Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Goodbye Kinda Funny Xcast - The Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Mike, Parris, Gary, and Alanah sit down to celebrate the entire run of the Kinda Funny Xcast and talk about how Kinda Funny will cover Xbox going forward. Run of Show - 00:00:00 - Start 00:03:00 - Gary Review’s Kinda Funny Helldivers Players 00:13:30 - Alanah is Here! 00:17:02 - The Final Xcast 00:19:42 - How We’ve Felt About Xbox the Last Year 00:27:45 - How Important is this Year’s Showcase? 00:32:30 - Alanah’s Time with Xbox the Last Year 00:36:00 - Mike’s Highlights 00:50:00 - Our Favorite Xbox Games OF ALL TIME 01:08:49 - How We’ll Cover Xbox in the Future Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody, and welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Wednesday, May 1st, 2024. I'm one of your show host, Snowbike, Mike, and today I'm joined by the X-Cast crew for the final Kind of Funny X-Cast. You're home for all things Xbox here, Kind of Funny. Of course, I am joined by Alana Pierce and my two gaming dads, Gary Witta and Paris Lily. I'll start with you, Alana, since I haven't seen you in a while. Hi, Alana Pierce. How are you? Doing good. How are you doing?

I'm wonderful. I get to hang out with you and the gang and you know that's a big deal to me. And we get to say goodbye to the Xcast together, which I was so lucky enough to have you and Gary start with me. So, you know, I'm pretty blessed here today. A little sad to see it go, but it all makes sense.

I understand the change. I watch the video. It all makes sense to me. But yeah, it's just such a beautiful green set. I won my green shirt. This is actually my portillo shirt, but I realized I accidentally wore it backwards.

But the intent was that. Oh, you're the best, Alana. Thank you so much. And yeah, it's been a lot of growth, a lot of fun, a lot of discovery, and a lot of great moments that we've got to share together. So thank you for doing that with me, Alana. And I have a lot to talk to you about because you've done some cool stuff. But, of course, I'll introduce my two gaming dads who are in the building today in sunny San Francisco.

Paris, Lily, you're here with us. Yes, of course. I mean, it's the last X-cast. I had to fly up and be a part of this. And I'm excited to be with Gary. Oh, come on. It's been way too long. surprised. I didn't know you were coming in. It's been way too long. And, you know, again, you're all,

family. I'm highly, I'm highly appreciative of being a part of this over the past few years. So, of course, I say goodbye in style. You know, we're happy to have you. It's right. Gary Witter, you're back on the desk. It's been a couple of weeks. People have been looking for you. How could I, I mean, I've been, I've been on sabbatical. Yes. But, you know, how could, how could I miss this? And it's funny, even though someone will correct me, I'm sure, my memory is terrible. I want to believe this is true. As much as this is the last Xcast, it's also, I think, an Xcast of firsts, because I think this might be the first time that all three of us have been in studio. Paris is usually back there. No. Have you been?

Starfield. Starfield, that's right, because that was also a very special episode. But certainly, no, but we did an Xcast after. We had the jackets. That's right. Oh, yeah, we all had the big stuffy, big puffy jackets. And it was hot. But I want, I feel confident the first time that all four Xcast hosts past and present have been together on the same shot. Maybe that, I think, I think that's correct. I think that's false, too. Oh, really? I also think that's false. Yeah. God damn it. Because, because, because again, let's go down memory lane. First of all,

the day Alana DM'd me and go, hey, would you like to be on X-Cast? It scared me because I go, wait, did I do something wrong? What happened? Why is Alana DM me? Yeah, so we can bully you. Yeah. But you were out. So that I came on to replace you. But then there was a second time, you were going to be out. but then you wind up being on and all four of us were together. But I wasn't officially a part of the show at that time. But I am very glad, Mike,

that we were able to get everyone. Obviously, the only thing it would be even better than this would be if Alana was actually here in the studio. But four of us together like this. You know, I might have done it if I had known it was an option. No one like even really suggested that to me. I could have. I just asked Alana.

I was like, can you be here at 11? And she said, Mike, I'll be here. I said, that's great. That's all I asked them. The point is we are all. all here. Yes. Yep.

I'm very glad for it because it represents the future, sorry, represents the past and the present, if not the future, because there is no fucking future, but we're all here. That's, and that's what's important.

Okay, well, we're going to talk a little bit about the future. There will be a future. I can promise you that, Gary. There will be a little bit. But, of course, I do want to go around the horn

because we've had all of us here on the desk do some really cool stuff. And I'm really looking at Alana and Gary, who we haven't got to talk to it a little bit. So, Gary, I'll start with you really quick. Ask me about hell divers. You're wearing the T-shirt.

I know I lost you. You went on spread democracy all around the super earth planets. What's going on? You all good? It's funny. I was going through my wardrobe this morning and I was thinking,

what could I wear that would, you know, honor the X-Cast? And I've got a couple of nice ex-cast pieces of apparel, merch, you know. I was going to wear my X-Cast shirt. And then I thought, no, why not wear a shirt celebrating a game that isn't even on the Xbox? And probably never will be

as much as I would love them. to bring it to the Xbox. I don't know, it feels like a long, a long shot. But yeah, it's, um, it's been hell dive as like just nothing.

But it is my, as I said earlier, people were watching games daily, 100% game of the year for me. I don't care how early in the year it is. I don't care what else comes out. It's my game of the year. I,

it's probably in my top 10 games I've ever played. I absolutely love it. I've got hundreds of hours in it. I play with a regular group. It's one of those few games I've actually, I stopped playing shooters, a while because I'm just not that good at them, especially competitive ones, but because it's co-op and because I have a slightly easier time with third person than first, and because it's

just so good, I've played it so much that I actually have built up a pretty good skill foundation. Like a lot of shooter games, if I'm in your squad, you're probably carrying me in hell divers without trying to sound arrogant. Unless you're a super sweaty, try hard, like mega, like elite squad, you'd be happy, any squad would be happy to have me. I'm a good player. everyone would be happy to have you on the squad. And in fact, as you know, I was the commander, commanding officer for yesterday's four-hour celebratory Helldivers game that we played with Greg and Joey and Fran.

You were. Do you want to give me a little update on that? You said you had some kind of field intel you wanted to give some feedback to the team. As their commanding officer, I feel like I have to give an after-action report on those I played with. It's my first time playing with each of them. Where do you want me to start? I mean, the good, the bad, the ugly.

You know what I mean? Well, so I'll just go through him player by player. Greg, I was surprised. He's very good. Okay. Not necessarily the best in terms of skill, but the one thing that he does do, and this is where a lot of hell diver squads fall down, Greg actually plays the objectives. Like he does what you're supposed to.

He's not running around over here looking for stuff, doing secondary stuff that isn't as important or looking for samples. He's actually on the objective. He represented, I was a senior ranking officer on the scene. He called me Admiral the whole time because I was the highest ranked player. and if I asked him to do something, he would do it without question or complaint and he would succeed in getting it done.

So what more can you ask for from a Hell Divers squad mate? Someone who knows how to play, who plays the objective, and gets the job done. I would give Greg a solid thumbs up. Okay. Now give me someone that didn't get a thumbs up. Well, talking about complaints, we've got to talk about Fran and Rebecca.

Okay. Let me start with the good. Solid player knows how to play. There was actually one moment where I had a charger, because we mostly played bugs. We did bots at the end. We mostly played bugs, and I had a charger charging down on me. I had no way to, I can get out of its way, but sooner or later, it's going to get me.

And I had a 500K bomb. I wanted to drop on it. People who play Hell Divers, you'll often know the problem with a 500K bomb is a charge will often move out of the way before it can impact and you'll miss it. Brand saw that I was dialing up a 400K, hit the charge. This is exactly what you're supposed to do. Hit the charger with a stun grenade, froze it in place, 500K fucking bullseye. it, killed it. I literally texted Fran after and said that that stun grenade was clutched,

dude. I was so happy with what he did. That's the good. I've never in my life played a squad game with someone who complains as much as Fran. Constant, constant complaints. Oh, I've lost my gun. Did somebody take my gun? Oh, I need a stim. I'm out of ammo. I've got no supplies. What's going on? Why you just on and on and on and on? He never stops complaining. for playing the division with him. Seriously, does that boy know how to complain? I was going to make an IGN joke, but to be honest, Fram wasn't like that to work with.

But I would love to pretend he was. He should be. I'm sure Fran is very professional to work with, but in a co-op game, endless aggravation. Blap, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh my God. But at the end of the day, again, he did the job.

