo or two other examples of just like PS4 being fucking awesome in terms of exclusives, but just in terms of quality games coming out. So now in between the mid-March time frame and E-3. So E-3, we're talking June 10th, right? I think that's the date that sounds about right.

Around there, the first, second week of June. Kevin, give me a date check on E-3 from you, a big guy. I think you're right. I think it might be 11. It depends. Nick, I literally called out the fact that you screwed me out of the, Nintendo World Championship in topic number four, which we recorded out of order. And here you are coming in now with it.

I apologize. I thought you said just now, Nick, can you bring the Nintendo World? I did not say that. That's your championship. Don't put it in front of me. It's a shit belt. It's okay. It's okay.

It's okay. It's okay. It's a bell coming on its own, man. Yeah, it's really terrible. Yeah, it's not. It's like a girdle for a baby. Thanks. Says it's name right there.

We'll just leave it there. June 13th to June 15th. Okay. E3 this year. There we go. There we go. Garbage. So, yeah, the press conferences and stuff started around June 10th.

I didn't even left the room. And I fell over. It happens. It's okay. It could stay. So I got a list of about 10 games with dates. You better start with the biggest one. Persona 5.

Oh, yeah. April 4th. Coming up quick. All right. Quick, yeah. So where do we, where do we stand on this? What do we think that it's going to do for the industry? What metacritic is it going to kind of sell out?

Oh, we're doing like a quick crazy. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. We don't need to get to get to crazy. There's no bets. there's no anything with this. I do,

I do, uh, a medicritic topic coming up where we guess the rest of the year. And start, and start putting bets down. Oh, wow.

And we can look back later and, okay. And see where we're at. Persona 5 is going to do incredibly well. It's going to do incredibly well. I'm basing that on the fact that I've, I've, you know,

only played a few hours of it. Like I said, I've played more since then. This is next topic, what we're playing. I think I'll, I'll save some thoughts there. Cool.

But, uh, I already done my preview or whatever for the first few hours of of persona five. It's what I expected from a persona. That's super exciting. It's super stylized. What I think, the reason I think it's going to deliver beyond that even in terms of the

score is the fact that I saw, you know, Polygons article and Kataku's article and the fact that they keep coming of now I'm 65 hours into the game. Right. You know what I mean? Like the game clearly is delivering what people want. And I still think that this is the breakout persona game. Yeah. Whereas in the same way, we always talk about Uncharted to Uncharted One.

where Uncharted 1 came out and if you had a PlayStation you're like, oh, this is great but a lot of people didn't have PS3s. So what you heard was you buy PS3 in the years between Uncharted

1 and 2, but you hear about Uncharted, but you don't necessarily go back and play it. When Encharted 2 came out, everyone was like, I'm on board for this, I've heard it's awesome. And it's the same thing I think we saw with persona of, you know,

my first persona was persona because Jeff Haynes when we were on the PlayStation team but IGN was like, you have to play this. I played. I was like, this is awesome. And then four came out,

but it came out weird. it was like right after three or I got it right after three and I didn't get into it because I didn't want to jump into another one and then that was fine but that was a super nerdy I'm into Japanese role playing games I know about this whereas when then there was you know persona three Fez edition on PSP more people were hip to it and then persona 4 Golden was like an industry changer right like you talk to somebody about hey man the Vita there's no games lo lo lo lo

everyone's like yeah it was just my persona machine so even if you didn't have a Vita you know how many people played persona 4 Golden and are like, it's amazing, you know, how great Yoske is and Rizai and all the stuff. And I think that's what's going to happen with Prona 5. It's going to land. It's going to be exclusive to the biggest console

in the land. And everybody's going to be like, well, yeah, I have a PlayStation 4 and of course I want to play this. Yeah, I'm coming from the perspective of somebody who's never played one of these games but has vicariously enjoyed that series through various websites like play-thrues,

like Giant Bomb Did Play-Thrues. Let's play streams. Like, I have seen people pay through those games but it's never really been the right time for me to get in. And I think that's exactly what's happening now. It's like this is, you know, it's almost like it's Witcher 3 moment, right? Where like it's been in the public discourse for a good while now. And it's coming out, and crucially what you just said,

it's coming out on the console that is the one that people seem to, I mean, it's the one in the ascendancy, the one with a lot of games come out. It's kicking the shit out of everything. This year, in particular, Sony's having a fucking riot. And I think it's the game that, like, has been enough talk about it. and if it has all those positive reviews in the same way that CD project we're writing on that wave right up to the Witcher 3rd

about it. If it comes out and it's reviewing well, I think that's going to knock over a lot of people who are sort of in the maybe camp for this one. Thinking about it. And I think, and it's going to fill an interesting gap in the fact that it's coming out

this close to Mass Effect. Mass Effect thing was, okay, cool. Oh my God, I have so many games to play. I've just got down with Horizon. I'm super into Zelda. Here's Mass Effect. And now Mass Effect has been in one of these games

of like, you can pass on it. I am passing on it. As a final series, I am like... And people who are like, that was like... I'm really looking forward to them holding out. Maybe they're gun shy to it. Maybe they're going to jump and not enjoy it. And now persona is going to land there.

And persona is going to be that thing. I think that is like, you want style. You want substance. You want story. We're putting all the hooks into you and getting you this way. I mean, it's crazy because, you know, this is a game that when, you know, everyone thought it was coming in 2015 and whatever. Then it didn't.

They got delayed and all that stuff. And when it started getting delayed even more, it was just like, oh, man, you're really not coming out in Valentine's. Day, like anything fucking serious. And now that's going to be the best thing to happen. Dodge such a bullet. If it came out at that time, it would have just been eaten alive. But now it's coming out the best time.

Like one of those, I think it would have done. A month after Switch launching, which is the perfect amount of time for people to be quote and quote done with Zelda. To the point that they're like, I can stop playing this is my number one priority. Sure. I'll still keep doing a shrine here or there. But they'll be done with the main part of that. And they're like three or four other really big PS4 games that came out in the past

couple of months. Like what's coming out around it though? Does it have like a good window? So that's the thing. We can all agree Persona 5 is going to kill. It's going to get great reviews. I mean, it's already being reviewed in Japan. So, like, we already have a standard there.

Ukulele is the only real thing of consequence that I'm seeing in early April. That's April 11th. Obviously, very different audience. Very different type of game. I don't even know the MSRP of ukulele. Can you look that up, God? I want to say it's 40 bucks. I'm just putting my prediction there because I think when we did our less play,

we talked about, or when Nick and I did our less play, got it. ukulele is a really hard read i'm i'm i've even seeing it at gdc and seeing it and packs as well with like a relatively strong presence 40 bucks nice work thank you um that's why you're the best in the business i'm sorry i'm sorry like i can't tell i'm like you know it had a kickstarter

and it's it's it's had a long story and it looks really polished but it's just like where what is the market for 3d platforming games i feel like this happens every like two years where another one of these comes out and we're like trying to see if it's going to kick off or not, and I just don't know. There's that fondness for it. There's that reminiscing of playing games like that. And I think that's, this is, you know, in the same way, I was going to say the same way off,

and the same way everyone here at this table, and people who have left this table have been able to find a life on Patreon, right? Of like, sure, I am super into this niche content and I will support it. That's what Kickstarter obviously has been for video games, and that's what it's going to be for ukulele. I don't think Euglai is going to move the needle

in a major way, any way, getting personas's way or anybody's way. Because for me, I was like, when they announced it, like, oh, cool, spiritual successor to Banjo Kizui or whatever. I was like, I was never super into those games, but maybe the time. It's similar to I feel like music games where like when Rock Band 4 came out. We're like in the guitar here, like, maybe it's time for that to come back.

And then it was like, no, not really. And like, when I watched ukulele and we did the, Nick showed me as Let's Play footage and stuff. And even when I saw a day the devs at Alamo Draft House, I was like, oh, this game's cool and it's cute and it's got a substance to it. But like the, the, uh, da, da, da, da, da, da. And like, the words popping on screen. I'm like, I'm not feeling this.

I don't see where I'm playing this. I'm not playing this on my screen, my big screen TV. Even on my Switch, I feel like, I don't know if I'd play it there. So for me, that's where I think it's right at home is the Switch. And unfortunately, it's not coming out of April 11th on the Switch. I don't think there's an actual date for that yet. I just know it's after. Because this totally is the throwback like, oh, I'm on a plan.

I'm just going to play something. And I have it there. You were saying that like it is such a weird kind of niche of like, who is the audience for this game? And it's like, oh, do we really need 3D platformers? My problem is, even within 3D platformers, there is a divide between the Marriard. 64 and the Benjo and the rare games. The Banncho,

Donkey Kong 64, that type of stuff. And I never really liked that side. I never really liked the collect-a-thon super open-worldly 3D platformers and that's what this totally is a spiritual successor to. So it's like if it was a bit more of just like an actual platformer, like more of a

spiral style game or more of a even Ratchett and Clank. I think Ratchin Clank had its moment. Like Jack. Jack, yeah, exactly, that type of stuff. where those are so good and I loved when Ratchin Clan came out last year and it was fantastic

but ukule is this thing for me where I'm like I'm like I'll give it a shot because even though I don't really love and have the nostalgia for the banjo type games like I feel like it is coming at a good time for me in terms of having the switch

and where I'll be out with that but I want to have like Marty Sleeve on the show to talk about him because he loves Bancher Bancher so like I think that this game might speak to him with a little no totally and I think that's the thing that there's an audience for it

my analog for a personal thing is like when I was, you know, growing up playing games, right, or whatever, like I love Jack and Daxia. You know, I love Draction Clink or whatever, like Dreshing Klingk or whatever, like Drescent later on, I should say. And, but I remember always seeing Sly Kooper. And Sly Cooper, I would watch me like, man, Sly Cooper's a game I want to like, but I just, I can tell I don't watch a gameplay. And when they put out the collection, I played it. And I was like, oh, well, now, of course, I'm fucking Mr. Infamous. I love Sucker Punch. Let's, let's go back and see what I didn't see before. And I started him up, I'm just like, no. And I'm like, maybe it's because it's,

It's dated. Let's try the Zanzarro game that I was mispronounced. Zanzaru. Let's play their, you know, their sly four or whatever, Thieves in time. And I put that in and I was just like,

no, this just isn't for me. And I like the devs and I like, I, that's one of those games. You step back and I'm like, I can see the quality and appreciate it, but this is where it gets into,

I think that's just not a game for me. Yeah. Yeah. I'm most interested in, you brought up the music game thing and is it time for music games to come back. I don't think this ukulele is the question of, is it time for 3D platformers to come back?

because I think the answer is no. I think it's good for ukulele because otherwise it would have been buried. Like the one saving grace is that at least it's coming out in a window where it's the only one. Mario is at the end of the end of the year. But with ukulele, I think it's more similar to,

why is everyone so questioned about Mario? Because we've been burned so many times by Nintendo and video games in general. Don't take everything you hear just like to Bible truth, Tim. No, no, no, I get that, but I just like, you both have mentioned in the last couple days like that Mario Odyssey,

you're like, we'll see about that. I said it at the fucking switch event when they first announced it. I thought Mario was going to be a launch title. From everything I've heard, Mario is so close to being done if it's not already finished. Seeing that trailer,

I was like, all right, this game is done. I had a feeling the only thing they haven't done is record the orchestral soundtrack because listen to it's a MIDI bullshit. Nintendo, like they usually show the trailers with shitty music

and then they later record it as their last thing. I think they're at that step. I'd be shocked. Video games in general, we've just all been burned. many times. And not to mention Zelda, right? Like, for Nintendo where Zelda just kept moving.

In Duncan, Barack, at some point it does become, well, fuck, though, we're you, but I mean, yeah. They're coming in hot in this whole console. Like, they're still adding in the online stuff. Like, like, a lot of stuff that was supposed to be on launch. It's got pushed out. We're eventually going to get, you know, Mario Card Deluxe coming along. It's just all seems to be quite like, I just wouldn't be surprised. It's like when people say Red Dead's going to hit this year.

It's like, there is a universe where that'll happen. And they're like, but it's soft money. I'm like, they didn't hit it with five. What are you talking about? Grand Tft Auto Five got pushed. I don't see Mario Odyssey get pushed I hope it doesn't but that's that's a separate thing My point was I think that this is more of a shovel night situation With ukulele where it is

It could be at least where it is going to a very specific crowd that could potentially love the game But that's a question of the quality of the game Is it just a spiritual successor Or is it adding on to what it is Because shovel night is not just a spiritual successor To retro platformer games It is it adds to them

And it modernizes them And Shovel Knight to me is like a perfect game because it not only gave me more of what I've remembered from playing the games, but it felt good now. Not just like, oh, this is all like it used to feel. It's like, oh, no, this feels how it should feel. This feels how I want to remember those games.

