Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - E3 2021: What Does It Look Like? - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 65

Episode Date: March 18, 2021

GamesBeat's Jeff Grubb joins the crew to talk abouit Loop Hero and what to expect from this year's Summer Games Mess. 00:02:20 - Housekeeping 00:02:53 - Loop Hero 00:17:26 - Avengers 00:33:40 - Animal Crossing 00:37:39 - Fallout: New Vegas and Game Pass 00:48:18 - Arcade 2020 handheld 00:53:33 - Ads 00:55:56 - What does this year’s E3/Summer Games Mess look like this year? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yo, what's up? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast, Episode 65. I'm one of your host, Blessing, Adioia Jr. That's right. Tim Geddes is dead. And joining me is one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. How did Tim die? You know, he tripped over his little puppy. Moose? Yeah, thank you. He tripped over moose, fell on Cool, Greg.

Cool, Greg, was holding a bunch of knives. He was holding a bunch of knives, and that's how he went out. RIP. The voice here is the voice of Twitch.tv. Slash Andy Cortez. Hey, everybody. Happy to be here. Talk video games with you.

And also joining us is the founder of the summer games mess, Games Beats Jeff Grubb. Hey, thanks for having me, guys. This is a lot of fun. You know, I'm not going to take credit for it, but I'm glad Tim's dead so I could be here. Hey, man, you're not the only one. No, I don't know what seems up to, but he's busy,

and so he's not here, and so has me hosting. Jeff Grub, it's awesome to have you. I'm excited to have you because the topic of today's shows is going to be all about summer games mess and what we can expect this summer from games announcements Greg Miller. I thought, I'm sorry, Jeff, I always thought your name was Jeffie Grubb, is not correct? Have I been saying it wrong this whole time? This is a funny joke you got going here with Greg Miller. I'm having a wonderful time already. You didn't tell me it was going to be like this

blessed when you invited me. I didn't know it was going to be hostile. See, that's the thing I love about hosting shows that I never know what energy we're going to start off games cast with because it could start off anywhere. We could start off talking about VOR and the meaning of war and looking into what war means as we did about a year ago. Why didn't I get that one?

That's the one I won. I want to talk about VOR. We can talk about war. What's your favorite war? Anything involving like Woreo's mouth? He's got that big open mouth. Oh, right. You guys know what I'm talking about.

Oh, we know, yeah. He can suck in the whole bicycle with those chomper. Cheered to your Lord. Of course, this is kind of funny gamescast. Each and every week, we get together to talk about the biggest topics in gaming.

Patreon supporters at the Silver Membership or above get to watch the show live as we record it. And you can get the full post shows exclusive on Patreon. Of course, you can watch this weekly on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, roosteathe.com, and on podcast services around the globe. Housekeeping for you. Shout out to our Patreon producers for this month. Mick at the nanobiologist Abramson. Tyler Ross, Joy, aka Joseph O. Yousaf, Trent Berry,

Mizuki, Man Bear Paradox, Julian the Gluten Free Gamer. Alex J. Sandoval, Sanchez-West Gaming, James Hastings, Elliot, and Casey Kern. Today we're brought to you by Purple Mattress and Upstart, but I'll tell you about that later. For now, let's start with the show with what have we been playing. Now, Andy and Jeffrey Grub-Grub, before the show, you guys were talking a little bit about that game called Loop Hero. Andy, I'm going to start with you. What's the deal with Loop Hero? You know, it's a game that I would have never thought I'd get into. It is a, I think the developers described it as wanting to make a zero player game

that is just sort of automated. And essentially what the gist of it is, it's a roguelight procedural game that starts up a new map every time you begin a new trek or expedition. And you go out and you fight. enemies and it's all automated. You are not controlling any of the combat. The only thing that's differentiating how well you do is the loot you pick up from the dead enemies or the loot that you pick up by creating a world around you.

It's like 10 games in one. It is RPG. It is world building kind of, you can also, after every run, go back to your home base. I'm just going to, let's compare everything to Hades right here, Jeff. All right. Yeah, do it. That's like the most recent thing on everybody's mind. We'll compare everything to Hades.

In the way that Hades lets you go back to your home place and talk to NPCs, what Loop Hero does different and I think better is that it lets you go back home and build out your world a little bit more thought out. You're not just kind of unlocking a chest or talking to an NPC to get more dialogue. you are I have enough crafts to open to talk to a person who makes potions and I could now build out

this little campfire and make my home base so it's also base building aspects are there as well this game has a lot of things to it it is very very complicated but it's so mindless that you can just kind of have it running

in the background like I have it running in the background right now and I'm just playing it right now and that's just it's a very, it's a very fun. You admit, you're just playing these games at work. Stealing time.

Stealing time. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's just, it's a really fun game and I'm digging a hell out of it. Jeff, where are you out with this game? Yeah, I'm at the point where I'm really glad that Blessing Head, you go first to explain it because it's still very difficult to explain what this game is. It's, I think it's more important to like to talk about the energy it's bringing. If you ever got into a cookie clicker or you ever got into like progress, that's the one that I think is

like the best example, that old flash game where it's just about filling up bars. And then the more bars you fill up, the faster you can fill up your bars. That's the game for Progress Quest. This is not exactly that. And this is not exactly a cookie clicker where you can just leave it on the background and completely let it go. You do have to babysit it a little bit. And that just comes down to making sure that you are constantly in the more powerful gear

that you're getting. And then strategically placing the cards on the map to build out the world. And I feel like I just talked about like three different major. gameplay mechanics in like 10 seconds. Let's focus on the card one though. I think that's where like most of the synergies are happening. That's what you're doing most of the time. Because most of the, like the gear you're getting is infrequent.

Once you get better gear, yeah, you'll put that on there. But most of the time you're just kind of getting gear that's most of the same or stuff you can ignore. So what you're mostly looking for is ways to combine the cards on the map to get certain synergies that unlock new abilities on the map. Like one of them is if you put the rock. card in a three by three formation on this grid map that rock all turn into a mountain. And then that releases harpies on your loop where your character is actually fighting.

And once he encounters harpies, he might get even better gear or unlock more resources and stuff like that. And then it just comes down to basically where this intersects with the difficulty is. You need to do a risk reward judgment at all times about do I want to keep pushing forward and risk dying. And if I do, I only get to take back 30% of these resources to build up my, my base. or do I just want to run home now when I get back to the start of the loop and take back 100% of my stuff, but not really have a chance to face the boss.

And that's where I'm like, that's where I'm struggling right now because I always just want to keep pushing. And it's very easy to get into that mindset where like just keep pushing forward. Maybe I'll beat the boss this time. And then, of course, I lose. And I only have 30% of my stuff. And that's causing the grind to take even longer. I had a heartbreaker of a moment yesterday, Jeff, where I, again, you get that sort of

Haiti's mindset because I think that's just the thing that is easiest to compare. since everybody has played it, I feel. In the Haiti's mindset where the R&G gives you really awesome loot, and you're like, oh, my gosh, I have all of the perks that I really enjoy right now. I have all these abilities that are giving me back health and all these sorts of things. I had a build yesterday where a lot of the armor that I had regenerated a lot of my health. I had a helmet that regenerated 2.4 health per second, a shield that regenerated 5.8 health per second.

eventually added up to where I was I felt unstoppable because not only you're regenerating health during fights but you're regenerating health just when you're walking around the loop and I felt amazing and then I kind of didn't pay really close attention to one of the

upcoming battles and and I had the game up by the way for audio listeners if you're watching the video right now you're watching A&A play in his window and it really scared me at first because you got really small Andy and then your video just went black for second and I was like oh no we lost him.

I was like Andy's up to something. At first I thought he was just doing the thing or he's going to play the game. He's like, I'm just going to play it now. Bye. One of the encounters that I, that I had, similar to this one that I'm pointing at right now for video watchers is it'll show you how many enemies there are. And there were four really tough enemies. And I had gotten to the point where I'm on loop level nine, which, you know, the more

you play, the more loops you go through, the tougher the enemies get, the better loot you get. And I had so many resources and I felt unbeats. and then I got absolutely destroyed by four enemies. And when you die, you only get to take back 30% of your resources. And that sucked so bad because I was like, fuck, I felt so great about this run. And I just didn't fully pay attention to the actual map. But I think it's really cool how you, the more that you unlock back at your home base.

So right now, I'm just going to flee and go and I'm going to keep 60% of my resources because maybe I'm scared of that upcoming encounter. When you go back home and try to build out your home base, and I have an herbalist hut built out where you can, I don't know, some magic person makes magic potions for me for heels. A blacksmith will make extra armor pieces and stronger armor that I can then go out into the field with. The more you build out your home base,

the more cards you unlock for the deck building portion of the game. So there's so many different elements to this that you don't really need to, fully pay attention to in order to get satisfaction out of the game but I think it completely makes the experience a lot better when you have a deck built out

knowing similar to in Hades where the thing that I would go out with was I need to get the Athena deflection shield as my first whatever they called those power up upgrades the boons. Yeah the boons there you go the Athena deflection shield

the dash deflect that's the thing I need first so let me start off with this Athena thing. Similar to that, these cards all have sort of different, you know, different attributes to them. And when you eventually go back into the field, then you can kind of build out the world the way you want. And when you get these environmental cards, you essentially build out the world to say, oh, if I put all these pieces of grass together, I keep getting health every time I start a new loop. it is just, it's so addicting and I did not expect to

be grabbed by a game like this where, shocker, there's no, there's no dash mechanic or a peri mechanic here. Oh my God, and you like this game? I'm noticing that. That's what you need in order to grab me and somehow this game doesn't have it and I... I mean, technically there's like no mechanics in this game.

There are no fight. No combat. Yeah, no combat mechanics. Yeah, there's no fighting mechanics and that's, again, it's I am usually not into strategy games like this. If you're watching, right, like you, you probably see the the turn-based battles, the sequence that it goes into, that is all automatic.

