Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Game of the Year So Far and Our Favorite Games Media People! - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 27

Episode Date: July 16, 2015

We discuss the future of Sega, what we think is the game of the year so far, our favorite games media people, and this falls lineup. (Released 07.10.15) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode was brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the easiest way to create a beautiful website, blog, or online store for you and your ideas. Squarespace features an elegant interface, beautiful templates, and incredible 24-7 customer support. Try Squarespace at Squarespace.com and enter OfferCode Kind of Funny Games at checkout to get 10% off. Squarespace, Build it Beautiful. What's up, guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 27 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Getty.

I'm joined by the coolest dudes in video games, Colin Moriarty, Greg Mee. Miller. Portillo's here. He's doing stuff. I don't know if he's the coolest dude in video game. Thank you for introducing him. Yeah, usually I don't.

Can he be the coolest dog in video games? Who's cooler than him? I'm trying to think of a... There's a lot of cool dogs in video games. The dog from duck hunt, I would give over him. Okay, well, yeah, sure. Dogs are Benin of video games. So he's the second coolest dog.

What about dog meat from Fallout? Rad dog? What about Shadow from Dead to Rights? No. Shadow no! Oh, Tillow's cooler than him. Okay. For sure.

Ladies and gentlemen, the kind of funny games cast, if you're not informed. It's like the game over Grady Show over on a kind of funny Except it's about video games Where we break it out topic by topic Monday through Thursday Full episode on Friday

You can get the whole thing early At patreon.com slash kind of funny games You should do that Because it's not that much money You can just give a dollar You get it early No you could No you don't get it early for no no

If you give $5 you get it early Yeah If you give $10 you get early in video You don't want to do that But for a dollar you get the bonus episode We're not even sure Yeah None of us know how Patreon works

You know what maybe I'm wrong It's not worth the dollar this time, guys. Evacuate. I'm sorry. I apologize. Never mind. Cisco, just to leave this off your iPod. Yeah, come on, Cisco. I like you so much.

You do a lot of cool things. So before we get into all these topics and stuff, there's a lot of cool stuff going on. Our friends over at Leaping Tiger. Oh, yeah. They have this app that lets you find... It's a social gaming app where you can find people to play games with.

Right. It's a networking app for you want to play online games together. Yeah. Yeah. Which is a great idea. You're backing into this all wrong. Leaping Tiger, among our best friends.

They are their Patreon supporters. The reason we're talking about them is that over on Patreon, they backed us at the month of shoutouts. Yes. I think our second ever month of shoutouts for somebody. So yeah, Leaping Tiger.

And so what they're doing is making it sweet. So you go, if you're iOS, you go download this app. You don't, if you're Android, it's not there yet, but you can go to the Leaping Tiger

standalone website, get on it there. Which is leaping dash tiger.com. Good job. I just assume Kevin's going to put it on the air. Put it right there or whatever. Let's want the audio people. You go there and you download it,

you put all your information, in and then you can say you're checking into a game like Rocket League and then you would ping around looking for other Rocket League players that you could go play and get together with and find other people to do it it's here's the best part about leaving Tiger in this app right is that they're just getting started their startup just like kind of funny a few months behind kind of funny but I'm not going to knock them for that starting up so that no one's downloading the app yet because it's brand new so what they're doing is these different game nights on every Wednesday so Wednesday 7 p.m. Pacific time so convert it to your

time zone from 7 to 9 so The one we're talking about right now is July 15th. Okay? Yes. I believe you. I didn't do that much. It's the Wednesday of Wednesdays. The next Wednesday.

July 15th. July 15th. 7 p.m. Pacific time. You can go check in. Play Rocket League on the PlayStation 4. PlayStation Plus game, free to play. You can find out the people to play as,

and they're going to pick from that group. You'll hopefully be playing with other kind of funny people because we're driving everybody to do it. They're going to pick some new on a PlayStation Vita. So not only did they sponsor us. Just make a cool app so you can play. other gamers, they're also giving away a PlayStation Vita, which is pretty cool. And that right now, it's like

really about the kind of funny community. Right now it's an app for you, the kind of funny community. So that's pretty awesome. Very excited about that. Definitely check it out. Are you going to take it all? Nothing. I'm letting you do your thing. All right. Well, leading into what the first topic is, the topic is the future of Sega.

Sega's been going through a whole bunch of stuff. Obviously, they have their huge hit, Sonic the Hedgehog. He's doing great. He's never faltered from his course of greatness. It's so good. Colin, this is another one of those things where, you know, we'll be eating lunch and we're having these discussions about stuff. And you're like, we should talk about this on the games cast.

And you start going into, I read this article and you do the Colin thing with the glasses and all that stuff. Right, right, right. And so, please do you. I want you to do that now and inform the people of what's so interesting about Sega. Sure. Today on Colin and Greg, actually, we talked about this too. So there's some redundancy here for people that, you know, listen to this podcast and also watch that show. And there's certainly some crossover there, but bear with us because we'll have a more in-depth conversation about that.

it. Tamar Hussein over at GameSpot writes, We betrayed fans and want to be a brand again, says Sega CEO, Sega CEO, Satomi, has said that he believes the company has betrayed the trust fans put in it over the last few years, and added it is now aiming to improve the quality of its games and hopes of reestablishing

itself as a valuable brand. Speaking in an interview with Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, which has been translated by Silicon Era, Satomi said he has been discussing strategies to improve the quality of its games with employees. Quote, I've been talking to employees about how Sega should start putting serious consideration into quality from this point on, which is a bizarre quote, particularly in North America and Europe where it's always been more

of a focus on schedules. I believe that if we can't maintain quality, it would be better not to release anything at all. That's one quote. And then he says later, quote, we did our best to build a relationship of mutual trust with older fans of Sega, but looking back, there have been some titles that have partially betrayed that trust in the past 10 years. Sega in the 90s was known for its brand, but after that we've lost trust and we're left with nothing but repatriated. We'd like to win back the trust and become a brand once again So that's basically the meat of it is that the CEO of Sega and I think he's been the CEO for quite some time actually I can look into that which is the weird part yeah he's been I'm gonna I want to look because it says

Hajima Satomi was the founder of Sammy Corporation so in Sammy and Sega merge Presumably that that's when he became CEO so yeah it's interesting just because he's basically Sammy saying, A, we didn't focus on quality, which is a fucking bizarre mission, but nonetheless an honest admission. And that they're saying that they might not need to release all these games, and maybe they shouldn't release games. Maybe it's better for their brand not to release some of these games.

And so I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, or just, you know, see where the conversation goes about Sega's status right now, because Sega really is, in my mind, and I don't mean this to be mean, a bit of a joke. 100%. You know, they were a powerhouse for a very fleeting moment. And that's what I think people kind of forget is that Sega, when they released a master system,

was getting trounced by the NES. They released the Genesis in 89, two years before the SNES came out, and no one cared. It wasn't until after they launched it again, really, with Sonic that in 91, 92, that people really started to pay attention to it. And then they had a few years of parody with Nintendo, and then they just disappeared again.

And I love, I'm a huge lover of the Dreamcast specifically, so it's not that I have a grudge against Sega. I just think that his words are a little hollow to me in the sense that this would have been a good admission 10 or 15 years ago. And I really personally feel like it's too little too late for Sega, you know, to be any irrelevant at all. The only reason they're relevant now is because they own Atlas. Yeah. The weird part about it is in what I said in Collierig Live is that it sounds like a quote from a new CEO. It sounds like somebody who just started and is like, hey, the other guys fucked things up.

We're going to get back to focusing on being a brand you can trust. It's not, that would be super endearing of, hey, I'm the new guy and I know things have been bad here, but I'm changing and this is my vision for it to be the guy that's been there forever and say that maybe it's time to start thinking that way. It's like, it sounds like it's too late. You should have started thinking that way a long time ago. It is over. I agree with Colin that Sega is a joke. I can't, it's one of, you look at Sega and it's like, you're still around. Like, how are you still around?

I don't even understand. Because when I got here, I remember to San Francisco and started covering stuff like Sega coming through for appointments and doing this. I remember they were like the first big layoffs that we covered that they like cut all of the San Francisco PR, this, that of the other. They kept moving offices and they weren't going to do this and that and da-da-da-da. And then like, you know, for me, the holdout for them was Velcare Chronicles that they were publishing that. They never brought three over. They kind of then just faded away until it was time for the next sonic integration with Mario at the Olympics or here's the wear hedgehog. And it's just like, what is happening?

How is this is still going on? How are they still being a business? Well, I think the thing there and what you're saying about the CEO, you're shocked that it's not a new one is that, I feel that the old CEO did the money thing, the business thing, of just like, we're just going to do something that just makes money. And Sonic made money. Sonic sold for a long time. The quality of the game sucked, but like the games were selling. Yeah.

And so I think that we're finally seeing with the last couple games, the sales have not been that good. Yeah. And the choices of going with the Wii U have not been smart. And like there's just all these like things where that business structure is finally not working for them. Sure. And I think that's the big difference where they're like, okay, we gave up on quality. quality a long time ago. So we just did the whole cash grabs.

Now that's not working. We got to go back to the quality because that is, it's the Netflix model that we always talk about. It is this more premium content. And when you are, like Sega no longer has hardware. It hasn't for a decade. Yeah. You know, it's, I feel like they need to go back to making a quality,

like quality games, not quantity. It needs to go away. It needs to just be quality. And then they can finally get back to being something. but they're never going to be what they were. And I just, at this point, it's the question of can they not be a joke? I think everyone knows they're a joke, but it's more like, is there anything they can do to fix that? I don't think there's enough time.

I don't think they have enough time to turn it around and get back to where they need to be, right? Now, Collins made the point before that, you know, Sega is like Konami, right? That, like, not all of their money is in publishing these video games and making these videos. Yeah, I would say most of their money is. And I mean, that's why I was on my phone was I was looking at some stuff. Like, Sega Sammy Holdings is like their company, like the whole company. Sammy is a very profitable Pacino and amusement kind of company.

So, like, they do, they, like, again, very similar to economy. They just do other shit. They're holding companies. So, like, they just have lots of subsidiaries that don't have anything to do with video games. And that's where they make their money, but I think they've lost focus. Here's the thing I think that we have to kind of come to,

at least this is my opinion. I know some people strongly disagree with it. Sega, in, you know, having studied Sega, having played Sega games, and having even been a Sega, you know, console owner, because I owned Dreamcast when it came I went back and bought things like Genesis later on on eBay when I was in high school and obviously played. I even traded my S&S

for a French Genesis for a French Genesis for like a while until I got in trouble and I had to switch back when I was a kid. What your parents find out? Yeah and I was like well you saved me that was a fucking awful trade. Yeah my god. But I wanted I played all these games I wanted to play Shinobi whatever the fuck it was that I wanted to play. Sega had

quality games. Sega's you know Sega has heart and I appreciate that like they the story as we said a million times I don't want to beat a dead horse or whatever. But, you know, console wars by Blake Harris talks about, you know, Sega has a lot of heart. Like, they really did take it to Super Nintendo and to Nintendo at the time and scared the show of Nintendo. It was the first time Nintendo was ever scared by anyone until PlayStation almost put them out of business. And there's something admirable about that, but I think we give Sega too much credit.

