Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Game Informer Reunion Show - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 237

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

Javy Gwaltney and Suriel Vazquez join Imran Khan for a Gamescast about depression gaming, Catherine, Monster Hunter, and more. Time Stamps - 00:00:06 - Start/Game Informer Layoffs/Finding Time To Play Games 00:21:14 - Banjo Kazooie In Super Smash Bros. 00:30:52 - Smash Bros Characters We Want In The Game 00:32:20 - Monster Hunter Ice Born 00:41:14 - Catherine: Full Body 00:56:06 - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (PS4 Platinum) 01:02:03 - Creature In The Well 01:12:19 - Control Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast episode 237. Thank you for our, I'm your host, Imran Khan, Surio Vasquez, I'm sorry, from Game Informer. Hello. Our former Game Informer is joining me. Also, J.V. Gwaltley, former Game Informer is joining me. Hi, everyone. Thanks. I want to give before anything else a huge shout out to Greg Miller and Tim Geddes for allowing

this to happen. If you've seen any of the shows in the last week, Greg has been very vocal about the game informer staff being able to have an opportunity to have, you know, let the people know that they still exist, that they're down but not out, that we're still here. And very graciously agreed to fly out two game inform people, Surreal and JV, for Games Daily and Gamescast. And basically gave us the keys without much instruction about what to do. So this is going to be a hell of an interesting games cast, because I've got nothing prepared. We did Games Daily this morning, and then we went to lunch, and I don't think I've been non. I've been I've done stop talking since then, so my throat is raw and bloody. So this is going to be hilarious as we try and deal with this. Yeah. I really do want to thank Greg for having us out here just because it shows, I mean, to some degree, how much he trusts you in that, from what I understand it was a lot of things.

Where Greg came to you and said, like, hey, you know, like, who would you want to do a gamescast with? And you immediately went like, yeah, my former co-workers. And like this eventually happened basically like a week later, which is like very gracious of him to allow you that. So I'm very happy to have this opportunity because I have not been, you know, on like this kind of platform in a while since, you know, the layoffs. Yeah. Yeah, no, I want to echo those sentiments. I can't express them better.

So I'm just going to say, yeah, whatever. Same. Yeah. Same though. I will retweet. I'll like this. Yeah, thumbs up. But yeah, big props to Greg and Tim and, you know, the kind of funny supporters.

Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. All right. So before we go any further, a little bit of how. housekeeping. Want to thank our Patreon

producer James Hastings real quick. And today we're brought to you by Beespoke Post and Upstart. But Tim will tell you about that later. All right. So the notes for this just say, do what you want. And then in parentheses it says L.O.L. So Greg, very unhelpful.

So I want to talk to you guys a little bit. Obviously, we've been laid off. And usually what this show is about is we talk about what we've been playing and all that jazz. Let's talk a little bit about this. It really fucking sucks to try and play video games after your job. Dude, right?

Yeah. It's a bummer. See, like every, everyone says, well, you've been laid off. Well, I guess you have infinite time to play video games. Like, video games are the last thing on my mind most of the time. Like, video games are the things I do to distract from my full-time job now, which is like trying to figure out what I'm going to do, right? Like, that's my new job. So I, like, I have played a couple things, you know, for, like, for work, ironically.

enough we'll talk about later, but like most of the time it's just been like looking at Twitter, looking at job posts, like emailing a lot of people and just trying to figure out what I'm doing in the next few months. Right. It's not even a time thing necessarily. It's like emotionally it is impossible, or not impossible, it's very difficult to connect to a video. Like after it happened, I think I was maybe two maps from the end of Fire Home. And that, that would, that's a night basically any other time.

But it took me about another one. week to finish it. Because I'd start and it's just, there's no way I can connect to this. I don't, I can't get invested in what's happening. I'm very concerned about the fates of these like school children and what, you know, whatever war is going on between them right now. This is very, this is very prescient for me and like something I can get emotionally invested in right now. Yeah. And I think, no, not really. I think Elise was playing control at the time because she had, she was, I guess, supposed to be on the review, but wasn't for reasons, obviously. But she, she was saying it feels good to just play a game where you just,

hit things and shoot things. Yeah, smash things. There's also like some aspect of like there are a few games for me that are distracting enough to really for me to sink into. Like I've just been playing a ton of Dota 2 recently because that game takes up all of like my cognitive faculties when I play it. So it's like the thing that

I go back to because like I can just lose myself in this game so heavily for you know an hour at a time. And that is the, that has been my go-to thing because it is so like I don't drift off and start thinking about other stuff when I'm playing Dota. So that has been like my main stay for for most of the last few weeks. Yeah, I've had a kind of funny like experience where

yeah, you know, control came out like right after we were all laid off and I assumed, okay, well, I'm just going to have a bunch of time to play control and I just couldn't get into it. Like I kept getting frustrated by stuff largely I feel like we talk about that later too, you know, half because of the game but also because of like just the how much of a bummer the layoffs were. Right. So eventually, you know, last. month, Sniper Elite 4 was when a PlayStation Plus his offerings. I just

downloaded it before I got laid off. And I was like, you know what? I just want something mindless and dumb and fun. So at least like 10 hours of, you know, the days following my layoff after I got back from America because I was laid up, or back to America because I was laid off during gamescom.

Was dedicated to just shoot Nazi scum with, you know, and seeing like those gory slow modes because it's not like a complicated game or anything, but it just felt so good just to like play something so dumb and cathartic as just shooting things in the face. Right. You know?

Meanwhile, I've been like playing a lot of techies in Dota and that's a character where you just blow people up. Like that is a character where you get, you get them stuck in a stasis mine and you blow them up with remote minds and here's like three little piggys basically laughing at your opponents and that's been really satisfying to see. It's been like, so for years, like in game informer and years before that as a freelancer, you kind to teach yourself to not turn your brain off while playing video games because you're like analyzing it critically. You're trying to figure out what can I mind from this that would, I guess

to say as content is a little reductive. What can I get out of this? It becomes like a constant refrain for everything you do. And like that again, this kind of comes back to like we kind of tie our identities into the job a little bit. But once you don't do that, it's so hard to play a game and just go, I don't, am I playing this just for fun? Yeah. And getting your brain to say yes is so difficult. Like I started playing Astral Chain. Like, and I don't know if anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that once I start playing a game, I start tweeting about like various thoughts and like, there's, I'm hitting the character a little bit on every tweet about the various thoughts about Astral Chain. I probably shouldn't be. I probably shouldn't have my phone in my hand while I'm

playing out a game. I should just go in there and enjoy it. But it's so difficult once that's been your job and your life and honestly your mindset for so long that once you lose it, that that mix of losing your identity and playing games combined with depression and trying to I guess sadness is a very weird word to use with it

but it's a logical word at this point of you get too sad to play some games and like you just want to try and figure out or just keep hitting everything if you figure out the one that hits that makes sense for you to play there was a long time ago where before I moved to San Francisco, actually, I broke up with my girlfriend. And the game I chose to play was a game that I had bounced off years before. I was Dark Souls. I tried the game. I didn't like it. I was like, okay, it's fine. It doesn't have to be a game for me. And as I started playing it, I started realizing, the death and reverse cycle started making a lot more sense emotionally for me. And there were other factors too, like my friends are playing it as well. So I had to, I had to be a lot of reverse cycle. So I had to be a lot more sense emotionally for me.

And there were other factors too, like my friends are playing it as well. So I had that like mini community that for the first time was playing that game, that we were having that communal thing that Dark Souls is supposed to be about of, hey, did you go see this? Like, did you go talk to this NBC? It turns out if you go do this and like wander around this certain door, you can do this thing. So that also helped.

But it made me realize how key context is. Like personal life context to how you feel about a game. Yeah. No, for sure. like I did not understand to what extent sometimes you just

I could put the best game in the world in front of you and you may hate it because your life is going to shit yeah yeah which is a weird thing to consider when a lot of our job was to have like properly evaluate games

and tell you what we think of them which is I mean that's at the end of the day the lesson people need to learn about reviews is that there's no objective analysis right that you try your best it's like literally it is someone's opinion of what they're playing So it's, I mean, you can apply rigor in a lot of ways of just like saying like, well, I don't like this because I like stepped on my toe when I was playing it.

That's obviously like, like, yeah, obviously that's dumb. But like there's a lot of more subtle ways that are harder to like identify when you're when you're talking about like I'm playing this game as like my professional job in my opinion is to my my job is to tell you what I think and like make a recommendation one way or the other. But there those that outside stuff does tend to creep in in a lot of ways, which is something that like you ultimately have to accept as a review. is that like you can't be entirely you know objective in every single instance right yeah as long i think it comes down to like can i make an argument for this yeah i don't like this because a b c and then turning that into this is bad game design if you can make that argument yeah all three of us have written here and jojuba the reviews editor there would put us through the ringer of like oh god yes he was great yeah he would make us explain every single aspect of why we think a thing is a thing yeah so

I remember I did the Hollow Night review. I was like, okay, I think this is an amazing Metrovania like 9.5 or whatever. And we ended up doing a 9.25 because I couldn't probably explain to him what was revolutionary about certain things. And like, it's not that I didn't think him, it's that I couldn't probably articulate it.

If I can't articulate it, then do I really feel it or is it just a, I really want to like this game kind of thing? It's part of why I like to take, like I don't like writing reviews and having them published on the same day in a lot of ways because I like the idea of writing a review like late at night one day

and just coming back to it the day after and just reading it over like not even like before I even sent it to Joe like just having a guttick of like do you believe everything in this review? And there are a lot of cases where it's like yesterday I was feeling maybe a little hotter on this part because of like some of like emotional resonance

or maybe where I was at like in my headspace. Right. And just being able to evaluate that over the course of like at least two days and being able to think, okay, do you still think this? Like on a basic gut level, do you still agree with this? And like that was like a thing that I slowly had to learn of like like the hot take isn't always correct, right? Like there are, there are, that, that is the rigor that I, I'm, I say when I applied to stuff.