That was the thing that caught me. I've only played about an hour or so of the game. And immediately early on, I was like, okay, I see what this is doing. You know, I talked about it a little bit on PSA Love You,

that immediately I got the sense of the cookie clicker aspect of it. Yeah. Yeah, it's idle. You are doing things here and there to affect what's going on on screen. But for the most part, our role is to make the numbers go up and to have that ultimate feedback,

feedback loop of higher numbers be get higher numbers. You are then getting better loop. You're then re-equipping that in order to do better in the game and then having that back and forth, which is very satisfying. And immediately I was like, okay, I got to con it. I got to slow down on this and not maybe not fall into this because I could see

myself getting super addicted. I was going to say, I made a massive mistake of starting this. The when was daylight saving time? Saturday going to Sunday. Oh, yeah. Started this at 3 in the morning. huge mistake. Oh my God, it was 6.30 in the morning. I was like, I need to shower. Look, I need to get out of this chair. I am disgusting right now because that was after a full

night of Valorant. Oh, let me try this loop hero thing. Initially, I thought it was going to be a, because of the logo and the word loop, I thought it was a rhythm game. I had no idea. The logo, the logo is meant to resemble Guitar Hero. It looks like. It looks exactly like the guitar vibes. Yeah. And so I thought it was going to be sort of a rhythm game. Yeah. I'm trying to think the Zelda games. The Zelda game. Cadens of Hyrule. Yeah, Cadence of Hyrule.

Yeah, Cadence of Hyrule type video game and it is definitely not that and I would have never thought I'd be into this video game at this point in my life where, again, if you don't have a dasher, a peri mechanic, good luck grabbing me, you know? There's the logo right there. I'm like

watching you play and like I are like, so we talk about the numbers going up, the cookie clicker aspect, but I think that is all like a clever a cover for what's really happening. It's teaching you its mechanics and its strategies Like you place the grove there at the top, and it's like this little wooded card, and he placed it at the top of what is almost like it's a mini loop, like a peninsula. And the reason he would place it there is because then if he gets blood roots,

he could put that in the middle of that. And then the blood roots attack the guys, all the enemies, when they get below 15% health. And so it's like this really good offensive strategy. And the way to maximize that is to make sure that there's as many like walkway tiles. Yeah, what he's doing right there, as many walkway tiles as possible touching the blood. So you get the maximum advantage of that card. And it's like, okay, I'm like learning these strategic tricks as I play.

And I will eventually, that will eventually become the entire game for you, especially as they like unlocked things like quests and you have the ability to add traits to your character. These are things that are not unlocked at the beginning. But you learn these things slowly and that will replace sort of just wanting the numbers to go up. But the numbers going up is the addictive part at the beginning that sort of gets you through the door and it works very well. Now for both of you guys who are way further than me in this game, is there a story that comes up?

Like are you at all invested at all in like the story or narrative or characters or anything? Or are you in it purely for the gameplay? Go ahead, Joe. I, the story is kind of creepy and, like, so it looks like a black void when you're looking at the gameplay here. And that is the story. Like the world used to exist and now it's a black void. And whenever you go out there and you go on the loop and you start placing things in the world, that's not like, oh, I found this thing

and I'm placing it there. It's your memory, remembering, oh, there used to be woods here. And I think, like a really interesting point is when you meet the harpy from the mountains that I talked about earlier. The harpy comes down and you had this conversation the first time and you're like, hey, help us rebuild the world.

And the harpies, like, that world was never our world. We just want to feed our young. We don't care. We need to kill you so I can feed my young. And it's like this really, like, creepy conversation. But it kind of gives you an idea of like, okay, there are like competing motivations even in this really dark grim void that you exist in. And that's working for me. And there's also one aspect to it that on this top left bar, whenever you add stuff to the map,

this bottom bar will complete. And when it gets to the end, you fight the boss. And I didn't really notice that until I was late into my run. And unfortunately, couldn't go back. Because I had already faced the boss once, got absolutely destroyed, realized, oh, I don't really want to do that anytime soon. because I know I'm nowhere close to even chipping away a quarter of this dude's health. But yeah, essentially, the story aspects, you know, maybe I should have played it, you know, at 3 p.m. instead of 3 a.m. And I would have probably tried to grasp more of what the hell was going on.

It's not necessarily what's keeping me going. But the cooler aspects are that when you do go, for me, at least the cooler aspects is where you go back to your home base. and you have enough resources to open up the kitchen. And the NPC who is the cook is like, oh shit, I'm here now. What the hell? And you're like, yeah, I remember existing, but now what the hell is happening?

So you're also getting little story threads through the NPCs that you're bringing back into existence because it's all sort of the, I forget the name of the bad guy, but he's essentially this sort of extra dimension. being that has turned everything into nothing, you know. The story aspects are not what's keeping me going. It is absolutely just seeing the numbers go up. I just turn into it into a mountain.

Oh, my gosh, here comes the harpy. Here comes a heartbeat. And it just gets addicting. You know, when you figure out the, the strats and when you figure out what works for you, similar to a lot of different rogue lights, going back out into the world, you feel like you are more prepared each and every time you go. back out into the world. And I think that it feels just so satisfying to know that

you are improving every time. Yeah. Greg Miller. I agree. Blessing at the Oee Jr., the future class of video. What's up? Right now, we're at March 17th. Tomorrow is going to be, as we're the time of recording this is March 17th. Right.

Tomorrow we're going to get the big Avengers update. Yeah. Where are you at with Avengers? Like, do you have an update for where you're at with that? Yeah, you know, my new episode of The Blessing Show. is available right now on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. I'm not sure if you're aware. It's this new show I came up with where I talk right to the camera,

like video essay-wise and just say some stuff. I mean, just talk for a while. Don't need anybody else on it. Don't need a podcast scripted. It's a brand new idea I had. Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, I did it all about what Avengers needs to do to survive. And it's this weird thing where there's the push and pull of it,

where tomorrow the day you'll get this, 6am, YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games, podcast services around the globe. Square Annex presents is happening. But also before then, we're going to be getting the Avenger content, which of course is the new character, you know, your free character, Hawkeye, the free DLC, Future Imperfect, which is his storyline picking up for where the Kate Bishop DLC left off. And then also the PlayStation 5 Xbox series X slash S versions of the game being all super bright and pretty. And there's a much other little things going on there, new villain's sector, yada, yada. And so there's this super excitement of getting new content for this game that I really enjoy playing.

and then also this thing of like, are they going to fuck up the Squionix presents? Because like the whole video is like, all you have to do is talk to your audience. Just talk to your audience. Give us a roadmap. It doesn't need dates. It just needs milestones. Give us something to look forward to. Give us a reason to turn this on.

Because as much as I love Avengers, right, like Kate Bishop, as I say in the video, I got two nights of play out of. Like I didn't feel the need to go back and grind Kate Bishop to level 150, which is the max of your power level in the game because there's nothing to do at level 150. It's not like there's a raid. It's not like there's an armor set. It's not like there's something I'm going after that's just there. And even if there was an armor set, why would I do that when I don't feel like the need for it?

I don't need that I'm being pushed that way. What's the over wonder for where you're at in terms of do they nail it at the presentation? Do you think they come out and they say everything they need to say? Well, see, the problem, it's interesting. It's a great question, bless. I think they're, I think they know that this is the time to say something. I don't think that they would have, I don't think, there's part of me when they announced it where I'm like clearly they're just going to come out and say also available you know they're

going through a whole bunch of different stuff right they have life is strange they have a bunch of stuff and there's part of me it's going to have them come out and be like also available today from Avengers is the Hawkeye stuff let's watch a trailer and it's trailer for Hawkeye stuff and then it's all cool see you later on to the next game but the closer we've gotten the more it's been like no they can't do that they know they're smart they know what people want they're paying attention to their audience they have to know but this is I feel like the make or break moment where if they don't come out tomorrow and you know say hey this is this is is what we're doing or where we're going and this is the next thing you have to look forward to

then i think yeah you do get to go there and say man is this game dead is score giving up on this game but i don't see that happening so i'm in this weird place with it right now where i'm super excited to play it but i'm on that it's the you know it's christmas eve where all that's tomorrow and today it's like bouncing around between other stuff trying to play other things and uh it's christmas eve like what if santa gets hit by a reindeer well it's yeah exactly either way we get hawkeye which would be fun right like k bishop's story was fun i i i really enjoy the the episodic comic book content of Avengers, where it is I drop in for an hour and a half of missions that is progressing the story beyond the single player campaign. But yeah, like beyond that,

it's always that thing of like, are they going to fuck that up? Are they going to make it so I'm not, I still have to talk about liking Avengers, but talk about the fact that there's nothing really to do in Avengers. I just want stuff to do. I want them to copy the division. I want it to, give me just the reason to rerun the old missions, give me some quest chain there, give me new content based on around the movies like Marvel Heroes would have done do any of that kind of stuff like give me a reason to turn this thing on and be excited but even then blessed like sorry what no go for it no I was gonna well I'm gonna transition away from this if you got more Avengers questions well no I was gonna ask what your expectations are for or do you have any expectations for the PS5

version because I know that's coming out tomorrow also and that's sure I mean I want load times I want load times drastically reduced like they're say load times are better but I mean they're better right now running the PlayStation 4 version on PlayStation but they're still noticeable. I think, you know, it is that thing as we all play more and more next-gen content the amount of times. Yeah, I go to pick up the phone like the old days

to look at Twitter, and before I even get the Twitter app open, I've loaded it into whatever, and it's like, oh shit, fuck, put this down. Whereas like Avengers, that is not the case. Avengers is I select them. I load in from the main screen, I get through all the logos, I get into the game,

I load up the mission, all that time I've been on Twitter doing something else. Like, that's what I want on the PlayStation 5 version. Like, I want it to look pretty, obviously, and sharper, but I think the game is already pretty in spots you have to worry about that part of it. I'm more yeah about,

for me it's not a version thing as much as it's a content thing. Like I want to know where we're going and what's coming, and I don't need dates for it. I just want to know what is actually happening over there. Do you have issues with time for matchmaking, Greg? Has that been? No, because I don't play random matchmaking. If I'm jumping on, I'm jumping out with friends.