And it doesn't look like Eugale is doing that. But I think that that's what it would have to do to kind of have its own niche be successful. Yeah, that would break it out in a way. Because it has like this three year long narrative, right? Like people know about it. So then it gets an endorsement in the form of, reviews and people saying it's good then that will you know push it into a bigger

audience yeah because again shovel night has similar thing where it was just like it had the what this ain't doing no shovel night don't worry about it but well that's the thing though but shovel night was nothing shovel night this ain't this ain't no shovel night shovel night was nothing until it came out like shovel night was a kick starter right that had a trailer that i was like this looks cool and oh they got the guy that varts doing music from oce remix or from vg mix and all that stuff great cool and that was it's a very underground shit but it took people like calling being like, no, this is worth looking at.

Yeah. I mean, we're not hearing that already. Ukulelea previewed fine. People like, oh, yeah, it's a throwback. But it wasn't like beat down your door. Holy fucking shit, are you seeing that? And that's what, I mean, that's what shovel night was. That's what Rocket League was.

One other games did Colin always claim credit for me. Like, you know what I mean? Like, hashtag Colin was right. We'll see. I don't think the ukulele is going to do it. But I do think the solo night's not popular after it came out. Not before it came out. But I think there was really great buzz behind it.

And I'm not, because I'm joking. joking around. Colin was on the early bird side of all that stuff. But there were other people there that saw it and were like moving that thing. You know what I mean? I remember when they, we brought it to the office, when Colin brought it to the office, and when he was there and Vince was there. People were standing up, gathering around like, holy shit, this is awesome. Yeah, I think we're now at the stage where like, unless you have that type of game that is breaking through, that people are like being evangelist for, like there's too many very good games coming out right now. Like if you're not in that realm, then you're, you're fucking done and

dust it. And like, we'll have to see with this one. But it's, it is strange that this is a game that's been at so many different on so many show floors and we're not having that conversation around us so and I also think it is one of those games that is just the narrative has gone on too long as somebody not connected to it I remember when the Kickstarter came and it's like oh it's former rare guys are making this game it's gonna be game it's gonna be like fucking awesome and then here we are and it's

like it still now and then when I was watching a draft house I'm like how this is this the first time I'm really seeing this game right and I'm like I guess my personal interest I don't know it is the same thing that no one's grabbing me like dude you got to look at this game like they did with near you know what I mean for a more recent example well yeah Like, dude, you gotta fucking check out this game. Yep. Next up, Mario Card 8th,

on April 28th. Yes. I don't buy Mario Card again. Fuck. Like, I'm going to buy it. But I bought all the DLC for the Wii U version. How much you play on me? With it though?

Oh, a lot. Yeah? I love that. See, that was my thing. It's like, I am a Mario Kart fiend. All right. I love Mario Kart. You just didn't have that Wii experience?

I hate the Wii. And so it was that I bought it. And then I'd sit there and be, like, I'm doing it all. Have you used your Wii? Since the Switch? No, God. No.

I'm so actually, I'm so sorry, actually, because I said this to somebody else earlier in the week, and I made them feel bad for not having a switch yet. But it's like playing like a V-Tech, like child's fucking laptop. It's like the cheapest. Yeah, that's how I always felt what did to begin with. And so that was the thing of just like, I like my cumbersome and weird. I do too. I really do.

I hated it. The last time we used it was at Let's Play Live Chicago, where we did the Mario Card for Hot Pepper Challenge or whatever. And when I came home, I almost went and put it back on the shelf. And I was like, you know what? And I tossed it just on the floor in my closet and I see it all the time down there. I hate you. I hate you. That was a full of mine set up.

That was a good Mario Kart game. That was the best Mario Kart in years. It totally was. I think Mario Kart 8 is so solid. It's beautiful. It sounds great. It plays great. The courses are awesome.

The DLC was like... DLC was like... Amazing. Impeccable. That's how you should do DLC. 100%. I would have like bought like five more packs of that shit. It was amazing.

I guess I will. It sounds like there's not much too much more coming. Dry bones in this. There's more characters and the battle mode, which is key. to this and I just it's gonna handle multiplayer better. They had a really bad bad mode in the other it was really bad. Hey, you're just on the car

the race course. You're like what? Yeah. Just driving around each other. What that's going to? Kevin, do me favor. Open up the Google calendar right now for kind of funny and make sure that you block out the afternoon of April 28th. No, that's the day after my birthday. But my birthday, I have something else going on the afternoon. But it'll be my Mario Car birthday stream where I play the community. All day, all afternoon long.

I'll be fun. I will play the shit out of a lot live. Or come on. Not live. I will live. Okay. Portable. Oh yeah.

I'm sorry. One one time what day? I'm gonna fucking murder you. April 28th. The day. I'm just double checking so I don't fuck this up. I just want to come around and kiss your mouth. You come and do it,

big boy. You have blue lips. No, I promise Jenna would stop kissing dudes. Will you please go there? Block it out after the kind of funny morning show all the way to 5 p.m. Joey Noel, work with everyone to make that happen.

I don't know how we're going to. I don't even know how this can work. But I'm very impressed with the Mario Credit Switch because to me, another example of Nintendo is listening, even though it doesn't seem like they are. Because my biggest problem with Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U was when you played multiplayer, you couldn't have two player or one person's on the TV and one person's on the game pad. Oh, you're right.

And that was stupid. Right. Like that was such an obvious, like, why are we doing split screen? Because they want a horn. You want the screen to just be a horn. It's a giant fucking horn. Yeah. It's stupid.

So with the Switch, I'm happy. Like, I've seen commercials that they played where it is multiple people playing with their own switches and they have their own screens. Yeah. Cool. Well, that was one of the things. we had it we had concern about and then I we asked about hanging on the morning show or whatever and they said yeah but like split screen as well if you just play on television you could do split screen

you could do it seems like they're giving you options right which is awesome and also I feel like already the switch has the benefit of not having the like the shit controller problem right like with the with the way you like I was okay with the game pad I know you drink the coolie but I know I didn't Stockholm syndrome you're like well this is what it is guys it has big buttons the D pads awesome always with the big buttons I fucking like the box he talks like he's Andre the giant It feels as a Fisher Prize toy, but besides that, the buttons and Dpad were great. So the thing is, though, like, to get... My Wii U was a smash post machine for the most part, right?

And that meant I had the two GameCube controller adapters, eight GameCube controllers. I was set plus the game pad. But then for Mario Kart, that meant you needed four pro controllers or like nunchucks and we... There was too many options for controllers that nobody liked. Whereas with the Switch, now there's a bunch of options for controllers that people do like. One of those joycons better than the other one, though. Oh, yeah, but fuck that. I'm not talking about the joycon, like, just using that.

But at least the joycon, grip, like, controller thing, or having pro controllers or playing in handheld mode, I'm like, all right, cool, we can do this. I mean, jokes aside, how much I hated my Wii, right? The reason I think I'm really going to be, I mean, it's the best of both worlds for me in terms of it, because that's exactly what you're saying of, for as much to travel, as much as I'm playing my switch right now, it is going to be cool. I'm on a plane. I'm going to get all the, I'm going to 200 Cs.

Let's get everything. Let's unlock everything. And then it'll be, all right, cool, I'm in the office and we have time. You go, you want to do it? You want to do a race? And like, okay, cool, when we do a race and Kevin sits over there and pilots because he doesn't have a switch. But we do that and then it will be, all right, cool. Let's, oh, let's fuck around and do a morning stream, play the kids, or let's go home and I'll do this thing. You know what I mean?

Like, when there's community game nights for that, I will fucking be all over that. Because that's something I love to do. Unless you're snake, you're snaking. No more of the snake? I hate that snake. Not snake pass. Yeah. Remember the old DS version? that was the problem with DS version

when you're playing that thing. The online got ruined. Don't cheat everybody. But again, I'm sure the best friend community we build will be fine. Moving on. All right, sorry. May 5th.

Pray. Oh, shit. May 5th. That seems way sooner than I thought. For some reason, pray seemed like a... They don't talk about games before they come out.

Brilliant strategy. Crazy. So you've played it. Nick's played it. We've done multiple reaction videos. What do you think? I think it's going to deliver. I think that's another game.

Yeah. Because you have to understand, And like for me in particular, like sci-fi is so hit or miss with me. And, you know, no jokes about space or anything. And where I'm watching that initial trailer they put out when it was just like, all right, praise back. Praise back. Yeah.

I was like, all right, this does not. I'm fighting what looked at be little monsters that are hair or whatever. Like, I don't care. Yeah. This looks dumb. And then when I sat down with Nick and did his let's play of it. And it was from the beginning. It was like, all right, cool.

Have you seen it from the beginning? I've intentionally stayed away from them. I won't spoil stuff. But it's one of those. You're like, oh, it's good. you're in a helicopter and you go up and like the fucking music kicks in as like drive music. You're like, oh, fuck, this is rad. And then there's this huge turn.

And you're like, oh, fuck. And it's one of those things is like, like, the whole game goes 90 degrees. And you're like, whoa, fuck, this is so different and so cool. All right, cool. And then I got to finally play it at Pax East. And playing that, it was like, is it just a one hit wonder and what they did there? And they're like, no, here's the powers. And you get to turn into, you can turn yourself into a fucking fire extinguisher and chase it around the bat.

Follow the bad guy stealthily and then kill him from mine. I'm like, this is awesome. It's doing what I love about BioShesh. of environmental storytelling. I'm picking up these auto diaries. I'm going through this world trying to figure out what is happening. And then for it all to be,

I don't want to spoil if you know anything about it. The thing is like I'm such a fan of like that whole, you know, emergent simulation type thing, which like very few people have tried to do. It seems to be it's solely based within like the post looking glass arcane world. Right?

We've like, you've got JudeaSX. You've got like people like Harvey Smith who were working on and then made dishonored. And then the rest of that team who are based out in Austin who are like working collaboratively on prey as well. They're just,

they're, that one team who are like keeping that dream alive, which is one of the, like, most beloved subgenres in the world, which has, for whatever reason, not many people have tried to do it.

It's hard. It's really hard. In a way, I feel that's why Zelda's so good because it's an open world version of one of those games. It's a game where you have all of these systems and they don't tell you how to use them,

and you figure out emergent, you know, ways of utilizing them. Metroid Prime is another example of that type of game. Whereas, What they're doing of prey, I mean, pray is not a sequel to prey. Like, I like the original prey.

Tommy Hawk, never forget. But, like, this is a system shock. Like, yeah. This is a new system shock. I mean, there is already, like, two other system shocks getting made, but this is, like, this is what this feels like. It's another one of these, like, you know,

merging simulations. And the reason I want to know about it is the same reason I don't look up anything about Zelda. Sure. And the reason I think it's going to work is because that studio and the pedigree of people they are working there are all people who worked on the original System Sharks, the original

like DeiSX's. One of the leads on this is the guy who designed Invisible War along with Harvey Smith. I think it's going to be amazing. The point you brought up two games in there that I think are important. DeiSX and then Arcane, no. Or Arcade was dishonor. Thank you. In the way of both those games critically well received, you know, IGEN's game of the year is Dishonor 2 or whatever, right? But underperform.

They don't find an audience. I think this is going to be a game that I think is better than those games, personally, from what I've seen. it seems more attractive. The controls are what you'd expect, which is always a problem with the SX. Like, what the fuck?

Why? Where are iron sights? But it's like, I feel like this is going to connect with way more people. I don't think it's going to do persona numbers. I don't think it's going to be uncharted numbers. I don't think it's going to be like this huge fucking thing. But I think it's going to be one of those games,

especially for Bethesda that it's like, all right, cool. Here's this game that's this new IP that is this cool thing. And it's going to go somewhere and we're going to be able to do it. It's not going to be dishonor. Everybody's like, oh, that's cool you made too. Right. Why?

Like, I understand you at a fan base. This is going to be a game that people are going to be like, no, this is fucking cool and it's environmental storytelling and it's doing different things in terms of a narrative. Dishonard had this weird problem,

I think, where, like, those games are amazing and the people who love them really, really love them. But I think it had, like, there's a lot to be said for the style of your game, and I think it has an amazing style.