And I think we have for a very long time. And I've always felt that way. Sega has never been on Nintendo's level, ever. They've been a publisher of wide array of games, including some internally developed games. and some of them I really love, i.e. Fantasy Star, but they've never had, like, a quality offering that rivals any of the big publishers or any of the big developers that you respect. So while they've had these games that we've appreciated or have been on their console first or appeared on the console first, like Soul Calibur, for instance, will always be identified with Sega, right?

Crazy Taxi. Crazy Taxis is another great example. You know, and they deserve some credit. Like, they were the guys that would publish Platinum's games when no one would touch when Platinum was an unknown entity. I appreciate those guys things. necessarily trying to shit on them from a like from a base level there's good people that work there there there are talented people that work there it's just that you know when we talk

about Nintendo for instance Nintendo and Sega are similar in the sense that they both come from a similar heritage shared heritage and often and shared a lot of barbs with each other I'll always believe that Nintendo in the back end has the talent necessary to turn things around and the wherewithal to turn things around and most importantly the money to turn things around and make better decisions to me Sega doesn't have any of that they do not have the talent that Nintendo has, they do not have the talent that a lot of big third-party publishers have in terms of their own array of studios, with the exception of Atlas. And Atlas, of course, owning persona team and a few other really important IP is really going

to be their salvation in the video game space, and I think everyone knows that. And someone had pointed out to me that in the Silicon Era and the Fentzu original story, it apparently says, although not reflected in that game spot story, that they have been learning from Atlas about the way Atlas deals with its games and takes its time, i.e. persona 5 will be ready when it's ready. You know what I mean? Which will not be in 2015 in North America. So it's a complicated issue because

I want to get to do well, but at the same time what are they going to do? Sonic, I'm sorry. Like, I'm sorry. I don't care what you do with Sonic. It's not going to be relevant beyond a small group of people or kids or whatever. Sonic has been run into the ground

to such a significant degree that it'll never be Mario again the way it used to be. You know what I mean? It'll never go to never ride around. That's my thing though. It was like, that's the fact. It never will, but I don't think that it is helpless in the fact of being something that's relevant. And I think that it was relevant for a long time. And it wasn't until fairly recently, like the last couple of years that the quality has dipped so low, like with Sonic Boom, that it is just like a disaster. Because even like the last couple years of Sonic games,

they've been good. They haven't been great. But they've been good and good enough that like people enjoyed them. And I think that that's important. And like the fact there was all these Mario Olympic Games and all that stuff, like keeping the character relevant. Like, Sonic is something that people know. Like, little kids, they know who Sonic is. He's had cartoons almost consistently from the 90s. Sure, and that's what's popular about him now with the cartoons and not the games,

which is a dangerous place, I think, from them to be, because that's fickle. Like, game audiences, I feel like have more, pay more attention and have more of an appreciation for the history of something and why it's important and why it should remain or why it shouldn't remain. Because I disagree with you. I don't think Sonic has been relevant. to a gaming audience or a mainstream audience in 15 plus years. And just because he sells games that sell a few million copies here or whatever,

once in a while or has a cartoon that's big with some kids, does not make him a relevant force for Sega. And I think that's one of the things that they've not been able to latch on to is that they need to figure something out. They should put Sega Sonic away for a long time. But isn't he the only thing that makes money out of this gaming portfolio? That's the thing. They need to put them away, but at the same time, it's like they can't.

They just need to fix it. Like, they need to do something that's, that Sonic more than anything with Sega, it has to be the quality. We need a quality game that, we need a Mario Galaxy for Sonic. I don't know how that could even happen, because honestly, I don't think it's possible. And as a huge Sonic fan, I love Sonic. Like, the Genesis games, for sure, I love those games. They're not Mario World. They never were.

So it's like, with this, if they were to make a new Sonic game that is good, it's never going to be the same level of galaxy. but I'm just saying it needs to be the galaxy, the galaxy, galaxification of Sonic. So just that level of boost. Because then when you look at the 3D Sonic games, they've never understood what to do with it. How to make Sonic work in a 3D space never has happened. There was the Sonic Adventure games,

which are beloved by so many people, I will never understand why. Those games, as far as I'm concerned, are bad games. Like, everything about them is bad. the Sonic level's fun everything else bad voice actor horrendous like the story

all this stuff is bad about it and the controls camera all the shit horrible but people will have these fond memories of it and I think that's a nostalgia thing then you start getting into like Sonic on the

the 360 and PS3 the reboot and that was just like cringe worthy in terms of story and all that stuff but again it was just a even shittier adventure then you start getting into the

they played with the like 2D running really fast things. Fun. It just doesn't warrant a full game. And I think that when you see something like generations, which I think is the best on a game we've gotten in probably since the Genesis. The advanced games were good. But the console game since the Genesis.

And that was for the 20th anniversary. We're coming up on the 25th anniversary now. I have a feeling they're going to come out with something next year that I'm going to be interested in and that's going to be good, if not pretty damn good. But it's not going to be great. and if anything, it's just going to be retreading Sonic's history again, giving people the little bits and pieces that they did love about Sonic in one thing.

In terms of a new Sonic game coming out and having gamers everywhere, be like, Sonic is a thing again. I care. Yeah, I don't know. There's no way that anyone will ever make you care about Sonic. No, I mean, maybe they could because I try to be open-minded. I just think Sega has been a victim for a long time of being too big for its britches in terms of like it was thrust in this position of the anti-Nintendo for a while,

made it relevant to a wide audience with the Genesis, but the Genesis is all they ever had that was successful. I want to reiterate that. The only thing that Sega has ever done that has had mainstream, important financial success was a console that was released in 1989. And for some reason, this company has been limping through existence since then, trying to prove a point to the point where they had a drop out of the hardware manufacturing race, which was unfortunate, because I actually think the Dreamcast was a phenomenal machine.

It was way ahead of its time. It's just that they had no piracy protection, and people were waiting for PS2. It was just a stupid time to release a console. And they should have learned with the Saturn that they probably just need to not do this anymore. In the 90s, weren't they like a big deal with arcades and stuff? And that's what arcades were huge deal. They still are a big deal with arcades. I mean, they still make arcade machines.

All I'm saying is that that would make them a publisher just like any other publisher. For some reason, in other words, what I'm saying is Sega has this mystique about them, where we expect more. Some people expect more. They think they're destined for more. I'm saying that the anomaly was the Genesis. Right. You know what I mean?

Like the anomaly was the right place, right time. I grew up with an NES. I want to be anti-establishment. I don't want these kiddie games anymore. I need something that speaks to me. That is the Genesis. I mean, that is why the Genesis was big. That's why the Genesis rivaled the Super Nintendo

because it certainly wasn't based on the quality of games and it certainly wasn't based on the hardware. When you look at Sega right now as a video game publisher, or video game developer right. I look at them and think of them as the THQ that hasn't fallen yet. We always talk about the spectrum.

I always talk about a spectrum of AAA developers here and then you got your Indies here and there used to be all these games in the center like Dark Void or whatever and then when THQ fell and a couple other publishers like that fell, 2K changed how they're doing games. People got out of the licensed games market. Still right there in that middle section out is Sega. Putting out these games that aren't selling enough

so what does that mean? How much time is left in the hourglass? And that's when you come down to these. quotes of we need to start thinking about quality. Is it too late? I would like to think so. I'd like to think there's someone over there watching the financials going. That's a great idea.

We don't have four years for you to turn this around to put all your money into this game, to make it awesome to get this thing, to change how people think of you and what this means and da-da-da. Maybe Atlas's influence does that, but maybe they also just like, all right, Atlas is our home console version, or you know what I mean, our home gaming set up. Everything else is the Sega you know from the architecture. Cigate, you know from these other branches of business.

Yeah, I think that, you know, again, like, Sega, Sega is a corporation, and I was just looking at their financials, they're profitable. Yeah. Like, it's not like, it's not like Sega is going to disappear. It's a very similar situation to Konami. Like we were just saying before, it's just, if you look at them not based on the things that we do not care about in the United States or in the West because we do not deal with Sega on any other level, just like we do not deal with Konami on any other level other than a video game publisher, they need to be smarter. or they don't even have a Castlevania or a Contra. You know? I think that's not.

They have Sonic. They have Sonic. Yeah, but Sonic is way more important to people than Contra. Sure, but I think that I wouldn't disagree with that. I think that if you gave a top tier developer three years and the money they needed to make, and you said make a Contra game and make a Sonic game that the Contra game would be more relevant and would sell better. I don't know. I really don't know.

because the difference between Konami or the difference between Contra and Sonic is that it has been shit upon for fucking years and brought it brought down to such a level where they've done bad game after bad game after bad game after bad game after bad game. It just hasn't been done to Contra. It hasn't even been done to Castlevania and it certainly hasn't been done to Metal Gear. So I'm just making a contrast. Castlevania had the Lords of Shadows and all that shit. It had two Lords of Shadow games that were bad from one developer. That's exactly the point. You know what I mean? Like they stopped making Castlevania games after that. They're just done, you know? And that's kind of the point, is that it seems like Konami, for as ridiculous as that company is,

has at least learned its lesson that way we can't disrespect franchises like this with people with their expectations. I just, I really do feel like Sega has been a victim of expectations. and maybe even its own expectations, and certainly gamers' expectations, because if you look at them basically as just any other publisher, any other small-scale publisher, which is what they are,

they're fun. You know, they published Valkyrie Chronicles. They published Max Anarchy and vanquished and, like, games that people really like. But they, because they have this ubiquitous figure around them,

even though they don't really own many developers anymore or anything like that, they just have a weird way about them. And I think, and that's what I was saying, put Sonic away. Sonic might be the only thing that's relevant. That's not going to be their salvation.

Their salvation is if they want to save themselves as a publisher and a taste maker of games, they need to start investing in developers. And then they need to start investing in new IP. And that's going to be it because Sonic is a fucking, Sonic's a relic, man. Because unlike Mario, they've not done a good job of keeping him relevant, you know? They didn't treat him with respect. Nintendo treats Mario with respect. And we might get a lot of Mario games and some of them are better than others, but they're all pretty great.

And you just can't say that about Sonic. And you can't say that about anything Sega does. And so that's why I feel like Sonic, you know, Sonic, yeah, Sonic is a big cartoon right now. Sonic Boom Games prop, maybe even sold respectably enough even if they didn't do that well, that they're making a fucking other one. So, I mean, clearly they made some money on that. It's just to say, this is the wrong angle for them to take. I want to see a strong and vibrant Sega, and I think that that's only possible through like a really a reassessment of what they do and how they do it. And you hope that's what this quote leads to, right?

Absolutely. To understand that, hey guys, like we, like, it's an, again, I'm just not in a, astonishing admission on the form of CEO being like we do not concentrate on quality basically is what he's saying or we that's not what we put first it's like it's an unbelievable thing to say yeah so shows something that's broken there but um but i mean it's similar to you know activision or um yeah was that ubi soft coming out saying that the assassin's creed that it's annualized because people buy it right similar statement it is similar where there's a difference between ubsop and sega ubisoft and sega ubisoft makes games that people like so they can say things like that you know it's not like they're making assassins screre I don't like Assassin's Creed, but it's not like they're making fives and sixes. When you, we talk about Sonic games, like, if you look at the reviews, it's not like there's been a million five and six Sonic games. Like Sonic Boom has been the low point. Sonic 06 was the low point. In between, there was a lot of eights, a lot of seven point fives. Like, that's not bad.