So that's, you know, we party up and everybody's in there, and you're just ready to go. Okay, good. I know the one or two times I've played, like when I was getting footage, for the Blessing Show, right? Like, I accidentally hit Square to enable a matchmaking,

and then I quickly hit it, but by the time I quickly hit it, somebody had already paired up with us. So even there, it wasn't that bad, but I'm far from an expert on that aspect of the game. I really want to, I might read download it just to see for myself, because I know if I ask you, Greg,

what have the improvements been for next gen? You're not this person who, like, really gives a damn about the frame rate the resolution and stuff like those are things that I really harp on and notice um so I might I might try to download it just to see what has improved can I turn motion blur off are these battles because again I didn't play since launch and I was there for well even that I mean motion blur I think is my address since on what is already out there currently and if you're talking about PlayStation 4 version on a PlayStation 5 like that I know has like 4k and performance whatever you can do

and tweak in the settings and stuff like that so as you start getting into what this version is going to offer. Like, it's going to have the bells and whistles that you expect from it, let alone the quality of life stuff they've already done, which, you know, is the thing you talk about of like, where are they going and what are they doing? It's, you know, the fact that I feel like they have done a good job of answering a lot of the littler things that were the sticking points early on, right? Like, there is a ping system. There are visual indicators on your HUD now for if this person's being in, if being attacked by PIM damage or cryo damage or whatever. Like they have for a long time, I didn't life.

Yeah, exactly. For a long time, I didn't realize why they were trying to get me to do the, um, uh, challenge rooms again, the harm rooms again. And I finally went and did it. And I was like, oh, this is like a new tutorial for all the stuff they've added for how the combat's working even. Like there's a bunch. This is why I'm hopeful tomorrow that they'll deliver on the things people actually want.

Because it is that idea, right, of like, the foundation is strong. I feel like they fix the foundation issues in terms of like, obviously not the comic books or like the, you know, whether there's tweet the level. 50 stuff that crap. I'm talking about like, I feel like the foundational stuff that people are like, oh, this is just a stupid thing to do

has been fixed to make it strong enough that you can build on it now and move beyond just like, if you were just going to put out, you know, new heroes on a broken platform or a broken foundation, people would be like,

why are you putting on new content when this is still fucked up? But they went to fix that stuff and now they're over there. Are those big battles still really framing? Because again, that was way early on. I don't, I've always wondered

what the progress is not in my experience on PlayStation 5. You're talking about the big villain sectors or like taking on like the big walk in mecks or whatever no but i mean like again it's like i even then i haven't run a villain sector in months right because when i transitioned over to just doing hives that's what i did and then coming back now i guess no well i've run villain sectors but i've been running him solo i guess when i pop back in because again why why why should i go ask timor to stop playing

what he's playing to come over here and get simon cardy back on the horn or andrew goldfarb when it's like you can put down bloodborne for you want to run the same exact thing we were running in september it runs a bit better now right like i feel like tomorrow is two Fold where it's going to be, hey, here, of course, is Hawkeye, a new character, new missions and stuff to go do and try out there. And then hopefully, knock on wood, at Scronix presents it is also, hey, here's why you should keep playing and here's where we're going. I hope so.

Because I'm kind of with Andy where I want to download it for the PS5 version to see how that plays and runs because that is the thing that sounds exciting if it can get, if it can do 60 FPS and have like a strong performance mode. Yeah, here's what I got for you on that. Sorry, I was trying to pull it up for. I'm talking Native next gen version, PlayStation 5, native. 60 frames per second checkerboard 4k this is hyper i'm sorry highest performance mode is 60 frames per second checkerboard 4k 4k mode is native native 4k uh cross-gen matchmaking cross-gen save file import

the significantly faster load times improved frame rate versus the playstation 4 high resolution textures improved heroics and armor destruction this is verse playstation 4 stochastic screen space reflections Andy I guess that gets you excited Oh yeah that gets HADSENT-aware sharpening higher resolution translucency improved ambient

inclusion improved volumetric fog baby Oh man Stahropic texturing spatial audio and haptic feedback That's all PlayStation 5 Yeah I mean all that all that sounds like awesome stuff And like there are reasons obviously

For Marvel's Avengers why I bounced off that weren't technical stuff In fact most of the reasons I bounced off we're not technical stuff. But, you know, that combined with... Wait, did you finish the campaign? Did you finish the campaign? Yeah. I beat the campaign.

And I was like, okay, I enjoyed that. And then I started playing a little bit of the multiplayer stuff. And I was like, no, I do not like this. Yeah, Greg, would your relationship with this game be better if the multiplayer was completely separated from it? And they, like, released it as a separate game later. Oh, my God.

If it had just been a single player campaign, what would your relationship with this game have been like? Who was I was playing with somebody and talking the other night. and I forget if it was Simon or somebody like that. But it was the idea that like, can you imagine if they would have done this like Ghost of Sashima where it was, hey,

we're putting out this Avengers campaign, play as Kamala, yeah, yeah, and then at the end you tease it and you're like in the summer or multiplayer mode's coming or whatever, something like that and have it roll out.

I think that would have obviously been a better way to do it because one of the problems that I bring it up in the video that like why Avengers gets, I mean, there's a number of reasons to ding it, but I think part of its perception problem is the fact that, It's two different games and both are hampered by each other.

Where the single, if they would have just been like, Chris Dunn Amics is making an Avengers game and it's single player. Imagine what we already have expanded without having to worry about multiplayer. And you'd be like, holy shit. Because I enjoyed the single player quite a bit. And so it's already, I thought like, wow, that's great. So like you could really take that somewhere.

But they had to make it so you could bring multiplayer people in. You could do this kind of thing. And it's like, you know, he made fun of me so much before. editing the video got Roger excited enough that he's like, can I get a code? Like, I want to play it. And so it's like, sure, and I got him the code. And it's that whole thing of like, dude, I would wait until Thursday so you can play it on PlayStation 5 because hopefully knock on wood, it all works great.

And it isn't a complete cluster flock on that front, which I will find out tomorrow. But also the fact, it's like if you don't want to, great, but you should play the entire single player thing. And it's not exactly what I'm going to pull you into later on. You couldn't jump around and do it before, but don't do that. It's like, it's such a weird messaging. It's such a weird mixed message for the thing of like, like, Like, I can't believe on this, you know, Wanda Vision,

but then MCU rewatch me and Jen have been doing, like the amount of times we finish like Winter Soldier or something, and I'm like, God, like, I want to go play an Avengers game. And I'm like, I want to go play Marvel Heroes, where I go in there and it is just Diablo, just grind out, get the gear, beat the thing, run the story again, yada, yada, dozens of characters. Exactly.

The winter soldier would be in there. Yeah, you don't think about Marvel heroes, right? And this is what I was to go back to of, like, you know, having, you know, friends with Anthony Gaios who worked on the game. Like, he was always like, people underestimate how hard it is to make heroes. And that was something they got really good at eventually at Gisillion, where they were doing the timed events where it was, hey, even though it sucked right, there's a fantastic four movie. So there's a whole bunch of fantastic four content and stuff for you to go do. And, you know, it seems like Avengers and Crystal are repeating the sins of the past, where when Marvel Heroes and Gizzolian started up, they underestimated how hard it was to make heroes and they didn't have that kind of content ready. So the fact that like you finish Wanda Vision and it's like man I can't jump into Avengers right now and grind out Wanda or Vision like what the fuck? How did that happen? How does that get so off track? And granted, COVID and delays and a million other things that have happened obviously behind the scenes and in front of everyone too for that. But the excuses only take you so far. It's like it's an interesting dilemma this game has. This isn't just you know adding a new fighter to the new street fighter game or whatever. Like they're with these newer games.

it just requires more than just the fighting aspects and the balancing aspects. But in a game like this, you need, what do these characters sound like when they all interact with each other? What do, you know, it's, when Overwatch adds a new character, or when any of these games add a new character? There have to be so many other things in just, oh, how can we make this character not way too O.P.? Or how do we make them feel adequate, you know? Yeah, and you figure that, in that, you want to talk about, I think, underestim. I think, again, the writing is on the wall for everything they've talked about since launch, where it is the cloning labs, where it is the Omega threat missions.

Like, again, it's always a joke, but remember, Fran accidentally played the cloning lab in September when they accidentally published it to the live servers for like one night by accident. Like, the fact that that still isn't out speaks to how hard, whatever they're doing with that thing is and from a technical level. And I don't know if that's balance, if that's crashes, if that's whatever it is. but even that kind of thing of putting into your game, something they've been planning for so long, they haven't able to do.

So hopefully by the time some people listen to this on the weekend, a lot of this is a moot point, and you get to go watch our reactions and see what they're saying and where they are. And like, well, as I sit here and I'm like, hopefully the PlayStation 5 version isn't a trash truck tomorrow. Like, I, for me with PlayStation, I still don't believe that they've made it easy enough

for my PlayStation 4 save of Avengers to get over to PlayStation 5. I haven't heard anything about how they're doing that. Borderlands, of course, is the clunky as hell process. I almost deleted Avengers last night from my PS5, because I was like, oh, well, PS5, you know, on Thursday. I was like, wait, is this going to be one of those motherfuckers where I got to turn on the PS4 version, make sure that's updated,

upload that save through their internal thing, go back over here, going like, all right, let it all ride, let it all ride. The trophies are going to pop, though, which is nice, right? Dude, that's the other fucking, why the fuck don't I have a Borderlands PS5 platinum? Don't even get me started. That's the A, yeah, yeah. Did that not happen? Did the trophies not pop for Borderlands?