I would have Fran on my squad, but I would just say to anyone else who's playing with him, just be prepared to mute him or put up with a lot of shit in your ear. But he will do the job. Solid player. I appreciate the after battle report. I needed to hear about it. I'm glad that you had fun with it.

Let's check in with Alana. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What is this Joey Newell erasure? Oh, you're not going to get, okay, you're going to give Joey Newell some of them. I thought we'd give some good answer to that. I got to say, Joey Noel, surprise MVP. Oh, good. Nice.

I went in as the highest rank as the person who's got them by far the most hours in the game, thinking, well, I'm going to be the kill leader every mission. And I watched for about half of them. You know who the kill leader was on the other half? Joey fucking Noel. I would go to war with her any day of the week. She's an excellent player. Wow.

And she at the end, she'd be like, I don't know how I got that many kills, but I don't care how you got him either. You got them. Yeah. Joey Noel's a game. Very impressive. She's got to create that. So that's, that's the end.

Can I ask Gary, are you still cheating with your orbital strikes? Wow. Well, first of all, it's not cheating. any more than anyone who plays, you know, plays, you know, Warcraft with mods or uses a guide. But the point is, I'm in agreement, you're being trolled, but are you still cheating? Well, the thing is, I don't know if you tried it yourself, but like, it doesn't actually work. If you do map your stratagems to the stream deck, which is what people have been doing,

so up down, left, left, left, up down, you just press a button. Oh, so you are cheating. Excuse me. The point is, it doesn't actually work. I don't know if they like, if the Helldivers devs actually like patched it out or if it's just not as good as advertised. But it doesn't really work. So I've just gotten, I have strategy here. I want my ship.

I practice every day. Give my thumbs a good work out. I'm actually pretty good at calling him down now. Are you putting the inputs just right next to each other? Are you giving a half a second delay in between each input? Because if the inputs are all being hit at the same time, it's probably not completely. No, no, no. That's all set up correctly.

There's something fiddly going on with it. But I'm not even going to try to fix it because in the interim, I've gotten, good enough at just manually dialing them up, but I'm now happy to do that. I think what happened is democracy said absolutely no, Gary. Yeah, I agree. It's anti-democratic. And the funny thing is, just about that, and I'm sure anyone who's played hell dial-dilers would agree, when I first saw that gameplay mechanic, like, really, you just do up down,

down, left, right? Like, how basic is that? When you're under fire and a lot of shit and you're trying to dial in something that's going to save you and suddenly your fingers are panicking, it's actually brilliant. It's really, really a good part of the game. of dance dance revolution in the middle of a wall. Yeah, except if you make a wrong move, you get shot in the head. Right.

Can I interject? Can I interject very quickly? And I do want you to go to Alana. This is why I miss Gary. Uh-huh. Yeah. We're on the final episode of the kind of funny X-Cass, and we've spent the first 15 minutes talking about a PlayStation game.

We missed it. Well, let me, okay. So let's pivot it to, because I brought it up earlier, do you think there's a chance that game ever comes to Xbox? There's always a chance, of course. But do you, a realistic chance, though? I don't personally think so. Because I kind of feel like cats and dogs have been living together since MLB the show came to X-Gots.

Yeah, that's true. Everyone was like, what? That's a Sony game. I mean, they did talk about earlier today on Kind of Funny Games Daily. They talked about how it is one of the top-selling PlayStation games in ways of earning, you know, U.S. dollars of all time. I want to add an addendum to that, though. Add more money by going on Xbox. I read a stat that I don't know if you covered it on Games Daily.

It's worth mentioning, yes, seventh most successful top-selling, published by PlayStation. did you just put my drink on a coaster for me? That's a first. Thank you, Barrett. First, sorry, seventh most bestselling game on PlayStation. But that does factor in PC sales. If you take PC out and you only count PlayStation sales,

it's not even in the top 20. So PC is really carrying the weight here. But good for Sony either way. It's a brilliant, brilliant game. And if I were Phil Spencer, I might be making a call saying, come on, what are we going to do to get this on Xbox? Well, he did make a public comment.

Did he? Basically, for lack of a better term, warning it on Xbox. I just would rather keep my expectations and check that it's not coming. So if it does, it's a pleasant surprise. Yeah. But I already told you, I haven't played it enough to be as much of the next project. We got to get you on board.

I know. I got to play with us. And my thing with the MLB example, that was such an isolated incident because the MLB was definitely holding licensing right, it's over Sony's head of like, hey, there's this subscription service we can put our game on and get more people interested in baseball? Absolutely. Do that. Or you're not able to make this game anymore. So, yeah, it's like a weird, weird one. And of course, Alana, I want to check in with you because it has been quite some time since we had you. Of course, when everybody

remembers, you left to go off to Sony Santa Monica to do great things. You've done some incredible things while you've been gone. You have an incredible YouTube channel. You live stream on Twitch, which always makes me smile. But you did creator class boxing. You also just hosted the game developer choice awards as well. So you've done always incredible things. So I wanted to check in with you, Alana. What cool stuff have you done? What do you look back and smile about? You know, this show, I miss the show, of course. Miss talking you guys every week. It was so much fun. Yeah, I mean, I've had a good couple of years, tough couple of years. You know, I've got family women who have cancer

and so there's like the ups and downs to everything and that's really what got me through the boxing match was knowing that my stepdad who was in hospital at the time would be watching. So that's been like honestly a lot of my life over the past two years is like, you know, you keep going, you deal with personal stuff, but certainly a lot of wins

along the way as well. I'm working on something really cool right now that I can't talk about yet that maybe I'll be able to talk about in a month. It's a film that I'm a part of that's been very difficult to work. through while also doing full-time work, but I'm kind of try to keep my life exciting, I guess. Also, I wanted to apologize if it looks like I'm looking down, my PC died yesterday, and as soon as

it happened, I was like, I fight Greg Miller's cackling in my ankle somewhere in the background. So I'm having to use a laptop to dial over the show. But yeah, things have been good. Thanks to have me back. Of course, Alana. We're happy to have you back. And we're happy to look back on some awesome memories from the kind of funny Xcast that brought us all together and brought you the audience of best friends to come in here and celebrate a little bit

of the green team with the X-Cast. So we'll jump right into that because, of course, this is the Kind of Funny Gamescast each and every weekday. We get together to talk about all the biggest reviews, previews, topics, and video games live on YouTube, Twitch, and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, please consider supporting us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon and on YouTube to get all of our shows ad-free. Watch us as record them live and get your daily exclusive show.

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ORA Frames, but we'll tell you all about that in just a little bit. Let's get to the topic of the show, which is us. I just noticed that we've already been rebranded. This is game cast down here. Well, why don't we kick that off? Of course, you can see. Is we no longer on the Xcast? We're on the Xcast. In our

hearts for on the Xcast. But of course... There it is. Okay, thank you. Today, can we at least have it for the last hour? We get to some dignity for fuck's sake. Showcase the new games cast look, which we will talk about of how we going to cover Xbox news in the future. But you have seen throughout the start of this week, the new games cast updated look brought to you by Andy Cortez. He's so talented and creative and

amazing. But you will see PlayStation Xbox, even Nintendo, all have their own special backdrops alongside the normal games cast look. So some new fresh rebranding going on. But we'll talk about that in a little bit. Guys, let's talk about some great memories. In Paris, we already checked in with these two. So you get to kick us off. When we look back on the kind of funny Xcast, What are some of the things you will celebrate, you'll remember, you'll cherish with us? Oh, man, there's a lot, actually. I feel very fortunate to be a part of this, number one. Like I alluded to before, I started off just being a listener.

I was just watching listening every Saturday, and I would comment on Twitter every now and again about a show. I think it was one, Gary and Alana were talking about, I think this is when all that Bethesda stuff went down, and you were all saying, oh, they're going to make everything. They're not going to make it exclusive. They're going to put it on there. And I was disagreeing.

And I remember we had an online conversation about that. Then I came on as a guest shortly after that, came on again a second or third time. I can't remember. And then obviously, once Alana left, I came on permanently in 2021. But my memories is just every week, the three of us being able to get together. And we just have fun. It's just laugh. Like, Gary, same, Gary being Gary, like just now.

just cracks me up every time. I love it. That's why I was saying I was missing you so much. I love being on here. You trolling me about, you know, whatever influencer thing I might get online and why you didn't get it. It's a small price to pay for all the free shit you get, Paris. I'd happily put up with a few mocking posts from you if I got all that free shit. Yeah, I freaking love it. Yeah.

It truly brings a smile to my face every time you say something. Can I ask you guys a question as like, I feel like I'm like very, very, far away from the journalist space these days and I'm like even miss half the news. How have you all felt about the last 12 months of Xbox in general? Like about, you know, since their showcase in June last year, like how have you felt about the last year of next year? Do you want me to kick that off? Take it off, please.