Yeah. I want to make sure that this is in a lot of ways that I'm putting myself through the ringer before anyone else, you know, even looks at it. What I liked about Joe's sort of approach, Joe is definitely the hardest. I've worked with a lot of editors, especially when I was freelancing, but Joe Juba is like the hardest one I've ever worked with. And I just want to say, like, I really appreciate that because the way that Joe works with other writers is it feels like if you've ever gone to graduate school or something like that,

it feels like a thesis review, you know, where you're in front of a committee and you're answering questions about the argument that you've constructed and whether it's airtight or not. That's what I liked about working with Joe is like he would really like hold you to those questions. Like you had to defend your review. Yeah. You know, and that's great. I've never worked with another editor like that who was like, you know, they embodied that idea, but they didn't take it to quite as like a minuscule level as like Joe does. And my first review, because like in my job, I was head of a department at Game Informer. So I could basically do whatever the fuck I wanted.

In Game Informer, the rule was you had to usually have like three people look at, three sets of eyes, look at everything you do. Yeah. Not for me because I had to get news up quickly. So often I had typos and things or whatever. But like I could just basically write however I wanted and, you know, no one really questioned it because, you know, that was my department. I'd do whatever I want. Not for reviews, though. The first review I gave to Joe, it came back with so many edits.

I was like, holy shit, am I a terrible writer? No, I had that same reaction. 100%. Like even reviews I did up to the day, I was laid off, where things where it's like you see a whole bunch of yellow text basically and be like, okay, I got to address all these points one by one, make sure like, do I agree with the sentiment here? Like things like that. Rearranged, like, restructure reviews, almost like rewrite entire reviews at times.

But there is a very mixed sentiment there where, Like part of you is like, man, like you, you dread it in a lot of ways, but you, you like, it's like exercising a lot of ways. It's like when you think about I have to get up and like run this morning and let's like, I don't want to do that. But every time you're done, you're like, I'm really glad that happened. Even though it was like painful when I did it. It wasn't fun. But it's rewarding to come out on the other side of it and think like, I'm better for that. Yeah.

And like he was so good at holding you accountable for those things. And like even on the feature side, I think Kimberly Wallace and Matt Burtz. also another one of the editors. Burtz made me a better writer, unfortunately. Like those, that is like Kim and Burtz like were the two people who edited features especially for the magazine. And they were such like a great deal where like births could structurally like point out like key deficiencies. And Kim was like fantastic about writing like, okay, you technically covered this and like you have all the tech marks. But like I think this you could go another step and like here's how to make the piece better.

And I think that that combination of thoroughness and like in sight like made a ton of my pieces way better than they. then they would have been had I just like, you know, just released them out in the world on my own. Yeah, no, I agree. Like, they're superb editors. Yep. It's, uh, I always think about like, whenever we were at E3 and things had to go out fast. And we had that thing of just post it and we'll look over it afterwards that people like Jeff Kork and Jeff Markievava would do this amazing job of looking over everyone's stuff and going like, all right, this is great. or they will help you fix those one things.

Like, I say this often, but the duality of writing for a game informer is you either think this is awful and it needs to be fixed and thank God there are people who know how to fix it, or this is amazing and someone is like going to make it more amazing. So I remember there was a time where I published something in the magazine

and Elise was proving it. I never had to prove for a magazine, so I honestly respect to you guys that did, but Elisa's proving it and I thought, okay, she's not going to find anything. It's going to be amazing. She comes back to me like, did you forget a word here? And my initial thought

was, how dare you? But also yes. Yeah. But yeah, I know we're talking a lot about Game Informer, so if you've never been like a big fan of that outlet or know a lot about it. So I apologize to people who are listening. But we were

talking, we were good at coffee earlier. And I think we all agreed that the years we were at Game Informer despite how it ended were still like they made us who we are we are those were probably the best years of our lives so it's in a way this is like the Irish wake

celebrating it at the time there were a couple of other like ways I could have gone in terms of like it's either I could get the Game Informer job or there are a couple other things I could have done and I think even even knowing what I know now I think I would still take this would have taken that job

yeah because yeah it has been entirely worth it even if this, even if this ends up being the end result of it. Right. Yeah. For sure. It's not about how an edit it was the, you know, the journey. Even if I hadn't taken the job, I'm in a much better position now, even within, like, the industry than I was three years ago.

So, like, 100% I would take this job again. And, like, I remember when I got that call and it was, like, Andrew Reiner told me, like, hey, yeah, we want to give you a position. I was telling them earlier that after he said, we want to offer you that position and he started explaining, like, Benevitz and all that. I didn't hear anything after, like, we're offering you. position. Like it was just a ringing in my ear of like, okay, uh-huh, uh-huh, bonus, whatever, sure, like, just let me say yes at some point. Like, that's all I want to do it right now.

And yeah, like, the reason we're having this podcast is we all love the game industry. We want to stay in it. We want to be there. But we also want to celebrate what was good about those years. And it's, it was a fantastic job. And thank God we had the opportunity. Yeah, no, I agree totally. I wouldn't do anything different. Yeah. Yeah. It was a fantastic four years, I think for me.

It's great. All right. There's no easy way to segue from that. Banjo's ad in Smash Brothers today. Let's talk about that. How about that? Before we've gone to that, let's hear a bit from Tim about our sponsors. This episode of Kind of Funny Games cast is brought to you by Mugsy jeans.

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Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at MintMobile.com slash kinda. All right, so as you said, Banjo is out in Smash Brothers. So we both got a little hands-on-time with Banjo last night. Yeah, I played around with him, mostly-link training mode, did like one of the classic arcade runs, and I'm pretty excited about him.

I think he plays really well. He's got a lot of interesting concepts at play. As is someone who's never liked Banjo-Kazoo-Kazooie, the character, like, or Banjo and Kazui as characters, like, he was surprisingly fun. Yeah. So break him down a little bit. I know people maybe watch a Smash thing yesterday,

but if you want to summarize it a little bit. Yeah, so basically, like, just to start with his, like, specials, he has, he can throw out eggs, which he can do in a couple of ways. He can either, you can either just press the button and he'll fire an egg, or you can hold the button down and he'll basically, like, fully jettisoned Kazui out of his backpack and start, like, basically shooting out of him constantly, which makes the eggs weaker, but it lets you fire faster. So that's, like, an industry projectile, I don't know if it's, like, super good that way,

like the rapid fire one. I don't think that one's great. Yeah. But you can do it, like, pretty quickly, like, you can jump in. in the air basically like slide your hand across the X and Y buttons and you'll like immediately jump and throw the eggs. I think that's like the best way to do it. His up special is like a pretty standard like I'm going to get on the jump pads from

Benjikazoo, which is like a nice reference and he'll fly up in the air. Have you noticed that every mascot character and smash our third party mascot character and Smashwether's has a springboard as their. That's it. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Like Mega Man, Sonic. Well, Snake has like the, he uses a foreign object.

But he's not really a mascot. I'm thinking like, you know, the kind of person you put under the logo. Sure. But yeah, he has that. He is like a weird. Speaking of Snake, he has like a grenade. Which at first I thought like was kind of bad because it just, it splits out the opposite side, obviously. So you have to basically turn around and if you want to fire it in the direction of the opponent you're facing.

You have to turn around and then do it. But he can also like immediately grab it and throw it. He doesn't have as much leeway as Snake does to grab the grenade and then throw it. But he can't still do that, which is pretty good when you're like edge guarding. The use I found for that is jumping past an enemy And then immediately hitting down B Just like dropping a grade on them as you're jumping past them He's not like the fastest character

Yeah, he's a big dumb bear Yeah Even while he runs like Kazui which is like a cool reference But like the most I think his most interesting special is like the Wonder Wing Which is his like side B In that you only get five uses of it per stock Because you lose one of the feathers that you That you had in the game itself that you had to restore

So and you don't have any pads So like if you if you like use all five of them He basically doesn't do anything with his side B he basically trips, but it's like super powerful. Like I think it does like 20% damage or something and it has like a ton of not back. And so the other, he is like a, his like I don't want to talk about like he's like competitive be viable because I have no idea. Yeah, nobody knows.

Even if I was good at the game, no one at this point knows whether he's good enough. I remember the day Joker came out. People were like, oh, Joker sucks. Yeah. And he had T1 Evo. Yeah. But like the other interesting thing about him is I feel like he's going to be some like a little bit of a grappler character, which is maybe not

common in Smash Brothers. In his down throw, if you get him on the ground, he basically smashes them into the ground and they stay there for a little while. So you can basically get free attacks on them. And the higher percentage they are, the longer they stay in the ground. So at like 100%, you basically get a free kill. You can just plant them in the ground and smash attack them and they're dead. So it's going to be one of those things where people are going to be wary of banjo's throw.

Like the better you get of like, I don't want him. to grab me because he's just going to go for the down throw and that's going to be like I'm dead. And even if you're not like he's going to he can do basically at certain percentages he can down throw you and then side beat which does a ton of damage. So he has like that is a really cool thing

for a character to have in Smash Brothers because usually it's like it's either I have to be where this character's counter or they have a lot of recoveries kind of like the or they're like a projectile. Like I mean I know Inciner Roars in the game and he had like some grappling moves but it feels like a weird tool for him to have in Smash Brothers because you don't hear a lot about grapplers in Smash Brothers.

I'm not sure how good he is. I like that he has three jumps. But yeah, he's been pretty fun. I like him quite a bit. Yeah, I got all the spirits with him. And like, so as someone who likes those spirit matches, I was kind of annoyed that like the last two characters have had lesser. I think Joker had like 11.

And the hero, I understand. I'm guessing there's some licensing issues. Yeah. Like that made sense. But like, Vangio should have had more than seven. Yeah. Like, I want to do dumb, like, put a, give me other rare things in there. For as many collectibles as that game had.