No, Borderlands, PS4, 5 trophies are still borked where it's like, yeah, for me, I, you know, brought over my, platinum save from Borderlands PS4, turned on PS5, and it dinged like, I forget, four or five, whatever, and then it didn't ding the rest, and you can go to any of the gearbox forums for nerds like me that care. And they're all just like, what the fuck's going on?

Like, you can't even redo the things that you need to pop the trophies to get it on your save. Oh, shit. I did not realize it was that bad. I hope that tomorrow, yeah, you know, I'm very excited for tomorrow to turn this on, get to play new content. I do pray, sit here thinking about like, upload the save and turning eyes. Bing, Bing,

getting all my tropes again, you know what I mean? But then there's a, and I won't lie to you guys. I know that this is sick and fucked up. I know that there's something wrong with me. I also kind of fantasize that it doesn't happen, but I can get all the trophies.

And I replay the campaign and I put it. You know how much I hate doing the 50 hives. You have been struggling with the hives for so long. You're a husk of a man. I'm a monster. I want to do it, you know what I mean? You really are.

God, we need to find him help. You're disgusting, dude. Before you transfer off, I want to do two things. Number one, Jeff Grub, will you do us a favor and restart your Discord? Because you're clipping just a bit. It's gotten a little bit better, but I want to see if that just solves the issue altogether. If you're an audio visual person or audio person, there it is. Andy, come down low like me, Andy.

Come down low like me, Andy. Blessing, I want you. See, yeah, you can go to two friends. It's weird. Which frame are you at which? There it is. Okay. There it is, yeah.

All right, cool, cool. While Jeff is figuring that out, Greg, can you tell me about Animal Crossing? Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's one of those things I think it's funny to be in this. Hold on, Jeff. I want you to give me your four score and seven years ago speech. Yeah, four scores and seven years ago, our forefathers, I don't know the rest, but I can wing it. No, this is great. That was all great. You sound great. You sound great. Sure, it'll come back at some point. What was happening? It was, it was really clipping. Every so often it would sound like the mic couldn't keep up with you, but it wasn't, if it was like ruining the experience, we would.

stops you a long time ago. Yeah, the audio and video was out of sync for me when I was watching you guys. So yeah, I think that, okay, cool. Oh, no, no, no. Update for Discord. Yeah, yeah, that's probably what is. Don't worry about it.

PC gaming, am I right, Andy? No, no. Get up here, Andy. Don't forget to sign it to your turbo text. I will not. I will not. I'm doing that this Friday. I'll, uh, I'll,

I'll, I'll, I'll, five you, Greg. Thank you, Barrett. That's why I, that's why I, like, keeping you around, you don't know what I mean? Uh, Animal Crossing. Yeah, like, I, I love Animal Crossing.

I think I've proven this time and time again. You know what I mean? There's a lot of doubters out there. I know a lot of people. You proved that. It's the weirdest thing right now where I feel like I'm in a relationship that's over,

but I'm still going through the motions. Oh, yes. Where it's like, guess what? There's Mario content. And I'm like, fuck, sure. Turn it on. Go buy it. And I look around the island.

I'm like, man, this place is fucked up. And I do not feel like fixing it by. And yesterday, I was like, oh, I got to get that St. Patrick's Day outfit. Got on there, got the St. Patrick's Day outfit. I was like, see you later, not playing any more of this. And I know. Later, suckers. It'll be, it'll be like, so in DC Universe Online, right, where it'll be that one day I'm going to have that wild bug.

One day they're going to do some update that I feel like I have to go be a part of and I will be there for a long time. And I know this sounds crazy. It might be Halloween again since my island is still decked out in Halloween stuff. Like, but I don't know. Like I just, right now, Jeff, I know you reviewed Animal Crossing. How are you checking in? Are you finding? like a lot in this right now?

No, no, I had the same breakup. That's exactly how I described it too, was it was a, it's a relationship. And when it's over, it is, it's over. And it's this awkward, like, it's this awkward breakup period where, uh, you have it over there and like you feel guilty and that guilt actually makes it harder to want to check in. And then the game doesn't, the game doesn't help a lot with like, I know it's not as bad as some of the older games where they would be like, uh, they would really harp on you and everybody would be like, oh, hey, you've been gone for this many days.

But they do that a little bit and they do it enough to where it's a a month. Yeah, it's like, okay, I get it, man, I know, I already feel bad enough. Jeff, it's when I go back home to visit Texas and everybody, like, at church would be like, oh, where are you been? I haven't seen you, stranger? It's like, ah, fuck, I'm... You get it.

Yeah, I've dealt with guilt in my family as well, so yeah, I get what you're saying, and it's like, I don't want to deal with that in my video games, please, please. Keep your guilt out of my video games. It's like, you know, like having a tomogazzi and then it dies after a while after not turning out, you know?

I was going to say, it reminds me of doing neopets back when I was like eight years old. I wouldn't feed it for the longest time when I'd come back. And the thing would say that all my neopets are starving. And I'm like, I'm tired of this, man. Help me, bless. I'm tired of going to the soup kitchen to feed you. I know, I do not have enough credits or whatever to feed you all. And you just got to cut it off.

You just got to end it. You got to like rip off the bandaid. And then like you do get the bug later. And then it's impossible to go back. I'm having a real hard. I'm thinking about just starting over, starting a fresh island, which is crazy. But if I ever go back, that's how I would do it. Yeah.

See, I want the history of it, but it's, it's the guilt. It's the, oh, man, I get excited for the announcements they make, and I'm like, when am I ever going to do this? Like, all the Mario stuff dropped, and I'm still signing on to buy it all. And it's, I think of like, but am I ever really going to do this? Am I ever really going to go and put the question blocks and, you know, smash blocks blocks and the mushrooms all over the island? Probably not, but I still want to.

I want to want to want to, and I know one day I will be. One day I'll fall in love again. I believe you will. I believe you. Thank you. Thank you. Speaking of abandoned lands. It's a very bad segue

I've been playing Fallen, New Vegas because Fallen New Vegas came to Xbox Game Pass, because all the Betheson games came to Xbox Game Pass. Not all of them, but a good majority, a good amount of them did.

And I've been having a fun time. I started over the weekend, and I want to say I'm about five-ish hours in. And I'm a big fan of Fallout 3. I really enjoyed Fallout 4. I really liked Outer Worlds. And Fallen New Vegas, I had passed by back in the day,

because I remember I had beaten Fallout 3. I'd played it a little bit late. I'd beaten it. And I was like, man, that was awesome. That might be one of my favorite games ever played. And I, after that, I had looked at reviews because I heard of this other game, Fallon, New Vegas. And I looked at reviews, and reviews for it weren't that great.

And so I was like, oh, this seems like a worst fall three. And so I had skipped it by. And as years have gone on, people have talked about Fallen, New Vegas being the best one and all this stuff. And it coming to Game Pass has kind of been my excuse to finally go, okay, you know what, I'm going to play New Vegas because I know how much I love Fall and I know how much I love Outer Worlds. And playing New Vegas so far, I'm having a game.

blast. It is, it's, it's, it's, it feels like I am returning to an alternate version of fallout three, right? Because obviously it's, it's made from the same, uh, same engine. It's made from the bones of fallout three, uh, taking place in New Vegas developed by obsidian, so, but does that, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, but like going back to it has been kind of fun because the same graphics that over a decade ago, I would have been like, wow, I can't believe how good facial animation and all this shit looks. I'm looking back at it now and I'm like, wow, this is going to as ugly as fuck. These characters look terrible. This world looks terrible. But even with that, I'm actually, there have been moments where I've been impressed by how some of the, how some of

the environments look when you look at the way that they place small settlements and they place hills. And when you look at a at a vast view and the way that stuff kind of comes together, that's been enjoyable a bit. I've been enjoying the story so far. Like it's very much a fallout ass story where there's different factions. The factions got beef with each other. You're talking to different factions. I can see where a lot of the outer world specific influence comes from because they do do the thing where you are upping your reputation with certain factions, right? And once you, when you make one faction like you, a different faction might end up hating you because you are doing things in order to influence this war between factions, which

is pretty fun. You know, I've been enjoying that. But yeah, overall, it's been such a fun, interesting thing to jump into, right? Like going into it a decade later, but and also going into it with the benefits of having an Xbox Series X, which means an SSD with fast load times, and being able to go from inside to outside and have it be almost a jump cut of, oh, shit, this thing barely loaded. That's been a fun thing.

And so, I don't know if any of you guys have tried out any of the Podestasic stuff or FPS boost stuff that's been going on on Game Pass, but it's been kind of a fun experience. I have not for the, on Xbox, but I have been, I did fire up I did fire up Dishonored one on PC

Just to sort of see how it looks And then I was going to try out of Dishonored 2 But I heard nobody likes that game So I just didn't even want to give it a shot Why do you hurt me when I show you nothing but love? No One thing that I did I downloaded Wolfenstein

Because I would love to re-experience those games on PC And just see how they look and perform But there's definitely a mod out there I need to get to unlock the full frame rate because they're locked at 60 and I don't know why and I really need to find this mod that exists out there and you just kind of do some hack in.

Greg, I'm really good at hacking. I don't know if you know that. Don't you have to put on that little Goku eye thing you wear all the time when you hack? Oh, my scouter? Yeah, yeah. So what the thing is, like, I put on my scouter and then I look at like what I have to change in the main frame or whatever.

And hopefully then unlock the unlimited frame rate because Wolfenstein games are just generally some, of the prettier games that exist out there. And I loved both of them. Again, I didn't really play cyber or what's it called?

Youngblood. Youngblood. You didn't play Youngblood. You didn't play Cyborg either. No, I was thinking of the VR one. The VR one. It's like Wolfstein's Cyber Shadow? No. No. Cyber Shadow is a different game.