Sure. Clearly it's not been good enough. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of, I'm trying to, I'm just looking up something real quick, because I want to make sure. I don't have my information good here You guys can keep going I mean it's a fall from grace In terms of what it was though What Sonic was you know I mean

Everybody looks back at Sonic on Genesis With rose-colored glasses And I know you've gone back and played since then And said we're wrong That it is still good But even then though it's good It's not I know it's not But when you were a kid

And you were playing these games And they were colorful and bright And there's robots and the colors are popping When the blast processing You're like holy shit This is amazing You know what I mean And like if that's where you left off

In your head And then you play these other Sonic games they don't capture that. The thing that I think the old Sonic games had more than anything was it the presentation felt so right.

The music was so catchy and so ingrained in what it was it had a feel to it. Then you play these new Sonic games and you play all this stuff and it's like, I have the same critique about Mario where it's like

ever since Mario 64 it's all looks the same it's all been like here's the art style we use this is what Mario looks like this is what the world looks like and sounds like and all this stuff

and you know put them in space you put them, whatever, it's all going to look and feel the same. Yeah. Whereas Sonic hit that same point too, but that looking and sounding the same is not good. Yeah, they gave him a scarf and really long legs. Sonic.

God damn it. Knuckles. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just reading because I want to make sure I have a history, right? Tales. They, Sega, by 2002, had five consecutive fiscal years of net losses. And then Sammy bought

controlling share of Sega for $1.1 billion I kind of brought it back to relevance and then they started expanding and making acquisitions. This is when they started getting studios like Relic, who is known for like Homeworld and Company of Heroes and stuff. This is when they got Demiourge. This is when

actually Demiurge was later, I think. That was T. HQish. This is when they got Creative Assembly. Creative Assembly, huh? So, yeah, I'm trying to just look at, I'm trying to look at where they now because

yeah no relic came from THQ that's what it was okay and then yeah they had bizarre creations backbone

obsidian was under there um yeah I forgot about all this yeah they worked with bizarre creations it says I'm reading Wikipedia

they worked with bizarre creations backbone entertainment monolith sumo digital obsidian gearbox um

um we need a this is interesting a vector man reboot yeah we do and a comic zone yeah could. Yeah, and it says due to the

decline of package game sales, both domestically and overseas in 2010, Sega began layoffs and reduction of their Western businesses, such as Sega shutting down five offices based in Europe and Australia in 2012, blah, blah, blah. And then we remember that they shut their San Francisco office. They're a big office and famous San Francisco office, which I think was happened this year. And then

they started investing in mobile development studios. So I don't even know if they're, I think they might be like Konami, where they're going to start investing in different kinds of games that they think are more profitable

for them for their home market that makes more sense for the Japanese-centric nature of Sega. Yeah. So I know some people think I hate Sega. It's not really about that because again I was a

especially in the late in their life I did everything I could support Dreamcast I had a fucking shit ton of Dreamcast games. Just to say that You have Choo Choo Choo Rocket? Choo Choo Choo Choo Rocket was a jam. It was the jam. For sure.

But it is to say that I really do feel like Sega's always been a victim of optics. Like it's always been a victim of like it's not what you think it is. The company isn't what you think it is. It's not as big of a deal as you feel like it is. Right.

Or feel like it should be. Yeah. Based on just something that happened once. You know? And strangely, a lot of people that play games today don't even remember or went around for. You know, and that's so it's amazing that that's actually been something that's like bled into gaming culture. And maybe that says a lot more about Sega than I give them credit for. You know?

Maybe we want something. We want a root for Sega. We want Sega to do well because they're the underdog. We want Sega to do well because. They're against the entrenched interest and stuff like that. But that Sega's 20 years old now. That Sega's dead. Oh, man.

Long live new Sega. So, early on in Gamecast's life, games casts life, we did a topic that was, what's the game of the year so far? Yeah. And it was looking back at the first quarter of 2015. We are now through the second quarter of 2015. Lord, it's going fast. Yeah, it really is.

So I want to revisit that topic. What is the game of the year so far? What's your kind of review of the first? half of 2015. Metal year solid five, the Phantom Pain. Okay, and this is

based on... Two days of gameplay. Based on two days of gameplay. But I'll leave it out. That'll be my surprise guess for what's going to be in the third quarter. So so far what's at... What did we say the first time I did this? Do you remember?

Dying Light, I think... Did we? I think we all universally did dying light, didn't we? Probably. All right. So then I think from there you add to the list Batman and Witcher in terms of like big things that mattered. Exactly. Her story I'd put on there too. I think that's going to turn a lot of heads by the time we get there.

It's one of those games that's going to get a lot of nods when we get to a game of the year thing. I don't know how many people actually give it game of the year. If they're still insulting enough to say indie game of the year, it'll get indie game of the year for sure. Before you go on with that, though, her story, it's something that's interesting to me because I've read a bit about it. I heard you and Nick doing a let's play of it in here. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. And my question is, is it a good game or are people just talking about it because it's different? Because, you know, you like the gone homes and you like these games.

But there was something there and it is an experience. Is this just kind of trying to do that too? I mean, it's trying to be different. It is. It's a very unique idea. You know what I mean? Like that's, if you haven't played it and we hadn't played it until we sat down to do it, it's that we didn't know what we were doing.

We sat down. Everybody said they liked it. We sat down and started playing it. and just getting dumped onto a computer screen in a police record folder and then trying to piece together what's happening and then going and then like this is cute and then being really engaged in the story and where it's going. I mean, this is the whole thing. Like, a lot of people wanted to be jerks when gone home was getting all its praise.

I'm like, yeah, it's a fun interactive experience, but it's not a game. Like, go fuck yourself. Like, are we going to sit here and just, well, a game has to have a jump button. A game has to have this. You know what I mean? Like, no, games can be whatever they are. If they're a game, if they're entertaining and there's an objective you're driving towards, right? solving this mystery in this game is it. So that is a game, yes. I think, and I don't think you can look past

the fact that it is different and unique and compelling and interesting, and that's what makes it. You know, the fact that it isn't a third person action adventure does speak to what it is. You know what I mean? Does make it interesting. It does show like what you can do with games and have them still be impactful and matter. And the fact that you're, you know, if you haven't played this game, you're just at a computer terminal. You're just typing words on your keyboard that are popping up on that key, on that computer terminal in that world, right? That's fascinating and awesome. It's an awesome idea and an interesting

idea. That deserves the praise it's getting. It is a game. I still think that this year is probably about a trifect of games that I think are somewhat similar to each other in spirit, which I think is dying light, Witcher, and Batman. And I think that I say that because there are open world games

that I think all do things well and all do things poorly. and Dying Light, I think, is the most well-rounded of those three, and I'll stand by that. You know, like, I know some people are, like, tragically upset, but that I think Dying Light is still the best game of the year, but I do. And I say that because it's the best one to play. The game plays way better than Witcher. I can't even imagine a world where Dying Light doesn't play as well as Witcher. So I think, in my mind, that's off the table. And then Batman, to me, has been really fun, but it's very one-dimensional in the way it's played.

To me, it's not so much about fighting or anything like that, especially because of the removal of boss fights, which was kind of weird. It's more about like you're just kind of mashing the triangle or the square button occasionally hit the triangle button to combo someone or like to deflect their attack and then you just beat them up and then you move on to the next story or part of the story. So what I think these three games do differently than each other that makes them all really interesting and all valid and all quite good in their own respect is I think dying light's the one that's good to play.

I think dying light, I was shocked by how fun dying light was and how much it made sense and how ambitious the game felt. it's a first person zombie clobberin parkour game it sounds I remember when Greg described to me that sounds like shit

like I don't want to play that at all especially considering you know Techland made it Techline's not a shitty developer but they're not the greatest developer in the world and this is another common theme between at least two of these games

they came out with something that was astonishingly good the disappointing thing about dying line is it's this more zombie shit I'm just so fucking sick of zombies I can't even explain you how sick of zombies I am and that's the unfortunate reality

of that game that you're playing like another zombie apocalypse because we have no fucking ideas beyond zombies. But the game was fun to play. I had a great crafting system. The parkour felt right. It was a great solution to the the inability to move vertically in games like this.

Like you basically just climb over everything. I think the leveling, the trifectal leveling system is really fucking awesome. You get experience points just for jumping, just for climbing. You get experience points for fighting. You get experience points for beating quests. It's a game that makes you feel like you're progressing.

I think dying light isn't getting a lot of love because a lot of people have forgotten about it. Yet, I think it's a game that stands out of my mind still is maybe the best overall game of the year that I played so far. The Witcher, I think, wins in terms of its depth. And I've said that this is a game. I like getting a lot of bang for my buck.

I like games that give you a lot of things to do. I think this is the densest game I've ever played in my life, and I think it's too dense. For completion, it's, of course, you can just ignore shit, but you don't want to ignore things. It's just like I never feel like I'm getting anything done in the Witcher. I played The Witcher for, like, 80 hours. And I feel like I haven't done a fight.

fucking goddamn thing in the game yet. I'm like, and it's actually to the point where I don't even know what's going on anymore. Like, there's just so many things to do and so many places to run around

to and people talk to. I don't even know what the fuck like what I'm even supposed to be doing because I've done literally 75 side quests and it's played more Gwent than a man can possibly play. You know what I mean?

But the game has substance and style. I think it's a very good game. I think it can play better. I think the horseback riding sucks. I think the combat's a little, you know, like it reminds me of like Assassin's Creed in kind of a weird way.

I'm like, this isn't that fun to play. I don't really want to play this. I want to experience it. The common theme between Dying Light and The Witcher to me is the developer came from. CD Project, much like Techland, has arrived now. Now they're here.

We knew Techland can make a good game, albeit a little bit broken with games like that island. We knew CD Project with the other Witcher games. They were competent developers that had fans, but now these are AAA-polished 9.0 games that now you have expectations for it. And the thing I appreciate about CD Project specifically is how they talk to their consumers

and how they respect their consumers and how they respect the process and the system and they're not nickel and dimeing people. I really, really think that's cool. And Techland does the same thing when they were making fun of Destiny's DLC with Red Bull and all that kind of stuff, which I thought was really funny.