I love how that game looks. But it's not the most invite. It's not like, you know, there's a reason they make RPGs, they tend to make the fantasy because people like fantasy. But there wasn't really any, like, familiarity

in the world of what the sonard was. that used to be the case where the dark space opera thing people never made those and then dead space came out and then suddenly people were like oh fuck we can make these dark space games and then a million and one of them came through with like first person shooters

with aliens and all these other ones right but we haven't had one of those in a while in fact Mass Effect has come out and reminded us that we haven't had a good space game in quite a while so if they nailed that and make this like incredible simulation type experience then like this could very easily be like another doom

like Bethesda just again fucking taking another game and making arguably the best version of it, you know? And I should dial it back. I know, right? I said it won't do persona numbers. I'm negating the fact that persona is on one platform and not a multiple platform.

So there's something to be said for that. PC credit are going to eat prey up. Yeah, exactly. With good reason, man. That game's going to be really fucking cool, I think. The next up, Injustice 2, May 16th. That's another one where it's just like the, another realm, Mortal Kombat and Injustice.

Like people really love those games. And it seems like they have kind of listened to their audience in a way that a lot of fighting games seem to not be doing. I mean, Capcom obviously are the kings of the fighting game world, whether it's Marvelous Capcom Street Fighter or any of that stuff. And they have what they have going for them. But the fact that Nether Rome has taken Mortal Kombat and turned it into this thing that like to this day on IGN, like even when we were there, any mortal combat trailer would outperform anything besides Grand Theft. Same a game spot. Yeah. Like it's just crazy.

A character reveal trailer would like. get millions and millions and millions of views and injustice is the same way. That's the weird thing when people hit me and be like, oh my God, did you see the new Supergirl trying? I'm like, what the hell? Why do you? It's like, that's awesome.

No, I mean, I'm not a fighting game guy, but I'm like, it's so weird to have people talking about like nerdy-ass DC shit, but coming at me, be like, oh my God, do you see how this guy fucking fights? But then you get all the comic blogs and the film blogs doing the exact same thing because they're using the fiction and they're like, oh, what an interesting way they're going to use it. Well, I mean, injustice was so interesting because not only was the first game good.

And I can't, I'm speaking. from outside of looking at it. I played injustice. I'm terrible at fighting games. Right. There's just not my bag. But I played through it because I wanted to see the story unfold.

And not only did I do that then, I went back and I mean, I read up until incredibly recently the injustice ongoing series, right? Right. Because like, this is nerdy inside baseball comic book bullshit. But like injustice year one or whatever you want to call it was phenomenal.

And it was written by Tom Taylor. And that's where Tom Taylor exploded. Now he does, you know, all new Wolverine. He of course did the Deep. He did a superior Iron Man. Like Tom Taylor like made his, mark with injustice. And I remember I'll never forget being at IGN at the time when some other

website that wasn't like you got a GameSpot or like whoever. It was like some other website shit all over injustice because it like opens with like, oh man, and Superman gets tricked into killing Lois Lane, but it's really, you do, he thinks he's killing Doomsday, but he kills Los Lane. And then he kills the Joker. And like, they're making fun of it. I'm like, motherfucker, you don't read comics. This is all awesome. This is all fantastic. This is what comics should be, taking what you know and twisting it and varying it. And like, that's where I struck up a friendship with Tom Taylor and like that was so good that not only did the brand in the video game the video game does so well the brand has has gone on forever like they're like they're making new injustice comics

they're going into this that injustice comics never stopped and it's like holy fucking shit to get to year two now or injustice too insane yeah so yeah may 16 so it that's again that feels like it's been forever yeah and my worry about that is that nether realm have also put out like they've been pretty consistent with these and I'm worrying is there a burn happening here in the same way You get with like lots of these, you know, like with music games or like with anything, right? Like after a certain amount of, you just, well, that was always the thing with like Mortal Kombat for, and granted, Mortal Kombat's always been around. Yeah.

But it felt like it took longer breaks, right? Yeah. Whereas now it is like Mortal Kombat, Injustice, Mortal Kombat. Yes. Yeah, it's alternating in this sort of bi-annual way, which like, for instance, like I, same as you, I'm, well, actually, opposite of you, I'm not a huge comic book fan, but I played in justice in that very similar way where I wanted to play through. I wasn't playing competitively or doing it like that. But it was also one of these games like MK that you could bring out of a part of,

and wasn't so difficult for people to play first time in the way the Street Fighter is. Well, that's always been more combat strength, right? Even if you can't do a fatality, you can have a battle where you do. No quarter circles and fun cool shit happens. Exactly, yeah. You just hit pause and the fatalities are fucking right there.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe they have a benefit in the fact that, you know, Street Fighter was such a lemon when it got launched, but they seem to have papered over some of those cracks now and people are back into playing it online, at least in the competitive stuff. Yeah, I think this might be the year

you get that burn where people like me don't bite on the... That's a great point. Yeah, I mean, like, if a code comes my way, I'm going to go home and play it and see what the story's all about. But if not, I'm not probably going to seek it out. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll keep reading all new Wolverine by Tom Taylor. Then Fire and Blum's. Oh, yeah. We saw Logan right away. Oh, it's great. There's a review up on YouTube. Have you not seen it? No.

Oh, you need to see it. You should just leave and just go. Sure. We'll pause the con. We should all go. Yeah. Oh, my God. Do you need a beer?

Fire Enblum, Shadows of Valencia. It's got the ice guy drunk. May 19. I'm good, Kevin. I don't need another one. May 19th on the 3DS. We talked about this in the morning show. Which was this?

Fire emblem. Oh, yes. Shadows of Valencia. It's the remake of Fire Emblem 2 from the NES now on the 3DS. I love Fire Enblem so much. This is a game that like I almost don't even want to touch it. I feel like we've been, we've had too much Fire Enblem. Where Fates, last year, I loved it.

And like two years before that, there was Awakening. And that's one of my favorite. Fire Enblem games. That mobile game came at? Yeah, Fire Enblem Heroes, which I, for the time I spent with it, I really liked it. It just, it sucks that I can't play it on a plane because there's no internet. Right. Like you can't play without internet.

But I thought they did a great job of mobilizing that game and making the gameplay of it fun. But with this, I didn't have a good time with Shadow Dragon when they remade Firemblum 1 on the DS, because it just felt kind of archaic. I could feel like Firearms came so far. And they added some of the newer stuff, but it just still felt like they were shoving the new gameplay elements in to what was pre-existing. And with this, it's a similar thing where they're adding the third person dungeon crawling. I'm like, I don't want that.

And especially like, I don't want to play my 3DS anymore. Like, I have my Switch. I like my Switch. That's good because Nintendo don't want you playing your 3DS either. I mean, it sounds like they do for now just because they know there's an install base. And that totally makes sense. It's just it's unfortunate that I need to get until next year.

Well, that's the other thing. They've already got to get me one of him. Fire and Blom Warriors. for Switch and 3DS coming out at the end of this year. Totally different style games, so it doesn't matter. But then next year is Fire Enblem, the proper Switch version. So I'm like, I can wait, you know, I can play there. So I think it'll do well.

People really like Fire Enblem. There's a lot of 3DS owners, so I think it'll sell well. But, I mean, it's, I don't think it's going to review that great. I imagine it'll get 7.5s around that. Okay. I have no feedback on this. Me neither. Sorry. It's not where I'm at.

Tekken 7, June 2nd. Oh gosh. Whoa. Finally. Yeah. Like this is generally one of those games that's like they've been talking about forever. Wait, boy, blah, blah. So Injustice 2 and Tech and Seven are coming out how far away from each other?

What a month? We're working at half a month, two weeks. Yeah, that's fucking too close. I don't know. I mean, but then different audiences. People buying Tech and at this point, they're buying tech. You know, like you got the tech. Who's buying Tech at this point?

The guys buying Tech and at this point are the guys that have. the arcade things in their house. Like, this, Tegan is a... Like, nothing against Tekken. Like, but, but I just, I don't... It does sound like you're talking shit. I'm not talking shit.

It does not sound like you're talking shit about Tekken, doesn't it? I have no affinity for Tekken. I'm sorry. I, but like, yeah, I just don't know where the, where the group is who wants to... Where the hardcore Tekin fans are. There's just been a lot of Tekken disappointment, though, for the years, I feel like.

Yeah, I feel like, I'm not saying... I just saw Sonic flash up on the screen. I'm not saying it's the same as that. But, like, they haven't, they've had some ups and downs and downs. in a way that I feel like Moral Combat and Street Fighter at least have stabilized

well over the past five years. That's the thing, yeah. I mean, Mortal Kombat had some lows. Totally. And so did Street Fighter. Oh, yeah, exactly. But then it came back and it had highs, you know, but Street Fighter, at least the core

series, I mean, up until five, having some mistakes. And they sort of, I feel like that boat is maybe doing okay. Yeah, it's finally, it's fixing itself over time. But yeah, I don't, Tekin, Tekin's a weird one.

Love Tekin 3, a lot. That's the thing about Tekken, I feel like, I feel like everybody, has a Tekken, like a story. I think it's always Tekken 3. It's Techin 3 or Tech and Tag? I was going to say Tech and Tag. because there's a launch title for a PS2.

Exactly. It had that. That's the thing is like that's honestly one of the last times I ever thought about Tekken. Tekans are those games that come and go and you don't even pay attention to. So maybe there is that big passioning community and none of us are topped into us. The voting game community is one of the most rabid communities

and they have their games that they play and they fucking love them and Techin is definitely in that echelon. So, Tekken 7. June 2nd. Yoshimitsu. Oh, Yoshi, motherfucker. The Yosha. The Yosho guy.

Different gosh. All right. Then Elder Scrolls online Morrowind coming June 6th. Obviously not. Both of those games are already out. Marlon came out in like 9099. Why do you combine these two old games

into one game? Yeah, so. I always feel bad for Yosau. That game is doing all right. I know, but no. That is there. What a raving review. Great point.

Great point. No, it was always that leading up to this. game, ESO. I was always playing and I'm like, I'm going to play the shadow of this. I'm going to be all over this. And then they did the, you know, Greg Miller-Killy-T-Love. Like, well, it's coming on PC and PS4 will be done the line.

Right. And I was like, oh, and I tried playing it on PC and I'm like, I just can't do it. I'm sorry, I'll wait for PS4. And then by the time PS4 got there, it was whatever the hell else was there. And I was like, well, no, I'm playing this up. It might have been, was it Witcher or there? There was some other giant RPG that finally got there. And I'm like, I already got the giant open world RPG I need to play.

I don't want to go through and do this. And I, it's not, you know, the MMO part didn't get me. But every time something like this happens, the fact that, yeah, it's doing fine. A lot of people playing it. It's weird. There's a couple of, like, we've had a couple of MMOs this, this generation that have, like, gone from total shitstorms to doing really well. I mean, Final Fantasy 14 online.

When a Realm reborn, basically reset that game, like, completely, like, turned into something new. What a gamble, right? And it actually worked. Same thing happened with ESO. Tamriel Unlimited was basically their way of just, like, fixing it entirely. And then Warframe, I feel like, as well, was a game that, like, at least had a development hell for a while. launched on a sort of okay

and now has been doing incredible incredibly well for that team so like I don't know you make expansions for games that are successful like if you have any moment that's working

you keep making content for it I think the fact that there's more stuff coming out for this shows that you know there's an audience there for sure definitely they should have had a Marwin expansion

back for Skyrim though because apparently that landmass was in the game sons of bitch god damn it Pete Hines you son's again get on it next topic

Mr. Shifty is sometime, I think, coming out somewhere in there, wasn't it? Mr. Shifty. There's no confirmed release date for Mr. Shifty. But I put it out there. I only talked about the games that had confirmed release dates between now and E3. Next topic. What have we been playing recently?

Let's get some impressions going. Fuck me. Let's start off with Mass Effect. You talked a bit about it last week. Sure. Yeah, I did. It was my review in progress. And I was, you know, I'm going to play more. You played not all the mornings. That's the thing.

It was like, we came back and it was going to be, you know, mass effect mornings here and I was gonna play it all week or long, right? Yeah, alliteration, good. Exactly, that's what I'm all about. And the fucking PS4 fucking straight-up died. Like, the day, yeah. Like, it just was like, we were playing it

and we showed all these bugs, and then it just went, I was like, oh, fuck. And eventually we got it back up and running, and I did the Monday playthrough of it, but it was that thing of, well, this is a story-driven game, but when you're streaming,

you're not really playing attention to the story. This isn't working for me. And then during the down period, people were like, you should play Zelda. And I was like, you want me play Zelda? So we've done Zelda every week, morning since then.