Hold on. CyberPilot. CyberPilot. CyberPilot is the one, yeah. But I definitely want to re-experience those games because I was talking with Bless and with T's Tim, actually off camera, talking about how when a game can be, you know, experience with a really,

really high resolution and a high frame. It just feels like a brand new game. And I felt the same way I talked about on a game's daily this morning when I fired up, Bioshock remastered, just to kind of, hey, how's this game looking? I don't really remember this game for back in the day. And holy shit, it just looks like a goddamn new game. And it's really impressive. and yeah, I've been sort of experiencing this whole new world.

But Blessing kind of let me know that Fall Out New Vegas is not available on PC Game Pass. It's such a bummer. And I've brought up the app and I was like, no, I think you're wrong. Oh, yeah, you're right. Why? Why not? Yeah, it's a huge bummer. I don't understand the reason.

But yeah, it also doesn't have FPS boost. And like, I get it. You can't give everything FPS boost off the bat, which is why they're kind of picking and choosing. But I did try out, oh, is that the scouter noise? yeah yeah hold on I'm reading what my power level is right now it's bullshit

that's not your power level it's bullshit oh I was like damn fuck he's just running right for you know you can't get New Vegas on PC that's my reading well I didn't personally I mean you know and I jokes aside

you know what I haven't paid too much attention to GamePass for PC versus Xbox right like we read I read the games on games daily and I'm always like oh you know GamePass best deal and gaming thing but like Roger Pokemon to hear from kind of funny had posted about it of just like hey like it was after the Bethesda

stuff and then what was the there was something else I thought they got announced just a bunch of games outwriters right and it was just like hey if you're not paying attention this sucks and I was like fuck that there's a whole bunch of stuff missing that's not there there's no parody for the ideal thing would be to have cross save

and like cross-sade capabilities from PC to Xbox like Windows to Xbox I don't really understand why that's a huge deal and why it's not fully available, probably just licensing issues. I'm sure for a game as old as something like Falladie Vegas, it might be like a programming thing,

where just the way it reads on PC is entirely different from Xbox, and they wouldn't even been thinking about it at the time? It's possible. But I guess even like newer titles, but there are definitely newer titles that are not Xbox first parties that

you know, why can't I play this on Xbox and then also open it up on my PC if I want to continue it on stream and then play some offstream or whatever. So that's where some of the frustrations come from for sure. But yeah, we got, I mean, we got a bunch of new EA titles coming to PC, which is really exciting. Yeah, play.

Very cool stuff. I also booted up a Dysonder definitive edition last night just to see what FPS boost looked like because I wanted to see, I wanted to see it in any game and Dysanard I had played before. And so I could have, I could compare it to what I remembered Dishonard being. And let me tell you, the thing is fucking smooth. Even the menus were smooth. I was shocked by how smooth that game ran.

And so, yeah, I'm now becoming a big fan of FPS boost. I hope they added to way more of their games because it's a really cool thing. Were you a frame rate snob before all this? Or were you always someone who's like, oh, I could live with 30 frames per second? Dude, I never gave a fuck. I didn't start caring about frame rate until I got my PS5 and started experiencing performance mode. And yeah, I played Miles Morales and a bunch of other games in performance mode. And I was like, dude, I don't know if I could ever go back.

to having something that's under 60 frames. Next gen ruined me. I need those frames. I was the same way. We would always talk to, we would always talk with our friend Alfredo who's this very, very good PC gamer for Achievement Hunter,

and he, you know, kind of made a name for himself in the competitive scene. And I would always say like, hey, come play Overwatch on, you know, on PS4 or whatever. And he'd be like, dude, no way, I can't do that. And he's like, dude, get over yourself. and now I'm the same way.

Like when we were going to play Predator the other day, I was like, Greg, I need to play on PC. Like, I can't not, I've seen the light, you know. I've seen how good it can be. Why would I want to be down here on earth with you, you peasants, right? Yeah. When I'm up here in the heavens with my really fast refresh rate and my mouse and keyboard, and I'm just deadly accurate, Greg.

You know, what's the point? What's the point? I understand. No, I get it. No, it's the same way. Yeah, when I did the switch on Miles. Oh, what's the other thing look like? you're like, oh shit, I can never do this.

Like, this isn't how I want to play this game at all. It's crazy how playing performance mode to me made the fidelity mode look ugly when I switched back to it. I was like, I can't believe. And not ugly isn't like actually ugly, but just weird in comparison to performance mode when you slow down those frames and see it not run as smooth. I was shocked. What about you, Jeff?

No, you know, it happened at the beginning of last generation with PS4 and Xbox One where I definitely was like aware of 60 frames. per second and I cared about it to a certain extent. And I, like, a lot of old Nintendo games were 60 frames per second. And I think I maybe grew up on that. So I'm like, that's definitely the way I leaned. But then PS4 and Xbox One came out. And I think both the hardware for both those systems was kind of trash.

And it pushed me towards PC gaming specifically because of refresh rate and resolution and, uh, and modding and stuff like that. But the big part was just the basic technology and just being able to run a game at what felt like a decent frame rate. So, yeah, that's the thing. that snobbery came to me in like 2013 for sure. I feel like I'm definitely like I was destined for it because I've mentioned before that I think I just got it from my dad where when my dad will go,

we'll go to like an uncle's house and the TV will be on and my dad will immediately open up the settings and like, uh, the contrast and this and that. And I'm, I've absolutely become the same way where I thought I was only going to care about playing games on PC for competitive shooters, but it's really just become any game where, well, I want the FOV slider. I want to select 1440P resolution. I really want to up the ambient occlusion and lower the screen space reflection and then turn off anti-aliasing.

Like, I'm just, I've become that person. And I never thought I'd come to this, Greg. I never thought it'd come to this. Hey, Jeff. Can you tell us about the arcade 2020 handheld? Yeah, just real quick. It honestly just came today. But it's a little, like, like, oh, wow.

I got DK64 there. Hell yeah, with DK64 on it. Yeah, so Let's talk about it for real. Like everyone always gets mad at Soldier Boy for, oh, you're pirating games. No, China will just put this stuff on whatever and send it to you with a bunch of games on there. UK 64 was pre-included. They don't care.

And that's what, honestly, it's one of my favorite parts. It's like, yeah, I'm like, I'm going to order this thing. And, you know, it's a pretty decent handheld from what I've used so far. It literally did just come today. But it's just got the one analog stick. It can do kind of up to Dreamcast. It seemed like Dreamcast was a little bit slow, not quite keeping up with the frame rate. But it's pretty solid.

Otherwise, everything else seems to run really well. And it's got like a nice build quality. And I'm digging it. But honestly, I'm just like, I get it. And I'm like, I wonder what games they actually included here. And of course, there's like 40 Game Boy Advance games. Some stuff I've never heard of. But a lot of it's just licensed Nintendo stuff.

And I'm like, okay, yeah, they're just totally just pirating that stuff. But it's, it's cool. I'm like, I'm in a weird place where I'm like, I'm really playing a lot of Switch still because it fits in well with my life, having the. kids and not wanting to like take over the TV in the family room. Someone's always doing something there and I don't want to kind of kick people out. It's not who I am. So yeah, lots of veggie tales, almost non-stop.

And when my wife gets done watching veggie tales, they put on like something else. Yeah. But I, I, so I'm like trying to find other ways to play games handheld and I'm like, oh, I'll kind of go back and play some stuff on 3DS, go play some stuff maybe on my, my old DS. But I'm like finding situations where I'm like, okay, I just kind of want to be able to, you know, load a bunch of ROMs on something and play it that way. And so I'm starting to look around in this,

in this area of retro portable devices. And there's a lot of them now. And this one seems like a pretty solid one. But I actually already, even before this one got here, ordered another one, the retro pocket. Do you just love collecting a bunch of different retro? No. I'm not a very specific against collecting,

which is why I'm like, okay with like ROMs and stuff. I just want to have the experience of playing stuff. Collecting has never made me happy. So I'm like, I'll just load them on. onto these little devices that are pretty cool and play in that way. But I am in a situation where there's a pandemic and I'm 37 years old. So I think I'm starting my midlife crisis.

So I am looking for like nostalgia a little bit. I'm looking for stuff that like makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Like I would never wear a Nintendo 64 shirt before. And then in the last year as I'm like, my hair's turning white, I'm like, I want a Nintendo 64 shirt and I want a, I want Mario in advance wards on a sweater or whatever. and so this is kind of part of that story. I'll see if it like, I'll see if I keep playing it or if I put it in a dresser drawer

and then forget about it like after a week. But hopefully this is a good way to like go back and play some of those games that I've been, you know, itching to play. Feel wise, does it, does it feel like more toyish or more this is a piece of technology? So this one feels closer to toyish. And I, and it's plastic and it definitely has that, you know,

sub-weeu gamepad feel. And I think they do that as like, okay, so they can keep it cheap. And then they also sell metal versions, a lot of these things. Oh, get the metal one if you actually care about that. And it's like got a really nice body in it. I guess it stays cool or whatever. I don't know. I don't have any of the metal ones.

I'm like, I'd rather just save the money. But I imagine that if you want something that does feel like a cool piece of technology, you would pay a little bit extra and get the metal versions. But I, you know, my kids are going to get a hold of this. So I'm like, just give me the plastic thing. Just kind of, it's going to get beat anyhow, so let's just do that instead. But it doesn't feel like it's

going to fall apart either, so I guess it's not, I'm not saying it's bad. It just doesn't feel like a piece of technology like you described. That's a dangerous game right there, Grub. Because I love the idea of just having all sorts of cool handhelds from all over the world that are

made from different companies. And I love that shit. Like, when it comes to the enthusiast side of collecting video game stuff, I mean, that's some of my Instagram discover feed of just like I'll check out this really cool

clear case random ass emulator or ROM you know player and it's a handheld like that or it's the retroid that you earlier mentioned I want to get into that and I realize don't get into that Andy

you don't want all these handheld littered behind you on your bed all these fucking toys not at all I mean but like I mean you sold me on the arcade thing you got there the arcade 2020 handheld like it coming with DK64 already is like

oh I can see more I'm also waiting for that what's the big expensive one that's coming out that everyone wants the analog pocket the play date's another one I'll probably end up getting but the analog pocket I'm definitely going to get if I can pre-order it but I just couldn't wait anymore and I'm like

I just had this nostalgia thing I need to feed a little bit so I'm probably going to like put advanced wars on there and play through that again and then kind of just take it from there and it's just nice to have something that works really well with modern technology. So I'll just pop the SD card out, put the games on there, and then go about my life. And that's nice.