We've talked about it in a bunch. Yeah. And then I definitely want to hear what Gary has to say on this. I'm lukewarm on it, to be honest with you. I see some of the changes and things that that have happened in the last 12 months as being mandatory just because of where the industry is headed. But as far as Xbox, like, what was the catchphrase we've had for the longest? Xbox is the best value in gaming, blah, blah, blah, that whole thing, right?

But you've got to have the games to go with it. And they've had a lot of missteps over this past 12 months with the games. Like, we were just talking about this big Starfield update that's coming out. Great. But a lot of people are probably going to say that's what the game should have been at launch, right? Um, we've heard repeatedly. I think Matt Booty the first time you ever said it was, I don't know, kind of funny. We want to get to a place where we have a major game coming every quarter and they've not been able to do that yet.

Obviously the red, what happened with Redfall and the, you know, that was about 12 months ago. So they've not hit their stride yet with the amount of studios that they've had, this whole drama with Activision and that acquisition. And we've spent so much time talking about and instead of talking about fun games that we want to play, that's the lukewarm part of it. But I think when I look beyond this in the past 12 months, I see them setting things up for the future that does excite me, but we're not there yet. And I think the biggest problem with Xbox has been is they're just not there yet.

They're close, but they're never where we want them to ultimately be. And I know when we talk about moments and everything, again, a year ago, Phil Spencer coming on here and not being in the greatest mood and being pretty upfront and honest about where things are. And I think that kind of set the tone of what we've seen over these past 12 months with them. They're close, but maybe the showcase will finally be the time where they get over the hump. I would, as an aside, say that was one of my favorite episodes of the show.

I watched that whole thing. And the way that you guys were like very honest with Phil without being overly aggressive, like it was kind of a bleak time to have that conversation. He was really honest, but you were asking the right question. Like, I felt like, I don't think anyone else could have handled that in the way that kind of funny did. I feel like you guys just absolutely nailed the handling of that conversation of like really asking the important questions without, you know, being rude unprofessional. And it totally makes sense that to me that filled trusted you, the X cost and kind of funny with that conversation. And there's a little flashback to me in my white Paris phase.

I was never able to pull that off. I can't quite put my finger on why, but I was never able to pull off that, you know, as my. as much as I would have liked to. I was bored for a long time. No, you're absolutely right. That actually would be one of my favorite memories that Phil twice now. He's done this. Once on animal talking, he came on my talk show after they had to bump the release of Halo Infinite. And it was a tough time. I thought he was going to pull that interview, but he didn't. He came on and he talked about it live and he was very frank about it. And I give him credit for that. And he did it again after Redfall. And, you know, that was a time when the vibes were very much off.

Remember the Lcast? We started calling it the Lcast? Because we were putting up too many L's. Yeah, it was. But again, Phil, to his credit, unlike a lot of CEOs will get closer to what he really would like to say. Obviously, you have to be, you can't be completely frank because, you know, you'll tank the stock price or whatever. But like he gets as close as you possibly can, as you reasonably can to saying, like,

this is what's really going on and this is how I really feel. And he was apologetic. He was contrite. He did seem deflated, right? It was a rough time to be Phil spent. I can't imagine there are too many rough times to be Phil Spencer, but this was one of them. And again, I have a lot of respect for him coming on and being very frank.

And he did make a very astute observation. And this goes to the bigger picture of where we've been over the last year. I personally think that one of the reasons why Xbox continues to lag behind PlayStation is the Xbox One Generation just was such a ball and chain. It's still dragging that anchor. It was such a drag on the Xbox brand. They made so many fundamental miscalculations about the Xbox One that it was going to be this all-in-one entertainment machine,

that it was going to be reliant on Connect. They were going to force you to pay an extra $100 for this thing that you didn't want and didn't actually work. That it crushed, you know, it got slammed against the PlayStation 4, which was a great machine. And not just that, the observation that Phil made that I thought was very smart, is that it was the worst generation to make that kind of mistake because it was the first generation where people seriously started to build

digital game libraries and get invested in an ecosystem. And you know, once you're in the ecosystem, you're in it. And like you can't, it's very hard to pull back from that. And I think what they're doing with the X and the other phrase we, at least I was Series S, the best console for more people, for most people.

It really is an amazing little boxes series S. It's one of the best things at Xbox. I love that. It's incredible. And it's one of the best things that Xbox Microsoft have ever done. But they're still trying to catch up all this ground. They lost the last generation, and they're doing it in a way, which is very different, right?

Heavily invested in game pass. This whole thing of like, we don't care where the games go as long as you play them, play them in the cloud, play them on your phone, play them on other consoles. Some of their games are coming to PlayStation 5 now. It's a very different strategy. I still personally have faith in Phil Spencer and the future of Xbox, but it's been, to answer Alana's question, I think the last 12 months have been very much a mixed bag and I think the future is still up in the air.

I agree what you're saying. I'm sorry, Lana, but just to add on what you're saying, and that that was the key point of what he said during that interview, talking about losing the digital library age, which was the previous generation. And he added on to that to say, which I think is very eye-opening as we see where the industry is headed, he said that it wouldn't matter if Starfield was an 11 out of 10. That is not going to help them catch up in the hardware race where they are. Because they lost that digital library generation, everyone already has their investment in their ecosystem. So to expect, no one's going to abandon the ecosystem they have and start fresh over in a

new one. Yeah, it's simply not going to do that. It's a hassle. Like, I'm an Apple guy, right? Everything in an Apple is like Apple and it's all connected. And a competitor could come along and release a minute that's better. But I might still just stick with Apple because I got that sunk cost of like, well, shit, all my stuff's already.

Already there. Beaked into this ecosystem. So I thought that was a very astute observation from Phil at the time. It's very hard to get back. from Xbox console, like physical hardware sales, as we know, have not been great, certainly not in relation to the PlayStation 5. COVID and the supply chain stuff didn't help, but that affected everybody equally, right? PlayStation still have done very well.

So I don't know what the future, I am optimistic about some of the hardware stuff they've got coming out. I still think, and this is the thing that I've come back to many times, one area where they really, really lag is in really good character and story. based epic games. Alana knows because she worked on one of them, God of War, Ragnarok, The Last of Us,

Uncharted, Spider-Man. Xbox doesn't really have much in that... It's such a critical genre to be, to have, because people love those games, but almost all of them,

yeah, you know, Plague Tale and Hellblade. Xbox's got some of that stuff. But PlayStation, I think, still owns that very important genre. And until Microsoft can develop, I think Bethesda's going to be a big part

of this going forward. don't forget, and Activision. Right? So you could make the argument in the future is going to look bright just based on, they've acquired so much of that stuff. And we're still literally years away

from seeing that really, you know, come to the front. And let's see what impact is going to make. It's not going to make an overnight difference. But between Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, I think that they can make great strides in that space. But as of right now,

they are behind Sony in a lot of important ways and they've got work to do. So how important do you guys think the showcase in June is? extremely extremely important they really need to because even if you go off of last years which which was great

we got south of midnight you saw fable you got clockwork revolution you know these are exciting upcoming games this one there I think is going to be even more of an expectation because Activision is a part of them now so now you have access to more IPs

so clearly it looks like we're getting some kind of call of duty direct that's happening after the showcase so this will be the big blowout for Call of Duty. Maybe it's on GamePet. I wanted it to be Fable so bad. I wanted an hour, 45 minutes. I have a conspiracy theory. I have a conspiracy theory, by the way.

It obviously looks like Call of Duty. I'm not denying that at all. What if this is the biggest okey-doke of all time and they're tricking everyone and then it is Fable or something like that? Well, why not both? That would be so funny. Yeah. Yeah.

But to the point where you're saying, Alana, no, it's huge because, I mean, clearly there's been speculation about Gear Six potentially showing up there. We might see Fable again. Perfect Dark should be getting. it's big gameplay reveal at the showcase in my personal opinion. Let's see what they're going to do with these Activision IPs.

Is there going to be something they can announce fallout related? Because obviously that's a hot IP right now. So you want to keep that momentum going. So they have a huge opportunity here. Sarah Bond obviously alluded towards some kind of holiday hardware announcement. Is that announced

at this showcase or are they going to wait until later in the year? Clearly there's rumors about handhelds, all this stuff. So they have a lot of things that they can use the showcase to announce and get the community and the fan base excited about the brand. So we'll see. Just as an aside to that, because you mentioned Fallout.