But the problem is, of course, when you put Mass Effect next to Zelda, you're like, wow, one of these is a masterclass in game design. And I fucking can't get it out of my head. And so, like, I'm going home and playing more Zelda and not playing more Mass Effect. And this jumps into what we were talking about a second ago and the fact that the way I had been justifying in my head of the tradeoff, right? Because I had played a lot of Mass Effect going into the Gamescast last week, played more of it, then went to Edmonton for the heel kick stuff. And I was like, I'm going to take Zelda with me, obviously. I thought about being the PS4. I'm like, I'm going to bring Zelda with me because Zelda is my playing game.

Mass Effect's my home game. And now, as I'm playing so much Zelda and trying to figure out what I want to do, I think I have to at this point admit that MassDex fine is what I said last week, right? Like, Mass Effect's fine. I enjoy the characters and everything else, but I think my time might be better start playing persona. And so I think I need to switch it over to persona is the home game and Zelda's the road game. So does that mean you're giving up on Mass Effect? Like, do you think you'll ever come back to it?

That's the question of, no, I don't think I will. You know what I mean? Because that's the thing of, I like the rider character's enough and I like discovering the Indromeda Galaxy enough,

but like playing it even that one morning where I was like, oh, here are all these bugs and that's really annoying and this doesn't feel, and it's just like that thing of like, again, where I was so not proud of myself's the wrong word.

I was so happy to have called it in terms of when last week's on the, you know, I'm like, it's gonna be really interesting to see what happens with reviews. Yeah. I think it's gonna get hobbled

but not get hobbled like six and fives. It's going to be, It's an okay game. It's a good game. It's whatever. And that's exactly where this Metacritic is settled, right? And the problem is,

in the climate we're in, that's not good enough. For sure. That is not good enough for me. I can't right now with Zelda in my hand, with persona in my hand, with all this other stuff going on. I can't sit here and be like,

yeah, you know what? I started Mass Effect and I need to see it through. Like, it's not amazing. It's a good Mass Effect. Maybe one day I'll get back to it. But I doubt it. Like, I'm not, I like the riders and I like their story.

and I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I'm enjoying it, but I'm not, the, whatever I said in the old games cast, three or four or five hours of persona I put in are way better than now probably the 11 hours of Mass Effect I put in. And so why not go down? And you could get away with that in a different Q1 and you could get away with that about five years ago

when there weren't so many good games coming out. But it's just like, I feel like this is really horrible timing for Mass Effect. We're like this needed to be a very good Mass Effect game. And it ended up being an okay Mass Effect game. And that's just like, And that's the thing is like I'm not trying to take away from it. Because like what I've enjoyed about this, it's been interesting, us being on the outside.

Now you being on the outside, right, of the review structure and that where you do think of what's the Metacritic and what are we giving it. And what does a seven mean? And when you get away from that and really see what an audience thinks of a game versus what critics think of a game. And now to be influencers. But look more importantly, look out when I'm looking at like, you know, Shinobi on Twitter or I'm looking at Brittany Bromrocker on Twitter. And they're enjoying it. And they've in like Aaron Porter or Guardian from. RTX took the week off for it.

And he's enjoying it. And it's like, that's awesome. Do you, do you. But it is that thing of like, I'm enjoying it too. But I'm not enjoying it enough. Whereas like last night, you know what I mean? Like I want to do something not Zelda. I've played enough Zelda.

I'm too tired for this. I could jump in and see the mass effect story, but I'd rather watch a movie. And that's not me. I'm not the movie guy. Like that's the thing. So Andy Cortez, one of the biggest massific fans that I know.

Like we've been talking. He's just like, yeah, man. Like, I'm away. I'm playing Zelda. Like I want to play Zelda. I don't want to stop playing something. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?

Yeah. Like, this is supposed to be your game. And it's like, that's not good when, you know, there's something that is, it's been this long.

Like, how long has it been since Mass Effect 3? Like, those 2000? Four years? I'm always bad at this. I think 2012. Me and Colin were sitting on this one side of IGN that was not our final side. Naomi sat behind us.

It was when Start started. Wouldn't it start started? Yeah, 2012. I love to you. That's why I, you got to just time. There's no sense to me. Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, it's crazy. like Massific fans have been waiting for What's interesting about this is this is a sincere look at me This is always the weird thing And I don't know if you feel this right Because your job is a bit different with the documentaries But a weird look at me and what I want out of games and stuff

Right is the fact that mass effect is underwhelming me But I like it fine But not enough to commit to it And I want to jump to the next thing So I have something to say to the audience about it Right, yes, yeah But if I didn't have this job Would I keep playing Mass Effect

If Mass Effect if everybody was saying Massifix amazing later on what I keep playing. I guess not because they said that about Last Guardian. I was like, fuck that shit. Right. Yeah, I don't know. But it is that thing. And I think that the problem with that is, uh, is that the more people put it off, the more they're hearing that it's mediocre. And so that the, the tail is dropping. Yeah. And it is that one weird thing of, and I know that this, and I said last, you know, that I'm investing these characters. I am. I like Peeby a lot. I want to see her story. I want to do their loyalty. See, I guess I will get back to it. Is Peeby the really ugly blue looking thing? Uh, yeah. And I'm sorry. She's

It's not an ugly. Oh, sorry? Yeah, with the black across her eyes. Oh, there's some character that I just keep seeing images of them. Like, are you kidding me? Like, this thing looks. She's got like the squid hair, the black along her eyes and a purple jumpsuit. Nah, that's, she was in all the trainers, right?

Yeah, PV was and everything. Big kept on. Can you Google Mass Effect Andromeda? Image search. Plus. And then pull it up on the wall. Yeah, I guess it's just that thing. It's when we, when Mass Effect morning is derailed.

Because that was, my excuse to play video games this week. Which sounds weird with our job, right? My excuse to play was, I want to put time into Mass Effect, and I wanted, but let's make content out of it, let's give me a reason to do it. And then doing it and not working the way I want it, and playing more Zelda, I was like, well, Zelda's so much better. No, go down.

Down. You want to talk. You're right. That thing. That's her. That's her. Have you played a Mass Effect? Go down. No, he's up.

Go down and keep going. I've never played a Mass Effect ever. Scroll that. You are talking about PB right there. want this stupid ass picture. Like, what's weird? What about it? Yes, it's a...

I don't like it. I don't fucking like it. If it makes you feel me better, the textures in this game aren't that good. That's not what she looks like on PlayStation for. Clicks of the other pictures. They're all the same picture. Now go to the other one.

Horizontly flipped. Oh, there's a gift. This one fucking moves. Put P-B-E-E-B-E-E-Mas-E-E-Mas-E-E-Mas-E-E-E-HUGGGED you should you had it all right here. And you're not going to play it because you're a fucking xenophobic or something. You raise an interesting question. You raise an interesting question of I like these characters. Will I get back to it? I don't know. And that sucks. I want to, but I already know

that I like persona characters more. And that's me 90 hours of my life. So why invest another corner 30? Not, what is that? That is a, that is not a real thing. That is not a real image of Peeby. Stop doing this to me, Kevin. You're putting, oh, that is not Peeby. That is, that's upsetting. That looks like, that's obvious. Is that Sean Spicer, Mixed at Peabee? It's somebody like that yeah. That's real fucked up. No. Is Peeby Christine Lichen?

What? Well, Kevin took it away, so we'll never know. There's a lot going on with Peabee. There's a lot. The really reason I'm hating on your girl Peevee is I have to make thumbnails for this show. So the amount of times we've talked about Mass Effect. Yeah. I keep using the same image of the dude with the helmet. Yeah, yeah.

And like there's been very few Mass Effect drama images up until recently that are like quality thumbnails. Faces work well. So the amount of times I've seen that I'm like, seen that, I'm like, I'm not using this thing as a fucking thumbnail. I don't like her. I'm sorry, next time you need to do Suvi. S-U-V-I. She's my girl. She's the one of her romance. All these characters

named after fucking food or ways of cooking. Or like shitty cars, and no one buys. Jesus Christ. Yeah. And then it's just the fact that Zelda is too amazing. I mean, it's too good to put down. There's also like some sort of

remnants of what happened with Mass Effect 3 happening here as well, right? Where a lot of people who were playing that game, myself included. I actually never completed a Mass Effect 3. I love that entire series. And I kept hearing about how the ending was disappointing. And much like games like Fallate New Vegas were heard, the ending was disappointing, I just kind of stopped.

About 80% in, I was like, all right, I'll get back to it eventually. Like you're saying, never did. But you always know what that means. Like when I was like, oh, you know what? I'm not going to platinum metal gas solid 5 during the extra live stream. I'll come back for it. Yeah, never. Right?

And what happened was, I think people came in with this expectate, with this, like, just worry in the back of their heads that maybe this game. There was always an element of that one on Dromeda. where they might fumble this, like they fumbled the ending of Mass Effect 3. And I think it confirmed it with some people and they're just going to pass. See, what's interesting about it is the fact that

I don't know how much it was, they're going to fumble it like Mass Effect. I think it was the fact of so many being like, they can't screw this up, it's Mass Effect. And so to get there and have so many weird, like when we started the stream, right, Kevin, those two guys were just like walking in place. And you're like, this is like one of EA's premier franchises.

So for them to get a game out that like clearly took a lot of time and not have it fucking be a home run, it's so weird. Or to even do that thing, just rush it out before the only Q1 finishes to get the quarterlies in. Like that's,

if that's what they did with this, then that's really a responsible. Yeah, it's not a good look. Do you think that it's going to do well specifically on the Xbox because while PS4 has had all these amazing exclusives, there hasn't been,

like all the games that we talked about except for Resident Evil 7 aren't available on Xbox 1. So do you think that like those gamers are just going to be like, I just want something? I mean, I think all gamers will.

I think this again speaks, I don't, it was a weird rollout, right? Of the EA access thing is always so weird. And this time it definitely blew up in their face. 100%. Here's a million gifts of faces being fucked up. And I'm really like, uh-huh. But I still don't think people canceled pre-orders.

I still don't think people, and I don't me wrong. Clearly people did, but not a lot. But I'm not saying like where you're like, oh shit, we fuck. I think enough people bought this and then are like, I want to play this. I love massive. I mean, it's similar to me of like infamous second son, right? Like, I'm this huge infamous fan. Yeah.

And so infamous second son comes out. And yep, I'm going to buy it. And like, you know, and I played it. And it's like, okay, cool. Like, this isn't amazing. It's good. It's more infamous. And I'm sure that's how a lot of people feel.

It's more Mass Effect. Yeah, it's rough around the edges. Yeah, it's doing this. But this is the other thing, too, similar to how we're talking about Unsharrow 1 to. Is the fact that, like, Mass Effect 1 had its problems, too. Oh, yeah. Elevators and all sorts of garbage in, like, just weird, stiff animations. And then Mass Effect 2 is the combat.

Yeah. Mass Effect 2 is fucking phenomenal. And that's where it really, pow, became this giant thing where it was everyone has these fucking mass effect and 7 shirts and tights. But they can't make an angiometer too. Like that's... You don't think so? No.

They totally well. They totally well. They've already said they did not commit to this being a trilogy already. And they did say that this could be a standalone sort of story that was going on. So like, I don't know, I feel like already coming out, Mass Effect had a little bit of dirt on it coming out of three. Sure. Now it's starting to have a lot of dirt on it. And I don't know.

Like it's fine for people like us who we don't care about that necessarily. But in the court of public opinion, I feel like, having... a toxic name is really dangerous for a game specifically. That's a good point. I don't know. Yeah. It breaks my heart. I wish I loved Mass Effect.

I wish I couldn't put it down. But it is a game that I'm like, oh, I enjoy this. I stand by everything I send out of the reason. I enjoy the writer characters. I enjoy the cast. I do enjoy scanning and getting better weapons and stuff like that. But it is just the thing of like, I don't, it doesn't. I said, you know, the third night was where it clicked with me.

Or I was like, this is, okay, this is Mass Effect. Is that what happened? No, I wish. It's working that Suvie girl. You still haven't got an alien? Well, no, because I still haven't played that much. Like, you know how Mass Effect. You don't know how Mass Effect is.

You have to, you commit. It's rare that you're just like fucking banging bingo bingo right away. You got to work up to it. You do their, yeah, you got to talk to him. Ugh, let me tell you. Got to pick the hard options. Got to treat them right. What do you got to say, Garris?