They could have had more collectibles. Speaking of collectibles, I actually really like a stage a lot in that they do, I think, something that's like, that I appreciate a lot in that it is not just like, it is Spiral Mountain, but it's not just like, here's Spiral Mountain. Like, it rotates in a way that I think is really cool because I think anyone who has nostalgia for Banjo Casuie remembers that first area a lot, but they remember it as like a 3D space to explore. Yeah.

And so the fact that the game, you're constantly rotating and get to see basically all of Spiral Mountain from the top of Spiral Mountain, I think is a really cool touch and it also affects gameplay because it's like during certain portions

of that like rotation, you either have access to the bridge into Grintilda's layer or not. But you get to see like the rest of it and like the stage is slightly different because there's like a ledge or like a slope basically on one side or the other. And that's like a really cool dynamic thing

that doesn't feel like, I mean, you can, I can see this getting, like, professional playing because it is just a thought stage for the most part. But it's, like, visually, I think it's really cool. And it's, like, the closest to we'll get to, like, a full remake of Vanjo Kuzui, you know, that we know of, right? That was a weird thing at the end of the, like, in the Smash Brothers section, like, where Maschiro Sakurai, the director of the game says, like, if you want to play Banjo Kizui, get an Xbox one. Yeah, I'm surprised that they didn't have, like, a switch port of Vanjoukazoo. You'd think so. Maybe Microsoft wants the first bites on this, like, but it is.

After a direct, the director of Smash, where they're saying, yeah, play the game on Xbox 1. Yeah. And then having that trend on Japanese Twitter, like the word Xbox, I think. They must have sold hundreds.

Yeah. Like, it's Japan and Xbox. It's not going to do great, but it's still, JV, what's your history with Banjo and Kizui? Nothing.

I don't like Banjo Kizui. Did you ever play the games? Yeah, I played one of them. I was just like, I don't like platformers, and specifically, I don't like 3D platformers.

I just, that's the one genre, whenever anyone asked me at Game Informer like, what can we have your review or write futures about that's the one thing we're just like don't give me that yeah i don't want to touch that felt i'm above it also like i will say like bandj zuzzi is not aged like super well like none of those have it is definitely like indicative of how that genre was just so used to like let's have a bunch of collectibles i mean like super mario 64 hasn't aged

well like i think it's aged okay it's like it's like it's like it's like you know the pinnacle of that time for a lot of people like when that's like the peak. Yeah. Aged well is a weird thing to talk about with video games because technologically nothing age as well. And mechanically everything's usually

improved upon. I feel like... Except Super Metroid, which is perfect. So that's the thing. Once we go back to, like, it's this different era thing of like, oh, there's NES games and usually S&S games are better. And then that's it.

There's definitely like, when we went to 3D, there was definitely a lot of experimentation and figuring things out. Yeah. Because like 2D, like the Super Nintendo era was definitely like we've refined the concepts that we've learned across the last 20 years of video games and here's like the best possible iteration of 2D

and then we basically threw away so much of that progress in the move to 3D that we're basically now at a point where it's like this is the best iteration of 3D and then even now where it's like we're starting over with VR in a lot of ways where it's like we're still figuring out this space. Yeah. I wonder at what point like it's all going to melt together

so much for people that like the timeline between because like there's more time between now and Mario 64 or Mario 64 or Mario Odyssey than it was between Mario 1 and Mario 64. Yeah. So like I can see people like

I don't know not really necessarily like they see it as a larger delineation but I don't know I don't know that any game is going to ever have that or any series will ever have that Mario 64 moment again. Yeah. As like as somebody that's been playing Final Fantasy 8 recently

I've been kind of play like the remastered version came out so I've been kind of toying around with it and just got me thinking about like this game was very unfairly maligned because it was that thing of if you're somebody making Final Fantasy when you're eight games in you're like wow we've done the same thing over and over and over

but the series got big with seven so one of the reasons eight is so maligned is because it's so different and weird than seven which is like if you make this big game that's a big breakout hit and then all of a sudden you're immediately deconstructing it you divorce so much from like that you diverge so much from something like seven

yeah and it's like you ever see the Clarks Animatic series yeah yeah you know how the second episode is a clip show it's that kind of thing of like doing a deconstruction and like it didn't make sense to people but like you look at it now it's like okay well let's actually set the stinger for a lot of different things and it's weird how openly

flaunting it is of the way it's different yeah so I am now I'm very glad that remaster exists because it makes me appreciate that and then you light. For sure. And that's, it wasn't a thing I plan to talk about.

But it is one of those. Javy, we talked earlier this morning about, uh, Samantha's characters he wanted in the game. Like I, I know you're not a big player of the, no,

I've played a fair amount of the new Smash Brothers. Uh, no, I've played a fair amount of all the Smash Brother games, actually. Um, like, are we talking like,

this could actually happen or just far-flung, ridiculous, like there's not a difference between the two now. That's true. Well, for a long time, there were, rumors of the Doom Marine.

And I really wanted that. And I understand why that's not a character. But I feel like as far as like Smash Brother characters go that I would want the game, he's up there. You know, I think that's Gordon Freeman, sure, with a crowbar. Like just like, you know, Ness's bat, just have like the crowbar be a version of that swing. That's what I want. I think that's it.

Like the idea of Morgan Freeman winding up baseball style with like his whole full body like, but they're not saying a word. Yeah. The gravity gun. You know, you could like pick someone up as a special and just shoot them off stage. That's his thrill like Muteu where he like disorienting you and then fires you off. Like a general valve character would actually be really cool. Like someone who like their side special is like a portal gun or something like that.

Yeah, like Shell. Yeah. Or a Dota 2 character. Monkey King. Which Dota 2 character would you put in? Probably Monkey King. He's got like a cool staff. He has a thing.

His final smash has in summoning like a giant circle of. Is this an end run around to get Goku in? Maybe. Yeah. Okay. people really want Goku and smash. He's got a big attack

where he launches a giant pole under the ground and it stuns you, okay? It just seems like a monkey's paw thing of like if you get Goku and smash it's Goku GT

monkey's paw, huh? You make fun to me because I'm the pun guy and then sometimes he'll make one inadvertently and point them out. All right so Javy you,

you for the last month before the game and former thing you were... What thing? What are you talking about? Before the unpleasantness. Is that too?

The troubles. The trouble. You know? I think we've all signed non-insparagement agreement. So yes. You were lost in the icy woods. Yeah. We could not find you because you were very busy playing Monster Hunter Iceborn.

Yeah, I was helping Kim Wallace was doing the review. And I was her co-op partner because trying to solo that game, trying to solo the original Monster Hunter World is an exercise in futility. Yeah. Iceborn, you know, a lot of people when Monster Hunter World came out, we're disappointed with the accessibility of the game. You know, it's not harder, like, older monster hunters, or it's not as ridiculously hard as some of them older monster hunters were.

If you're one of those people, oh, man, iceborne is for you. You're going to get your ass handed to you so much. It is just brutal. You've played it at preview events. I played it, I think, like, the first three to four hours. Yeah, it is brutal, even out of the gate, because, you know, you go back to it and you expect, like, oh, it's been a year since I played Monster Hunter World.

I'm sure the expansion pack was sort of like, you know, ease you in, have like a tutorial or a reminder or something. Iceborne, that's not the case. You fight your first monster and he beats the ever-living crap out of you, especially like even if you haven't acclimated yourself to the controls, because I did two hunts before, like, some of the harder hunts in the game before I went back and played Iceborne just to get adjusted to the controls again. And I still got torn to pieces by the first guy, by the first one.

Yeah, there was a thing of like, so I went to Capcom to play it. at this point about two months ago and about a couple of months before that there was a Devil May Cry 5 event before that game came out and I'm pretty okay

at Devil May Cry so I ended up it was that event was the first nine missions or whatever and they gave us two to three hours to do it I ended up beating in about an hour and then going back

and refilling some stuff because I lost some footage and all that so the same PR people from Capcom were doing the monster turn of things are like oh you did so well a devil may cry we have a high expectations

of you in this one I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty good at Monster Hunter, too. This should be fine. That first monster, I was struggling so much against it. I was carting. It took me forever. Like, they were all finished with the mission while I was, like, still trying to do it. I was like, this is for real.

This is end game monster hunter. Yeah. Yeah, no, this is not a gentle game by any means. There are some new mechanics to learn, like the grappling. You basically get the grappling hook from, you know, attack on Titan, you know, where you can, like, grapple to monsters. just like stab them in the face while you're doing it and that's super satisfying and it's necessary for like flying monsters especially if you're not a gunner class like if you're like me like the

dual blade class you're going to have to use that for several of the dragons that you fight but it's just unbelievable how hard some of those fights are because like in monster hunter world whenever you fought a monster that was dealt a lot of damage they usually they were kind of a glass cannon like compared to the other monsters you could take them down pretty quickly you know that's not the case here. Like the monsters you assume are glass cannons because they hit hard and are fast. They're still tanky.

Like they take forever. There were several monsters that, me and Kim, like there's usually an hour long time limit and monster hunter world, you know, outside of like special quests, like for every story beat.

There were at least four of them, not even like towards the end where like we were on 58 minutes before we took the monster down after multiple attempts. Remember you telling me that there was a monster. I'm sure you guys were struggling with.

So you're like, okay, well, this is hard. So let's ask Capcom. Yeah, we asked Capcom for how to send us, like, someone to help us with. And they told us, oh, we're not as far as you guys are. Like American Capcom. Like, Capcom's a, you know, American, you know, in San Francisco and stuff. And it was just like, oh, shit. Yeah.