And then we get to Batman, and I think Batman nails it in terms of story, in terms of character, in terms of ambience. I think that Batman in some ways, is a product of Rocksteady, which is a very competent developer,

outsmarting itself a little bit too much about what they need to do to make this game different. We have to add it. We have to add to this and crank it up to 11. I'm confused like why there are no boss fights. Like it's very, when you bring down a, in a way it's realistic because

when Batman will go after the penguin or poison ivy, he's not going to beat the shit out of Poison Ivy in the comic book. So like he doesn't have, like that's not the way he does. Like once he gets to her, it's over. right and so there's a realistic thing like he's not going to have this hour long boss fight with that with penguin he just punches him in the face and throws him in his fucking car and brings him to Gotham city you know police department so there's something to be said about that like okay I get it but the boss fights I thought were clever in the other in the Arkham games and I liked them and it felt like you accomplished something more than just kind of going through the motions of getting further and further to quest until you inevitably just grab him in a cut scene or her and put him or her in the car and bring him in the prison so there's that and I just feel like Rox said he kind of actually simplified it in some ways

and made a game that was a little more I don't know, a little more traditional, but I appreciate what they did. And I think that they nail the writing, they nail the ambience. They're a studio that has proven that they can do right by other people's IP, especially an IP as powerful as Batman. So I'm excited to see what they do next. So those three games to me are

all open world, non-linear, role-playing game inspired, or just straight-up role-playing games with upgrade systems and upgrade trees and skill trees. And Batman's skill tree and dying light skill tree are way better than the witches, I think, in terms of giving you that are meaningful and that you want to do. Like I said in The Witcher,

there are upgrades. I have, like, I'm sitting on like 15 upgrade points because I don't even want anything. I'm like, all this shit sucks. I don't care about anything else. So they're all games that got something right, got something wrong. Yeah.

And I don't necessarily think one is immediately better than the other. I just think that I want gameplay and dying light delivers it. See, and that's the problem, yeah, is I feel like, I talk for like ever on that. I feel like none of them, like, are far and away the winner. I think for me, dying lights at the end of the pack. I think it's a race between. Batman and Witcher right now.

But yeah, I have problems with both those things. Not a huge problem, not glaring problems. You know what I mean? Like, I loved Batman. I hated the tank control batmobiles. I didn't mind that there were no boss fights. I thought they'd run their course. I thought that's in Arkham City and asylum.

That's really where I'd ground to a halt a lot of times, like that Mr. Freeze battle, that people either loved or hate. I know most people loved it. For me, it was annoying, like back in the day in Arkham City having to do that. I like the Deathstroke Battle, but that's another one that was like, you know, alienating. So to get there and just have it be the story and go and do all this stuff. It was great, but it is by the numbers, especially when I was platinum.

I mean, over the weekend, skipping the cutscenes. It's just like, all right, jump in, land here, fight these guys. Okay, this is a predator mission. This is a Batmobile tank mission. This is a race. This is a tank. This is a tank. This is a tank.

Stop with the fucking tanks. That. And then, yeah, Witcher's the same way, right? Of, like, Witcher is a lot of fun. And I, like, it's when I kick into that critical thing of, like, if I'm trying to think of, like, what game is so far this year has. the most going for it, it seems like, Witcher with all the content it has with the

DLC it has with the story, with the graphics. I enjoy the combat with your upgrades, all that jazz, like, Wichers the if somebody's like, I can only buy one game this year, for the entire year I'm going to say Whisher, because there's so much content, at least right now, right? And then dying light, yeah, I enjoyed but I had put it down and then I just,

once I put it down, I was like, oh, I don't need to go back to that, you know what I mean? Like, for me, that was similar to what you were saying, right? That it was, for Batman or whatever, like, it was traditional and by the numbers, like that's how I felt about dying light. Like, the gameplay was solid, but it was doing the same thing over and over again to get to the next upgrade point.

But that's video games in general, so that's never a quality not. What do you think, Tim? So, I mean, for me, you know, I'm not the biggest AAA game guy. Like, I'm not going to play every single game. I'm like, you guys, that's what you do. You know, for me, there are the AAA games like Metal Gear that I'm looking forward to. Yeah. Yeah. I love the Final fantasies and Kingdom Hearts and all this stuff. You won't plan those

this year? I'm not, no. But I have my franchises that are my go-toes. But otherwise, Nintendo, Nintendo's my AAA. heaven, right? But 2015's been a bust so far for, in terms of Nintendo experiences and all that stuff. I mean, they've done a lot of good.

Like, I love how they're handling the Mario Car DLC and the Smash Bros. DLC specifically. I feel like I'm consistently getting new content. I've been going back to Smash. Not that I wouldn't have anyways, but I'm going back and getting fresh experiences. Like, this weekend I got to play as Ryu, and I was like,

wow, this is fun again. Like, I'm experiencing Smash again for the first time. Yeah, and that's great. but I can't give that my game of the year, you know. But then thinking back on it, too, in the last time, I kind of skimmed through the last topic we did, and I brought it PAYGO Blast.

And I was like, it's a fucking mobile game and all this stuff. That is the one game that I'm consistently going back to, and I keep saying this, but every day I play. And I had a lot of problems with it when I first brought it up a couple months ago. They fixed a lot of those issues, and now I know. Do you think they watched the episode of the show? They probably did. They're probably like, I'm going to fix this.

Tim's got some good ideas. We'll fix these. but it has a lot of issues still and I still don't like their like promote this on your Facebook to get free lives and please fucking stop I wish I could just buy this game and play it so that's annoying but I've kind of just learned to

make it part of my life to play a couple like 10 minutes a day every day and it's fun because they keep coming with challenges the 4th of July just happened and they had a whole new set of levels there were like fireworks space and stuff and it's like I just like because Pagel is like the game

Gameplay is awesome. And I think that's what's important about it, is that I love it because it's a game. It might be my game of the year because I love it as a game. And people are going to hate on me, I'm sure, because they're going to hate the course team like a fucking moly. Maybe it's like, whatever. They're going to hate.

I love this game. It's great. Going back to console stuff, I've had an Xbox one sitting in a box that I haven't opened for years. Last week, I was like, you know what? Fuck it. Like, Cuphead sold me enough that I'm like, I'm going to play that for sure. Yeah.

So then I hooked it up and I downloaded it. Ori because that was the one Xbox game that I was like, that speaks to me and I want to play it. And it's one of those things where I turned it on. I was like, I'm going to play for 15 minutes. And then like three hours later, I'm like, holy shit, this game's good.

Yeah. Like that game, it's so beautiful. And it just, it's fun. It doesn't play right for me. Like the controls and just the way the character moves and the physics, it doesn't quite feel right. But I think that kind of makes it funner for me too,

where it's like it's different than I expect it to be. So that adds a little bit to the challenge. And it's not so much in a frustrating way. Just in a more, I need to wrap my head around this in a different way that I'm used to. Sure. And I'm having a damn good time with it. Like, I have a feeling that once I beat that game,

it's probably going to be my game of the year so far. Answer. Until Mario Maker comes out. No, fuck that. Metal Gear. Things are going to change. Yeah. Things are going to change.

Have they dated Mario Maker? Yes. September? September? 11th. Okay. Yes. I'm pretty excited.

It's for Sean Finning, it's birthday. That's why they're doing it. Oh, man. Yeah. It's going to be good. Um, okay, so besides your game of the year, like, just in terms of new, like, the video game industry as a whole so far in 2015, you think it's been good? It's been a good half year for games. I think it has been for sure.

Yeah, I really feel like both, especially, I mean, we're console, our feet are firmly planted in the console market. I feel like it's been a great year for PS4 and Xbox One really getting next gen or this gen, their feet, their legs. You know what I mean? Like, we saw in that first year, like, oh, this is fun. This is good. but now you're getting, like I said in the hot pepper game review of Batman, right? Like, for me, this is the first game I've been playing where I'm like, fuck, this is like next gen.

This is like from the ground up something that it could never have been on PlayStation 3. Because even playing Dark Souls, or I'm not Dark, um, Bloodborn, right, for a little bit. Oh, yeah. I know that's not a lot of people's list, but that was obviously a great part of the first half of 2015. It's like, okay, this is cool, but it's not like blowing my hair back in terms of what the PlayStation 4 can do, especially like character creator with Galvan Tron and stuff like that. Yeah, I was going to say Bloodbourne, to me, was the biggest surprise.

And I don't think it was a big surprise to a lot of people. There was a big surprise to me in the sense that I always begrudgingly play Dark Soul. Like, you know, when Dark Souls came out, I'm like, I don't like Demon Souls, but I'll play Dark Souls and gas. And I didn't like, and Bloodbourne was one of those games where I stuck with it long enough where I like, I like this and I get it. And I almost feel bad that I didn't beat it because I spent a lot of time with it. And I think that we went to Pax East and that's why I stopped playing it. And then it's just a game you can't go back to. Like, I've just not in that rhythm anymore.

I feel like if that didn't happen and I kept playing it and I beat it and stuff. just felt very satisfied with myself, very smitten with the experience. I think that that game was very good. It's just not one of my games in there, because I didn't beat, I didn't see enough, but I was very impressed with it.

And I started to finally get it. That said, I think Bloodborn, as I've been saying, since the first time I played it, long before it came out, it's just not like Dark Souls in a lot of ways. I think that it's a little quicker.

I think it's just an element of arcadiness. I don't think it's the same game. And I think that's why it appealed to me and finally, you know, the comboing with the gun and the sword and so like that. was pretty cool.

And I want to give a shout out as well to all three of those games that we mentioned earlier. So Dying Light, Witcher and Batman, in terms of, to Greg's point, those all felt like next-gen experiences to me. And might have been the first games that I had played on the console.

I think Dying Light might really be the first one where I was like, this is really impressive. Like I remember looking around being like, this is impressive that this world is this big. There's no loading. The draw distance is perfect. the lighting's great.

I remember being really, really astonished with how good dying light looked. And then Witcher came out, and I think Witcher has a great look. I don't think all of it looks good. I don't think the character models are very good, with the exception of maybe

some of the main characters. I think there's a lot of repetition and hair styles and facial types and so like that. But the environments, and again, the lighting, the lighting is astonishing in the Witcher.

I can't believe how fucking good that game looks sometimes when you're riding through the pine barrens and the lights shining through the future. needles and stuff. Damn, man, this is amazing.

And then with Batman, I just think Batman is just, you know, very technically sound. Low times are appropriate. The frame rate's steady. The game just runs very well. Like, it sucks for PC gamers that the game doesn't run well for them because I think it runs great on PS4.

Although, again, it's had catastrophic problems on PS4 in terms of just, you know, crashing my system. But so to those three games, I think, to your question, we're in good shape. We have, This first half of the year has been front-loaded with some really great stuff. Now we have a little bit of a lull where we can get in games like Rocket League, for instance,

which I think is, you know, I played the shit out of Rocket League yesterday because we had it a little bit early. Games fucking awesome. I mean, that game, on a pure gameplay level, that game's going to have people hooked for years. I know it. Yeah. You can just feel it, like, just like the one that, you know, with the awful name that came, and then my balls. And then there are other little games.

Hotline Miami, too. I think I got a lot more recently, very good. Titan Souls. Titan Souls, very strange and ambient game. Hell divers, was that this year? Yeah, Hell divers came out this year. So there's a lot of smaller, like you already said, ORI, I think stated the K came back out and was very good.

It's been a pretty solid year so far. It's been in stride with what we were predicting and promised, I think, really, in what this generation of games is going to be, right? You're going to have these tent pole giant games that you can't wait for, and then you're going to have all this indie stuff in between, right? And I feel like from launch till the order, that was like where you're getting these games. They're like,

uh, these are half-baked and they're not really like the games we are expecting and now we're at the point we're like, no, no,

this is what you've been expecting from this PlayStation for Xbox One experience. Excellent. So, this topic has been sponsored by Luke Crate. Thank you so much,

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today. Thank you Loucray Thank you Loucrate All right Topic three Favorite people in games media I bring us up

and Ardy Morinardi Yeah he's a good dude. I think you, sometimes you stutter my name. I was watching kind of funny live the other day. Yeah. Just the certain part, you like announced me during the press conference.