Shut up and fuck me. You know what I mean? That's all I kept thinking. But it happened. Kev looked like a cricket. He looks like her cricket. Kevin's never fucked a Russian alien. He doesn't know.

He doesn't know anything about it. Yeah, I want to, I want to see it through, but I feel like I need to, I feel like I need to mozy on out. because we are in that place where it's just like, do I have time for this? So what else you've been playing? Can we talk about Horizon Zero Don? Oh, of course. We are big Horizon ZeroDoh fans.

Kevin, actually get on your mic. You've been playing a lot of, you played a lot last night. Did you? Where are you right now? So I've cleared the whole right side of the map. I'm not doing, like, with these games, I can't just do story missions. Like, I have to go around clearing as much as possible. And I collect those cups.

Yeah, the whole right side's all cleared. Yeah. And I've just started opening up the rest of the map. So, I mean, I've got so many days. When that game, when I finished playing that game, I was looking. I got early copies. I was sure you guys got from Sony. Yeah.

Like a good two weeks probably before it came out. I think I played it like almost nonstop for like three weeks. But when I finished that game, I was sad. Yeah? Like, I enjoyed my time in that world so much. But that's how I feel about Zelda right now. I'm like, I don't want, I'm just, I'm enjoying every single moment. I have one divine beast left.

It's like, oh, man, it's getting close. It's just so great, right? I think, right, like, I mean, the whole, and I like Killzone, but the entire time I was playing that game, I was like, I cannot believe this is a game for the Killzone. Oh my God. That's the biggest thing. It's just like, that is one of the best of moral games. And Killzone's fine. Yeah, but like, totally different craft when it comes to making games.

You were talking about a linear, like first person shooter. They had really good. Here's what we're doing. Is killsone great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I like Shadowfall and I like, three was that had that weightiness to it. And that was, that was fine. Like the Shadowfall, I thought, was where they got the, like, stickiness of the guns right. And I think that comes across in the combat of Horizon because Jesus has a lot going on in the combat of that game. But it works, like the slow-mo with the, like, with the shots, like being able to tumble out of the way, the camera operates. The melee stuff works.

Like, all of it is so tight. That's a great point that I haven't actually thought in context of because, you know, of course, everybody wants to go, oh, well, what about Zelda? What about Horizon? Compare and make them fight. And I hate doing that because I do think they're different games. Yeah. But a great, one of the reasons I love Horizon so much is that I felt empowered,

when I was fighting and it didn't feel clunky and I didn't feel like I was fucking up. Whereas today I'm doing this boss in Zelda, whatever, on the stream. And it's just like one of those things of like, oh, fuck, he's, oh, why? Oh, right. Because I had my, I was using my bone error last, so I didn't have my shield assigned where you think it naturally should be. You know what I mean? For me, the lock on shoulder button should just be, I have a shield no matter what.

And of course, that's not how it is. I have to switch this, do that, blah, blah, blah. The dance in Horizon is like as good as I have ever played in a game. The combat dance. The, like, it reminds me of games like, remember Stranglehold? where you just, you enjoyed, like, jumping and, like, going on carts and down, like, Horizon, when I get into a fight with something, I'm not, like, worried about it and, like, trying to make sure that I beat them. Like, some of the big boss fights, I certainly like that, but, like, the beauty of just, like, everything down to the sounds those fucking dinosaurs make, or when you're knocking off, like, little parts of them, and, like, the way they're, like, buckle on the knee when you hit them the wrong way, like, everything about it is just masterful. That was the thing for me in the combat

of like getting, you know, I'm a huge Freedom Wars fan, right? And if you ever played that, but it is like sawing off specific things. And so when eventually the game gets complicated enough of like, well, if you shoot off his disc launcher, you can use that against him. I'm like, oh, fuck. And so you're lining up shots and taking up specific things rather than the beginning where you're just like,

pop, pop, whatever. Yeah, we've done with this a million times, but the polish of the game. And that's just not visually and like just with the world, but with the combat where it's just like, it does feel right. And like I, the sliding mechanic when I first saw when I was watching you play, I was. I was like, this is kind of weird looking.

It's so good. Excessively long. But it's like, it feels right when you're playing it. And when you're fighting and you slide, fucking pop a motherfucker and it's just like it works. And even just like the little details of like her hair color matching the, um, the, the color of the grass. Crops.

Yeah. Then when you go through it feels like you always feel like a badass in a way that I feel like games often strive to make you feel like. And it's always kind of forced and fake. Whereas this is like, nah, I'm the fucking predator here. Empowerment again, right? Exactly. Where you feel like you're in control of situation.

It's not that, oh, man, this clunky controls are this weird thing. And you're in control of it and you're the one in power, but it's not that the enemy is weak. And I think there's a lot of games, you just feel like you're overpowering and come and just attack them. And it's not that you have a bunch of equipment. There's a genuine feeling of, and I mean, this is like the, people compare stuff to dark souls all too much, right? But like there's a genuine feeling in games like that where the mastery of the, of the character is what makes you stronger. And when you're playing as A-Loy at the start, you're literally playing as a little girl, right?

And you can only do certain amount of things and you don't have that much skills and all that. As you're playing that game, you're getting imbued with so much knowledge about how everything works about, the grass, about the different types of animals, the way they react and all that, by the end, you're throwing yourself into these combat encounters. And just, like, not because she's got bigger guns, not because you've got, like, more inventory, all that stuff helps, but, like, because you're just, you've mastered combat, you're able to just destroy these things.

And like it barely drops any, it barely has like any problem. The combat's amazing. It looks amazing. It looked like graphically. It's incredible. The story's great. Right. Like the story's really good.

That was the most unexpected thing for me. Right. That game. When I came back from that preview event and I was like, yeah, I knew I thought combat would be fun. We've played it before. But like to come back and be like, I can't wait to see where the story goes. Like I was.

And then the fact that no spoilers. When you start it like there becomes a point where all of a sudden there's two fucking stories in both are fucking fascinating of like I want to know that but I want to know that yeah yeah no I love it unlike you guys

I don't really like the whole open worldiness of it all and I don't want to clear out the entire map before I was like I just want to I just want the story because I liked it so much I was like I want to keep this going and so I played it more like an uncharted game

where I just went from MainQuest and I had such a damn good time with it and it's like I now can go back if I wanted to and do all those other things that's why I was so exciting when they announced the sales and it was like yeah we're doing a story expansion.

Like, fuck yes. Fuck yes. There's so many weird parallel. It's almost like training wheels for Zelda as well because not only

that it have like, you know, all of those sort of collectibles and whatnot, it even has down to like photographs of places that you stand it. It's like ridiculous.

It's weird that they came out so close together and they are so similar yet so different. So different. In the way that I get different experiences and different vibes

from each one of them. They're like distant cousins or something. And even the way like it's a thing that I've now like to do now that I'm out

of the industry a bit more is like just try and not look at trailers all that much if I can get away with it. And like with Horizon, I went in with zero expectation. But also like I didn't know about all the different environments and like all the, like even the way they handle towers. Yeah. Everything about that game just they put in that little bit more effort than it really shows. Yeah. And that's what's, and I'm, you know, I've said it before. I'm so happy to see a payoff because again, you know, I've covered PlayStation forever. So to see Gorilla get that. And that's what I kept saying, I said in our review, right, of like, this is Gorilla's moment of going from Jack and Daxter to Uncharted.

Right. You know what I mean? Like, oh, you are on another level. Holy shit. You've suddenly gone up so much further in the ranks where maybe you didn't like Killzone. You liked this little bit of it. You thought it's beautiful. There's different things, but here's a package.

Here's a complete fucking package. I would love to know the story behind this because I bet that they were being asked to make Killzone games for Sony for a long time. I bet when they finally got around to making their own new IP in Horizon that they decided, look, we're not going to fuck this up. Yeah, we got it. We got it. We're going to kill it.

Well, I mean, you know, what's so funny is, like, when we used to, as IGN, go to GDC and report on panels. Right. Right. Like, just, you know, it was covered these panels. I did the report where Gorilla was up there talking. I forgot it must have been after Killsone 2, maybe, 500 3? But it was like, yeah, we're working on three different games right now.

We had a game jam. We pitched this thing, that thing, that thing. And they had, like, not concept art, but something that hinted at all of it. Right. And it was weird to think that since that long, they've been working on what horizon was going to be coming. Wow. That's nuts. Comes across now.

Yeah, totally. What else you've been playing? Wait, you beat Zelda, right? Yes. Well, so I wanted to end on Zelda. My apologies. Yeah, but so you were talking about...

Night in the woods? Yeah, play some... Oh, yes, please. Finally got around to paying some Lightning the Woods. It's a very different pace and also just, you know, mechanically. It's not a game about achieving much. Yeah. It's really hard to explain.

And that's a good thing, I think. It looks like a 2D platformer. It's not... It's a, it's not a platformer in terms of like, there's no difficulty to it. There's nothing like that. It's a story based game. They had reached out to me a long, long time ago. I'm like, I forget it was not this last GDC, but maybe a GDC probably. Maybe a Pact, probably. Like, we know how much you love gone home. Yeah. This is a similar thing to that. I was like, oh, awesome. I clicked on the trailer. It's 2D fucking cat man walking around. Yeah. Yeah. How was this? Anthropomorphic cat girl and like you're in this rust belt's, you know, town with, you know, massive social immobility where you're going back as somebody who's like kind of dropped out of college and. all your friends are still there and dealing with like the relationships of people's expectations of you against like you know their sort of dreams for their own future but all told like the thing

about gone home is that like I really really like gone home but gone home the way it looks I mean people just think it was a horror game where they played the first hour or whatever but the way it looks is the way it is that it is a story about like this sort of like stylistically it matches with the theme of it right and I think what night in the woods is because they go for this like cartoonish anthropomorphized cat animal situation it kind of takes the serious sting out of it, so you can sort of enjoy it.

So in a way, like the way the story, the like super sincere story comes across, even more sincerely, I think. It's basically a story about you interacting with people, who you spend time with, talking to your parents in your house. It's the type of story that if, like, I feel like there's something

in here where you could personally connect on many different ways, depending on if you've left your hometown, for instance, or if you had trouble in college or if you had friends who you grew apart from in your early 20s. Yeah, and I kind of don't want to say anything else because it's all about, it's all about enjoying the story. But it's great. Super polished. Really well written. When I turn on the PS4 or two for recently jumping a massive or whatever, I see it there. I'm like, fuck, I can play that. I got to make the time for it.

It is a game that you should make sure you're ready to play it. Okay. And then just do it in like couple of days. Just burn through it. Yeah, it's really special game. It's totally different to everything else is at the moment. So there was a, It was a little bit jarring, like going from Zelda and Horizon into it. But it's, yeah, very, very well-made. So then Zelda. Oh, fuck, you know. Update on where, no spoilers, obviously.

Okay. So I did beat it. I don't know if we talked on Gainescast about that. What's beating Zelda? Do you have all of those little fucking... Calamity Gannon has fallen. You found me. Calamity Ganon has fallen.

And I'm very satisfied with overall experience. I mean, man, it is definitely one of my favorite games of all time. And I think that it always will be. I think that we're going to look back in this game and everything I've been saying about. it still remains true where in 20 years we're going to talk about I remember where I was playing Breath of the Wild. Right. I remember what it did differently. But I mean, you know, all the, I will remember the plane rides. Beside Danny and Tim also playing Breath of the Wild. Exactly. Exactly.

Like, like doing doing all that. Yeah. We haven't mentioned that. We were all in the, it was you, me, Tim, Nick and all in one row on a plane, playing Breath of the Wild. We did not plan it. I literally booked the Middle Sea because it was the last one left and then who the fuck sits down next to me except you. It was amazing. Fucking amazing. And we played the entire time. That was your first, you started the game there. Yeah, I had not played it. Yeah.

So that was, that was a very simple. Five hours to Boston, five hours back. All I did was played. Yeah. And the time freaking flew because of that. But looking back on it, I do, I do want to do at some point. I don't know when I want to get some guests on and do a proper, like, real spoiler, real critical thing for Zelda. Because I feel like it deserves it.