I felt worse for Kim because she had to write the review and stuff. But it was definitely a moment of, you know, it was kind of like an ego pleaser or two of like, hey, yeah, we're pretty awesome, but also we're so screwed. Yeah. Kim, like, we're just screwed. It is so weird like now because I think a lot of games use the like the expansion pack or, you know, their second round of like DLC to say like, okay, now jump into this thing. You know, you think about Destiny in the way it's like Shadow Keep. It's like saying, no, you can just basically start at Shadow Keep if you want, you know,

Final Fantasy 14. Let's do it hop right into Shadowbringers. But this is just like, no, this is like if, you know, that punchout Wii game had just added a bunch of DLC where it's like here to the first. DLC, Donkey Kong. It's like one of the hard fights in the game. When you're going to get your ass kicked immediately. Like it, and you can't really jump to ice when.

You have to get through. Yeah, there's no like XP catch up. So it's like, it makes it harder to catch up in a lot of ways because there's now additional content that you have to work through to get through like. Yeah. There's like at least like 60 hours you have to play before you can even play ice porn. Yeah. The most generous assuming like, oh, I'm just barreling through this with like no game

overs or whatever. You've got about 60 hours ahead of you before you can even touch ice porn. Which is an interesting decision. Because Monster Hunter World was such a big success that I kind of like I guess they're just assuming that all those people who love Monster Hunter World will also buy Iceborne and they all finish the game. Like I don't, I'm very interested to see the sales on it. Because it is, they're really pregnant. This is their big game this year. I think this is like their only thing until the next financial year really.

Yeah. So like they're they're releasing this expansion that is geared only towards hardcore Monster Hunter fans. And it's been, I want to say it's been like at least eight months as I've really hardcore played Monster 100 World. I'm scared to jump into this when I, when it times comes. Like even having played that preview event, just based on how hard it is. Yeah. And it's like as someone who like I reviewed the PC version of the game and like mostly for

like performance differences and things like that. But it's definitely one of those things where it's like, well, I'm kind of dreading the process of like if I jump into the PS4 version of having to switch. So it's like in a lot of ways, this is the least accessible Monster Hunter is going to be until they release a sequel. Yeah. Which, you know, they're going to do because it's like that's like their biggest game now. Yeah. So in a lot of ways, it's like, hey, if I want to get into the Ice in the Monster Hunter world, it's like my right.

Like, this is a really good expansion pack from everything I've heard. It's just a matter of like if you're if you're getting started now, like this isn't like the best time, which is hard to say for a lot of other games or it's like usually like, yeah, the best time to get started is like whenever you want to get started. If you're looking for a lot of monster hunter, you have a lot of monster hunter to start with here. It's just, if you're not looking for a lot of monster hunter, you can't just leap into iceborne. Yeah, no, that's, no, you got to eat the whole hog.

I guess is that how the expression goes? You're from the South too, right? I mean, that sounds correct. I've lived here for quite a while on this point. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, sure. California's a weird space.

But yeah, it's, I do want to play it. It's just one of those things where, like, that this expansion pack, just made going back to a game even more intimidating than it already was. It's weird that they're not releasing it on PC immediately. Yeah. I just have to assume it's not done.

Yeah. But like I would make sure that thing is done on everything or at least, like this would be the time to bring it all to parody. Yeah. Also cross-save would help a lot. I went back and tried to do that Witcher quest recently.

Oh, that's, yeah, for Monster. It's hard. Even with Gere-out there? Like, you have to play as Gero. Oh, you have to play as him? Yeah. So like the monster is a lesion from The Witcher.

Oh no. So like, I'd gotten so close and like at the very last second when he was like, the game was telling me he's about dead. It's nearly done. And he,

he teleported behind me and swiped me and I was done. That's the tree monster, right? Yeah. Those guys suck. They do. Yeah. I mean, it's a very cool like

DLC package for like, especially because it was free. But man, that was, it made me especially worried about going to Iceport. Like, do I suck at this game now? Mm-hmm. which kind of.

Yeah, you probably will. Ice foreign will let you know just how much you suck at Monster Hunter. I hope like maybe I'll SOS the first couple of hunts. Yeah. How long is it?

Oh man. I put with Kim, understand we were we were like four fights away from the ending before I had to go to Gamescom and things happened. But I want to say we put 50 hours in. Okay. Yeah. That is not an insert like a small amount.

No. No. is this is just as big it feels like it's monster hunter world like they're calling it an expansion but it feels like just as meaty in terms of like how many fights you do and stuff okay yeah uh that is one more thing to throw onto the pile yes yeah and increasingly busy fall for sure sir you were telling me at one point that the day the unpleasantness happened uh-huh the troubles yeah the troubles the thing on your mind was whether or not you liked katherine full body yeah that was a that was a That was a weird thing that, like, have to stop thinking about for a little while.

But, yeah, Catherine, Catherine's a weird game. It still is in a lot of ways. And I feel like the biggest takeaway I have from having basically finished it at this point is how my opinion on everything about it is basically inverted, where when I first played it, I didn't like the block puzzle stuff, but I thought the relationship stuff was, like, super interesting,

especially at the time. Because it's like, oh, not a lot of games do, like, are this low key in a lot of ways. It's like, this game is about, your relationships with like one of two women. And now like coming away from full body, I definitely feel like, oh, this block puzzle stuff is actually kind of cool.

But like I think a lot of the concepts at play with the relationship stuff, I think I've aged pretty poorly. So like what I mean by that is that, like I think on a basic level, I don't think this game handles decision making super well, like just mechanically. So if you're not familiar, Catherine is basically like a game from the persona team

that they were making basically between persona four and persona five. Yeah, it was like learning how to use the engine. Right, and that was a lot of appeal of the game, honestly. It's like seeing like, oh, persona could look like this, right? Like in the PS3 era, which they basically managed to skip entirely until right up until the very end. When they released persona 5 on PS3 and PS4. Winter 2014. Right.

And like they use this like block puzzle thing as like the buffer between all these cutscenes basically. So the thing like you're basically, the premise is that you have like a long-term girlfriend named Catherine with a K. And you basically begin getting tempted and eventually cheat on Catherine with a K with a C. I'm just going to start calling them K and C. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

So C basically is like this presence that you consistently cheat on every day. You're not really sure why. And the idea is that you're trying. It makes more sense in game. Yeah. There's persona-esque stuff going on. You eventually learn very quickly. Where you're trying to choose like, hey, do I like which, do I like K or C better?

Right. But like it just, I don't feel. it is a very rudimentary version of a, like, of a moral system. Because the game is very, like, very heavily pushing you towards K. Catherine as, like, the universal good. The correct choice. Yeah, as the correct choice. It's like, like, law versus chaos.

Right. And it's like, they make no effort to make Catherine, like, an interesting character beyond the fact that she's, like, very pretty and is, like, kind of, like, right. And it's like, there's no rule, there was no real temptation on my end to, like, even think about Catherine as a potential, like, option. Because, for one, it's like, they make such a, like, a. they reinforce the idea. It's like, oh, man, I'm just struggling with this choice of, like, these two characters. But it's like they very heavily imply that it's like Vincent does not remember ever, like, having a, like a conversation or ever sleeping with Catherine.

Yeah. There's not like a seductive consent. Yeah. Like, see Catherine is just happening to him. And he's like, oh, I'm so broken up about it. But like, you don't remember most of your time with it. So like, he blacks out drunk and wakes up next to a blonde lady. Right. Like, for, again, for reasons outside of his control. Like, it's not like a thing where I just happened to. drunk and I ended up with it. It's, he doesn't have like, he does not make that choice of his own free will. So there's never like this like, am I actually a bad person? It's like, no, you are very clear.

Something is clearly happening to you. And I don't want to spoil it. But it tries to be a very lynchian thing. Right. But it's like not. It doesn't quite get there. And like you're making choices about, like, they'll send you texts and you'll reply back with like answers that effect you're like.

You're like, stop calling me or like love you. Right. So it's like, and that affects your meter of like if you're being like, uh, If you're mean to Catherine, you'll get, like, closer to see Catherine or to Kay to see. This whole conversation is going to be confusing. I apologize. Just like the game. We still have another letter to introduce.

They don't do, like, they don't really go to the effort of making those characters react to your choices. So like, Catherine, I see Catherine. I was immediately like, I'm going to blow her off completely and say, so it's like, hey, yeah, I got your, like, hey, I hope I got your number correct. Like, this is, this is, this is C Catherine. Like, like, you can text to, like, stop calling me. Like, this is like, don't talk to me.

and you can make those choices and she'll immediately reply with like, oh, great, you have my number. That's so amazing. Like emoji and like, oh, I hope you can like basically sleep together again and I love you. And like they don't make an effort to have you like have those characters react. So all those choices feel hollow. There are other choices you make where as you're climbing the block, as you're working your way through all the block puzzles, where they have you make moral choices about like, hey, do you like someone because of their looks or their personality?

And you're never like tempted to actually be honest because what you'll, what will happen is you'll end up. up in the middle and you don't get to see either of the true paths. And they highlight the fact that like, hey, if you want to actually have any, if you want to make it, if you actually want like a good ending, you have to go one way or the other. So all your choices aren't made by like, what do I think about this like potentially tricky moral issue with relationships? It's like, which one is the C. Catherine choice? Which one is the K. Catherine choice?

I'm just going to pick the one that reinforces that choice. So this kind of sounds like the, I, when I play Catherine, so I'm kind of like leaping off ideas I've had of it before. Sure. But it's the same problem that a lot of Western games or relationships have. And like it's a more reduced version of that of I have this person who I want to relationship bang whatever. Right.

And like I'm just going to- Relationship bang? Relationship bang. Yeah. Basically. Because that's what all relationships are. I'm sure you meant hyphen. Yeah. Relationship bang.

Do you really like someone if you don't want to bang them? Like that's honestly what most, what most video game relationships are. Mass Effect, baby. Yeah. So like that's also an example of this of I have this person who I am working toward. So I'm going to answer questions. answer questions in the direction of them. Right.