We saw it happen with The Last of Us, certainly remember how Last of Us sales ticked up after the show came out. I've never seen an example of a game getting such a lift from a TV show as we've seen with, obviously the show is terrific, right? And all credit to Todd and my friend Geneva who runs that show. And like they've done them. And everyone who was involved in. it did an amazing job. But like my social feed and my TikTok is now so filled with not the show,

the game. Fallout 4, Fallout 76, people are flooding back to it. I've got to believe that somewhere inside Bethesda, they've already had an all hands with a like, whatever it is we're doing with Fallout and the game space, we need to step that up because there's something happening here, right? Fallout is more popular than it's ever been, and it's not even anything to do with a game. That show has lifted that brand amazingly. Did you see Greg's interview with Todd Howard the other day? I saw a little bit when I was, because I was on right after that. Yeah. So I could see it, but I couldn't hear it.

Well, he hinted at there's a couple things in the oven right now. But you could tell he almost wanted to say it, but knew he shouldn't. So something fallout related is happening. How soon we'll obviously see. But clearly, they did anticipate it to some degree that the show was going to do. I feel like they didn't even expect it quite as much because like we saw, and this is just an assumption. The lost of us, what, I don't know what they called them. remake. Part one.

Yeah, it was a part one. Yeah, it just called it part one and part two. Yeah. Yeah, it came out like right in time with the show. I feel like like that was that to me always seemed like it was being made for the audience of the show. Whereas I feel like with Fallout, like this Fallout 4 update has come a little bit later. Um, people have some concerns with it.

I feel like they were caught off guard by just how popular it is. I think it's now the second most popular Amazon series that they've had since they like actually started making the Amazon shows. But it's such an interesting contrast to Halo because I definitely had the same thing with both The Last of Us and with Fallout where watching the shows, as fans of both of those series, has made me go, man, I should play the games again,

and I am playing Fallout again. The Halo TV show, totally. The Halo TV show never made me want to play Halo again. I was never really a big Fallout guy, but I installed Fallout 4, partly because the show, you know, has renewed all this interest. but also because I know there are problems of the update, right?

There's classic Bethesda, right? There's a lot of problems with it. But super ultra-wide support and it does look really, really good. Like, they did time. I feel like, yeah, that obviously was like, let's time this all up and we'll, you know, and there'll be this synergy and that has worked.

But like, I don't know where they are. They've got to be somewhere, I presume, with Fallout 5. But I just kind of feel like that is going to get some kind of boost within Bethesda to get that. And if that were an Xbox exclusive, what a flex that would be? Is it too early to spoil the show? Can I spoil the show or no? Should I not do that?

But the fallout show? Yeah. Oh. The ending. Oh, no. I've not seen all of it. So don't say anything. We'll talk some more about fallout and Xbox right after a word from our sponsors. Looking for the perfect gift to celebrate the moms in your life. Aura frames are beautiful Wi-Fi-connected digital picture frames that allow you to share and display unlimited photos. It's super easy to upload and share photos via the ORA app, and if you're giving ORA as a gift, you can even personalize the frame with preloaded photos and memories.

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Welcome back, everyone. It's the final kind of funny ex-cast and we're joined with the whole crew here at the table. And Alani, you asked a great question of like, what are our thoughts over the past 12 months? We kind of talked about that summer showcase, but we haven't had you on this show in quite some time. I'd love to know what your thoughts are. You know, you said you were kind of out of it. You haven't been keeping true tabs on everything. But what has been your Xbox experience over the past 12 months?

And what have you thought about the brand? Well, I did hit 100,000 game of score. Hey, nice. Thank you, thank you. Very proud moment for me. I was really nervous because my Starfield achievements were bugged. So I actually stopped playing Starfield because, thank you, thank you. Because I didn't want to accidentally have them all unlock and then ruin the exact precise 100K because they did the math to get that exact number.

So that's very exciting. Yeah, it's something that like I wouldn't call myself an achievement hunter. I just will go for achievements when I'm enjoying a game and I want to get more out of it kind of thing, right? So it did take a long time for me to get there. I'm not playing the easy, thousand G games or whatever. But that was huge for me. But in general, yeah, since I left the gaming journalism space, I am not as plugged in. And I've heard people say that when you start working in game development.

You know less about games than you ever knew before because you just know a lot about, like, one game. Apparently, that's a huge thing. But from my perspective, I think that the Xbox brand has definitely changed. You know, Gary, you were talking a lot about hardware. And I think I've been saying this for a while, but it was more solidified with the conversation. I don't remember what they call it now. They had that sort of emergency sudden podcast after all the rumors that all the, one of us hosted by Tina.

I don't remember what they called the program. Sorry, but that Xbox is a brand, I think, is multifaceted now in a way that I think is just going to take people, especially because of all the console was garbage, a little bit of time to adjust to. Xbox as a brand is now a publisher who is doing one particular thing, a streaming service slash wide service, which is doing a different thing and a hardware company. So there are these three divisions that are obviously cohesive. And I totally commend how good of a job I do think they are doing, of keeping them cohesive and of like maintaining that brand.

But they're doing three separate things and three separate goals. So you can't really look at them as trying to outpace Sony in terms of selling hardware anymore in my opinion because that's not the whole ethos. It's much bigger than that now. So I think going forward, I'm really interested to see a lot more from Xbox the publisher. Obviously, we've seen bits and pieces of that. Breadfall was not a great start for them where that's concerned. But there are a lot of other things that, like, you know, how of it, did that just come out?

Or is it an early answer? There's a lot of people playing that. That's something that was, like, nice to see them publish like a weird, a smaller game like that, that they actually gave airtime to that a lot of people have really enjoyed. Obviously, very excited about how old aid too. excited to see what stuff the best is working on, excited to see stuff out of the vowed. So it's like the publishing thing really kind of

just started. And I think that I'm excited to see where that road leads. If you're not just looking at them as a hardware brand anymore, which in reality, I think they aren't. You can't look at them that way anymore. They have these different facets that are all doing different things. So it's just a really different perspective on that brand than the conversations that we've been used to

having since the brand began. I'm sorry, can I just interject before I all lose? Get out to the comment. I saw, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a quote here from someone. I won't say the name. I heard Gary going right about he freaking 15 minutes on an Xbox and do it today, thumbs down.

I know it's probably like a big coding thing, but is there any way to like have your chatters like pass a basic literary test or something? Literacy test before they come on the show? Because that's just fucking embarrassing. Is that even English? What the fuck is that? I couldn't make it out myself, Gary.

It's like a shitty AI. What is going on? Maybe they can take a moment, rephrase it, write it back to you. Just take a moment to look at what you've written before you hit saying. Just take a moment. If you're going to insult me, at least spell it correctly.

Gary's back, baby. Gary's back, and he's reading the chat, y'all. Alana, that's very well said. And I'm right there with you, like Paris said, right? We're kind of looking towards the future now, and there's a lot of unknowns. But for me, this past 12 months, it has been kind of just bland, boring. There's not much going on. This whole console generation so far has been very middle of the road.

There's been some positive with some games. The hardware, I really love the box. But all in all, like, this is just kind of come and gone. There's not much highlights that you can really point to, which is too bad. But I have pointed out some highlights. When I looked back on our journey through the Xcast, I thought I'd like to share with all of you because we had some really cool moments together. Of course, the first time we saw Halo Infinite,

you, me, Gary, Alana was really cool, right? Getting to see the next generation of Halo and all of us kind of being wowed at the idea of this semi-open world and going up that elevator and going, oh, my God, what is Chief doing? then to quickly a week later, two weeks later to the internet going, well, it doesn't look that good. And then we went on a whole year break and delay, which was wild.

Craig, Craig, Craig, yeah. Craig the brute, what a, what a wild feeling that was of like being wowed right off the bat of like, oh my gosh, finally the next halo to, oh, we're going on a year delay. This is tough. That was one, if not the first, it was one of the first ex-casts we ever did, right, where we were forced, wanted to start on a positive no, but we were forced to react to that trailer, which was poor.

The first three weeks of our Xcast. I think even then I liked it. I was like, but it looks like Halo 1. So I was really excited about it because of the shift. But yeah, that was an interesting one to also like, you know, see Halo. We were like right in the middle of COVID there. So it was a, they did a discord behind closed doors. I went back to our kind of programming metadata here.

So yeah, the first episode was the Xbox Games showcase predictions. And then episode two, the great Halo Infinite. Oh my God. Amazing. How fast that changed. Yeah, I think I may have been on the side of being excited about that because I don't know, I guess I didn't care about Craig the Brute's face, but the delay was obviously totally necessary. I had a ton of fun playing Halo Infinite multiplayer and then I feel like that dropped off a little,

but I've been thinking about getting back into it. I feel like people are saying that it's kind of come back around. Paris always says good things about it still. Yeah, well, ironically enough, I was on IGN when, because they did the showcase. And we all said same thing to were like, oh, looks good. And then I saw the feedback where people point out Craig and all that. Yeah. We took a time.