And I do have a lot of thoughts on it now. And I think that as perfect as it is and it's like as much for the master piece that it is now that it's done quote unquote I do have a lot of thoughts where I'm like I have ideas for how they could have improved I think that that's part of what makes it special though is that despite all those things sure I still think it's fucking amazing you know and again it's the same way like with Ocarena time you can look back on it and just be like well they could have fixed this no but I mean it's it's not nowadays though I mean you're playing the Aquina time for the first time for the first

time the fuck yeah I'm I'm not that far I've just completed Zora's domain I guess that was part of it. Yeah, I'd never play. So I have no affinity for the series whatsoever. I played Winwaker when I got a GameCube that was the first Zelda had ever played. I have never completed one. I probably even played that to about 20, 25%. And I'm playing through Ocreen of Time at the moment and just because it's a massive gap in my video game history. So I have no affinity for that whatsoever for these games. But I, like, I needed some time to like make sure this was the case. This is like generally one of the best games I've ever played. Yeah. Like it is a And I mentioned it in the last segment, like, it feels to me like an immersive sim, those types of games where you've got all these mechanics and they have thought about every single permutation that it's possibly there. Like, just using the cooking as a microcosm, the fact that you can combine all of these different things to make, like, I keep finding gifts on Twitter that I'm like trying to not look at of like all of these interesting ways of combining recipes together. But you put that into, you know, the first time you figure out that like the fire lifts you up. Yeah. With your with your paraglider, right? Like,

to trying to get into different areas, to combat mechanics that you didn't know worked. It's just this constantly like unraveling world, but it's not doing it in an artificial way where they're tutorializing or where they're like boats, man. Like I didn't figure out how to use boats until yesterday. I still have it. I've never used to there.

Yeah. And it's, I was waiting. I have an idea for how old. But I was waiting for the game to like tell me, like the pop up to say, oh, oh, oh, you're, this is a boat. To use the boat, you do. And it's that. but for like literally most of the mechanics of the games.

A little bit of handholding at the start where they need to tell you how to use the buttons. But like even just apples, right? You walk out, there are apples on a tree. Figure it out. Yeah, exactly. Right. My thing, and this is a critique I have that is really,

it's not spoilery. And at this point, like for people that have played, you should at least know certain things about the game. For me, the divine beasts are the thing that I do feel get a little bit too handholdy. Right. And they're not at all. But there's a moment where with each beast,

you get in and there, They're like, there's a map. You need to go. You need to find the map to unlock the area. And they do that. And it's weird because it happens four times through the game. And every single time, it has, there's still characters. So it's not line for a line the same thing.

But they're telling you the same thing. And it feels weird to me because they obviously did that so that you can play in any order you want. However, it's the only time the game holds your hand in any way, which makes it stand out even more. Right. You know, and I'm like, why would you do that? But it's like, that's such a minor thing. to complain about. And I'm excited that there's DLC.

There's a story DC coming. It's so crazy that we're, you know, this many weeks in, right? How many weeks is it? Because I feel like it's been

a month and a half, but it's just been a long month. It's been three weeks since it's been. Three years. And the fact that like every day on Twitter, there is a new gif or a new comment where you're like what? And even today or yesterday when we did the island,

I did an event tied out. I just did that last night after I saw you. Yeah. And it was that thing of like, I was like walking Kevin through you. I'm like, I know where everything is. And I'm like,

I need to get this ball over there. And I threw it in the water and then I used the ice to bring it up. Oh, that's how you did it? And somebody in the chat was like, oh, I never did it that one. I'm like, that's so fucking crazy. Did you do that?

Crazy. I haven't done it yet. Can you guess how I did it? The guy in the chat said, I already forgot. What did you do? There's a rock right on the edge that's kind of ramped enough.

Yeah. So I put it there, froze it, hit it a bunch of times and it just went like golf shot into it. I mean, it's awesome. And I love seeing it because, again,

I do think that there, It reaches a point with this game where for a while, it was like, I don't want to see anything about this because I want to experience it for myself. But you reach a point where like, all right, cool. I've played enough. And now I want to see all the cool shit people are doing. And again, I brought this up in some other show. But Breath of the Wild reminds me of Star Wars episode seven in a lot of ways where I was so excited for it. And I was like, I want to know just enough.

I want to see a trailer. But I don't want everything spoiled for me. Don't fucking tell me anything. I want to watch the movie and I want to experience myself. But then it reached a point where after you see the movie. movie. I was just like, tell me fucking everything. I want to know every Easter egg. What Storm Trooper was played by which actor. There's like a second wind

of I want to know everything. And granted, watching movies different than playing a game. What I'm saying is, I feel like with Zelda, you hit a point where you're like, there's that second wind where I'm like, all right, now tell me everything I don't know. I see some people doing things that are like, and it's funny because with Zelda, it's the one game where it's not breaking the game. It's no, you could solve it that way. Yeah. Have you guys seen the thing with the magnets?

Nick, oh, no. Nick Robinson? Nick Robinson. I literally... Not the magnet, it's electricity. Well, yeah, electricity through the metal. I literally did the same thing. Well, that was one of those gifts where I'm like, you son of a, what a... It works.

It totally fucking works. Yeah. We're not going to explain it to you. If you want to see, go look at it. You can go to Nick Robinson. His Twitter is Babylonian. Babylonian. Babylonian.

B-A-B-B-L-O-N-I-A-N. Yeah. It's from Polly. Yeah. It's amazing. I've never... Even in getting into the, Like the fact that like there are physical barriers to world exploration, like the island, right?

But even the desert. Yeah. And just the way they had, or the mountains, sorry, like in the first area when you go up there and it's too cold for you as well. Yeah. Yeah. And they don't tell you like, oh, you should do X and Y to survive here or whatever. It's just like this constantly unfolding world where, you know, I'm sorry, man. No, no. I mean, we did this documentary on Noclip like three weeks back about mystery, right?

And like, it's like amazing that we did it right before this game came out because we basically had like Derek Ego, who made Spolunky, Jonathan Blow did the witness, and then Jim Crawford made frog fractions, talking about how you design a game where you respect the players' intelligence and allow them to uncover things for themselves. And one of the things that Derek talked about was how in the first Zelda,

and again, this is, I haven't played these games, so it was educated for me. In the first Zelda, when you wanted to find those hidden dungeons, you'd put up bombs on special parts of the walls, right? And then it's everything. Do-do-do-do, and it opens up, right? In Zelda 3, there was cracks in the walls. And, like, that is basically a microcosm for the way

in which, like, modern games have turned into handholdy experiences. And they can be fun, But you've got games like Assassin's Creed, right? You basically have the UI telling you what to do. So you can almost play this game with just losing the map. They have a game of Zelda, which is basically not even done anything that crazy. It's just gone back to the way we used to play games in the 80s where they did not have this sort of hand-holdy thing. And that was the thing that I, after we were done with the review and progress of Mass Effect last week, that was the thing I was like, oh, fuck, I meant to bring that up, is the fact that I saw someone on Twitter tweet out after playing, after playing Zelda, Mass Effect feels tantal.

10 years old. And the fact that, and once he said it, I was like, oh yeah, totally. Because it is, Zelda's like, I respect your intelligence. And Mass Effect's like,

we're going to tell you a story. There's been this murder on this thing. Go here and find the body. The body is a giant star on your map. You go there. You scan the body. It's like, all right, now go find his gun. It's a giant star.

You go there. Like, there's no like, Zelda's literally like, yeah, if you want to get in that town, there's a guy that wanders around, see you. And you're like, wait, what the fuck does that mean? Like, what do you want me to do?

But it's, and I think that coupled with the fact there is so much to do means that when you hit those roadblocks, it's fine. It's like, I'm going to go do something else. By pure like osmosis in this world, I'm going to find that information to then get me into that. Lucy O'Brien put up a thing the other day. I was just like, she has this. She's like, it was a screenshot from her phone.

I was just like, my phone is filled with things like this. And it was just a conversation bubble of like, if you do this, you can find that person, but whatever. And I think all of that is super key because when it comes to Zelda, comparing the the the specifically Zelda one link to the past right and then Breath of the Wild here I think that Zelda one classic game no one will ever you know fight that at all however I do think that part of the magic of that game was the conversations people had in real life yeah and it was like oh how do I do

this and someone else just figured out oh if you put a bomb here there's a secret right but like the game didn't tell you that and I think that's bullshit like I think that it's that's it's too open it's just there's There's no way that you should have known. How would you know that this pixel here? Yeah. It's like, but it's like it's, that pixel looks no different than any other pixels. So linked to the past, having the cracks, I think is a, is a way to like, all right, cool.

This at least is teaching you a language of what you're supposed to know. I think the breath of the wild is kind of the perfect evolution of both of those, where it has the openness of the first Zelda, but it's all logical. So, oh, it's too cold. I'm shivering. Right. I need to get hot. How can I get hot?

Oh, if I wore warmer clothes. Right. You know? Or like, it's all things like that where it's like, oh, man, I need to figure out how to shock something. I probably need to use electricity and something. You're right. And that's like the cracks, right, where they are giving you the puzzle elements for you to piece it together. I think you need to have that bomb placed on a random wall just once.

Or you need to think that that's possible. Sure. Because if you think that that's possible, then anything is possible. And Zelda's world. feels like a world in which I'm learning so much about what's going on here, but it still feels like there's so much to learn. And Derek also told, you know, there's that old thing about why Zelda was made. It was that Miyamoto was walking around that forest and he came across a cave, right? And he's like, wow, like, I discovered this cave. The story ends there. He doesn't talk about

what was in the cave. It's not about what's in the cave. Condoms. Condoms as far as the eye can see. Just like rows of them. It's about the mystery, it's like the magic trick, right? If the magic trick, if the solution to the trick was better than a trick, they would have told you about the solution. They don't. They're telling about the trick. And now what's cool about Zelda is that that element of mystery, it's an untangible thing. We're not talking about figuring all this stuff out. We're excited because we don't know everything. And for people I also feel who are in their 30s who were playing video games for a while, sorry, you're younger than us. This similar thing, right? That's rare. Yeah. And I think that's

why Zelda's really I mean today playing on the stream right Kevin and I got to the shrine with the constellations and it's like look to the look at the constellations and it was that shut the chat because we're playing on Twitch and I've not come across that that's we're fucking wondering what the fuck do we need to do here but and it's like back and forth there's all the shit and then like I pitch this idea it doesn't work Kevin pitch it Kevin finally was like what if we did I'm like oh fuck of course and then I still didn't have my head completely wrapped around it I was like this is great oh Zelda's got portal in it it's got portal in it the shrines are portal oh no I get with

And that's my favorite part. The shrines, I fucking, I just love it so much. Now that I'm done with the game, a criticism I have is like, all right, did it need more dungeons? And I do think that it, I personally think that it could have used two more dungeons and less shrines if that had to be the concession. How many shrines are there? There's 120. Jesus. Which is a lot of shrines.

Which really makes you sad when you look at your screen. Like, fuck, I have 46. And I'm not finding them easy anymore. Like, what the fuck are these things? I've loved so much. So many of the shrines. There was a handful of duds, but overall,

I'll give it to them because even the duds tried something different. And there's the minor test of strength and major test of strength or whatever. And it's like, there's a couple too many of those.

I'm skipping all those major tests of strength. They're like, nope. But at the same time, I do feel like there is a reward. Those tend to be the shrines that were harder to get to. So it was like,

getting to the shrine was the challenge. The amount of shrines I've walked in where I've like busted my ass to get there and like, all right, cool, here it is. Yeah. I love that. That's so good.

So I like that. the dungeons are the real, real meat of Zelda, you know? Right. But man, like, I just, I love the, the use of your, the runes. That's what they're called. Yeah. The ruins. Here they are in the beginning of the game.

Master these things. Because you can be fucking creative and do whatever you want. Every puzzle is going to use these things. The amount of times I'm in one of these shrines and I'm just like, I must not have, nope, that's not the answer. You have everything at your disposal right now to beat this. Figure it out. Yep.

It's great. And so many games don't do that. They keep their like masterstroke to the end. it reminded me of Half-Life too where it's like, no, here's the gravity gun. Yep. Like, we're going to tell you loads of different ways of using it. Like, it was the same with these ruins, right?

Yeah, it's like, here's like all these different way to play it. Oh, that's so good. Yo, put your amoebo on this thing. So for the next topic, we're going to have a very special friend, Seb. Seb's coming from SnakeBats every. He's going to appear right there. We won't have been drinking.

I'll put on a sweatshirt. We'll all shift over. Don't do it. You're breaking reality. Look at this time is broken. Go. support Danny O'Dwyer over at Patreon.com slash noclip?

No slash Danny O'Dwyer. Because it's not just no clip. I'm also bringing back my old op-ed show real soon too. Awesome. Thanks for doing this, Dave. Pleasure as ever. Great to have you.