Of what they want to hear. Which it doesn't, at that point, it feels, I don't want to say gross because it's occasionally gross. It makes them a quest item. Right. And it is especially egregious here because like you, in something like Mass Effect or like Dragon Age, you can kind of forgive these flaws because it's part of a much grander game, right?

Right. And so this game, the pitch is like, we are more sensibly focusing on that. We're like kind of narrowing down your, the potential. potential possibility space of this game because we are focusing purely on relationships. And like the fact that the game, like the choices that you're making feel just as arbitrary kind of feels like a huge fault. But like there are points in this game where like they do have more in-depth conversations about relationships and what that stuff means.

But that stuff feels like entirely divorced from the fact that you're making all these choices. So the other thing I want to talk about is like in full body, they introduced a new, a new character named Catherine with a cue. I'm just going to call her Wynn because that's what they always refer to her. With a cue? Yeah. They're rid of options. Yeah.

So Catherine, or Q, or Rin, I'm just going to call her Rin. Again, this conversation is going to be very confusing and I apologize. So Rin is basically introduces a wrench in the entire morality system. Right. And she's basically divorced from that morality meter in that they very, they make it very clear when you're answering a question about Rin. And all of those are about like accepting someone for who they are. like is it something where would you be able to date someone who's different

and they make these like allusions to who she is and I'm not going to spoil things but it's like I know you're not going to spoil it but I feel like there's a thing that we need to touch on there sure there was a controversy when that game came out in Japan yeah that the I guess assumption but I that Rin is trans

yeah so here's where things get especially tricky is that I want to I want to point out that I am a cis Latino male So I don't feel like I have like the ultimate authoritative take on this subject matter But I do feel like a lot of the way this game

Handles Gender I think is very in line with how Persona has handled gender in the past Which not great Yeah, like in every persona game that has been like a problem with trans characters specifically And this game really like sidesteps that In some ways that I That do not sit well with me in like a much grander scale

So, like, the thing is, I don't know necessarily if Rinn is trans because they, like, it's very hard to talk about without spoiling things. But a lot of the ways they address the question of Ryn's gender kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. And again, I am not trans, so I don't want to say, like, this is objectively bad. You don't want to speak for anybody here. Right. But there's a lot of stuff with, like, my experience, like, leads me to be able to. believe like this is they really did not want to really proper up as as being trans and

I know they kind of they've said outright they fix a lot of it in localization yeah they definitely feels like it's a little bit they definitely do try to address it but it the plot events do not change like in a lot of ways and they they sidestep it a little bit in a way that I don't like and then they sidestep it in again in a way that I think is really stupid not not like a stupid is like you guys fucked up. And just the way that was really eye-rolling

and it just felt like, it felt like ah, like this weird like joke thing in this, in the way that I'm just kind of like, when I beat that again, I was just like, oh, oh, what a, Jesus. In a weird way, I had no interest in playing Catherine before you're just like breakdown of this. I want to see this.

I want to like, I really, that might just be like the game critic in me. It's like, I want to see like what is so disastrous about some of this. So going into the office on the day that I was laid off, this was the question that was on my mind. It's like, like, do, on one hand, like, I have to evaluate

this game. Like, it is my job to write my takes about video games. On the other hand, I was trying very, like, okay, am I where, my take is on this is very, you know, kind of one way or the other, like, how do, like, what is the right way to approach like sort of my uneasiness with this topic?

A, without spoiling things. And B, like, by properly addressing, like, where my issues come from with the story. And so that was the thing that I was struggling with. And I'm still not sure where I land on it, But I know that, like, the Rinne path specifically kind of left me with a bad taste. And I think that is, that is a thing that I, like, I don't want to, like, downplay. But I also want to make sure that, like, that I, again, that I'm not coming off as, like, speaking for anyone, right?

But overall, it does feel like it is in, like, if you've played other games from the studio, it does feel like it is trending along the lines of. Because it, like, and it's very weird in this game because this game already had a trans character. Yeah. In Erica. Which is it not handle well. Yeah. there's a specific thing with Erica specifically that they also do not handle super well. And that like it just like it like it bums me out because this game had in a lot of ways it plays it more low key in a lot of ways because it does feel like it is marinating in like topics that a lot of kings don't cover.

But I just don't feel like they they they feel very confident about like yeah, we're going to talk about gender. We're going to get risky. And like it's just them saying like yeah, we're going to we're going to talk about these new on topics and really break it down. And like they just fumble like all those next. narrative beats in ways that like just had me rolling my eyes at it a lot. I kind of wonder if it's like Catherine is laser targeted at a certain demographic that we are just aged out of a little bit. Maybe.

Because like I remember 10 years ago when that game or however long it came out, I was like an unemployed 20 something that had had pregnancy scares in the past and that game really spoke to me. It resonated with me. Like speaking of the context of video games at the time. And if I played it now as a different part of my life, I'm not sure that I would find it nearly as appealing. all.

Yeah. Yeah. No. And the other thing about the RIN route is that like the RIN route like basically removes any question that like it basically makes it about something completely different. Like it in a weird way that it's like it is, it feels like it is sidestepping the rest of the plot for you to play it. It feels like a separate game.

It feels like a what if scenario in a lot of ways. Right. And like I contrast that with like the block pushing is actually kind of fun now. I mean, they made a speed running game out of it right or it's like become like a cold speed Yeah. It's played at Evo. Yeah. And they've made some, like, very good changes to the way you actually play that game because

you have, like, you have redos where it's like, oh, I fucked up that block push. You can just, like, rewind. You have, like, certain limit. There's a limit on it. But, like, you can say, like, oh, I can just rerun it and, like, try to do it again. There are more interesting block patterns in that there are blocks that are basically, let's say, multiple spaces where it's like, here's an L block, basically, that you're pushing out versus one block that might have spikes coming out of it.

So it complicates that in a really fun way. And you can basically, any pull. puzzles you've beaten, you can skip. And there's also a difficulty, like if you just played on the easiest difficulty, you can just outright skip every puzzle in the game. So even if the puzzle wasn't good, you could ostracize it from the game completely and just say, like, I just want the story stuff, which is cool. Like, it's actually like a really good way to address it.

Like, if you don't like the puzzle stuff, you can ignore it completely. If you do like the puzzle stuff, we've made it better. And like they have, you know, the Tower of Babel stuff again. And that stuff is actually still really good. and a lot of the improvements they've made to the block pushing, I think, turns it from like, eh, to like, I actually like this. I'm not in love with it, but I like it, and I can see why people would, like, weigh it competitively. Right. So, like, there's that where it's like, ah, as a mechanical thing you engage with and you have controller, you have control in your hands and you play it, that stuff is actually fun.

But, like, the fact, because this game focuses so much on, like, we're going to talk about relationships, we're going to talk about topics that aren't necessarily, like, that most games don't touch on. But the fact that they fumble it, like, it kind of left me kind of like, I don't know. I don't, I'm not super into this game, which is a bummer. Thinking back to the day, when you were trying to decide, do you like Catherine full body or not? Yeah. Does that have an answer? I think I'm leaning towards no, like, more so than yes. Because, like, there are parts of it where I do appreciate, like, how, like, they, a lot of the game is just, like, four guys sitting at a bar just talking about, you know, their love lives and, like, where they are in life.

That part, when they focus on that part of them. it, I actually think it's like legitimately great dialogue and the localization is like pretty strong. But it's like whenever you, basically there's like a table at the stray sheet bar that you're in and like whenever you're venturing outside of that table, I think the game like falls off in like a really frustrating way that they could have done so like they could have done better like a sequel to this that kind of learned a lot of things, you know, like from life experience, I guess, could be pretty good. And like the structure I think is actually really strong. It's just like they fumble a lot of like the key points along the way. Right. That's a bummer. Yeah. Yeah.

Not surprised, but, you know It would have been nice to be surprised. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see, because persona 6 or whatever the next persona game is going to be. We'll come out when we're 50. Well, yeah. But it's also not going to have the same team behind it.

So it should be an interesting thing to see if it perpetuates the same problems or not. Yeah. Let's see. I, Platinum Securo recently. Ooh. I'm going to step away for just a sec. Yeah. Yeah.

But I did that. Platting that game is not fun Yeah, I very Like very recently started deciding that like platinum games isn't to me worth it a lot of the times Like I the only game The last game I think I platinumed was Mortal Kombat 11 And that's a combination of A It's really just a time investment and it's stupid easy

And B I really really like that game And the platinum that game is actually pretty fun But a lot of the times it's like Having to do very hyper-specific things like I thought about platinuming bloodstained And that is a lot of like checking things off the list in a very boring way. But Securo is definitely a game that I thought about it,

but it doesn't seem like it's worth it. So there's two problems with platinum games like this. One is the grind of you need so many skill points. You need to just run this same thing over and over and I listen to like five episodes of the podcast while doing it. It sucks. It makes my hand hurt. The other problem is, as the game, for hard games like Sekiro, as you start getting close to platinum it,

It means you've mastered its mechanics. You know by the time you beat that final boss that Sekira has given you all the hard things that you can get. So how is the game going to still keep you challenged? And the answer is it sometimes cheats. And that sucks. Oh, yeah. There are times where like, no, I got that window correct.

I don't understand. Or no, there's no way anyone could have possibly seen that coming. And you're just like, okay, well, I understand what they're going for. and I understand from the main game, this design should have been fine. As you're trying to fully complete the game, it starts trying to challenge you on ways that are past the mechanics,

and I don't like that. Can you give a specific example without spelling something? So you have to redo bosses in various paths to do all this stuff. There is a, one of the final bosses has an attack in one of the past that

he will hit the ground and fire will raise up at random spots. If you were in a certain, like, you could just be in the wrong place, and there's just nothing you can do about it. Yeah. And like... I'm pretty sure I know which was you're talking about. It's like towards the end, right? Yeah.