Jeff, I have more I want to talk to you about. But before I do, I want to tell you about our sponsor. This episode of Kind of Funny Games cast is brought to you by Purple. As the world becomes increasingly uncomfortable, we're all looking for as much comfort as we can get. The one thing you can always count on is how comfortable your purple mattress is. That's because Purple is comfort reinvented. Only Purple has the grid, a stretchy gel material that's a much. amazingly supportive for your back and your legs while cushioning your shoulders, neck, and hips.

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Kind of Funny. That's upstart.com slash kind of funny. Don't forget to use our URL to let them know that we sent you. Loan amounts will be determined based on your credit, income, and certain other information provided in your loan application. Go to upstart.com slash kind of funny. And we're back with topic of the show. Jeff Rob, you're here for a reason. You're here because you're the pioneer of the summer games mess.

Can you, for those who don't know, catch us up on one, what the summer games mess is, what it has been, and what is going to be this year? Yeah, so when E3 exploded in 2020 and became a shell of its former self, some pretenders tried to step in and wrangle stuff together, and it just wasn't worked for him. Shots fired at Jeff Keely, huh? Well, I mean, his problem is he's a professional, and I'm not. I could just go on there and put stuff on a list on Google Keep, and it's a lot simpler, especially if you don't have to ask anyone for permission, Jeff Keely is like, hey, can I please include you in this thing? And some people might say no, and I just don't ask.

And so it's very easy to just throw everyone on a list. I'm a reporter. I'm just reporting facts here. Here's where all the stuff is. It's a nice freedom that I have that he doesn't. But it's also something I found people were pretty hungry for. They were feeling lost when E3 just wasn't what it always was. And when they were looking for a place, like a central location to find out what's happening,

when's it coming up? And sometimes like what stuff that like we know is coming and we don't have the exact date, is this a good place to find that. that out. I was able to provide some of that information as well. And it turned into a pretty fun thing. And now it's just something I'm having fun kind of keeping up with this year as well. Because it seems like we're going to have something similar to last year, but maybe not quite as bad. Yeah. If only it last year was a, it was a very fun thing, right? Because you said it yourself, you know, yeah, you had the professionals doing it, the professionals being people

like, like Jeff Keeley. And you saw some outlets having their own thing, right? Like IGN had the summer of gaming. You saw similar things like that breaking down what the calendar year was going to look like in terms of big video game announcements. From last year, we got big things like the Ubisoft forwards. And even though that wasn't necessarily part of Summer Games Fest, that was a part of the big activities. We got New Game Plus Expo. We got the indie showcase and all this different stuff.

Barrett, I linked you, or I guess you found it on Twitter, right? The latest graphic for what the current Summer Games mess looks like this year. If you're able to bring that up. Oh, you got it. Cool. Don't ever doubt me, blessing. Don't ever doubt. I keep forgetting you're not Kevin.

I'm not. I'm not Kevin, all right. You're not Kevin. You're already on it. It goes like this, right? March 13th, we're looking at the paradox insider slash game dev direct. March 17th.

We got dying light to dev update. March 18th. Did anybody watch that today? What was the update? They were just like, we're going to release it in 2021. Still, we promise, basically. We like, they read a bunch of, they were, yeah, they read a bunch of mean tweets saying,

hey, hey, a whole, where is this thing? that's sort of like the Conan O'Brien thing or the Jimmy, I can't remember, Jimmy Kimmel. And then at the end it was like, we hear you. And they all stood in line and like, hey, it's really hard, we're trying, but it's still going to come out in 2021, the end.

Do any of us believe that? That dying light, too, is coming out this year. Pizza bet. Pizza bed time right here. Yeah, that's that time right. Someone has to believe it for there to be a pizza bet. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I believe it. I believe it. All right, Andy, you are doing it.

If I win. Andy. Lots of pizza for me. And I'm going to say, side note, Andy, did you see us eating Pasquals on stream earlier today? Ooh, boy, was it a good one? No, I do. You had some good pass on. I got a couple tweets about it. You had all of the other pizza in SF. Why not Pasquil? Why not just try this one?

Listen, you've eaten everywhere else. Just fucking try this too. So continue with what you got, right? March 18th, tomorrow, Reagan, the Square Analytics Showcase. The Ball and Wonder World show is what you have here, which I assume is part of the Square X X X X Xer Xerad X showcase. Ball and Wonder World, they keep fucking promoting that. Jeff, why? Stop saying that's going to be part of Square Index presents.

You're telling us about a new life is strange. Talk about that. It's awesome. March 25th, we're getting to the future game show. March 26th, or March 25th, the future game show. March 26th, a low-key Xbox show, hashtag hype is a sin. March 31st, Nintendo executes Mario. April 10th, you have here, AOE, which I got questions on.

Age of Empires 4. They confirmed, they actually confirmed that today. So, yeah, that's going to be a reveal for Age of Empires 4. Nice. And then we got more including here June 30th. We're celebrating Tim's birthday, which is a beautiful thing to include. But yeah, it's basically you have like a messy version of what we can look forward to in this year for this year in announcements. My question to y'all for discussion is what do, like, what are your expectations for this year in terms of E3, how this year's announcements are going to go compared to last year's. Because last year, like, what are your expectations are going to go compared to last year's. Because last year, you, I'm going to, you know, how this year's announcements are going to go compared to last year's. Because last year very much felt like a, hey, let's set this all up, let's figure this out. We just entered a pandemic. Companies are scattering to put together their own showcases. What are your broad expectations this year for what that looks like?

I think it's going to be as segmented and unspecial as last year, if that's a word. Is that a word unspecial? No, it became right now. Ordinary. Unspecial would be ordinary. I'm looking it up for you. And what I mean by that is, you know, when we have normal E3, which seems like it's all but gone now, it is a long two days of stuff, but it feels really, really hype. And because you're going to get a shitload of announcements and you maybe care about five to seven of them.

And those are the ones that really get you excited and say, God damn, I love video games. This is my favorite time of the year. This is Christmas. Um, I feel like this is going to be the, I feel like this is going to be, by the way. Oh, special. Perfect. Fantastic. I'm just kidding.

You're not Kevin. I believe you. You're not unspecial. You're unspecial, bear. I love it. God, damn. So is Kevin, though. Um, but, but with Lassar's E3 and I feel like the same thing with this year.

I don't think that there are really, I'm worried that the lessons to, that they may have been learning aren't fully going to be, realized because it's still going to be spread apart and you're going to get the new game plus Expo. We already had that. I know that was like last month or whatever. Well, there'll be another one. Don't worry about that. Oh, good, good, good, good.

Thank God. But I think it's just going to be, it's going to be like last year. Very segmented. And this thing might have, this one hour event might have one thing you're really excited about. Otherwise, it's going to feel like, why did we do this? And there's going to be another event that's an hour and a half long that you're stoked about two things in there. Otherwise, you're going to think, damn, this is, this felt like a waste where,

and I think just spreading it out makes it feel a lot less exciting than having it really, really, you know, compact in two days. I think that's, it just feels less, there's less of that, the wow factor there because it wore on too long in 2020. Yeah. Right. That's, I think, what we all said and felt, right? I mean, Jeff, you obviously had your mess then. That's when it came down, but I'm not wrong about that, right, Jeff. Oh no, no, yeah. It should be a little bit better this year, but it's going to expand as well. Okay, so like, there's two things here.

The normal June timeframe for when we should expect E3, there probably will be more condensed into that what we consider E3 week. Will they actually be part of the official E3? Will they pay money to the ESA? That seems very unlikely. That seems like that's not going to happen probably across the board. I don't know, maybe a few exceptions. I guess I don't necessarily know what Nintendo would do. Maybe Nintendo will get crazy and do that, but it just seems like they're the ones that have to do it the least.

So why would they? But there's already, like I'm already hearing that stuff's moving from June to July. There's already companies that are delaying their stuff from June to July because they have more time. If you have more time, you're going to take more time. If you don't have to crunch to get a demo ready for one week. And instead it's like, well, let's just take a little bit more time and get the trailer look a little bit better for this event. And we'll just put that event in July instead because we can. can. No one's, no one's going to stop us. Why wouldn't you? And it turns out, yes, some companies are

already doing that. So I think we're going to, I think it'll be a little bit more condensed. There'll be a little bit more happening in that normal June time frame. At the same time, though, continue to expect things to elongate unnaturally when compared to traditionally three. Jeff, what is your view on what E3 specifically looks like this year? I do you think E3 this year is just, you know, like it pales in terms of what, uh, what it means. in comparison to earlier E3s, and do you think we eventually snapped back to E3 eventually?

I'm less certain of that than ever. I think that the future of E3 is, a big part of this is just, is their competency within the ESA to put together a show that people want to do? Everyone is putting together their own, like Squaring-Nex Presents is a new brand-branded show that they're doing.

Bandai Namco seems like they're starting their own thing as well. These companies are spinning up, just like brands, but like teams to work on these things to do Nintendo direct style events. And then when E3 tries to come back as a physical event, those companies are going to have to decide, do we want to spend a lot of money on this physical E3? Or do we just want to keep this team together and have them focus on the thing they did last year and continue to do it virtually, which seems to work just fine for the gaming audience that we're trying to reach?