When you're like looking at a big picture and you're excited about something, it kind of takes the internet sometimes to like point out. I think I say if you really like something and you're a Halo fan, like you want to believe, right? You'll find a way to put a positive spin on it. You know, just you want it to be good. I wanted it to be good. I mean, I just like, I just

had to, all I could do was like say what I saw and what I saw was kind of a mess. Yeah. And that was obviously they delayed it and they got it a better place. I don't know where it is now. I don't know what the current state of Halo Infini is right now, but what a roller coaster that's been up down. It's really good. It's gotten good. Yeah, it's very fun. It's wild the roller coaster we've been on as well. Over the past three years since we started the X-Cast, Xbox and Microsoft purchased Bethesda. They purchased Activision Blizzard King. We got to see those all happen in real time. And it was wild

of making those announcements the day of in that feeling of going, oh my God, Microsoft just bought who that's crazy and then the real time of like yeah yeah how that goes and then two years of abk just sitting here waiting for that and now finally kind of being on the finish line of this is when i look back on the xcast it's wow that we got to share those moments together and really the abk of how long it took and the feeling of will this ever happen what is going to happen and now what will be the future what we'll see and then of course some incredible interviews that we got to all share together. I've been really lucky to, I think that's where I've grown a lot, is with

all of you and being able to, you know, feel confident in those. But I want to give some big thank you. Of course, to Sarah Bond, Phil Spencer, and the team from Xbox, we got to share some good ones with them. Larry Herb, Major Nelson, my hero, was really cool. But also the Sea of Thieves team. Mike Chapman and Joe Neat

have been really great to us. And we've gotten to shine a light on their awesome game and some really dope content that they've put out. So they've been really cool. We've actually had a really fantastic interview about shutting down your game and live service as a whole with Vellon studios. We had the game directors on from that team with Knockout City and we kind of talked about like what that's like to make a live service game, have that out there in the world and then

have to shut it down and what that really looked like. I thought that was a really special one. You know, we had Sissy on recently about AI and voice acting. I thought that was very powerful and special to talk about. But, you know, I look back on some of our cool interviews that we've gotten this chair together and we've had some really great ones guys Todd Howard was a good sport when he came on speaking of Todd I want to circle back to that but along the lines where you're just talking about when Adam Boyce came on when he was talking about rumble city it was it was very it was great to hear him from his perspective because he was at playstation during the time talk about the previous generation and the initial launch of the PS4 versus the

Xbox and how all that went down back then that that was also just a great conversation to get that perspective. But Gary, the Todd Howard one, again, when I think about a highlight, just being a part of this, is you and I a year ago at the showcase, we're at the Xbox Mixer thing, hey, let's go say hi to Todd Howard. And we go over to say hi to Todd Howard. He instantly

knew who both of us was. And then he goes, I want to come on your show. Wait, what? That, to this day, that still blows my mind that he has been an avid listener of the show and wanted to come on to talk about Starfield. So I'm always appreciate it.

You guys are so like you're, you're honest, but you're not, again, like so much of the YouTube, content creator space is really negative. And I admire this about the whole X-Cars and kind of funny in general, that it's a lot easier to lean into rage bait. That's kind of what the ecosystem wants. And I don't feel like you guys have ever done that.

There's a reason that these people are like willing to come on the show and talk to you guys. And it's the professionalism and the compassion, the enthusiasm without being like runaway fan voice, right? Like, you guys have done just such an incredible job of making people, like, taught how I feel like they can listen without it being rabid or terrible, even when you're negative. You're always fair and reasonable. And I also just wanted to say, because you touched on this, Mike, you've grown so much as a host. It's been, like, incredible to watch.

Like, you're just so, such a natural now. You're, like, watching you get more confident. Like, it's just been a delight to watch you. You're such a delightful person. Excellent. From where you started, you were clearly a little, maybe a little rigid, a little nervous. But you've just come such a long way, and it's been wonderful to watch it. I'm sure everyone who's watching at home is very proud of you.

Thank you, Alana. As I used to say, I love that and then move on, but thank you, Alana, for everything. I've told you that many of times. The three of you and Baird in the room and all of kind of funny in the audience have really been something special in my life. So thank you all. And to our credit, I would say on behalf of all four of us, they think when we have done those interviews, they have been, I know what I remember about that knockout city. Was it Knockout City or Rumbleverse?

I can't remember it was the game that was getting canceled. Yeah, we did both, but Knockout City. was the one I remember that turned into a broader conversation about failure, right? And how much it sucks

when something you put so much work into fails and very publicly fails, but how like you've got to take from it what you can learn, right? Failure has a lot to teach you

if you're willing to listen and I thought there was a, there was a lot of really good stuff there. And then when we had Phil and Todd on, even though this is an Xbox podcast and I think there is like an assumption that we're going to be try to slant positive towards Xbox

when we have had people on like when, when, you know, when Xbox was struggling post-redfall, I think we, I think we have done a good job of not coddling people, right? And they're like trying to be puffball and go,

but what's the good, but what's the good side of it of redfall, like falling on its ass? Like, we weren't trying to make it, like we weren't trying to spin it. Like we would, you know,

not trying to be rude or make them uncomfortable, but like just having an honest, straightforward conversation and not like trying to talk around some of the tougher stuff. I think we've done a good job. Of course, inevitably in the comments,

we still got called, you know, partisans and Xbox and because some people will always see it the way they're going to see it. But one thing I'm proud is literally unavoidable. Yeah, there's always going to be some of it. But I think for the most part, we kind of watch that tightrope pretty good. Yeah. Can I give a truth bomb on that? Since this is the final show, I might as well say, I know you are not supposed to read the comments.

But I have sometimes read the comments. And it is clear as day to me when I see negative stuff like that. I'm like, you didn't watch the episode. You don't listen. You don't hear with the things. that we're saying because to your point Gary, sure, it's an Xbox show. We like Xbox. We're fans of Xbox. We want to see Xbox succeed. That's not a secret or anything like that. But I would say all four of us when we need to be critical about Xbox, we've been critical about Xbox

over the years. And the fact that we've been able to talk to the CEO on down and be critical. And that's been respected is a credit to all of you on this panel right now, being professionals and doing what needs to be done. Because the thing that I've learned in this industry over the years is they'd rather hear what's wrong than for you to be cheerleaders and say what's right. Because they want to know what's wrong so they can fix it. So if you're not being 100% honest about what's wrong, like Gary, your criticism of Starfield was even more,

I mean, you were way harder on it than Mike and I as an example, right? Initially, yeah. I came to like the game better than more I played it, but my initial impressions were not great. But nothing you said was false. It was the truth. It's, they want to hear that.

Guess what? That update that just, it's coming out on the 15th. Damn near addresses everything that you're. Yeah, I can see myself, it's tough to get people to go back to a game after they've had a negative first experience with it. But I'll give it another try.

I liked it enough that I thought, oh, if they just did this and this, I could really see myself getting into this game. This game is very much my shit. Yeah. If they just fix these things, if they are in fact doing that,

I'll absolutely give it another try. Yeah. But even like when Todd's here, Todd's a friend of mine, And like you sometimes there's, oh, you don't want to say something to what if it, like, you know, upsets the Apple Cup. But like, I think you've got more to lose by trying to spin it in the eyes of like whatever credibility you have with the audience. Like you've got to, you've just got to be honest, even if sometimes that, you know, it's hard to hear or you don't enjoy saying it. A couple other fun ones that I'd like to share with all of you. Of course, we got the chat with Studio MDHR and talk about Cuphead and the future of Cuphead.

and we were immortalized in the cuphead art style. So a big thank you to that team over there. That was something that I show my friends and family and still smile about. Some of us were. You're right. You're right. You're right. Dang it. How can I forget a lot of it?

I know we were doing favorite moments. Yep. Earlier. And Paris was talking about his. Since we were just talking about some of the better interviews that we've done, I want to just like finish out and round out my top three. Because this is the last show. And I want to make sure I addressed this one last time.

So my three, my top three would be, I think, the feel interview that we did. I was really proud of that, to be honest. I think the one that we did with Todd, I think was really good as well. I think we struck the right tone. But my number one memory, you know what I'm going to say. Tell them, Gary. It's still my fondest memory of the whole time that I've been on here is that time that you, me, me, Mike, Paris, all three of us, that time that we went to Las Vegas together to check out. out.