During the, in the shore path. Sure. So he will, like, he'll just raise the fire up and it's like, okay, well, I guess I was in the wrong spot, so I will take the hit on this one. And that's, that specific spot is one of those things where it's like, that boss specifically is a boss that's like, that is trying to get you play differently than you have been the rest of the game. Yeah. And so it feels like, well, I'm just trying to learn this entirely different thing that I don't think is as interesting as the rest of the game. Yeah. But yeah, it definitely feels like that's what you do, right?

Because a lot of it feels like that game is about pattern recognition, like memorization, right? Of just like seeing, okay, this guy is going to do this, this and this, and then that's how I have to time my parries. But yeah, when it starts introducing challenges like that, it definitely feels like, okay, we are playing by a different set of rules. Securo is like one of the strangest like video game experiences I've ever had period because like I reached I want to say like the very last bit of one of the paths and got to a boss fight and spent like three days on it and just wasn't having fun and usually like I think working at Game Informer and playing Seciro like the fusion of those two things cured my habit of needing to beat everything right right like I just reached the point I'm like I'm done having fun with this game I'm I'm done playing this game. Like, I like it a lot, but I don't need to like complete it to like to have enjoyed it so much. You know, it's really weird. It's a thing that only happens with games because it's like you never hear about like, oh man, I love like, you know, 2001.

Oh, I only watched like the first. Yeah, watched like the first three-fourths of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like Securo's got some amazing highs. Like a certain fight with a gorilla. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You know. That's one of my top moments of the year. Like, Sekirala as a game is one of my top games of the year. Yeah. Yeah. It's my game of the year so far. Yeah.

It's just one of those things of once you master the mechanics, how is the game going to keep challenging you in sometimes in not great ways. Yeah, it doesn't really, it doesn't find effective solutions for that question. I think the last boss in that game, I think is actually like one of the best showcases for like, here is a way we are going to test every skill at your disposal. But like there are bosses leading up to that and encounters leading up to that that feel like, well, we can't have that be the entire rest of the game where we test you on every front. So we're going to introduce a couple like wrenches in the way.

that kind of muck with your ability to actually learn the basic to like continue learning the basics But yeah, that that that's definitely a thing where it's like I like my My goal with Secura was to just beat it and then I I wanted to beat all the bosses like that feels like that is That is how you should approach to those games is like can you climb the mountain top? Not like can you make sure you ran back and Like found every path on the on the way to the mountain top that doesn't sound as interesting for me Yeah, the grinding part is I would recommend nobody planned in that game because that grinding part sucks Did you platinum it? Yeah.

Yeah. And also like a lot of the times because of that grind, it's like the Secker's Comit is so based on like this very tense like, okay, he's going to do this thing. This thing that kind of like takes up all your of your like being in a lot of ways and having to grind in that way just kind of either it'll either wear you down and you're not going to want to do it anymore or it turns this like intense thing into something way more like banal and that kind of ruins a lot of the game in a lot of ways. And this is like coming from someone who beat that game with the demon bell on

like once I found that I had it on which makes the game harder and I ended up beating the entire game that way because that was that was like the appropriate level of challenge for me but it was one of those things it's like oh yeah and I'll do it again now do it again now do it again like that's not a thing like that's just like keep running after you've already ran 10 miles like this is just painful at this point this is like more about endurance than like you know like a sprint right I need to simply for two seconds talk to JV about creature in the well okay creature in the well So Creature in the Well, embargo for this lifted up this morning. It is a, if you are not aware, it is a very colorful and very great-looking. A pinball dungeon crawler, which is a weird thing. Those are a bunch of words I've never heard. So, okay. So the basis is you are a robot engineer called a Botsey, and you are, there is a thing called the Creature in the Well that is in some, in preventing you from activating this weather machine that will cure a sandstorm. that is affecting this village and basically making it impossible to venture outside of that town.

So the way you do this is you venture inside a mountain that has several components that you need to repair. And these are all basically like think of them as like small Zelda style dungeons where it's like you go into that section, you see a map and you're kind of exploring that map until you get to the boss. And the way you do that is instead of like attacking enemies or you know like basically killing things, you're basically messing with like pinball layouts. And so the way you do that is you have two Let's basically like a sword and a bat Basically let's say and one of them allows you to attract these energy Orbs into your orbit and then fire them off And that's what the other bat is for

So you basically have one that's kind of keeping them in place And then you bat them away with the other Okay And that is like that central mechanic Like with a lot of any games It feels like it is a game that is betting the farm on this one mechanic And I think it is a mechanic worth betting the farm on Because it feels super fun

because it's never, you never feel like you figured out how to do that precisely every time. So like there's, you use the analog stick to aim where you're going to hit it. But the, the trajectory is always like kind of,

you're never quite sure that you've nailed the shot completely. So, and because you're working with pinball where you're kind of working like, okay, not just can I hit this angle, but is the angle that I hit it at appropriate to bounce off a couple more things

and sort of get the thing that I want to do, which is pinball, right? It feels more like breakout in that sense in that you're not, you're not playing a slippers that just do the one thing. You're moving around the space. You're kind of dodging things because there are things,

there are obstacles like lasers and bombs that will get in your way, but no real, like, enemies that are, that you're trying to kill. And that I think is really, like, it's a really solid mechanic to base around. So I wrote a review of this freelance for fanbite.com, and you can find my review, my full review at fanbite.com. So the thing that where it falls apart from me a little bit, ended up giving you a seven for context,

is because, like, as strong as the central mechanic, I guess, I don't think they fully exploit it to the best of your ability. So in a lot of ways, by the time you've seen the fourth area, you've kind of seen most of what the game has to offer. There are some really interesting ways and like later on where they synthesize all of the elements of like here's danger here's like there'll be rooms where the whole mechanic isn't like you're not in danger but you have to say okay hit this one

this next bumper is going to appear for like two seconds and you basically have to bounce one off in a very specific sequence that is very strict with timing. That happens very rare that doesn't happen as often as it should where most of the time you're kind of walking in a room you're kind of like okay there are the four bumpers

that I need to hit and like this is a very reductive way of looking at it, but you're kind of just hitting all the bumpers in the room and then moving on. Say your name is J.V. Gwaltney and you don't give a shit about pinball. I don't think, I don't think you have to have like an inherent love of pinball. Yeah. I think it's more about like, do you like, is it like, it's sort of like Hotline Miami in a lot of ways of how it controls. Okay. If you think about it. Um, so if you're, if you like the idea of like banking things off angles, I think that that's kind of like a. So it's geometry. Yeah. Okay. If you're into like, And there are ways, there are a lot of ways that game helps you.

Like you get different bats and swords basically that do different things. There's one that gives you a stronger orbit that you can pull things from. There's one that gives you basically like a guiding laser line that lets you see like, okay, here's where the ball will go next if you bank it off once. Okay. There's one that'll like basically act as like, okay, if it hits this bumper, it'll chain react to the other bumpers and sort of hit them a little bit. So there's like a progression system. Yeah. Where you find, like, there are certain like optional puzzles that if you do them, you'll unlock a new weapon or you'll unlock the ability to like,

there's a whole sort of like resource and currency system where the thing you are hitting these bumpers for is to gain energy and you use that energy to open doors. How strong is the narrative? Not super strong. It has a really interesting premise where you're like, okay, this town has been beset by the sandstorm for years and you're trying to cure it and there's like this very mysterious like creature who you only see its hands and its eyes. Oh, so you're not the creature in the world. No, no, no. You're like you're a robot who's trying to basically free the town from the creature. Okay.

And they have an interesting premise. There's some text entries of like, oh, yeah, I was just watching the neighborhood kids play with a baseball field down the road. And it's like, it's really depressing that they can't really do that anymore because of the storm. So they lay these little bits and pieces that kind of like hints at what the town is like outside of your presence. And they drop some very interesting narrative beats, but they don't do enough of that. And by the end of it, I didn't feel like super connected to the story itself. So like, plot is not the reason to play this game. Okay.

It is a bummer. It's an action game completely. I would classify as that. But it's an action game where you don't, you don't directly attack or get attacked to buy things. Yeah, which is kind of, it's a cool,

like, premise for an action game to have. It's just like, you're not actually hurting anybody. You're just trying to be like, you're just trying to light these paths. You're trying to adventure threat. It's really fun to, like,

play, like, intense action games that, like, find a way to circumnavigate, like killing things or harming things. Like, I think about a thumper. Mm-hmm. A lot. Like, that is terrible. It's terrifying, but you don't, like, hurt anybody except your own heart when you're playing.

Because it's so intense. So that's kind of at the core of my issues with the game is that, like, it should be, like, it wants to be intense, but it very rare. It only is, like, it feels very haphazard about when it is, like, challenging you. And that, to me, it feels like it's a mechanic that only feels good the way it should when it's being very challenging. And a lot of the way you basically, if you're ever stuck in a puzzle in this game, you're going to build up so much energy because every time you hit a bumper you gain currency that you can use to open doors. and so eventually I had like the fact that I was completing

the puzzles was basically a formality because I could have just skipped so many doors by just because I had so much energy So you can break the game basically? Yeah and then I talked to the developer about it once they said that like they

it's built by intention that they wanted so if you do get stuck you can just go through yeah you can skip certain puzzles that you're stuck on but it's like they go a little bit overboard in like I got stuck on one puzzle and basically could just finish the game from there

and the other thing they do is like you're there's like a to successfully kill like let's say a bumper you have to like deplete x energy right and so as you find optional puzzles you gain the ability to have each time you hit a bumper consume more energy so if there's a puzzle where you have to bank it off four walls or maybe twice you're eventually going to get upgraded to a point where it's like you can just do it once and it's like it makes the puzzle super easy and a lot of the weapons do that as well where it's like the upgrade system eventually ends up trivializing the puzzle aspect of it in a in like some key

ways, which makes the game a lot easier, which you don't want in this kind of game where you want the gameplay to be intense. And there are puzzles that I think are super strong. And later on, they have a lot of moments where they synthesize all the elements properly. But most of the time, it doesn't like, those elements don't come together as often as they should, which I do want to point out that I do overall like the game. I think it's fun enough to where if like, if what, if the core concept I'm selling you, like sounds interesting, you should probably play this.

but it's not like, it is not like this game that was like blowing me away. And I would, I would love to see a sequel to it for sure. Yeah, that's so weird though. It's like,

I get the designing a puzzle based game is hard. Yeah. You know, because it's a push and pull between like, well, how much Leo A do we want to give to the player

if they get super stuck? Mm-hmm. But at the same time, it feels like if you're just going to go to that extent, just do the Spider-Man thing, man, of like, do you want to skip this puzzle? Mm-hmm.