So I am very skeptical that E3 and the ESA are going to be able to create a convincing, seen and compelling argument to bring many of those companies back, especially when they are charging so much to participate. It's a very, a very expensive thing. Just getting a booth is expensive, getting internet's expensive. A lot of people are aware of this. So, but, but, so like, when it comes to like what it looks like this year, it's, it's probably going to be a lot like last year, but I think people are going to, first of all, have, be able to set their expectation levels a little bit better. We know what to expect. So that helps. And then companies also know how to do this a little bit better. So I think just a lot of,

lot of Nintendo Direct style things that and some of them might be, some of them might be disappointing. Some of them might be exciting. A lot of it's going to come down to the fact that companies like Microsoft and Sony have already announced a lot of games. So they're probably not going to have too much more to talk about when it gets to this summer. There'll be updates on stuff we already know about. And that is inherently less exciting, I think, for a lot of people. But a lot of it's just going to come down to pacing and making sure that we are excited about stuff that is coming out maybe this year. And maybe if like, if like Starfield really does get announced and stuff like that,

making that like a really big deal, making it feel like an important thing. And if they can pull that off, it'd be like, okay, yeah, that's what I want from E3. And that's kind of all I'm expecting. And if they go beyond that, then great. But I'm not holding my breath. Who do you guys think actually partners with E3 this year? Because that's been, that's been the huge question for me, because we've gotten reports about it being six figures,

if you want to participate in their presentation, right? They're doing it. The reports have been that they're doing it in a non-traditional way where they're going to do E3 digitally over the course of two days as opposed to what we've gotten in previous years because of COVID and restrictions and all this stuff. With that

being the case and with what we've gotten last year with different companies doing their own thing and everything that Jeff just talked about, do we see Nintendo? Do we see EBSOF? Do we see EA partner with E3 and actually show up in the presentations they're doing? And if not, then who do we see there?

It's a great question. Let me just go. Let me say the ones that I know aren't like Microsoft's probably not going to but that's not going to um i EA in Activision haven't for the last several years so they're not going to sony hasn't for the last several years so why would they uh there's a lot that i think we know are not going to that and it's a very short list of people of companies that might but i don't know great i think it's a great question i think it is what is the ESA doing and what are they charging you bring up that question that's the that's the million dollar literally questioned where it is the whole thing of last year i think

was eye-opening to so many different publishers of, oh, man, we really don't need them. We don't need this window. It is this age where you can put together a video, put it online, and everybody finds out about it that way. And I think as the, you know, the lesson was as we went on, the longer you waited to do it into the summer, the less eyes were on you, or at least less energy was there. Because in the beginning, we all came out that first month and we're so excited to be reacting to everything. And then by the end there, we knew that, okay, this thing isn't going to perform. It's just a bunch of third-party games. That's fine. But it's just not something we need to get super juiced about, let alone it was just so complicated,

let alone the people who were triple dipping and were in the PC gamer presentation and also in this presentation and also in this presentation. There were so many games you saw over and over again. So I think, I would hope the ESA's smart enough that they're not charging an arm and a leg to be part of it. And then I think you'd see hopefully more of those AA publishers trying to get a part of it, right?

I'd hope that you'd see them partner with the guerrilla collective or something like that to get a bunch of indies together to have a presentation to go out and do it. that way. I think that, you know, I've said it a million times, obviously, but that was my hope last year is that that was what Jeff would have done was going to be, all right, cool, let's rally, and I'll give you two days of, you know, nine to five programming that is all of these different game companies coming out to show their wares. And, you know, Jeff instead did some of his own reveals and stuff, obviously, but then also was more just a place to house the information and keep you

included on what was going on. And so this year, I'd hope that's happening. I would hope if he's not doing, then the ESA is doing it. But I, I, you bring up this point of like, does an Xbox, does a PlayStation, does Nintendo need them? No, of course not. They know they don't need them. But what about previous relationships and what about what the ESA is? And like, is there a conversation to be had about that and what that means for E3 going

forward and trying to keep it next year if it can be in person? Who knows? The question that I have for y'all and just throw this out there is that like, would the industry would be better straight up from now on just not having E3, especially like hearing the stories about cyberpunk and how they did a lot of crunch to have a demo come out specifically for E3 a few years ago. And then to see like how that actually, that game actually launched and like what the mindset of that studio was, like, hearing what Jeff was saying of like, there are some people that are pushing from June to July because they have more time and stuff. Like it's, would our industry be better and actually grow if we decide?

didn't have an E3 type of an event anymore. I think there's this balance to it. Like I think the point of Cyropunk and how much they had a crunch on demo and on what you hear about other studios and how much work it takes to put together a demo for press, there is an added pressure when it comes to the E3 season and being prepared for season and then also being the publisher having to pay to participate in E3 season that would add to probably a lot of benefits for companies being like, we're just not going to participate in E3 season.

But I think Andy makes a very good point of having something that people can look forward to that is compact that doesn't give us as audience fatigue over the course of a year is also very nice to have. And also I think it's a very effective way to market. And so I could see, I could see a case where Jeff Keely's summer game fest, I can't want to call it same game mess, summer game fest turns into the quote unquote New East. where, you know, it's compact enough, but it still gives publishers breathing room to be able to be like, cool, we don't want to rush a demo for the first week of summer.

And so we are going to have it be maybe the last week of June. Or we're going to have, we're going to do our presentation, but we're going to, instead of it being just this first week of June thing, maybe summer games mess or summer games fest turns it into a, okay, cool, we're going to do three weeks. Early fall fest. We're going to do three weeks, one week in June, one week in August, one week in July, and do it that way. So it feels compact, but it also gives publishers the freedom to kind of roam around and be able to put stuff out there when they're ready. I think there has to be alternatives and shifts from E3 because I do think getting rid of E3, or at least E3 not being the main event that it has been over the last couple decades, to Barrett's point, can lead to hopefully some benefits. Yeah, I think it's going to become like South by Southwest where,

there is official proper South by Southwest in Austin. But for weeks before and weeks after, there are tons of things that are not really related to it, but hey, we're also a band here performing here in Austin, and I think we're just going to continue to see stuff like this. I think quarantine totally changed the industry, and we are not going to have the single weekend, or week of events or whatever.

I think it is going to be spread out just like it has. has been since last year or whatever. I think we continue to see that sort of, that sort of layout in terms of releasing, and not necessarily crunching, right? Like I think, I think developers are gonna become a lot smarter and publishers are hopefully gonna become a lot smarter. Maybe that's just me, you know,

being a little bit too optimistic, but I think they realize, I think cyberpunk was sort of a big moment in the industry to see like, oh shit, we should, we definitely should shouldn't do what they did because we don't want to become the joke that they became. You know, we don't want to be that punchline. Yeah. The industry's a blob. It's sort of, it's, it'll fill in any nook and cranny you provide for it.

So if, if it starts shifting to a different model, they will find ways to fit crunch into that model as well. That's sort of inevitable. But, but it, it could be better. I mean, I guess a better world is possible. My guess, though, is if the ESA cannot make, make ETH, you know, make ETH, you know, three work, one of these other entities, whether it's Jeff Keely or just like maybe actually Gamescom or something like that, they step in and they take that week and they claim it as their

own and they, you know, maybe not doing the LACC, but maybe they'll move it to like Las Vegas or somewhere cheaper or something like that and turn it into more of a fan thing, but, you know, try to keep the spirit alive. Someone will try to do something with it during that time frame. So something continue to exist, but I just, it's, going to continue to morph and shift and change. And I don't necessarily think that like it's going to be Nintendo involved in the same way that they are when it's the ESA doing it. I think Nintendo will just be like, okay, well, we're out. We're going to do our own thing. And it'll have to be much more fan-focused. Yeah, I think that, you know, the thing about it all is to Barrett's initial

question here of like, do we need E3? Does the industry need E3? Like, E-3, I think, is such a product of a bygone era where, I mean, if you want to go all the way back, right, it was very much like, here are the hottest games. You should order them for your stores, right? But then what it really became was, here are the hottest games to get on your Christmas list, but also to get into USA Today. Like, that was always the goal of E3. E3 was to get mainstream coverage of your video games. And I think that is still, you know, you watch the nightly news, you don't see them talking about every video game or anything to that effect. But we've come so far in that way where you can't have a conversation on mainstream media about video games. And it continues to change and

continues to evolve and you look at something like Animal Crossing that granted is very specific to Nintendo and is very first party and is very huge but you are seeing the need for that fall away where PlayStation doesn't need to have an E3 for the PlayStation 5 right PlayStation 5 is going to be news in wired and in all these weird Bloomberg articles and all the weird things they want to put it in right and the same for Xbox in their next system and so the desire for um bandai Namco to try to be at an E3 is to try to be in that same second paragraph that at the PlayStation presentation this happened. But does that actually move units for what they're going on? Probably not. If you want to look at something like Capcom, like a Resident Evil is a Resident Evil. And I don't think it necessarily

needs the pop of an E3 to get covered in certain places. And so that's the push and pull of all this thing. But even when you say mainstream media, it's like, what the fuck does that even mean anymore? Who is watching the news necessarily to get their information? You're getting it on Twitter. You're getting it on YouTube, you're getting it on Facebook, you're getting it through a million different fragmented sites, and that's what everybody's finding. And so, you know, when we talk about, I hope somebody does it, I hope, Keeley does it, I hope the ESA gets it. Like, we're, you're going to run back into the exact same problem of trying to take an antiquated system and put in modern parts, because it is what you're talking about. Of like, okay, well,

our biggest game isn't going to be ready for this thing like we said it was, so we'll just push it out and do it on our own. And so inevitably, it's going to keep expanding, like you're talking about filling in these nooks and crannies, because when it isn't for you know, ESA, you had to be an ESA member. There was this thing. It was a,

you're contributing to it and you're getting dedicated in space and you're paying more for booth and yada, yada, with all of those benefits gone, then it is just like, all right, well, I'm still going to be able to make a pop out of this later on.