The new sports are really I was waiting on this. I knew it was going to Las Vegas. And we drove those cars. And we went to that amazing steakhouse. And I felt so special. They made me feel so special. I was so honored to be a part of that.

Like, it was so amazing that sometimes I imagine that I must have like dreamt it and it didn't actually happen. But like, you can't fake memories like that. No, you can never forget it. Honestly, that's a top 10,

not just X-Cast, top 10 life moment. I know, but Gary, the best part of it was when, all three of us took the picture by the pool? Oh, my God. That was so good.

I have that framed at home. Yeah, I had to Photoshop myself into it, but it's framed at home. Yeah, I'm very, yeah, that was an amazing, an amazing moment. That was a special one. Yeah. You know, maybe we put that out into the world, all four of us can go to an ex-photsman together. As the guy that was picked last in, you know, like the sports in school, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

As a guy who has struggled with chronic insecurity and anxiety all my life, being included on that trip, really did so much for my mental health and made me feel so good about myself. I just thank you once again for making sure that I was thought of that my feelings were taken into consideration and I had a great time. It was just wonderful. Thank you so much. You know what the best

about all that was? The thumbnail that Andy created. Oh man. That was so freaking good. Yeah. I remember it well. Yes. You guys really went the extra mile. Oh man. I drove so fast in that car. It was unbelievable, Gary. It's a special time. As we get towards the end of the show, of course, Alon, I want

check it with you. If you have any special highlights you'd like to share before we get to our final topic of today's kind of funny X-cast. I think I already have. I think the highlight is watching the show exist in a space, you know, rife with console wars and seeing you guys, you know, even from my part of it or now, not only disagree with each other, but disagree with the consensus and just just be honest. It's a pleasure to have you. I'm sad to see it go, but also I get. You know, it makes sense. I'm sure you guys have a lot of the same conversations that repeat on multiple shows, and it all totally makes sense to be why it's changing.

But now the highlight is all three of you doing a great job. Thanks, Alana. And you know, we love talking games here on the kind of funny X-Cast. It didn't matter what the game was, what the game was, where it was at. We were always talking about some of our favorite games. And so I asked all of you to come together. I said, hey, maybe give me some of your favorite top tens,

top five Xbox games. And now, mind you, I didn't give them any, you know, any explanation of it's got to be only Xbox. it's got to be an Xbox exclusive. I said, hey, give me your Xbox top 10. And I just let you go wild with it. Oh, there's the thumbnail. Yeah, look at that.

Oh, my God. Man, we drove so fast. It was wild. What an all-time great moment that was. But we got to talk about this because Gary did his homework today. He actually did homework. It's the last show. You know me?

I usually rolling here. I don't know what the fuck's going on. What we're talking about, I've done no preparation at all. I actually did compile a top 10 for you today. Before you go, I just as a reminder, because I know time, we are going to address the future. Yes, we will address the future at the end of this. Okay.

Your top 10, sir. I'm just going to, you know, we need to get into a discussion about all 10. In fact, I have 11, so I just remembered another one. So one of them, I guess, would have to go. But you know what? I'm just going to do 11. This is my top 11. This one goes to 11, Mike.

Some of your favorite games. All right, hold on some of your glasses up so I can see up close. My eyesight. So, again, I followed the rules here. It doesn't have to be an Xbox exclusive. Yeah. But it was a game that I played on the Xbox. So it was a Xbox game for me.

And this is across all generations of the Xbox from the beginning. Red Dead Red Dead Redemption, it's one of my all-time favorite games. Braid, one of my old-time favorite games. Remember Xbox Live Arcade, gave us so many goodies. Brade for me was the top one. I'm so excited that new version's coming out. Very excited. Mass Effect 2.

That's in my all-time top five across a new platform. Inside. Everyone agrees with me on that one, but that was a game that really affected. Alana, did you like inside? Oh my God, I love inside. I think that I would put that in my top 10 games. People disagree with you on that one. Some people, it's not for everyone, but I loved it.

What a mood that game set. Do you remember the freaky special edition, like, collectible statue they sent out? I have it. Don't way, Alara, really? Oh, that's crazy. Yeah, I have it downstairs. Yeah, so made by real doll.

It's actual, it's a sex doll company, so it feels like real human skin. And it's just like, well, it's kind of a spoiler, but I've had many of people come here and be like, what is this exactly? I've never had a game when I played inside that made me feel like genuine apprehension and fear. Like you're like, there were a moment when I was like so afraid

of getting caught in a spotlight or ravaged by those dogs or whatever those ghostly things that chase you under the water. It's like, ah, it was so invested in that game. If anyone listening hasn't played inside, play it, I'm sure it's on game parts.

One incredible game. With headphones. Play it with headphones. It's, oh. This is one that definitely most people, well, I don't know about most, but many people don't agree.

But for me, again, it's all-time top 10, the Artful Escape. I loved that game so much. And maybe it's just me. Like, it just hit me, right? You know, I always say no two people ever see the same piece of art because you always, because everyone looks through it, you know, through their own individual lens. Whatever bias, prejudices, you know, life experience you've had gets reflected you through that prison before you interpret the art.

So it's different for everyone. But like, for me, it was just, I was so fucking blown away by that game. And I've left it for a while because I want to play it again. But I want to wait until, like, I've almost forgotten how good it was, so I can try to have that first experience again. Knights of the Old Republic, I still remember staying up until 3 o'clock in the morning

on the original Xbox playing that game. Absolutely loved it. Oh, no, okay, I know which one I can kick off. GTA 5, that was an Xbox game for me. Still one of my all-time favorites. GTA 6, of course, is my most anticipated game. Some of the best world-building and sense of... I've spent hours playing GTA-5

doing literally nothing, not even doing side quest, just like playing golf, doing yoga, just like wandering around the city and just feeling like you're living. I've said this a million times, this is the last X-castle,

so I'll just say it one more time. For me, the best games are not a game that you play. They're a place that you go. And you inhabit that place and you get to live in a different world for a while. And Los Santos feels like

such a living world and such a sense of place and being alive. I just love spending time in that game. Yakuza like a dragon. Fucking love. I loved that game. I love that game. It's so wacky and so Japanese and so weird and no Western developer could ever make it. And yet at the same time, it has this genuinely affecting and powerful and tragic story. Like there's a real, real heartbreaking story buried within there. And the theme of the game, which is all about the power of friendship and how important it is to have friends around you and how friends will do anything for one another. And you're stronger, you know, you're stronger as a collective. You know, a group of friends is greater than the, you know,

some of its parts. And now Itchy Barn, who I think is one of the greatest game protagonists of all time, like, I cried at the end of that. The final shot of him, I'm going to get Misty Eye just doing it now. The final shot of him, when you realize that all he's ever wanted to do is be a good person, and he's like accomplished that now, and he's so satisfied that he's done something good. Like, I was, oh my God, like that game will live with me forever. And I did the true final millennium tower, which is the final tower you go back and do on extra super duper hard. When I finally beat that, I've never had a greater moment of triumph in a game. I through the controller in the air,

like the mortar board at a graduation, like you throw your hats, caps in the air. I was just so, oh my God, that game just took me away. And then Crimson Skies on the original Xbox. Don't remember much about it, but I remember when I was playing it, I loved it to bits.

So that's my top 10. I think it's a respectable top 10. I think that's a great top 10. Paris, do you have a couple? Okay, so I purposely was just going to wing it because I shouldn't have to put any research into this to come over the top 10. For Xbox, you got to start with Combat Evolved, obviously.

That's an easy one. Another one for me on the original Xbox would be that first Ghost Recon. That was my OG Xbox live game. I never played that one. I love to play with my buddies. We were talking about it the other week, Mike, Lynx. That was the other one. OG Xbox had to play.

Oh, God. I remember that was the first golf game that let you take shot simultaneously in multiplayer. Saved so much time. XS. N. Yeah, it was so good. And then, wait, that was three or four. But, um, Cotor. That'd be four, of course.

Going to the 360 era, got to say Gears of War, first one, clearly. Gears was my 11th. I'm going to lump the Halo 1, 2, and 3 are all together. Would you just cheat and say, like, Master Chief Collection? Basically. That's what I was going to say. Let's just put Master Chief Collection on the board. Biolshock.

Bioshock. Great game. Mass Effect, too. I mean, just one of the greatest games ever made. Unbelievable game. Or in the Blind Forest. Great Xbox game. Cuphead was another amazing Xbox game.

And I could keep going on and on. But I'm going to end it and I'm going to say Psychonauts too here in this current generation. I think what Double Fine did with that game was phenomenal. Love that. Another very respectable list. Alana, we've talked about some of your favorite games. Give me some. You've covered a lot of them.