You can skip this puzzle, you know, but at the same time, maybe that defeats the whole game because I definitely did not do a single puzzle in Spider-Man at all. Yeah. Yeah. So I get that it's a hard thing to do, but that doesn't sound like an optimal solution to just, like, give you the tools to break the game.

Because like, one of those things of like they wanted to, they had good intentions with it. It just the idea got away from them. And I think when this game is good, it is like a really strong, like, solid, fun game that I like quite a bit. It's just like, it feels like it is that game half the time. And the other game is just kind of like this very like kind of a mediocre game. So I ended up giving a 7, which is a positive score, and I like the game. It's just a matter of like, you can see where this game could be so much better. And to be clear, you give it a 7 on fan bite.

On fan bite. Yeah. Can I ask you something about outside of a creature in the while? You can ask me whatever you want, man. All right. Is it weird, because I'll probably be doing this too. Is it weird writing a review for another site now? Yeah, like, the actual writing process of every was very, like, introspective in the way that's like,

okay, how much of my voice has been defined over the years by the Game Informer House style? Yeah. How much of it can I comfortably break out of and still? Like how much, how much should I deviate from that house style? Like, is it appropriate for me to diverge? And how much of it is like my voice versus the house style that I need to break out of? And what does the client want, right? Like, it's that sort of thing too.

Like, do they want the game informer style review or do they want you to come out a little bit more into your own personal thing? Yeah. It's always, that's what I'm concerned when I start like doing because I'm going to do a couple of reviews on the side of on looking for something new. And it's like, well, what do they want? Do they want me being like just kind of funny and experimental or trying things or do they just want, but nope, just bread and butter, baby. Yeah. It's definitely one of things where I had multiple drafts of that review. I just like trying to figure out like I'm just going to restart this entire review with a different approach and see how that goes.

So it's definitely like pretty intense, but it's like one of the things where I just have to, you know, on some level you're just working on deadline. And it's one of those things where like as I start reviewing more games for different outlets, it's just I'll find the commonalities in my voice and like start. It's a thing. It's a learning process that I'll have to, you know, reconfigure myself. Yeah, it seems like it's going to be very strange to react. Yeah.

Also, standard disclaimer. Creature in the Well is a pop agenda game, which has a relationship with kind of funny. Yeah. All right. So, JV. One last thing I wanted to hit it.

Control. We've talked about it a lot in this book, games, guys, but I've never heard. I have not heard you. Basically, I've not heard your thoughts on it. Okay.

Well, understand that my relationship with remedy games is I believe that they haven't, made a game. They have made interesting worlds to explore. Yeah. You know, interesting stories, but they haven't made a fun game since Max Payne, too. Like, a game that's actually, like, moment by

moment. Like, I'm really wrapped up in, like, the mechanics. I think control fixes that mostly. To be fair, they haven't made, like, that many games since Max Payton. No, it's a quantum break. Yeah. Um, but at the same time, like, I've seen a lot of effusive praise for control. There's also a lot of bullshit in control. Yeah. Like, the map system

sucks. The map is bad. Yeah. Like half the time on PS4 Pro It doesn't load Like it'll like bring up the names of the places But there's not actually a map So I'm just looking at them I'm like a blank screen It's kind of a weird way

A testament to the game's world design That you I've been relying more on the Ingame's in world signs Yeah which are great actually Yeah But the map itself because it teaches you to like Hey your your objective like we've been taught by games Like your objective is the thing that you look at

At the map and the fact that that is bad. It's like, wait, well, am I even on the same level as my objective? The problem is they wanted to have that flat map on the side that's like with you as you move around when in reality it should have been a Metroid Prime map. Yes. So like you look around and like you can like look at it as a structure. You can like do a

3D sort of flip stuff. Yeah. That's what I think would be the ideal solution because so much of that map you know, like actually shows the staircases and stuff that it doesn't matter when you're looking at it from a top view 2D plane. It doesn't matter. It's really hard to do it. It took me until halfway through the game to realize

oh, that's a stairwell. And the difference between levels is like, this one's gray, this one's darker gray, and this one's black. Well, what level am I on? I don't know.

Yeah, it took me a while to actually realize that, because control doesn't explain anything to you, right? Like, it feels very much like, we're not going to hold your hand. You have to figure this stuff out,

which means diving into its menus and, like, lore and stuff, which is great on one hand, but on the other hand, it's like, oh, the yellow point on the map is actually the approximate area of where my objective is.

You know, it took me a while. That explains a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's really weird. Because I would always hit right directly there. I'm like, okay, what am I looking for here?

Like, what in this exact spot does the game want? Yeah. And it's like you are in the area where you should be not like you have, you have pinpointed the location of the thing. Yeah, it's frustrating because at first I thought it was pinpointing. It's like, oh no, it's actually just in this area. Yeah, it's across the room. And the other thing is this is the most fucking bullshit kind of checkpoint system.

I've played in years of like dark like there are so many games that like take lessons from dark souls that they should not take and this is like a prime candidate of you don't need this. This is bad. This is actively annoying. Whenever I die to like a ridiculous boss fight and I have to go past like staircases and stuff like at least like souls like you're you're sort of traversing this beautiful and twisted and grim dark landscape no matter which Souls game or you know a bloodborne game. or Securo game. You're playing like, the environment is beautiful to behold. The enemies are terrifying.

And control, like, the oldest house is a cool setting, but the brutalist architecture, it's not a fun thing to look at over and over and over again. It's like, oh, I'm in another stairwell. Oh, here's another hallway. That's misunderstanding,

or the developers are misunderstanding the point of Dark Souls dying. Yeah. Because, like, it's supposed to be, you died, now you have to go through all this stuff again to get back there. And if you don't make it there in time,

are not in time, but with enough health or whatever, then you're not going to get your souls back. So you have something to lose. When you die in control, it's you don't lose anything except time, which is frustrating. Yeah,

and inversely, it's like the idea that you're going down the same path over and over again, the fact that Dark Souls is an RPG is a big part of it where it's like every time you're like, sensibly getting a little bit stronger and you're memorizing the path a little bit more.

Or you're figuring out a way to get around the enemies without being a deal. Like all the enemies are still, if they're not dead, that's annoying. are dead, then it's pointless and boring. Yeah. I've, like, I've, I kind of knew about the checkpoint going in.

So it's basically one of those things where it's like, I only, I don't, uh, stop playing unless I've reached one of the control points, which is like the, the surefire way of being able to save. Yeah. And if I haven't had, like, I'm playing on PC, which I think helps, like, with like a lot of the combat where it makes it a lot faster. Like, I can aim a lot more quickly. So it's like, I'm probably not having as much difficulty with the combat as a lot of people.

But it definitely feels like, like, like, the. Like the one time that I died is something that is like outside of my, like, if I ever die, basically, I, I, I've been kind of like dreading it for a little bit. Like, I haven't died too many times. But it does feel like when that happens, I'm kind of like, I know I'm going to be frustrated by my how much progress I lose. I was having problems very early on in the game. Like, there was a one specific room where you leap down over this thing and like there's a number of enemies that come up and one of them is stronger than the other. And you don't really have any other powers besides the gun. So I died there a couple of times because the game doesn't want you to stand in one place and shoot.

they want you to move around, but this is, this is like the second combat encounter in the game, so I didn't know. But every time I'd respawn, Jesse would say the same lines of like, oh, the hiss is your enemy, too. Like, okay, then it's mine. It's like, okay, I get it. You don't need to repeat. You have acknowledged that I've died and done this before because the, like, little

collection items I've picked up are, like, I can't pick them up again. So the game understands. It's not resetting to an old state, but it's still redoing that same line. line of dialogue and it makes it feel more and more repetitive. Yeah. I will say though, you know, I started off kind of crapping on the game, but the combat is like really good. Yeah. Once you start getting more, like I just got the dash. And that's thing that makes everything so much fun. Like you feel like the incremental steps of power with every new

like ability you get are huge. Like there's strides. Like Jesse has gone from just being like, oh, someone who has a cool gun to I can pick up a freaking like copier and beat an enemy to death with it. I can dash around. I don't want to get into later abilities, but there are some really cool. Whenever you enter a combat arena, you feel like you have so many ways to

approach any individual like enemy. Like not even just the encounter of like, okay, I can hide it over this way, I can teleport this way, I can try to brute force them by going up to a shield and then mailing them and then using the shotgun version of the gun. So all that stuff feels like it is like the best version of their combat that they've done

where it feels like you have so many options. and verbs at your disposal that you never feel like you never feel like you're in another third person shooter where you're like I have to hide behind cover and like make sure you should like shooting is just one of so many things you can do in that game

that makes the combat super interesting. Yeah see like I feel like I hated Quantum Break because it felt like a poor man's infamous tacked on to like a generic third person shooter and this is like oh no this is what Quantum Break should have been like all the powers here

like you were just a tornado of death when you're at your bath Like it's just you tear everything to pieces. It's great. One of the things I love about the incremental upgrades, like, of your powers is you can feel yourself getting more powerful because one of the things the game does is it takes these characters who are enemies that were threats at the beginning. So like the standard guys with guns, like they were a pain in the ass at the beginning.