And then if you're in NIS or somebody, like you team up with somebody else and you have an event that brings you and Sega and all these other people together, right, to do something different and big and bring in that very specific audience, but the actual audience that's going to buy your games. Jeff,

is there anything you're looking forward to most from the Jeff's summer games mess? You know, I think I'm just trying it's not on the list yet. I still want to see what Nintendo's going to do. I imagine they're going to have something right there in June. I'm always a big Nintendo fan, so I'm looking forward to that. And just kind of speaking to Nintendo, I do want to see how they handle pulling the stuff off the store from the Mario anniversary.

Are they just going to kind of do that and then the next day say nothing? Or are they going to have something in place to like replace that value? because Super Mario 35 is something that is, it's part of your subscription when you put, when you were subscribed into Nintendo Switch online, and you can play it that way. And then all of a sudden the next day it's gone, it feels like, you know,

that they're worried about that value perception. And I don't think most people are going to be like, oh, I can't play that game anymore. Why would I pay $20 a year for this thing? I'm not going to do that anymore. Most people probably will, but Nintendo's going to still be thinking about that value. And so I'm very much looking forward to seeing

how they try to message that transition and whether or not they have anything to replace it. And then, yeah, I think that I really just want to see how Microsoft and Bethesda work together. I think they will be two separate events, but they'll probably be a double header back to back. And if Microsoft goes first and they talk a lot about Halo and that's really coming later this year. And then Bethesda really does have Starfield. And if that can come later this year, that'd be a pretty big one-two punch that I would be very excited about. So, yeah, that's my hope.

Give it to me. And, Jeff, of course, I saw you getting put on to what was a reset era and then having to argue, your own point again today. Blessing and I have an arch villain and his name is John BX 32. John fucking BX 32 and he hangs out in the PS I love you chat live. He's hanging out right now in the games casting every day for the last four years. This guy's been saying Starfield 2021 is happening. You're all wrong. What are the odds you think Starfield actually drops this year? The odds that it drops this year and actually releases I would say are 75%. I think the odds that it it's revealed are really high.

I think it's like, yeah, that I believe that I buy for sure. Yes. But I just see it getting delayed out of this year because especially now that they're under Xbox's umbrella of like, well, you have Halo and we don't want this. We want this to be perfect. Yeah. They easily could happen. And I mean, it just, you got to think about like what their motivations would be.

If the game is ready to go and they want to have a one to punch of Halo and Starfield, yeah, sure. But maybe they want to like, Halo in the holidays. And then you continue to. bring on subscribers by release of Starfield in early 2022. I could totally see that. But the Fallout 4 Rollout worked really well.

I don't know if they would want to deviate from, I don't know if they would want to deviate from that. It just was such a well thought out plan. It's really what to do it. Reveal it in June. Release it in November. It's just nothing but hype up until then. It's, yeah, it worked really well. If you reveal, if you do a 60 minute long event

in June, that is all Starfield. That is all the details we want. introducing us to characters, introducing us to the world, introducing us to mechanics and what Starfield is, as Bethesda, you then own the rest of the year, like in terms of the conversation and all that stuff. Like, you then become the biggest game, just like they did will fall out for.

And so, yeah, like, that would be a great way to do it, but I don't believe it. I just keep in mind too, John BX32 and everybody watching, this is legitimately, once again, the persona-5 argument of release date, where even if they come out in the summer, And they're like, guess what? Starfield's coming this year.

Don't fucking be doing victory laps around me. I want to see you playing it come December 31st, 2021. That's when we'll see who won this fucking argument. And honestly, I don't, yes. I never saw it come in 2021. And now with quarantine, I just really don't see it coming on top of it. Yeah.

Go ahead, Barry. I was just thinking of like, what if like internally, like now their plans have flipped because people have been saying like, oh, they got Halo on the fall. So like what's the point of really putting out Starfield this fall? But what if it's the opposite internally where they're like, oh, well, now we have Starfield. Now we can give more time for Halo and maybe put Halo out in the spring. They'll do whatever they need to with Halo. But like, can you imagine the fucking shit they would have to sit down and eat if they delay Halo again? Oh yeah. Like Starfield hasn't been teased or given a date or whatever, right? So you can, you're not delaying

that if you said, hey, fucking please, Todd. Ride. bench for a few more months. Let us get master. But again, I think delaying Halo again would be way less damaging than releasing Halo and not having also true.

Yeah, no, I mean, if Halo's not ready, that's a different, yeah, for sure, for sure. Because this is really their last chance with Halo, I think. I think the reason I am more confident, the reason I would say 75% that comes out this year is I do think that they want to have multiple big games this holiday.

And I think, did you buy, Bethesda? I mean, you spend all that money. Let's see a return. turn on that investment really quick, and I think that would be a big part of it. But they're just not, like, they've announced a lot of their games. And those games, when I'm talking about Microsoft does announce a lot of their games. And a lot of those games are still years away. And so when they go to have their E3 show this year, Microsoft, it's going to be stuff that

we're really familiar with. It's going to be a lot of Halo, maybe some other stuff, maybe Forth and Horizon 5 still. I think I'm pretty confident that's probably going to happen as well. God, I hope so. What else? And then I think it's very possible. But I think that show right there is probably pretty disappointing for a lot of people, especially after the buildup of like, oh, perfect arc was released or revealed and all this other stuff. And they're just not going to have anything like that.

So then to back that up with Bethesda coming up and saying, here is Starfield and it really is coming and that's going to fill out the rest of your year. And if it does become the talk over the rest of the year, that really helps Microsoft. It really benefits their communication. And I think they wouldn't want to avoid that. I think they would want to embrace it. So that's why I'm really confident. Man, they better knock it out of the park with Starfield. Hell yeah.

Oh, they have to. I am in cyberpunk territory where I'm like, I definitely am overhyped for this game for no reason. We've not gotten shit about it. We've not heard anything, saying anything. But coming off of Fallout 4, which I stand by is a great game, which I know most people think is a great game. But I love Fall Out 4. The reception of Fall Out 4 wasn't the reception of Sky Room or the reception of Fall Out 3. And for them, especially coming off of Fall Out 76, it's like, I'm sure they're like,

yeah, we've got to fucking reclaim that crown. The shit better look good, man. That should should better look good. That should have a cool world. That's one reason why I just never got into Bethesda games. I just always thought they were the ugliest games. And I think a lot of it is color palette. I think a lot of it is Fallout, the Fallout games being very just bathed and desaturated.

That color palette is fucking just straight up. Brown. Yeah. The Fallout 3 is green. Fallout New Vegas is brown. And the Fallout 4 was like, oh, there's more than two colors here. Green and blue. Yeah, you'd be inside environments and like,

God, the lighting, this doesn't look next gen. And I guess it makes sense since you started it so long ago, and that's why we're able to play it so soon because you were releasing it this year, and that's fucking awesome for us, but also this tech seems kind of, you know, outdated. And so, yeah, I really hope Starfield is the thing that gets me into a Bethes the game really hard.

Although the H-bomber guy video essay that you recommended Jeff Grub on New Vegas, Good video. Very, very good. Very good video. A smart boy. I got to check that up. The thing I'll say for a quick note for what I'm looking forward to you from the summer games mess, which I don't think it's on there, but a thing I anticipate in terms of events, that Nintendo Switch Pro has to get its own event. It has to get its own either direct or something, right, presentation, because for the news that we've gotten over the last couple of weeks of reports that they're looking to make more money off this next upcoming.

fiscal year, you know, over the, more than they made this last fiscal year where they had such success with Animal Crossing, that speaks to what we've heard previously about them having a killer lineup to go alongside a Switch Pro. And so I think that would speak to Breath of the Wild 2 and maybe a new Mario. Like, I don't know, I don't know what all would fit that, um, fit that quality, but I, that has to be something, something big, right? That has to be something that they're able to come out and be like, boom, boom, boom, you're going to get this, you're going to get Switch pro, you're going to get these games. And it's going to be, it's going to be one of the biggest years

of the switch you've gotten so far and so I'm expecting that I'm trying to manage my expectations because obviously there's always room for disappointment but you know that's an event that I'm expecting sometime this year yeah I think that's I think that comes

I think it happens probably separate from like the E3 time frame it probably happens in early fall like they do those things separate and they do them like two months before they release the hardware right that's what they did with the switch light So like August, September, I guess that's still a little bit of summer. But that's when I would expect that if it's going to release this holiday, which, yeah, I'm starting to agree with pretty, pretty hardcore.

Jeff Grubb, thanks so much for coming through and joining us. Where can people find you? Where can people find your work? Yeah, if you just kind of want to follow me, I kind of do everything on Twitter. I tweet too much, so don't follow me on Twitter, but I'm at Jeff Grub. But if you want to find my stuff, just go to Twitter.com slash Jeff Grub and just type it in and leave it. don't press that follow button. That's a website.

Yeah. And then go to YouTube.com slash Jeffrey Grubb. I think it's the best you are to get to it. I put some, I actually have some like a show where I talk about the summer game mess now. I just started in the last couple of weeks, the game mess show live. And I kind of talk people through what's happening,

the changes I make. I put one out this morning talking about, I actually added some stuff that wasn't on the list that we read earlier, like the AG French direct. What is that? A little bit of information on things like that. But it's been a fun experience so far. and a lot of good responses to that.

And then my writing is always on gamesbeat.com. Come check me out there. Come, you know, see my fellow cohorts, Dean Takashi and Mike Menati and Jason Wilson. We're always trying to write about the business of games and, you know, how they make money and things like that. It's a fun job. I'm glad I have it.

Yep. I am very happy for the work y'all do over there at Games Beat because it helps me out a lot on Games Daily because you get that very good stories of you guys right there. Of course, this has been kind of funny games cast. each year every week we get together to talk about the biggest topics in gaming if you're a patreon supporter right after this we got a post show is it a bless who yes it is it's so thank you for that of course i've been blessing that's been jeff grub that's been game over

greggy that's been twitch dot tv slash aides until next time rest and peace tim gettie's love you tim stepped on a rock