Great to be here. Let's do another topic with Seb. Let's do it. Hey, Seb. Why don't she just appear where I'm sitting? And for a final topic of the day, we have a good friend, Seb, from Sumo Digital.

Everybody, give it up for Seth. You appear from nowhere. Like a ghost. Just popped on set. Like a European ghost. Like a European ghost. That's why I left Europe. Ghost everywhere.

You know, it is an older place. So there's probably more ghosts. Totally. Dead people everywhere, bodies, Vikings all over the place. You were a Viking? No. Not a ghost Viking. No.

A lot of history though. Yeah. Have you seen a ghost in Europe? Yes. Really? Yeah. What happened? There's like this haunted mansion near where I live where people go to.

But now they've like turned it into like a tourist attraction. So it's kind of lame. But they said the devil's fist, went through the ceiling. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty fucked up. We used to go there in nighttime drunk and we'd see stuff, but like, you know.

You were drunk and we're 16 years old, so, you know, I don't know. So this is Seth. Yeah, sorry. Snake Pass. Let's play up over on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Right. So here's the thing, Tim.

This is Seb. Yes. Sebs working in Sumo Digital. He made Snake Pass. If you're one of the people watching this on the early Patreon exclusive, it's coming out on Tuesday. If you're watching this on normal YouTube,

it's out right now. You can go pick it up. PlayStation 4, Xbox 1, Switch. and Steam. All of them. You nervous? If you have a computer, you can play it. I'm really nervous, yeah.

I'm excited, nervous. Like, I sleep worse every night, pretty much. Yeah. I can't wait for it to come out for people to get their hands on it. Well, you know, you've shown it to us a bunch of times. We played it, we enjoy it. We did the Let's Play, obviously,

a while back during GDC. This is after we had already seen, like, stuff you talked about it after you saw the trailer for it. David Wise doing the soundtrack. That's my favorite part of this whole thing. You guys that did the Doc and Kong country soundtracks? Fantastic.

And then you came by and Dino, who was on your team, screwed me out of the kind of funny Nintendo World Championship in Pax. Because at no point during Pax East was I shown the secret route that Nick was shown that he used to retain the kind of funny Nintendo World Championship. I'm not a fan of it, but I won't hold it against you. Well, next time, just think more like a snake and you would have actually won. Seth, don't get me the tagline to your games. So for somebody who does it, and this topic not really about Snake Pass the game.

That's already out you can go play. But what I want to know is, give it the elevator pitch to somebody who doesn't know what snake passes. Right, Snake Pass is a physics-based platforming game where you play as a snake. So this means you can't jump. It's all about managing your long body and using gravity and friction and the likes to navigate a level. Sure. Reach challenges.

And it's like a puzzler. Is that how I like to think of it? Because you get there, you see the gems. You know you got to get that. But how do you get that? And how do you keep your momentum and how do you not fall and die like I did? Yes. Some people have said it's a puzzle game where the character is the puzzle.

You have to figure out every time you want to grab something, you have to figure out how do I get this character to that place. So now I want to dial it way back. Because what you're here to talk about is how fascinating your journey to Snake Pass is. How did you slither in to you? Oh, geez. At the office, do you guys do this all the time? Do you just have all these snake puns? It's crazy.

We've had to take out, I think, about 80% of the snake puns because people just couldn't hear them anymore. There were many more before then. So you were telling me when you came through, you were a teacher. That was your day-to-day job. And then you played so much little big planet, you got a job. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. So. You can do that?

I know. I can play so much. You're telling me people can play games for a living? I watch so much porn. You probably have an eye now. You have a camera. I do have a camera. I have a body.

Yeah. Oh, my God. You got a lot. I've got a lot. Man, new patriarch goals coming to no clip. I can't wait for. For this. No, for you, Seb, what were you teaching? How long have you been a teacher? I was teaching biology, and I was a teacher for four and a half years.

Halfway the last year, I got an email from Sumo, and that's when I quit. So, four and a half years. No, you don't jump. Pretty much instantly. You can't jump around like that. You can't. So you're a teacher, you're a biology teacher in high school? Yes. Okay. You're teaching all these scumbag kids. They're coming out. About the birds and the bees. Yeah. That's the exciting part. I don't want to learn about this, Mr. Seb. Wait, did you have to do sex ed in biology? Yeah. Man. I mean, that's literally biology, right?

Yeah, we had religion class. That's where that came in. Really? Yeah. I had religion class, too. We didn't talk about it there. They said, don't have sex. And if you do, don't wear a condom because go to hell.

Sorry, I'm... Don't wear a condom? Catholic, man. My God. God's not about that. God ain't about that life. Did you tell your kids to wear condoms or not? Yeah, absolutely.

I actually did the whole banana thing demonstrate. Yeah, it was a very different life than what I'm doing now. I'm going to get the snake. Okay. Okay. So you're teaching biology. Do you enjoy it? Like your whole goal, your whole life, Ben, to be a teacher? No, no. No, I was always kind of obsessed with video games. And I always wanted to do something with video games. But, well, when I had to choose a study, it was still sort of, people said, like, there's not a real career in video games. And I was good at the science study. So I just sort of naturally moved to the science studies, pick biology. I ended up getting a biology master in uni. Oh, wow.

Did you secretly hate it the entire time? No, no, not at all, because I do still like nature a lot and biology stuff. But halfway the second year of uni, I definitely was sure that I picked the wrong thing. Right. But by that time, it was already halfway, so it was like, I might as well finish it. This is such an awesome redemption story of like, you knew it was wrong, where you're like, I got to bite down and keep going, I guess. Yeah, well, lots of kids have the same issue nowadays, I think, and nowadays when you have to make.

I swear to God, why do you hate this microphone? Sorry, when you're doing this whole thing, Kevin's going to yell me after the show. So when you have to make a choice, I was 17 when I had to choose what I wanted to be, and I honestly was not ready for that at all. So I just picked the most convenient thing and not the best thing.

Sounds like a 17-year-old. That's a 17-year-old face for sure. So many people. So you're playing games still. You're deep into them. When do you get introduced to Little Big Planet? So it actually started for me with a different game, a C game called Spore,

from 2002. So that was one of the first games where it allowed you to create stuff for the community to play with. And I got really into that and I must have created over 1,000 different creatures and vehicles and when the expansion came out

it allowed you to actually create mini adventures, mini games almost. And I just got a huge kick out of the idea that people were having fun with the stuff that I was creating. And getting feedback, comments, subscribers, kind of addicting in a way. Oh, sure.

So, yeah, just keep going and keep getting better, keep improving myself. And after about two years of spending almost every night in Spore, I got an email from the creators of Spore. No way. If I wanted to visit our studio in San Francisco. Oh, wow. So at that point, I was like, this is it.

So they're going to offer me a job. And how old were you at this point? I must have been about 22, 23 maybe. So now you're ready for the big life choice. Well, I knew I was in the wrong spot at that point. So, yeah, I was convinced that they wouldn't fly me all the way over to San Francisco for no good reason. Just to show you the game and show you talk to you. So I was convinced they would offer me a job.

So I was allowed to stay there for a week and visit their studio during a game jam that they were doing. Wow. Was that over in Emeryville, the Maxis one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got closed a couple months later. So that's probably part of the reason they didn't offer. They're just throwing money away, bringing people in. I mean, you dodged a bullet.

then as well. Yeah, probably. So yeah, the days went by and they never actually offered me a job until the very last day, they still hadn't offered me a job. So I decided to just try whatever I could. So I sort of started wandering through the building, looking for the door with the highest looking function on it. And I found some executive producer or something like that. And I just knocked on the door and I said, do you have five minutes? And I just sort of pitched myself there. like if you want someone really passionate for video games, hire me. Yeah. Wow.

How'd they go over? Well, I think they were sort of impressed by that, but it still never led to anything. Did it stop him from call security? That is awesome. That is a got to all. That is a Tengetti's ass move. You just got to go for. I like that you went door to door and had the highest one.

Yeah. You don't want to just be going to a producer. You need the executive producer. Yeah. That's what's up. But then flying back and without a job offer was. very depressing, very disillusioned, because, well, I couldn't believe that it would fly me all the way over there for really nothing. Yeah. So after that, I sort of stopped playing Spore.

I was just don't know. Oh, the sport. A score and lever. Yeah. What about Dark Spore? No, I never got to that, no. No, it was pretty much tough for me after that. Yeah. But I read on some forum that the best creators from Little Big Planet were being hired by the creators of Little Big Planet. So I went I went out bought a PlayStation and bought Little Big Planet and I decided to do the same thing to become the most subscribed creator in Little Big Planet. See, this was intentional. That's just an job through that. Wow. I didn't know that part.

This was a scheme from the beginning. We were like, I'm going to play this game to get hired. Yeah. Hell yeah. I'm going to be the best Little Big Planet player. Yeah. So that's Little Big Planet One you pick up. Yeah, Little Big Planet One is where it started.

And after a couple of months, Little Big Planet 2 came out. So most of my more advanced stuff is all done in Little Big Planet 2. How many levels and how much did you put up for Little Big Planet 2? Well, I've just created about 20 levels and five mini games, because later on it was all about using Little Big Planet to create things that look like they don't belong in Little Big Planet. To really push the engine. All those music levels and all that stuff. I remember it was very much into 3D stuff, like using the 2D engine to create 3D stuff.

Wow, okay, okay, cool. And I think that is what in the end got me noticed. So after doing that for two years, religiously, every day, creating content. And how many subscribers do you have? How many views were going to know what was happening? At the end, I was up to about 15,000, I think. Still not the highest there. Sure, but I mean, you're doing quality content.

It was getting noticed. You're the audience behind you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And medium-mocchio, they're dialed into that. Are you talking about subscribers on YouTube? Are you talking about subscribers? No, just subscribers within the game. In the game.

Okay, cool. That's awesome. That's a big. That's a huge one. Yeah. So were you, like, learning about game design then when you were doing Yeah, absolutely. That's the thing that a lot of people seem to underestimate. There's loads of people in Little Big Planet that are very good at game design

because it's such a competitive environment. Everybody who's creating games there, there's millions of levels out there. There's literally tens of thousands of levels coming out every day. So for this relatively small group of people that play that game every day to select your level, you really have to stand out on all fronts. So it really pushes you to think from the... I look at creating a little big planet level for me was someone selected to play my level. And I got to make sure that from the moment they selected me,

I keep them entertained. From the very first second, I draw them in and I keep them playing this is my level until it's finished. Because it's super easy to just, as soon as you run into a difficult bit, to just quit out, go to the next level. So yeah, yeah, that really made me think about the entire process of, what draws players in and how do you keep the players there. So I think I learned really a lot from that. All right, so you're making all these levels. You're killing in a Little Big Planet 2.

Who reaches out? How do they reach out? Is it medium molecule? Who reaches out to you? No, so at that point, medium molecule was no longer working on Little Big Planet. Because they're transitioning on. Sumo was ramping up for Little Big Planet 3. Which was all like sort of secret to the public.

We didn't know that for a while. As far as I thought, it was still a medium molecule. So when I initially got the email and I was a teacher for about, well, four and a half years at that point, when I got the email from Sumo Digital, my first reaction was Google Sumo Digital. Actually, my first reply to the email was, is this for real? Are you guys for real? And she up me, yeah, we are for real? What was that initial email? Was it, hey, we want to talk to you about working here? Or was like, we want to give you this job? Yeah, they said we've been following your work in the community. some of our staff members have recommended you, would you be interested in having a chat with us about maybe a possible job?

Gotcha. Something along those lines. Did they mention a little bit of Planet 3 in it, or was it that? No. Okay, okay, okay. They did in the first Skype interview that followed it. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. How many interviews were there?

Two, one over Skype, and then they flew me in for an actual face-and-this-to-face interview. And this time you knew it was real. This time I'm flying here with a purpose. Yeah. And actually, the week before I flew in, I was on a ski holiday, and I broke my ankle. during that. Literally the first thing that I thought of when my ankle broke was not, oh shit, my ankle. It was literally, oh, shit, my job. I have to be in England next week. What am I going to do? Where were you coming from? At the time, I was teacher in Holland still.

Holland, okay. Okay. So how long was that? I mean, how long did it take you to realize what was happening? Because I feel like they hit you up. Do you want to come get interviewed? You're a teacher already. You don't like the job. But is that thing? Is this real? Is this really happening? Like, was it when you got there on the first day and sat down at the desk? Well, no, the interview itself was really nerve-wracking, because it was for me, like, the make-a-break moment. Like, I felt like I invested almost two years to get noticed in Spore, and then two more years to get noticed in LVP.