You just totally didn't say my name right. I'm like, how long have we? Yeah. How long have we known each other? But then I was thinking like, you said it. You say it right, probably 99% of the time. Yeah, exactly. They call me a moron.

I appreciate it. No problem. Yeah. Call it's a good dude. So here's the thing. The reason I bring up this topic is there's been a lot of hate recently. A lot of people upset about stuff because of the internet. And that's how things work.

But I don't like that. Because I feel like there's a lot of good on the internet. We should talk about that more. We've always talked about this. We have a good community. We have people that enjoy positivity and all that stuff. Indeed. But I feel like there's a lot of other people out there that maybe don't get enough love.

Maybe some of them do get enough love. But I want to give them a little bit more love. Okay. Because what it comes down to it, we are public figures in the video game space. You guys are the coolest dudes in video games. I've heard about that. So that means there's a lot of people that kind of look to you guys for your opinions and all that stuff, right? But at the same time, we look to other people for their opinions because we're fans of games just like everyone else is.

So we read articles on these different websites. We watch YouTube videos. We watch all this difference, the content that people make. Who are some of your favorites that you go to? Justin McElroy. From where? Like him on. Polygon. Is that what you want, it's old bio?

Yeah. West Virginia as well. As a baby, I believe now. These kids all, they all start having babies. It's impossible to keep up with. Lovely on Twitter. I enjoy Twitter interactions already. He's very good at the Twitter interaction.

Here's what I think of this game in a nutshell. He's one of the first people, I believe, that turned me out to gone home back in the day. When the Batman review embargo lifted, he was on there answering people's questions to the best of his abilities without any spoilers and stuff. I was really appreciative of that. Again, not ruining them, but there. Ray, former Achievement Hunter over on Twitch. Everything he's doing is super fascinating now. Jeff Gersman, Giant Bomb, of course.

You know, San Francisco here. a Bay Area person. I'm sorry, I'll give you more of these bios. No kids, I believe. Oh, no kids, okay. No kids. You believe? I believe.

I believe he believes that too. Him and Brad Shoemaker, look. There might be something going on there. A little father-son stuff. I think Brad is his kid? Yeah, from the future. Yeah. Makes sense.

Those are people I jump to when you say, like, who do I respect? Who do I think about on that level? Who do I want to hear about when, you know, hear from, I guess, when games come out. That's my list. What are you calling? I think that in terms of raw writing ability,

I think actually Vincent Genito IGN is one of the most underrated, not this most significantly underrated writer in the entire industry. In terms of media, I think that, as someone who edited a lot of his work, I wouldn't walk around and openly admit to people, I'm like, you're way better than I am,

but he was one of the people, and he was like, you know, I was many bars ahead of him on the chain, you know, the chain of command at IGN, I'd be like, I wish that I could write like you. You know, I write differently. I have my own voice and I think I'm a good writer, but he has command of language

and says things in his, reviews is in criticism that I was like I wish I could I thought to say something like this. So I think that in terms of just underrated people that I don't think get enough credit, I think he's one of those people, but he's always in the trenches, like you just don't see him. And so I think that's part of the reason why he's kind of under the radar for a lot of people. From there, I'd go to the old standbyes. I think Jason Schreier and Patrick at Kataku are probably the best journalists in the industry. They're real journalists and they break real stories and I respect what they do.

They also have opinions, which I think is good. But Jason especially, I don't know, understand. I really do feel like Shriar breaks like 75% of the news in the industry of like any consequence. That doesn't come straight from a publisher or a press release. Matt Leone is a guy at Polygon now who I've never spoken a word to in my entire life and have never met. But is one of the only other people, really the only other person at a big outlet other than me that wrote long form articles. And I liked a lot of what he was doing. He was given a lot of room to do that kind of stuff.

and I think that that's great, even though it doesn't probably pay the bills. It's cool to have what they call prestige pieces for your website like that, which is what I think history of NaudiD when I wrote that and history of insomniac and all that kind of stuff were for me. So I kind of go in that direction.

And then I want to give my final shout-out, and this was the most recent edition, and this only happened in the last six months or so. I just didn't read GameSpot that much or look at the site. I just wasn't really interested in it until this year when I started kind of just reading more and getting around.

and what I realized was that GameSpot had their very own Greg and Colin that I didn't know about Danny and Chris, Daniel Dwyer and Chris Waters. They're really great. And Daniel Dwyer especially is very impressive to me. I think he's got a solid foundation of facts and a basis for knowing games and he's a gamer and he plays games. But I'm impressed with the way he is on camera. I'm impressed with his verbiage. I'm impressed with his ability to get in and out of segments and kind of lead the conversation and direct a conversation.

So I want to give a shout out to those two because they reminded me a great deal of the way Greg and I interact with each other. And I didn't know that they existed really until I opened my mind enough to or really even have time to not be in our own trench where I'm like there are other trenches and let's see what's going on in the other places.

I'm like, these guys are great. If I hadn't known that they had existed at that level, I would have been watching them for a long time. Daniel Doir Irish. No kids. Got it. At least one cat. Okay. Cats are good. I got to give a shout to my boy, Dan Reichert. Oh, Dan, yeah.

So I didn't, but prior to kind of funny and, like, doing this whole thing, I didn't know him. Didn't know of him and all that stuff. I'm, I'm very much a YouTube guy. Like, you guys are games journalists and all that stuff, and you're so in those trenches. I'm so in the YouTube video trenches. And, like, that's just my group and that's the type of people that I am more drawn to, because I'm looking more for the entertainment instead of the critical analysis and all that stuff, right? But I have a soft spot for that, too, for sure.

And that's why people like Colin are some of my favorites to read and stuff, because it's like you have real opinion based on facts. You know what I mean? It's like this nice amalgamation of all the good things that need to happen in order for something to have. Thank you. You know, value instead of just entertainment. Not to say entertainment is not valuable because it obviously is and it's all we do. Yeah.

You know, but Dan Riker was one of those dudes that because of this, I met and I was like, man, I like the way you do things. And I think that is like the best compliment I can give someone is just being like, everything you're doing, keep doing it. because it makes me happy and you're doing a good job. I like his opinions on things, even if I don't agree with them. And I like just,

following him on Twitter, and I think Twitter is a big thing. Twitter changed the game when it came to all of these personalities and stuff. Because whether you're watching YouTube videos or reading articles, getting people's real, like, 140 characters

of just what their thoughts are at the time, and they do not reflect the views of my employer or all that stuff. You're just getting them. I love that. And like, you really get to see another, side. Dan's a good dude, and I really, really support him. Obviously, Rooster Teeth, pretty much everyone there for one reason or another. I'm a huge fan of, like, Ashley Jenkins, who was at IGN with us, I always enjoyed her, and we were always friends and stuff, but she was in such a position at IGN where she was the social head or whatever. So, like, she didn't really get to give her opinion about games or, like, do that stuff. And now that she's over at Rooster Teens, she kind of heads up the no, which is there more information-based stuff. And, like, what she's doing with the patch with her, and Bernie and

Gus and whoever else is on the show week to week when one of the three is busy. It's like, I love it, man. Like they, they do something that I find pretty unique in the sense of the games that they cover. What we do is we cover the games that we like,

but we also talk about the general news and all that stuff. They cover the games they like, but it's just very different than us because it's way more steam focused and it's way more early access. And it's fascinating to me to talk to them or to hear their shows because their shows are so radically different than our shows.

And it shocks me how little I know about that side of video games when we know so much about this side. And it's just crazy that there's this whole other world that really is kind of the future of how things are when it comes to just like playing on demand and playing whatever you want, whenever you want and stuff. And we're just so used to the indie titles coming to our consoles, but they've been there for years.

So hearing from them, I really like that. and Philip DeFranco has always been one of those dudes where he sums up his opinion really well and that's kind of always been what he did is just gives opinions on things it's not critical reviews it's not whatever it's I liked it I didn't like it whatever here's why

and my one thing that I really liked about it one thing I really didn't like about it so I always enjoyed following his opinions about games and stuff and then in terms of like people that we have worked with I mean like IGN has has a whole bunch of people that are all awesome. But again, Jared Petty.

Like, that motherfucker knows what he's talking about. And it's like, he simultaneously makes things that are interesting to me, not interesting because he gets so in depth and so detailed. But then somehow comes out the other end of it's so interesting to me because it's like he really kind of taught me something. Sure. Every single thing I read from him or watch

from him or any of that. So shout out to him. You should watch, I know if you've seen it at World One One, which is a documentary him and I are both in, because he's really the star. of that documentary. They use me for a few minutes and I narrate it, but they, like, as a talking head, but they,

he's, like, very impressive. Like, his, his range of knowledge is, Jared's one of those guys that, and it's, I don't mean that, like, that I know everything, whatever, but I, I, I'm confident in what I know, and I know games. And I'm comfortable engaging in conversation

and teaching people things or are having a debate or admitting when I'm wrong, whatever. Jared is one of those guys that authentically can teach me something. And so I like to listen to him talk. And I was thinking about, kind of who I look at is the Patriarch, kind of of

games journalism or games media who I think is Jeremy Parrish Jeremy Parrish is at US gamer now used to be at one-up he is just Jeremy Parrish knows so much about games that I dare not even talk about them he

I'll never forget him just taking the time one time I was in Japan to just bring me around and we hung out for a while and I was just talking to when we were picking games off the shelves and he was teaching me shit and he is just an absurd font

of knowledge about video games and he knows how to how to talk about them too so that he can express it and he does so much like people that follow him like he does he's like the head of US gamer

but like that's I don't even read that site like he does like blogs and podcasts on like fucking everything he's also the person that coined Metroidvania but which is like the coolest thing ever I can't believe he coined that

but like he does like He'll just do block post. Like, here's what I think about this Game Boy game from 1991. Like, a fucking huge... He publishes books, like, actual books about, like, the DNA, the genetics of games. Like, like, goes through screen by screen through, like, a Mega Man or Castlevania or Zelda or something. I'm like, this is insane. Like, I don't know how the fuck he does it.

I don't know how he plays games he does and then has the time to think about the games and then has time to, like, publish books about them and write about them and do podcasts about them. I have in a tremendous amount of respect. and appreciation for Jeremy Parrish. I think he's probably the most knowledgeable person in the entire games industry. And for as much as I know about games, and I think I know a lot about games, he knows way more than I do.

And we'll always know way more than I do. He's a great writer, too. You bring him up reminds me of Ego Raptor. Like, I gotta give him a shout-up because he doesn't do it too much, but his sequelitis series where he kind of like really gets deep into a game and why he likes it and why it's a good game.

Oh, man. It's like, I wish there was just more content like that out there. Sure. Like, there's been a lot of other. the YouTubers that have tried to do it. And I feel like it always comes off as disingenuine, very just kind of forced and like trying to pick things apart that aren't there.