You got some bangers in there. Mass per two, one of the goats. I think my number one favorite Xbox game of all time is Fable the Lost Chapters. it's the game I played more than any other game slash fable anniversary. I just, I don't know what it is about the charm of that original fable. I love the combat.

I feel like I'm still trying to find that combat system in other games. The closest I think I got was kingdoms of Amalore. Like, I just love the first fable so much. I should have put the first fable in. You're right. It's all right to tell you now. We've done it.

I know. I can't ever be in my top ten now, but no, you're right. That was an amazing game. Such a good game. Yeah, all of all of the HALOs. I go one through, you know, ODST and Reach as well. You know, sometimes there are those games that you feel like

like have had an impact on your life. My life is different because of those games. Like, I feel like, like, HALO is a part of my being because of those games. And there are, like, so many core memories that I have that are tied to playing. By multiplayer or playing through campaigns with friends in high school. Like, it's just, HALO is just such a big part of my whole world that it's, yeah, that's really a part of me. Gears 2, the first and only game that's ever made me cry.

And I think that it kind of maybe even changed a little bit of how I feel about the medium and maybe put me on the path of where I am today. Like I wouldn't be surprised if Gears 2 made me go, oh, this can be really emotionally impactful. And I remember feeling so defensive of that game, because from the outside, Gears is a bro shooter where everyone has biceps the size of tree trucks, right?

Like, from the outside, it doesn't look like it would have any emotional resonance, but it absolutely does. And it just for everything to do with it. Is it really the only game that ever made you cry? There's got to be like, yeah, but it's, it's really hard to make me cry.

So that one, like, yeah, it is the only game that's made me cry. I don't cry at a lot of media. So it's, yeah, it's a hard bar to pass, but it really, really affected me. I cry so easily at like movies and stuff. I think that's healthier. I'm also going to put a little bit of recency by, but unironically think this is one of the best games ever made, Tunic. When I first got into Tunic, it took me a while.

I played maybe the first three hours, and I was like, yeah, it's a Zelda, it's got some soulsy stuff, whatever. And then as I played through that game and finished that game, I just am still in awe of the fact that it even exists. Like, just if you haven't played Tunic, my God, is it? It's an amazing game. It's really, really good. It's just you, there's this thing that Chanik does where there are puzzles right in front of you,

but it flips the switch on you in a way that sort of the witness does, where you don't realize their puzzles and the whole world changes. And it's just, like, I just, I struggle to think of that. Like, it takes a while for it to reveal itself to you as like what it really is, right? And how much there is going on. And then there are a lot. layers to that because then there's like another reveal and another reveal and then there's so many moments in that game where you're like, this meant that? And it's so weird to talk about,

but God, just such an awe-inspiring experience. I think that game is just so unbelievably incredible. I highly recommend playing through that as well. It is tough, but they also have really good accessibility options. Like if you have trouble with the difficulty, I think you can even turn off all damage. So some of those boss fights are really hard. I would recommend sticking through them literally any time. If you want to ask me for strategies for taking down tuning bosses, I would love to talk to you about Tunic. I just absolutely adore that game.

And I give a shout out, a little shout out to Fusion Frenzy. All right to the back to the Star. It's got to be represented in there somewhere. Just a lot of, yeah, really early, iconic memories of the platform. But, you know, we've got to bring it back. You know a couple of other games I would put in that Tunick category? maybe not as good as Tunic, but games I really enjoyed in the same way. And again, some recency buyers, sure, but Death Store, which I know you love.

Oh, my God. And Cult of the Land, also fantastic. You know what Coon was really good, too? I still haven't played it. I've got in the store. I haven't played it yet. Kekoon does this really cool thing. I finished that in one sitting.

Kekoon does this really cool thing where if you were to start playing that game, it's similar to Tunic where it's like, I don't think there's any English in it. It's like, Jake has a little bit of English, but very, very little. when you get to the end of cocoon, you're doing things that if you were to try to describe them to yourself at the start, it would not make any sense whatsoever. Like the puzzles reveal themselves so slowly and the language is so strong that you fully understand what you're doing. But if I were trying to describe to somebody, well, I took this all, but I put it inside that all, but then I have to move this thing. So when this fires, it goes through that all and then lands on it. It wouldn't make any sense at all.

Like you're basically traversing worlds in that game. but it really like catches you up on how intricate it is so slowly that you're doing this like very high level meta stuff and you kind of don't even realize that that's what's happened like that also a really really fantastic game I feel to say out of wilds is out of wilds is another one

for that particular effect and I think inside made me feel a little bit like that too sure and inside and braid and why did you just shake your head at me bear no I was shaking my head to Paris who is you know just around everywhere I mean I this top 10 is going to keep

shifting, but I keep thinking of games now having those conversations. Brothers are Taylor 2 Sons. There you go. Did that for me. Big style. It takes two. One of the best design games ever made. A way out and it takes two.

Way out is actually really good. That's someone who gets forgotten, but it's actually really good. Yeah. And what I love about indie games is the way that we've been talking about games the last five minutes saying things like, oh, it's so interesting the way it reveals to you like this and there's layers and it's surprising and things at the things at the end you wouldn't have managed at the beginning. You never talk that way about AAA games because they don't do that kind of stuff.

They don't engage in that level of experimentation or creative risk-taking. That's what indie games are for. Exactly. And I think AAA games do a lot of things amazingly well. So my favorite games are AAA. But if you want to have that kind of like, oh, that is so not what I expected type experience, that's why indie games exist. Yeah.

Now, a game I forgot. It does do that, but I don't know if it counts as AAA. I mean, it has to now, right? Yeah, I think two is. I think the first one you still wouldn't say is AAA, but I get your point out. Probably. But one game just before I forget, before you. go, Mike.

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Oh, my God. And Chronicles of Riddick from that same era. Oh, my God. Ridic as well. That was O'DX-2. That was so good. Yeah, dude.

Yeah. So good. Yeah, shout out, but shout out to Pentiment. Pantiment snubbed from our top 10 of the year. Love Fentiment. You know, gaming has always been something for me that brings me together with my friends and family. And that's what it will always be is something that will get us all together on the couch or

online and sharing moments together. I have a lot of multiplayer games in mind, but you bring up Halo. Every single Halo has been special to me. No matter if they're good, bad or ugly, I love them all. NFL Street, volume two,

we talked about it. That NBA Street, that NFL Street, the couch competitive nature of those games, bringing your friends together, screaming at the television because something didn't go your way. I didn't think to include that

because I actually played that on PlayStation 2. Yes, of course. One, DJ cucumber slice. What a legend. Portal 2. You know, shout up to Portal 2. I got to experience this with one of my first girlfriends ever going over to her house and playing Portal 2 together and that kind of working through puzzles and getting to see,

like you said, Gary, through someone else's eyes of what they see and their point of view and how you two can come together through communications to solve these. That's how it was for me and my wife with that it takes two. What an amazing game for that, yeah. I'll always cherish that moment. I ironically think Portal 2 is the best video game ever made. Whenever I'm asked for a list, I put Portal 2 literally number one, top of the list. it's hard not to put portal as well,

but Portal 2, like, also has the story. I remember, I mean, to a lesser extent with the original portal as well,

but certainly Portal 2 where they took it to a next level with the repulsion gel and everything. I remember so many times thinking, like how did they come up with? How did they even begin to design that puzzle? It's so ingenious.

This is absolutely brilliant. You know, it's funny, Alana, you just mentioned that. You just mentioned that because on the playing up, I was watching Logan and Stephen Merchant is in it.

And I'm thinking, as I'm watching it, how awesome he was as a voice character. in Portal 2. We just made that story. You're so good. Perfect costing. What a special game that will always be for me. Some other ones that I, of course, have to highlight.

Titanfall 1. What a great time. What an awesome experience for that to be an Xbox hit multiplayer only. And to see the success of where it became with Titanfall 2 and that desire from the fan base for to see more of it. I mean, that game rocked. That game absolutely banged to be able to call in the Titan, to get in the Titan, to scurry up the side of a Titan and be able to drop a grenade in to slow that person down, wall running, zip lining.

What a cool freaking video game that was. I know Reespawn's very busy these days, but Titanfall 3 would not be unwelcome. I mean, that Titanfall 2 campaign is maybe one of my favorite FPS campaigns ever. Yeah, ever, period. So good. Amped 3 snowboarding. What a great mix amp 3 snowboarding was. I have to keep changing my list for me.