Like, if I don't get a job now, it's probably never going to happen. I felt really the pressure of this has to happen. So the interview, I was, in my memory, it went really bad. I was really nervous. I couldn't really answer properly. So actually the first three hours after the interview, while I was waiting on the plane, I spent mulling around in a big shopping mall there,

thinking about what I said and what I should have said. And I actually ended up buying a little block note and a pen and writing down the things that I should have said. I went back to the office and I gave the note. No way, really? Yeah. You were fucking awesome. Wait, you left the airport?

The shopping mall. I went to the shopping where I sat on the couch and I just started thinking what I should have said. and what I could have said and which suggestions I wanted to give. And I wrote all that down. I went back to the office. I went to the reception. I said,

I just had an interview. These other things that I forgot to say. Can you hand this over to the guy that did the interview? That is awesome. That is a baller-ass move. People take note of that. You should do that. Absolutely.

It did work in the end. Yeah. It was a couple of hours later, actually, when I was on the airport, they already sent me a message that I was going to be hired. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's fucking awesome.

Kevin clapping? It was... Okay, you keep it going? Congratulations. That's awesome. That's a... Dreams do come true. Yeah.

And not only was I able to become a game designer, I was able to work on my favorite game. Yeah, sure. Like Little Big Planet is huge for me. So... Not just because of the opportunities it gives me, but just because I love that type of game, like the happy...

Sure, yeah, yeah. What kind of questions were they asking you? Were they asking you questions as, all right, you're a video game fan who's good at creating stuff? Or were they asking you, like, serious game design questions? Well, funny enough, the guy that did the interview, which is now the lead designer also on the Snake Pass, I worked very closely with him. That was the first time I met him on the interview.

And the first thing he said when he came in, I hope he doesn't mind me saying this. But the first thing he said when he came in was, I'm so sorry, I haven't prepared for this at all. So he sort of just winked in the interview. It was kind of a weird mix between personal questions about my normal hobbies just to see if I was a normal guy. Yeah. And some questions about game design and specifically about my ideas for a little big planet. Gotcha. Especially that last part, I wasn't prepared for it.

So that's the things I wrote in the note later on with it. These are my ideas for Little Big Planet. God, I mean, they played through your portfolio, presumably. Yeah, that's a good point. They knew. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so you go from Little Big Planet then. You did that Little Big Planet 3, right?

Yeah. So then after that, does it go straight into Snake Pass? Pretty much. Well, they were planning to move me onto a new project. project which was using Unreal. And because I only knew Little Big Planet Engine, they gave me two weeks to try to learn Unreal Engine. Oh, geez, another high pressure situation. Okay. Yeah, I didn't experience it like that at the time, but in hindsight it might have been

sort of a trial period. Yeah, yeah. Let's see if he can still be useful outside Little Big Planet. Yeah. And so they gave me plenty of time to learn Unreal. And as I was playing around with the rule following tutorials. I ran into this tutorial about splines and it tempted me to try to make a rope that would swing when the player walks into it. Now what are splines?

Because I know splines from SimCity. Ritculating splines. SimCity 2000. Back to Maxis again. It all goes back to Maxis. It's basically you draw a bunch of dots and then a line that smooth out that draws a smooth curve.

Okay. That's roughly what it means. Okay, cool. So a rope that swings would use that essentially. So that's how it started. And when I didn't attach that rope to the ceiling and press the play button, I saw it fall on the floor in this really nice, smooth, coil shape. And I thought, I've never seen anything like that.

And also, especially from the Little Big Planet, coming from a Little Big Planet, where everything is really square. Yep. Yes. So just that big contrast between two years of only looking at square blocks and then suddenly this smooth, beautiful shape. Yeah, I thought there's a game there.

I'm going to try to make something out of that. So my initial prototype was a controllable rope. And then I thought back to my history. If I could control a rope, what is that like? Some sort of rope animal. Exactly. In university, I had two pet snakes. Yeah.

Oh, well, solid and liquid snakes. Oh, nice. Love it. Yes. Now, here's the big question. You were boring to make this game. Were you one of these guys who like brought the snakes to class? No.

Okay. I had one of these guys in like a journalism thing and then it got loose and everybody flipped out of course. That's hilarious. Why did you bring a snake? Why are you bringing a snake? Sorry. No, I did spend many hours watching TV with them just crawling through my hands over my body and so I knew exactly when and how they use their muscles. Yeah. Right. So I put a lot of that knowledge into there plus some general biology knowledge about muscles. Right. And it started working more and more like you literally have been training your entire life to make the same. It does feel like that that everything is sort of led up to this game.

So you're getting unreal, you're getting good at Unreal because that was going to be the next project or whatever. But then you start doing this snake thing. Do you come to people and you're like, hey, I think I have something here. I shouldn't work on that game. We should make this game?

So I had that, at that point it didn't even have a head. It was literally just a cable crawling around. And I had a feeling that there was something special there. But normally when I create something, I always get that feeling. Like you get the initial period of being. really particularly proud of yourself and you look at it later a couple of months and you realize it was kind of shit yeah so I always get the feeling and I don't trust

that feeling anymore so I brought it into work and I showed it to one colleague and he was like dude this is amazing I've never seen anything like this you should do something with this and which is exactly around the time that Sumo did their first internal game jam yeah trying to because Sumo is a big company normally doing triple A games for other studios but we always want to do something of our own so They organized the Game Jam for that, and this was October 2015. And, well, I had this prototype, so I submitted that to the Game Jam, and I won it. Wow.

And, well, that led to initially Sumo giving me three guys in three months to try to make something small that we could put on Steam for maybe even for free, more as a promotion. Sure. Like Sumo has ideas as well. Hey, we make original stuff. We're not just doing a little big plan on other contract work. But obviously, the little team that was on it was just so passionate about the idea that we sunk incredible amount of time and effort and energy and love and passion into it. And after three months when we presented to the bosses, like, this is what we're going to put on steam. They were just so blown away by the potential of the idea and the amount of work that we managed to do in a small amount of time that they gave me like six more people.

So we went up to 10 and they decided to try. to work towards EGX Rest, which was April last year, to try to make a demo and see if there was actually an audience for this game. So that happened. We worked really hard to nail the art style and turn this headless or sort of realistic-looking creepy snake into something cute and colorful. And when we brought it to EJX Rest the first time, and we showed it to the public for the first time, the reaction was just amazing.

There was smiley faces all around. that looked at it, wanted to play it. There was cues around that booth all the time. And we had our big boss standing in the corner with a big smile. Like the one smile that matters. Yeah, exactly. So pretty much the day after EJXREST was finished,

they came over and they said, we're going in full production. You're going to get a full team with a real team with producer and their budget. How big is the team there? So that was April last year, and it's been ramping up and down depending on what we need at the time.

but it's been varying around 20 people have been working on it since April last year. So don't take this the wrong way. But do the people at Sumo Digital hate you? Because you come off like Tom Hanks and big. I just showed up, pulled from the community, and now I have this giant team and fixed that's our big thing. Somewhere is like, I've been working my entire career. I can punch on the wall.

I hope not. Sometimes it's difficult to try to push your vision for something coming from a background. that's so different from a lot of the other people. But I do not, I don't think they hate me. Was it weird when you came on for Little Big Planet to be, because I can't imagine going from, you know, I love Patapon, but all of a sudden like, you're on the Patapon team, and I'd be like, well, you guys made all the games that I love.

I don't know where I'm going to sit up in a meeting and tell you this is how it needs to be, and that's how it needs to be. Were you timid at first to get out there and start talking? Well, in Little Big Planet 3, it was, we know, I wasn't the only guy that got in through this part. At the same time, about eight people from all over the world to the best community creators from Little Big Planet Got hired

and Boucher to work on Little Big Planet 3. So there was a small team of us all coming from completely different backgrounds, changing their lives around and trying to live the dream. Who came up with the dog? Whoever's idea that was. It was a business of a race. Because that was the hit of that E3 trailer.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Without having people losing their damn minds of that dog. I'm not exactly sure. Came up with the dog. I came up with the power up for the dog. Okay, well, smart. There you go. Spring.

Thank you. So how crazy is it then? You go from being a fan of games to being like, I want to make games to making the games to now making a game that is about to be on all consoles, including Switch, that just came out. That seems like a big deal. Yeah, it is unbelievable. And especially the last few months, it's just been going so fast.

And it's been growing, growing. Because initially we're only going to release on Steam. And then, well, another platform is interested. Another one is interested. And then the most recent one, Switch, which was very important for us. in terms of getting exposure. And yeah, and it just, it's unreal. And at this point, recently, I looked at a video of our game,

and I can't hardly believe that we made that. Right. It all started as a rope with that ahead. Yeah. It's just been a crazy journey. And every time, every day, there's a moment where I have to pinch myself to check if this is actually still really happening. This is one of them, like, I'm sitting here with you guys.

And that's, yeah, you just talked before this, you're running us through, right? Right. What's been your travel schedule here? We saw you in San Francisco for GDC. Yeah, that was three weeks ago, I think. Yeah. And then we went to Boston for packs for a week. Yeah.

And after that, I had one day at home to do my washing. Then off to Madrid for four days. And then from Madrid, I had one day for washing again. And then we flew back here. You can wash clothes in other countries. He's got that jar of quarters. He's got to get there. He's not going to spend him anywhere else.

Funny enough, the one day I came. back from Madrid and I really needed to do my washing. My roommate actually just moved out of the house and took away the washing machine. Oh, dick move. I ended up having to go to the laundry. Oh my God. God damn. Maybe you'll get that snake pass money and you can, you know, get your own laundry. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, from when it's, you know, how it works for me is I think it was GDC, it was the first time we talked about Snake Pass, right? I'm yelling at Tommy, your PR guy, who's kind of funny best friend as well off the way. Two weeks before. Yeah, okay. So I remember hearing about Snake Pass on the peripheral

of it happening and then when you sent through the email, I go through every email for a GDC or for a show to see if it is something that would work for us and my first reaction isn't like oh whatever, I'm like Snake Pass, I don't get it and I click on and I watch it was like, shit, this does look fun. You know what I mean? Like this does look cool and that's when we booked the Let's play and then the Nindy's trailer came out and showed it and I came back

from something and you were like, holy shit and have you seen this snake game? I'm like they're coming here in three days. I was excited about this separately from Greg talking to them, whatever. And also Tom, shout out to you. I like you a lot. So I missed the let's play when they were all here Because I forgot where I was I was off doing something I worked to do you

I came back the next day And there was a post-it note with a dick drawing On my monitor And it just said to Tim Love Tom And I'm like, who the fuck is Tom? And now the thing is I was impressed Because it wasn't just a dick

It was a very detailed dick Oh yeah I went to all school And it took a hard school And it took a lot of dick's notes On top of each other It was a real long dick. I was like, I don't know who this Tom is, but I like him.

And then I was running around as me. I was like, who the fuck is Tom? And they're like, oh, it's the Snake Pass guy. I'm like, all right. That's great. And then I bet you in packs and then there you go. If anyone wants the job, it's kind of funny, they just do what you did, but just don't knock on the biggest door. Just draw the biggest dick.

The biggest thing. Post-it notes that you can't together. From here on out, at every meet and greet, you're going to get posted notes. I should have a show up. I will accept them. All right. Fine. But yeah, and that's the thing.

I'm glad Snake Pass is great. congratulations getting it out. Thank you very much, of course, for putting a platinum trophy in the PlayStation 4 version. My plan for Snake Pass comes out on Tuesday, right? Get it on the switch

because I'm going flying. Play it there, figure out how to do every level, come back and just bust out the platinum on PS4 because I'll just know, bop, pop, pop, pop. I'll probably have to watch YouTube to figure out the speed runs.

Are there speed run trophies? I'm assuming there's speed run trophies. Yes. God damn it. So bad as speed runs. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

To beat the champ. Nick Scarpino. No. Thank you so much for joining us, said. This has been fantastic. Everybody, make sure you check out Snake Pass is available pretty much everything they could possibly want unless you plan on some weird shit like Game Boy Color. You probably can't play it there. I'm sure there'll be someone that figures it out eventually.

But until then, make sure you support these guys. Until next week, I love you. Hope you enjoyed that episode of Kind of Funny Games cast for more Kind of Funny games content. Click right there to subscribe. For more just fun content like The Morning Show, click right there to subscribe to Kind of Funny. or support us on Patreon here or check out some videos there. Give me a little wiggle.