Like you're trying to give, you know, reason to things. It's like, oh, well, if you notice this and this leads to this, it's like, no, you're just kind of looking. You're stretching to tell a story. But he, man, he cares about games. And you can genuinely tell that. And I love that.

I also want to give a shout to Lucy James at GameSpot because her video content, like she, produces rights and hosts the content she's in, which I'm familiar with because at I Jan is what I did. And like that's kind of, it's a niche that more and more people are doing. But I think it's a still a relatively unutilized thing when it comes to the big, the game spots and the IGNs and stuff like that. Because there is such a structure of you're a writer, you're a video guy. You work together to make a product. But these kind of hybrid roles that do

all of it, she's killing it. Like her show in two minutes, I love it. It's the type of content that I'm like, I want to make this. And that's a good sign. I like a boogie. We didn't talk about boogie from YouTube, right? Like, he does a great job of entertainment in terms of when he does a Francis video. And then he'll turn on the same thing and do a boogie video, telling you why this is bullshit that this is the way it is or why this isn't working. Or, you know, his thoughts on a game, which I think is invaluable, right?

Like, he commands an audience that he can then talk to on two different levels, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. Also, I don't know if it counts, but I say the Fine Brothers, whenever they do a reacts, whenever they reacts to a Game Boy or an old game. or something like that. I think that's always awesome stuff that I actually sit down and watch and enjoy and wait for it. Yeah, they make great content just in general.

Yeah. I also want to give a shout out to Kyle Bossman at Game Trailers. Game trailers in general. Like, I haven't gotten too deep into it yet, but they have the layoffs and that whole issue. They've, like, essentially relaunched

and there's a YouTube channel. They have a whole new slate of programming. And from the little I've seen and kind of, like, dabbling, it's really quality stuff. And there's an energy to, new cast of people, and I don't know how long they've been there, so I might be wrong in saying new, but

it feels new, and it feels like a solid team working together. It reminds me of us in a lot of ways. Yeah. But what I really like about Kyle is that he kind of reminds me of the Greg Miller of my generation, age-wise.

Sure. You talk about all the, like, when you talk about Metal Gear and like where you were, when it happened and all this stuff and, like, your Sega stories and all that, like, there's this passion and energy that kind of, flows through every single time you talk about any video game, like news story, anything.

It's like, I get it. I feel that way about Kyle, the genuine, like, excitement and stuff, but it's about Pokemon and, like, Yoshi and, like, the things that I care about, you know? Yeah. Kingdom Hearts and stuff like that. So it's like, it's refreshing to me, and it's really interesting because I think he is one of the first people

to kind of do that for people that grew up where in 1998 was their favorite year in games. You know. Yeah. I only watched one of his videos once, and it was the only where he talked shit about us. Whatever. I mean, but that's the thing, though. It's like, people are going to.

He did talk shit. But it's like... About us? Yeah. What do you say? It was something like, kind of funny, not really, or some shit like that. I don't know. It was fucking forever ago.

Yeah. So many other people have talked bigger shit than that. Yeah, exactly. And, like, I remember he did that, like, after we had been officially covering games content for like two weeks, maybe, you know? And, like, to be fair, it's like, whatever. Like, everything we do is not. the best sometimes.

Like, criticism's criticism. You know, and when your job is to be funny on the internet and, like, you're talking about other people, we've talked shit about a lot of people too. Have we? I'm kidding. Okay. Okay, good. That was a joke.

What I'm saying is, like, sometimes talking shit, if you talk shit, you get shot. Yeah. But I feel like there's different levels of shit that you kind of got to, like, be like, all right. Like, I guarantee you that if we talk to him and whatever, we'd be friends. It was a play on kind of funny. I'm just, yeah. Yeah, and I also, I mean, I, to that point, like, I don't think.

we do talk shit about individuals. I think we talk shit about, you know, I certainly talk a lot of shit about some publishers and so like that. That's just me being honest. So I appreciate the honesty. I don't try to get it to a personal level with anyone. I mean, we just, I just had a huge rant about Sega and how bad they are.

Yeah. So I mean, I, like, it's not really any different. Yeah. You know, so I respect that. If you, you know, you said, like, not everything we're going to do is the best. I would take it a step further. I don't think, like, much of anything we do is the best.

That's not like what we're trying to be. Yeah. I mean, like, we're not like, I'm not even trying to be facetious. It's like, we're not trying to be like a fucking Nobel laureate fucking games channel, you know, like, but what if we were? We're just, what we, we're not, we're not the best. We're honest and we're ourselves. And that's what makes kind of funny, kind of funny, which is I think why people like us, because we're not, we don't have a pretension about us at all, you know, except for Greg Zigo, of course. Yeah.

But, you know, so I think that that is why we're fun. So yeah, like Kevin was laughing. I'm not even trying to be fichist. Nothing we do is the best. We just, we, we are who we are. Yeah, I think that's fun. I think, if I remember correctly, the quote-unquote shit he was talking about us

is because it was a time when a bunch of different groups were split up, Jim Sterling, like went off, which also Jim Sterling, I think, deserves a shot off. Oh, yeah, Jim, yeah, what a fucking huge admission. Yeah, Jim Sterling, of course. Jim Sterling, son. Oh, my God, Jim Sterling, real quick before you get into that. Go, go.

What an incredible omission. Jim Sterling is my hero. You know, like, I talk to Jim all the time, and, you know, we talk, we talk, you know, privately, and he is a fucking boss. You know what I mean? Like, Jim Sterling is a boss. And that interview he did with those developers that hated him on Steam last week.

I don't know if you saw that was like the fucking funniest thing I'd ever heard. I told you, like, it's an hour and 40 minutes of the developer that fucking hates him talking to him about his games and like how he's talked to all this shit. And Jim just was just like very calm and just batting down things and stuff. I respect his mind. I respect his ability to not give a fuck. Yeah. Because you need, and I feel, and I, we've said it to each other, and I feel like it's true. He and I are very much covered in the same cloth, just the opposite ends of that cloth.

You know, like, I don't care either. I'm not out to, like, make friends and make publishers like me and all that kinds. I'm here to tell you what I think. And I think that Jim is just like that. Jim's making, like, $11,000 a month on Patreon doing whatever he wants. And he's got a fervent fucking audience, and I love Jim Strong. And the reason I'm most excited to go to Screw Attack is to see him, because I haven't seen him in three years because he doesn't travel

and he and I are going to collaborate and we're going to have a good time together. I want to just interview him actually. Not even, yeah, that's it. You bring a best you see which reminds me pro Jared's going to be there and I hope to meet him because pro Jared is one of the dudes that I love his content so much. He's real nice. I loved him when he was at Screw Attack and like I loved him when he left Screw Attack and I hope that we can collaborate

with him someday because he's fucking legit. But going back to it with Kyle I think what he was saying was he was using kind of funny as the example of the sellouts that like that we we left to get be independent and then we sold out because like with our Patreon and all that stuff and I think that that's just it's an education thing of not knowing how these new worlds of crowdsource things and all this stuff works and also not working knowing what the term sellout means but that too but then but like I'm saying is it's just like

with so much integrations and so much stuff like that but it's like that's not understanding our audience and how much our audience understands what we're doing and gets that like when we get sponsored for stuff. It's a big deal to us. And it's not like we're selling out and like trying to we're not getting, we try to get integrations that are actually good for people. You know what I mean? And things that our audience actually cares about and all that stuff. And it's like once you realize all that, then it kind of. Yeah, no, I don't, I don't know him at all. So I don't, you know, I wish him the very best. I'd, I'd forgotten that that that happened. But leaving and starting a Patreon is just, just to be clear is the antithesis of selling out just want to just throw that out there.

Yeah. Words have meaning and all that. Is there anyone else that we're leaving out? I feel like there might be. Probably. Let's think about it. Jim Sterling was the only one I was thinking. Okay. Good.

All right, so before we move on to the next topic, we are going to have an integration for something that I think is cool, the Star Wars card trader. It's the official Star Wars digital trading card app available now exclusively on the app store and Google Play. Open trade and collect cards entirely online. Your favorite characters, vehicles, and locations from the Star Wars universe

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licensed Star Wars trading cards from the vintage era through today with new cards being released every day. All your favorite moments, locations, and characters. Download Star Wars card trader today at Topps.com slash kind of funny. That's T-O-P-P-S dot com

slash kind of funny. And we can confirm there is a water. There's a Wado card. I was going to say, I was going to tag that on there if you missed it. There is a Waddle card. You should have done like, make all your friends. Oh, me.

We can confirm that the... We can confirm that there's a lot of... Breaking news from the desk. Yes. All right. We are moving into the last topic. I got to go. Okay.

Colonies leave. Sorry, I have dinner plans. Very important. Very important. It's not important at all, but it's with a good... It's very important. It's a very good friend, and I don't want to cancel it or just moving around. So thank you for your patience and a pleasure having you here, Colin.

It's been good to see you guys, as usual. Always a pleasure. A good day to you. All right, Greg. Me and you, we're going to roll this. motherfucker out. First question. From Dallas.

Tell me of my final fantasy. Oh, geez. No, no. All right. So if you guys don't know every week on the Kind of Funny Gamescast, I like to have the last topic be reserved for your questions.

So you go over at kind of funny.com slash forums. Go to the GameCast forum. Leave some threads. Leave some like posts and stuff. Leave questions and comments and concerns. About the Kind of Funny Gamescast. We'll get to all of them at some point.

Dallas Rico. That's a great name. I'd love to hear what you all think about this fall's lineup across the three platforms. Do you think PS4 sales will suffer? This is what we keep, we were going back to after E3, right? The fact that Xbox actually has exclusives for the fall

whereas Sony does not. Maybe No Man Sky, probably not, but so no, you know what I mean? So what does that mean? I don't, I think Xbox

narrows the gap but doesn't surpass PlayStation here. And I don't think PlayStation's too worried about it because they're still going to sell PS4s. You still fallout, Batman will still carry over, Metal Gear will still carry over. And then on the other side, yeah, I mean, Xbox has Halo, you know what I mean, which is the big one.

But, like, Halo does only speak to a certain audience. And do those people already have Xboxes? Were they waiting for this? There's more Destiny content out now that's keeping those people happy and grabbing those people to come play. Like, we are in this interesting spot where it seems like, and I say seems with a shrug, right, that it's flip-flopped a bit here to where PlayStation is in front and PlayStation is where your friends are playing. so when the new multiplayer game, if Destiny's so popular, comes out, you play it there.

And so as we saw with PS3, right, like all the exclusives in the world didn't make them catch up and surpass 360. Eventually it did. Years and years and years later. But in terms of right now, this holiday season,

I don't think Sony's sweating it, and I don't think Microsoft has delusions of grandeur that they're going to run away with this holiday. They're definitely laying the groundwork to pull ahead, get past, you know, next year. Because next, like, that's what we kept talking about with E3 and then Gamescom. the fact that Microsoft has so many exclusives,

they're able to come out at E3, or before E3, and be like, hey, you're not going to hear about quantum break, you're not going to be about these other two games. We're going to talk about them at Gamescom. This E3 is going to be totally focused on what's coming out this fall and into the future

so that you know 2016 looks awesome, even though you know that 2015's end looks awesome as well. We have Tomb Raider. We have Halo. Exactly. I don't think PS4 sales are going to suffer because the people that are going to buy it are going to buy it anyways.