You know, for me, it's SSX. I know it is. That's why I brought it up, Gary, because Amt 3 found that perfect mix of the over-the-top nature of SSX tricky, mixing it with kind of like the real-world snowboarding and this perfect blend of you can go outrageously big or you can also keep it low and small like you would see in the real world. And I loved that blend of what they did. And the outrageous nature of it all. It was totally mounting culture and I loved every single moment of it. SSX-3 is the only original Xbox game that I still have installed on my Series X at home because It's available.

You can get it from the library. Like five bucks. They upscaled it for, you know, current generation. It still looks amazing. Soundtrack still incredible. Yes. What a game.

You know, it wouldn't be right to not call out the Xbox Connect. And so I will give a big shout out to NBA Baller Beats, which is the most outrageous game ever. It is Dance Dance Revolution meets NBA basketball. And so you were encouraged to dance with the basketball via dribble moves. And I always found the Connect. to be absolutely ridiculous.

And I loved when they blend, you know, my world of basketball with video games. And, you know, shout out to the Connect for just being weird, wacky, and a small piece of our lives, you know? Are you supposed to actually have a ball when you're playing it? Yeah, it came with the basketball when you bought it, too. Wow.

Yeah, bounce the ball. That's all you did. Shout to your under, downstairs neighbors just hate you the whole time. Somehow it was the first time I've ever heard of it. And then a couple final shoutouts I want to give is to Hela Wars 2. and Lord of the Rings, Battle for Middle Earth 2.

Bringing RTS games to console on the controller, what a special time that was. I loved Battle for Middle Earth. I loved Halo Wars. I am so lucky to see now we get Age of Empires on the console, and it's celebrated and loved. What a really awesome time it is. So those are some great Xbox games

that we all got to talk about. Since you were talking about multiplayer, and I know this came, it took a while to get to the Xbox, but it's on the Xbox, so it counts. I have to say some of the most fun I've ever had playing a multiplayer game and we've talked about it so many times on the show. We've got to give one last shout out to Fall Guys.

What a game. I know some people absolutely hate it. It's a love or hate game, but my God, when that game was like in, when it was in its element, that was the game that made me realize that Mike, as nice as he's in real life, is a deeply, deeply toxic gamer.

Oh my God, Mike, you're just the worst. I love fall guys. To this day, I will still turn on fall guys. I'll still play it. And see if I can get a crown. I don't know if I told you this, but like I, I didn't played it in ages and ages. Like probably two or three seasons have gone by. I thought, you know what?

I should, I should pick it up and try it. Let's see what's going on. I jumped in, played one game. Amazingly won a crown. I was like, that's it. Done. Never playing it again. I just stands it out of the room.

It's like, I won a crown on my first game back and I'm done. I haven't touched it since. What a special time is right. Yeah. Great games. around. Paris lets you, me, Alana and Gary talk about the future and how we'll cover Xbox news

in the future here with Kind of Funny. Because, of course, this might be the end of your weekly Kind of Funny Xcast, but that doesn't mean kind of funny, won't talk about Xbox. They won't cover it. They won't have you, Alana and Gary on. So what do you see in the future of us

being able to talk about Xbox here with this community? So I want to be upfront about when I first heard about this and how I felt at the time. So I've actually known about this since February potentially happening. And then it got confirmed, you know, a few weeks ago. And I was a little concerned.

And it's funny to see the comments since this has been announced to the change. It's been pretty split. Some people are very excited about it. A lot of people bum that I was used to every week at 3 o'clock. I know I'm recording X-Cast, right? That goes away from me personally. So I was a little concerned about it. but the more that what I saw, what kind of funny is doing,

having this more live format, you're doing GameCast five days a week, and I'm still a part of it, you're still a part of it, you're still a part of it. Obviously, a lot of you ever want to come in to do something, you could be a part of it. But when there's Xbox news,

when there's an Xbox interview, preview, review, something big, we had the graphic you see behind us now and what will actually be on the game's cas logo. We will still come on and talk Xbox. I will still be coming on talking. Xbox. I know of something that's going to happen pretty soon that I'm going to be a part of that people in the Xbox community is going to be excited about. You know what I mean? So the consistency

of every Thursday at 6 a.m. you're getting the X-Cast. That might be going away. But when there's Xbox news on the games cast, we're still going to be the guys doing it. So that's not going to change. Of course. I think that's the special part about this is you are getting more kind of funny games coverage. There's more really in-depth analysis and conversations around topics in the gaming world and topics that interest us as gamers. And I think that's going to be something special of moving away from your PSI, Love You, XO, XO, and Xcast weekly, you get more. You're going to have more talk and more time with the gang here.

And so many guests, right? We already had Lucy James in to talk about a Fallout TV spoiler cast. So you'll see so much more, which is exciting. I mean, think of this. He just walked out. But think about it. You know our perspectives and how we talk and think about Xbox. But you're going to get Greg to come in every now and again and talk.

about something at Xbox or Blessing or, you know, Andy or whoever, right? So you're still going to have the, quote, quote, the core Xbox people talking about Xbox, but you're also going to get perspectives from people that may not be as invested into the ecosystem as the four of us are. I don't know what the future is from my point of view. Like you, Greg did reach out to me a few months ago and said, hey, you know, Xcast is coming to an end. I love you is coming to an end and we're going to mold it, to fold it all into this one thing.

But then was like somewhat vague about how what that was going to look like going forward. And then he makes the public announcement. I believe it was it last week or earlier this week that he made Monday. Monday he made the public announcement. And the phrase that stuck out for me, I don't know if you caught this, but he said, don't worry,

I'll still be here talking about PlayStation. My comparison was still be here talking about the Xbox. I'm like, that's funny. In great defense, Gary. I can, let me just say something. When I showed up today,

the garage clicker they gave me to open the gate didn't work right away and I thought fuck this is happening fast but it works on the second try but I'm like oh shit they're moving me out fucking fast here yeah the final announcement of the show is that you've been fired Gary

thank you so much for your time but we've had enough yeah it's I mean and that's why I get it you want to appeal you want to appeal to a younger to a younger demo oh my god no the breaking point was

coming in and talking about hell by this for the first 15 minutes of an Xbox show. You're not the first time I've done that either. We decided it's enough. Actually, one of the things I do like for us, you know, I mean, it's the case. It's games daily all over again. Remember, you used to have a regular spot on Games Daily. That change when you move into the studio. Greg said, oh, don't worry, we're still having gone all the time.

You know how many times I've been on since then? Fucking twice. In what? A year? But we're going to, I mean. So I'm not optimistic. They're going to make sure you're on it. They're going to keep myself available.

Because you know me. I've got nothing better to do. I'll keep myself available. But if I do come on, I do appreciate the chance to talk about games outside. You know, because I play everything, right? I mean, mostly the last couple of months, been playing PlayStation and Xbox and PC games, games on Steam. So it'll be nice to be able to talk about, you know, a broader spectrum of games and not just what's on the Xbox. Hip Uno wrote in with a $10 super chat and says, petition to preserve the Halo themed Xcast intro and play it whenever Mike hosts the games cast.

I agree. You will definitely see the intro that is not going anywhere. that is very special. I'm sure we'll figure out a way to get it involved when there's Xbox days. Barrett as the producer and director gives a look like

maybe you'll never hear it again, but it's so good. We use them this week as we sunset the shows, but we just have not had that conversation. Hey, look, now it is games cast again. See, they keep changing it. Hipuno, there you go.

Barrett sends out. The ground is shifting under our feet here. Let's end the kind of funny Xcast with a nice viewer message. Of course, this is coming in from B.J. Bernardo, an Xcast watcher says, Hey y'all, no question, just a big thank you. Thanks to Mike, Barrett, Alana, Gary, and Paris

for providing great Xbox-centered show. X-Cast was an appointment viewing slash listening for me. Never wanted to miss a live recording. I've been introduced to so many gaming industry people and gaming podcasters just through this show. Thanks, Mike, for being the perfect host. Thanks for Barrett for being the voice of reason and the chaos. And thanks to Gary, Alana, and Paris

for the amazing, thoughtful insights. I miss the X-Cast, but I'm excited to see more of the kind of funny crew Talk More Xbox. Thank you to BJ Bernardo. Thank you to Alana Pierce, Paris, Lily, Garrett-Wittah, and of course, Barrett Courtney, all for making my dreams of talking Xbox here

at Kind of Funny a reality. You guys have helped me grow, mature, and have so much fun with this. So thank you all for that. To everyone watching and viewing out there, thank you for riding alongside with us for over three years with the kind of funny X-X-Cast. The Xbox talk does not stop here at Kind of Funny.

We will continue to talk things all Xbox and video games on the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every weekday right after Games Daily. But we will see you on another one. Goodbye, everyone.