But as you start moving forward, they're basically just ads. They're like, they're nuisances to be in your way. But they're not the main threat. So you can start, you start building upon threats as you go on. And if you also do it in a very, like, very strong. curated sense in that you meet the snipers and they're like oh man these guys are going one shot me and then you get the shield ability so it's like okay these guys I have solved this enemy with this ability and they get you to think critically about like

this ability counters this enemy this ability counters this enemy and like here's how I can like and here's how like this arrangement of enemies is gonna get me to mix up my approaches and how I think about those locks and key abilities in that way I actually think it's a very interesting Metroidvania that way because you were getting powers to solve enemies not locations. Yeah, there's not a whole ton of like puzzle solving of like, oh, here's an area that requires me to like, you know,

turn into the morph ball or in, right? So that isn't like where this game is in Metrovina. It is like very, a lot of the edges of like the traditional Metro Havania have been sanded off here where it's like, okay, I know that I cannot get past this area because this area requires a level five key card. I will come back to this area way later. And it's not like a, well, the lot, here's a pit of lava.

can I make that jump or do I need an ability, right? It always makes it certain that you will never have to think about that problem that a lot of those Metroid-A games have. It's like, can I actually do this or do I need to come back? Yeah, my favorite, it's interesting you guys and ever, like a lot of people describe like the abilities themselves is kind of like Metroidesque. To me, like that gameplay feels more in line with like instinctual rhythm like Batman almost like, you know, you're talking about the snipers. so like, oh, I'll throw up a shield when they're firing at me and then I'll just like levitate this item to

smash the shotguners to my left like everything you're reacting to things that are coming at you as fast as you can with like the right prompts. And like getting to the place where you can move that way and think that quickly and just react. It just feels, it reminds me a lot of Batman in a weird way like the Arkham Games.

So I was going to say like the feeling I got from this game and it's a very, it's hard for me to articulate what this feeling means, but I was getting tingees of when I played RE4 for the first time. Like, not the same in Polish or anything like that, but like

the game so well understands what it is, and it's happy to be that. I was actually, I played a little bit of RE4 on the plane and it's actually talking to JV about this. And like one of the things that playing Resident Evil again for the umpteenth time that I realized like I think one of the game, one of the reasons

that I think that game is so great is that like every arena is like this multi like play space in a lot of ways. that you can mess with the enemies in a lot of different ways and the enemies react in interesting ways. And I don't think like I don't think controls enemies are on that level, but there's a lot like you look at a very small battlefield and you instantly think like a number of different ways about how you can approach it. So like in Resident Evil 4, you knew a thing where it's like, okay, here's this group of three enemies. If I shoot one of them in the leg, I know because of how this

game has taught me at systems that he will like stumble back into the other three guys and I'll have the opportunity to run up and knife all three of them. Like I'm thinking about my approaches in control in a lot of the same ways. Not like, I can shoot this guy in the knees, but it's like, if I do this, I know that this will happen and this will cause it a teen reaction that I can use to like further my approach, right? Like to do things like that. And it is such a, it feels like such a rich play space that you can, you can just manipulate the battlefield in ways that feel both creative and useful. Yeah, like the combat and the world building and control are so good and rich that it makes it easy to forgive like a lot of its failings. Because I think there are

quite a few. Like, there's one boss fight, for example, and I'm not going to say which one where, like, I learned the pattern and then I went to, like, go do the fight only to find out for the first 10 seconds of the fight the boss is inexplicably invincible during, like, the window when you should be attacking him, and then I died. And it's just stuff like that where, like, the game pushes against you in a way that's unfair. Yeah. You know, it's just, it's really frustrating. Yeah, it feels like it's like, in a ways that Resident Evil 4 wasn't, it feels like it is tied to like the arbitrary like limits of like, well, we have to curate the experience for the player by like having like, we want to make the cinematic in a way. And so we're

going to like introduce twists on the gameplay that don't abide by the rules that we've laid out for them. Yeah. I will say like one of the things I like about this game is that Remedy games have this very, I don't know how to put it like kind of alien feel with their dialogue, which is not always intentional. Like I think a lot of people describe it as campy in a lot of ways. or like self-aware. I think it fits much better in control. Yeah. Because everything should feel off.

Yeah. Like it's, God, Lynchian is like just one of those terms that you don't really want to say when you're a writer because it's so, you know,

cliche, but like, we've already using this podcast. It really fits here. Yeah. Like, obviously because they just take so much inspiration

from Twin Peaks, uh, from a bunch of other places. From X files. X files. Yeah. From like House of Leaves. There's so much from House of Leaves in here.

It's, it's just wild. It is, it, this game can, as somebody that has liked Max Payne, but that's what didn't necessarily love it. I liked Alan Wake didn't necessarily love it. Did not like quantum break. This kind of cemented remedy is like, oh, I can see why everyone thinks they have this amazing level of talent.

Yeah. Because they absolutely do. Yeah. It's a, it's just a matter of like arranging that talent in the right way. I feel like, and Max Payne did it for me. Alan Wake did not do it for me because I just was so bored playing that. Like, the story was cool. but it's just, it was a chore to get through that.

This is like the first one in a long time where it's just, the marriage is almost there, right? Like, it's almost, I don't want to say perfect because there's a lot of problems here, but it's the most satisfying to both play and experience, you know, the other elements. Yeah, they're like one or two refinements away from an all-time classic.

Yep. All right. I think that's going to do it for this game cast. Yeah. Before we go, you guys, I want you to give, I'm giving you an open mic to say whatever you want to, do about where people can find you, what you plan to do next, if you even know, and it's

fine if you don't, or just who you want to shout out, what you want to say about Game Informer, any of it? I don't know that I have like a lot of places, or, I mean, you can find me on Twitter.com slash Surreal Vasquez, S-U-E-Z. For now, I'm taking it kind of easy. I'm sticking to freelance for a little while, trying to figure out what my next move is. But if you want to follow me on there and look at my posts, I guess you can. but he's funny yeah we'll see where I go next I'm not entirely sure what I want to do

whether I want to stay in the industry whether I want to be on press or dev side but I'm open to offers I guess if people are people want to pay me money he's funny and good but yeah I as far as like I do want to say that like the game informant team is like those people are now friends for life in a lot of ways I think that that that outlet was a family in a lot of ways and I'm going to miss working with all of them they were all everyone here and everyone, you know, back in Minneapolis and abroad were like an exceptionally talented group and you should, you should do everything in your power to hire everyone who was laid off. Because like Game Informer was a uniquely talented pool of people that, um, did not deserve

what happened to them. So, yeah. To be clear, outside of that, besides the three of us, there is Elise Favis, there is Jeff Marcia Fava. There's Matthew Burtz. Who else? Kyle Hilliard. Kyle Hilliard.

And is that, yeah, that's all seven, right? By the way, Kyle Hilliard is streaming at Twitch.com. Every morning at 11 a.m. Central Time, which for you guys on Pacific Time is 9 a.m. Yeah. So watch his stream. He's playing through Metal Gear Solid for the Game Boy, which is Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel. And he's very entertaining. That game seems kind of weird.

But I've been watching that stream, and it's been very fun. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm still looking for work in the industry. You'll probably see my writing pop up at, like, freelance sites. but on Twitter. I was away from Twitter for a long time, so I made a new one once these things happened

because Twitter is basically like the gaming industry, LinkedIn. You force this man to make a Twitter. Yeah. That's a mistake. But let me look at this like an old man. My username is at Ivy underscore J-A-V-Y. So I'm there. I'm looking for full-time opportunities,

both dev side and journalism side. So if you have anything, hey, it's me. Hire me. When I was still freelancing, and before I came to Game Informer, I remember having a discussion with a friend about JV specifically of if I continued freelancing, there's no way I'd ever be as good as Javy because this man hustled more than anyone could possibly do. If someone who was freelancing at the same time as he was, it was like one of those things were, man, he had biolched on every site every day.

We couldn't like none of us can match up. And I remember applying for the job. And I remember before I applied for the job, I wasn't sure of myself. I didn't think I could do it. I DM JV because we were Twitter mutuals, but we never actually really had a conversation much. Yeah, we didn't tell that much. Yeah.

So I was like, JV, hey, do you think I could do this job? You're like, yeah, you'd be great. And I was right, because I'm always right. You were amazing at your job. Thank you so much. I want to echo what these guys said. Game Informer was a family. They're lifelong friends.

All the people who were let go and the people who are still there, they affected our lives in ways that we're not going to be able to say, because there's just no words for it. Even for writers, there's just no words for it. Even beyond the fact that we signed a thing that says that limits what we can talk about legally. But I want to, I hope that everyone lands on their feet and that everyone at Game Reformer knows how much they meant to us, that all of our fans from Gaming Informer know how much it meant. I want all of the kind of funny best friends and all of you guys to know that all your enthusiasm and support. has meant to all of us that that all that stuff blunts the edge so much.

On a day that I felt like I was completely replaceable and like not necessarily important, seeing the outpouring of love from people who's like, someone from, that I used to go to high school with, reached out to me and said, like, hey, I've been a fan of you for a while. And also I went to high school with you. Like, you know. Was he a fan of you in high school? We didn't, we actually, we hung out a little bit, but not a whole lot.

You were to look at the pictures back then. It's like, yeah, background. Yeah. Yeah, so like seeing everyone like just reach out and like all the DMs I've been getting like that that has meant the world to me in a way that people will never know. So I really appreciate all the love. Yeah. No, same. I speak for everyone at Game Informer.

If you've sent, you know, messages of support or whatever, trust us. Like everyone who's not with the magazine anymore and everyone who's still with the magazine have deeply appreciated it. It has made this time a lot easier than it would be otherwise, I feel like. Yeah. So thank you guys again. If you're a Patreon subscriber, we're going to the post show in a minute, but I just wanted to say, again,

thank you to kind of funny. Thank you to Greg Miller for making this happen. Yeah, no, thank you both. Or thank you everyone. Yeah, both. All right. We'll see you guys later.