And I don't think that any of the exclusives would be the system, that people would like think that they are. You know, like even Uncharted 4, if it came out this holiday, I don't think that the, that's going to sell a bazillion systems. Sure. You know what I mean? Especially because there's a bazillion already out there.

Yeah. What I actually do think is I think Xbox sales are going to be pretty good because of all the people that decided to buy a PS4 that are, that were Xbox guys to begin with that are now going to be like, you know what, now it's time to buy an Xbox as well. There's no longer connect. The price is lower. Here's Halo.

Like, okay, you find, because. When you talk to somebody who doesn't have an Xbox 1, what they say is, oh, I need a game on it that I care about. You know what I mean? And this is, which is a weird thing to say, but when you think about the fact that if you're just buying third-party games, then PlayStation 4 can give you Batman Witcher, whatever, you're fine. But when you get

over there, you're building the same case now, right? And the fact of you have Sunset Overdrive, you have Halo, you have Tomb Raider, you have massive chalice, and the list goes on of games that are exclusive that you've heard enough good things about, where you're like, all right, times now, it's the holiday,

I'll ask for it. My wife will get it for me, so on and so forth. Yeah, exactly. And then, of course, there's Nintendo, which between Mario Maker, Yosh's Woolly World, and Star Fox, I'm excited. It's going to be a great time for me. Is this going to sell systems? Absolutely not. But it's going to have a good lineup of games, for sure.

I'm looking forward to Mario Maker. I just worry about how much I'm actually going to play it. You know what I mean? It feels like I worry about it being one of my usual, I'm super excited for this Nintendo game, and I get it and I play it for weekend and I'm done. And I don't want that to give a case. that the only time I'm ever going to actually make a level is going to be in let's plays that we're here. But that'll still be fun.

It's going to be fun, but it's like I'm not looking forward to Mario Maker to make Mario level. Sure, sure, sure, sure. I'm looking forward to playing others. Mario Platformers will forever be my favorite game. Right. Ever. So the fact that I'm now just getting that.

Unlimited. Oh, man. I'm going to be all about that. But see, like, that's my thing is like, it sounds good on paper. You know what I mean? Just like Little Big Planet does. But there has to be a finish to what's built in the game. and so once you have all the gold stars

or whatever the hell they do in Mario, red coins, blue fucking gems, a purple shoe, once you have all the collectibles that are built into the 100 levels that are on the CD, right? What's next? You know what I mean?

Like, is it just that now there's infinite worlds, but like, how do we vet the crap and what am I do? Why am I playing them over and over again? So there's a thing. Like, I love Mario Platformers. I specifically love Mario World. And I remember back in the day,

there was a huge thriving community for a ROM hack. with the Mario games, specifically Mario World. And this is to this day, one of the reasons the PSP will be one of my favorite systems of all time is because you can do emulation, you can do all this stuff, and you can play the ROM hacks. And all it was was expertly created Mario World Levels, but the thing that made it special was that they were full games. Like, there was thought put into the progression of the levels and the difficulty curve and all this stuff. With Mario Maker, I am a little concerned that we're just getting level, level, level, level, level.

It's not going to be actual experience, but what I am looking forward to is the creators that do do that. That have, download these 20 stages. They're a game. Yep, yep, yep, yep. And it's going to be interesting to see how Nintendo kind of supports that.

And if they do support collections of levels being a thing. Package, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or if I can sort of jump into a creator's thing and do play. That would be, that's going to be the thing that makes this go from, oh, wow, I really love this and I love playing this to, oh, my God,

this game is amazing. Yeah, yeah. So we'll see how that goes. Andrew Jeffries wants to know what our favorite gaming all-nighters from back in the day are. The one I immediately default to is whatever NCAA. NCAA will say 2000, 2001, where it must have been, let's see, I went to college in 2001. So then it must have been NCAA 2002, where I came home, it was building up to coming out. my best friend Poe

he went like a week before and bought his PlayStation 2 which was a huge deal because in my community of gamers or friends I was the gamer right and so Po always came over and played stuff at my house he's the guy who I was talking about like we passed the controller from Metal Gear and like that was like we discovered that together

finally buys this PS2 buys NCAA and then we both bought it that you know Tuesday or whatever then he came over and we played from like four o'clock in the afternoon until six in the morning the next day Like I remember opening the door to say goodbye to him And the sun was coming up, you know what I mean?

And we had it where I brought the TV out of my bedroom downstairs onto a card and table And he played on the TV and I played on the big screen. And then whenever one of us got to the big bowl game or the big rivalry game, the other would stop and hold off so that we could switch spots. So whoever had the big game was on a big screen TV and stuff. And we played like, yeah, some ridiculous amount of seasons that year. You know, because we played every game in our season. We were insane people.

You were crazy people. Yeah, yeah. Sounds about right. I mean, I have so many members. Like, this, this is a topic that I can go on forever. Yeah, it'd be a topic, right? Yeah, we should. We should probably do that at some point.

WrestleMania 2000, no mercy. Golden Eye, Mario Kart, all that stuff. But yeah, Smash Bros. I'm not even going to get into it. The amount of all nighters have had with that. Yeah. It doesn't even count. All four games.

There's been multiple ones. Right. The Tony Hawk games, like I have so many memories. Blockbuster games. Like, I feel like that alone could be a topic of games I've rented and just played all night. Sure. For three nights because the rental was not long. It's all you had to get it done.

But, but. the story that will always come to mind is Halo. So Halo 1, me and my friends beat together. This is me, Alfredo, and then my best friend, Curran. Like, they were way better than me. But we all really enjoyed playing Halo together. Halo 2 comes out November 9, 2004. We get there, we play it, beat it in one sitting together, co-op.

Halo 3 comes out. We do it again. And I will never forget it because this was a time. We were in my living room. Each of us had our own TV. We system linked it. Yeah. And we're just sitting next to each other playing co-op.

We played through the entire thing. And we were playing online with one other person doing co-op with us, one of Alfredo's friends. And I remember we were playing on, I don't know if it was legendary. It probably was legendary or at least heroic. So it was difficult. Hard, yeah. And I am not good. So I was definitely the like the guy that, just hide in the corner, let us get far.

And then when we hit a checkpoint, you can come out. And I was like, all right, I'm just enjoying this for the ride. And at the end of the game, spoilers for Halo 3. Um, there's a part where you get into Wardhawks, the vehicle. Yeah. And two people are driving. Two people are on the, the gun seats. And you're driving across this big thing in the sky and like, it's blowing up and parts of HALA are falling off and all this shit.

And at the end, there's a big ass jump. So, Kern and Alfredo's friend, jump and make the jump. Alfredo is driving. And I'm like shooting the gun and stuff. We're going. He's about to make the jump. And I accidentally hit the button to get out of the car. So I fall off at Alfredo just.

starts driving without me. And then he realizes I wasn't in the car. And then in real life, everyone just kind of looks at me. Like, what the fuck, man? I'm just like, just go without me, dude. Just go without me.

And they're like, are you sure? Like, dude, just go without me. Like, we got to finish the fight. And then it goes off. And in the cut scene,

it like cuts to the in-game cutscene. And you just see my character just explode. And it was just the best end. And it was then like seven in the morning. Yeah. We always look at each other. Like, that just happened. Yeah.

That was great. So yeah. those moments are just the best man. The other one for me was, I think it was the original Smackdown of PS1, but it might have been Smackdown. No, I must have been Smackdown on PS1. Where, uh,

so for some reason at like three in the morning, like, the party's, a part of sleepovers winding down. And my friend's like, let's just do an hour long Iron Man match. And we're like, all right.

And so four in the morning we play. And at the end, like, it's tied or whatever. And I think we went, it gives you like one overtime or whatever they call it. And we didn't finish. And so at the end,

it was like, it was like the most like, am I dreaming right now? Because it was just a screen that said it awarded one of us to win and it was like Vince McMahon has declared that this person won and it's like what?

Like is this, we had never heard of this feature? This was never in anything we had like since I've told that story and people are like yeah that happened to me too but it's like in such a weird thing and eventually the game is like fuck it.

And you're even playing SmackDown. You're playing some other game. Vince McMahon just decided you won. The Mario Kart screw job. Yeah. Oh my God. All right. Who's this dude?

Thomas Sinclair. Hi. owner of the Sinclair gas station. Is it worth it to finally make the jump to current gen? Which system wins for the late adopters? For sure, it's worth it to make the jump. Yeah. I mean, I'm playing to the audience, but PlayStation, you know what I mean?

Like, I would say, I honestly do feel like at this point, it's whatever. Whatever one you got, you'll be happy with. You know what I mean? I do think that PlayStation seems to have the leg up. And again, this is my personal interest in terms of what's out right now, like, you know, let alone for Uncharted next year, you know what I mean? but what I'm excited about, like everything I listed today, right?

So Witcher, Batman, dying light, right? And her story is a PC exclusive. So those three games right there, you can get on Xbox 1, no problem. Massive Chalice, state to decay or Xbox 1 exclusive. They're awesome, you know what I mean, in terms of consoles.

But then, yeah, I mean, just, I like the interface of PlayStation 4. I like how it runs. I like the community. Granted, I covered it for so long. It's second nature to me. You know what I mean? So it's a weird question.

But like, if Halo and Tomb Raider do something for you right off the bat, then there you go. but uncharted collections this year still you know what I mean uncharted's next year which is awesome I'd love to see what the other first parties are doing but like yeah you really couldn't go wrong it's like I always used to answer this question

I still should I guess with the thing I'm just like where are your friends like wherever your friends are playing that's where you want to be so just worry about that more than anything I do think it's a fine time to jump yeah yeah I mean too I feel like you need to and you know if Alfredo was here I know exactly what he'd say because he is an Xbox guy through and through

but he bought a PS4 because early on that was the answer yeah you know like everyone was saying that, but at the end of the day, his friends play Xbox. Yeah. Still. So he plays both constantly,

but Xbox is where his shit's at. So, yeah. Honestly, for me, it's like, they both seem great. They both have lineups where both systems have some game.

I'm like, fuck, I want to play that. Right. You know? If PlayStation have things like Ori, I'd be like, yep,

I don't need to play it. And Cuphead. Yeah. Nope, that's coming Xbox. So this is going to happen. Yeah. No,

that's the big thing is like, there's just such parody there. You know what I mean? where it's like, we have the PS4 out there. I was trying to get us on to one PS4 in the living room where Colin and I have the same,

our accounts are on one unit so we have to keep disconnecting it. Then I thought through it, the problem more, and I'd put it on a second system instead of my primary system, so now my primary system's never hooked up so I can ever remote download anything

so I switch it out, and then I come out there and Collins disconnected it to put back in the other system. I just recover your profile on this other system. Like it's so easy, and it's also like,

well, hold on, the Xbox is turned on at all. You're only turning on this other thing to play Netflix. The Xbox can do that too. Why don't you just turn that on? You know what I mean? Yeah.

Plus, Xbox Skype is awesome. We use that all the time now. It's just, yeah, it's fucking rad. So if you like Skype, get an Xbox.

Yeah, that's the one to go for. Get that connect on that Xbox Skype ready to go. At Napier 6. What do you want to go back and play, but you know you never will? Oh, man. That's like half the games that have come out in existence.

I mean, I would love to go back. And I mean, like, this is not, I'm sure how he means the question, but I'll get to more of his. thing. I would love to go, I would love to only play DC Universe online. I would love to be so dedicated to that that's all I play. But the problem is there's so, it's such a time sync, especially now at end game where it's just raids and shit for me, where it's like, I'm more

than 500 hours into that game. And it's just like, I know when I, it would inevitably, I'm going to stumble off the wagon here and get back into it. That's a month and a half of my life of just nightly grinding and trying to get exobits and bites, which you can't do right now. It's like in terms of the game I've already, I'd love to get back to. That's one of them. I could go out there right now and read off the, uh, the list of all the games that are still in rap. You know what I mean?

There's so many games out there's still in plastic. It's just like, sunset overdrive. Like I love Insomniac. I love Drew and Marcus who made, there were the guys in charge

of that game. I've never played it. Like I played it at a preview events and stuff and I was like, this is cool. But yeah. It's not like I've never actively

like I need to sit down and play sunset overdrive. You know what I mean? Like that's just not how it is for me. Yeah. For me it's like the majority of the Kingdom Heart spin-off games.

Yeah. It's like I'm sure I'd like them. Sure. And I hate on them blindly without actually playing them and knowing how good they are. Because I know a lot of them are really good. Yeah. And just because they don't have a number in front of it doesn't mean that they're any worse than one and two. And the Peacewalker, I think, is the glaring answer for me where it's just like I'm not going to go back and play.

But you can just now you've got to, you'll be fine. Once you get Phantom Pain, it's going to be fine. I'm just going to be in it. Tam, I can't fucking wait for Fan of Pay. I can't hear that. I'm so excited. I think about Phantom Pain. Every day I wish it was Fan of Pain Day.

And like now we're so close that we're starting to booktrane. may be around it. And I'm like, well, I'm bringing them a fucking thing. I'm not going out. I'm not going out. I'm going back to my room after our commitments. Maybe bringing the games, the game screen I have with me to play

wherever the hell of my commitment is. You know what I mean? I'm so scared about that game, man, because I play metal gear differently than you. I just play for the story and I just want the campaign. That's there. You can do that. I know, but like, I'm working from everything I've heard about five.

It's that it sounds so big and so open. And I'm like, I just want linear. Just go. There's a whole tab that says, story. Just play those missions. Nothing else. Do I get quiet then? I can't spoil any story things as part of my NDA and embargo information.

Fine, Greg. I got you, Konami. Wesley Bray, if you were in charge of Sony, how would you make Morpheus success? I would not do it. Your livelihood depends on it. I would show them the reasons it's not going to be a huge deal. Let's not do this, please. I would say, like, literally, my thing with how to make Morpheus successful and how to make money off Morpheus would be all right, cool. This tech is cool and it's so close, but it's not there yet.

We can let Oculus and HoloLens and everybody else do this. And what we'll do is PlayStation 5 will come bundled with Morpheus from the get-go. Like, I feel like that's their problem. I feel like they're in another move situation where it's like, what's going to happen

is they're going to launch with a bunch of cool shit. It's going to be really cool. Everybody's going to like, oh, I can't, this is a nice thing. I use VR and I like it. I think it's cool. I like what I'm doing in these experiences. I don't know if I'd like to play it forever, blah, blah.

all that aside it's going to be and I'm being generous 10% of the PlayStation 4 owners by that very very generous 5 between 1 and 5 are really going to adopt this thing yeah and so then immediately every fucking developer is going to be like oh it's cool and it's great but like we won't

need to make games that are making money that can go Xbox 1 to PS4s and PC so that's not how we're going to do it you know what I mean so unless shoo in all his wisdom is back there right now with the first parties being like, cool, I want you guys to make

these games. Numbers don't matter. Get a team on this. Let's do something awesome. I feel like they're going to come out and it's going to be dreams. It'll be this big thing that'll be really cool that not a lot of people are going to play. And then it's going to be a bunch of other games that people aren't going to really play. Yeah. And then it'll be stuff like Bioshop Infinite's Move

Integration. Yeah. Where it's like, all right, cool. You know, this thing has this. And then there's like three levels. Like the next Batman or Rock Steady game will have three pre-order PSN things that you put on your Morpheus for and do things. It's like, what are you doing? I mean, you're right.

It needs to be a pack in with the system, and it can't be this system. It needs to be the next system. It's way too late to pack it in now. It needs to be something, and this is where this will never happen. But if you want it to be a success, you need to partner with Microsoft in some way. Get it on the Xbox one as well, because that's when it's an everybody wins situation where the only way that this is going to be a thing is if the developers can make games that work on both.

And third-party games can get involved. And it's not having to choose in this whole ecosystem of peripherals and bullshit that no one cares about, but that's not going to happen. Yeah. That's the thing is like, yeah, like, if everybody could just agree to work with Oculus and have it plug into their console, you know what I mean, which I know is impossible, but... But that would be the answer, man.

Like, Oculus has been doing this. Just support it. Yeah. Make that a thing. Yeah. All right. Final question. It's the final question.

I love looking at some of these names and just trying to consider how to possibly pronounce it. Okay. We got Dabominic. It's like Dominic, but like... He's more of a bomb. Daubomynic. Daubonik. He's DeBominic.

His name's Dominic, but he's DeBomynic. But he's DeBombe. How often do you check the hours you spend with a single game? I wish it was easy. Yeah. That's the thing is that every game makes it a little bit different and more difficult. And like Batman, I would have no idea how many hours I put in, but I upload all my stuff to the cloud just for fear that I was going to lose all my progress. So I put 50 hours into Batman.

You know what I mean? And that's just because I get to see that thing. I wish all games had it very easy. easy. I wish all games played by the same rules. Because, like, the Witcher... Time moves differently. When you suspend your PlayStation 4, the Witcher, at least at launch, kept counting.

So I remember looking at it, like, somebody asked me how long, and I'm like, oh, cool, yeah, I'll check it. And I was like, oh, man, it says I've been playing for three days, and I've had the game for... That's impossible. This is broken. You know what I mean? It's like, come on. Yeah, that shit's weird. I'm fascinated with game time. Like, I'm cons and percentage, too. Yeah, yeah. If a game tells you the percent you're through it. I hate it when it's like... I like the percentage of the,

campaign. Yeah. And then, or I want a separate percentage for collectibles and all this that's what Batman does really well

is when you go to jump into Batman, it's like, here's your safe game over Gregie and it's like 10% or whatever. But that's 10%

of everything. And then when you go in, you can then look at your radial wheel and see you've done 40% of the story and 2% of the Bidler, you know what I mean?

Like you get to see it broken down where you understand where that number's coming and that's cool. And then when you go to New Game Plus you're getting like 112%

I'm like yeah. See that's just great But I always remember with games like Donkey Kong Country or Crash Bandicoot where it's say you're 30% done just because you haven't got all the collectibles and all. No, it's bullshit. I'm done with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But then there's games like Uncharted that I remember I check constantly. Every save point I would save and then every time I decided I have a save point. I would save and then go back to the gameplay and then go back into the saved because that's one it would update the percentage so you want to see how it is. Yeah, we're weird. Gaming makes people very OCD.

It comes a badge of honor, right? And I mean, that's why I know my pat-upon, you know, game play time on two. And then, I guess I don't even know it. But I remember bragging about it. And, like, now with Metal Gear, I'm always like, well, like, in the Let's plays, I'm like, this saves says I've only played 67 hours, but you know I played 90. And my Mario Golf, 85 hours, you know what I mean? Like, because it's just like you're, you know to another gamer that speaks volumes of

like, how much are you really into this game? Like, how much you really know about this game? Well, it's something I love about Smash Brothers. and it's just the gift that keeps on giving because even the, even like, melee had an achievement system. Yeah. And like, they just notify you about a bunch of random stats.

Sure. So you play, it's like, congratulations. You played for a hundred hours. Like, oh, cool. Nice, yeah. I did. Well, that was the thing even with like, you remember Burnout Paradise.

Like, that was what they did so well. Like, all right, you smash like a fucking cone. It's like, all right, three hundred more of these guys. Like, oh, geez, all right. You know, I only won a one out of 40 races. You're like, oh, man, there's so much to do. Because, like, that's what I was talking about with, like, why the Witcher got me

way it did, why Batman did, like, why anything really Questbase is getting me lately, it's just like, I feel like if I can only chip away at something for a few hours, minutes, you know what I mean? Depending on what it is, I like to feel progress is being made. And that's why I would like, to Collins point earlier with the Witcher, right, is the fact that

there's so much to do in the Witcher that it feels like you're not making progress. You're not doing stuff, yeah. All right, guys. So, thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring that topic. Squarespace is how we made kind of funny.com. That's true. I'm in love with how it looks and simple it was to make. Nick Sarpino did it himself.

He did. And he's not the brightest guy in the world. He's not the brightest bulb. He isn't. But he made it all look the same on every site. That's one of my sweetest memories of that first week when we were getting all that stuff working and how impressed he was. They were, look, it looks like this on the website and it looks like this on your phone. The iPad and all this stuff, so that's great.

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and you get a free domain if you sign up for a year. Start your free trial site today with no credit card required at Squarespace.com. When you decided to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use the offer code, Kind of Funny Games, to get 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace. Build it's beautiful. This is my idol animation.

I like it. It's a good idol animation. You should probably do something interesting. You know what we got to do? What? We got to figure out how to fucking capture the N64 again. Yeah. I want to play No Mercy so bad. I think about that every night too. God, you have an interesting life, Greg. It's just, yeah, it's a weird life, all right.

Yeah. I either got to get Metal Gear, we got to be able to capture no mercy. It's one or the other. It's going to come down to that. Kevin, figure it out. No, but yeah, but that'll be laggy then. Remember, we bought that box that puts it through, and we'll talk about this later. We have to figure it out.

I was saying figure out the Metal Gear thing. Can you put on your solid snake? I should probably just give up. I should just admit that I can't wait until August, and I should start playing ground zero is not right now. To start, get 100% of ground zeros. It's too late, man. I need it.

Kevin comes with a good point. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the kind of funny games cast. The first and last ever episode 27. Next week, guess what? First and last ever, episode 28. It's going to come. And then 29 and then 30, because that's how numbers work, unless you're final

fantasy. And then you add a bunch of weird numbers in between. It's going to be episode 29-2. Yeah. Oh, don't tell me, Greg. Should I do that at some point? No, don't do that. Save it for that, you know, because if we're coming up on like a milestone and we're earlier late, then you can do it.

That's what you do it. It's like we get to 199 dash two because we're not ready for 200. Just out of duke. Duske. Yeah, Prologis. Duo Decombe. Dogeum. God damn it, Final Fantasy.

God damn it! I used to call it Dukakum just to piss off at Ryan Clements because he loved that shit. You can cut it, Kevin. Nah, you can keep it going, Kevin. Let's just do a game over Gregic show. What's up, everybody. Welcome!