Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Grading Gamescom Opening Night Live 2022 - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Tim, Bless, Andy, and Mike rate and breakdown Geoff Keighley's latest showcase featuring Kojima's Podcast, High on Life, Dead Island 2, Callisto Protocol, PlayStation's new Dualsense Edge Controller, Sonic Frontiers, and Harry Potter Hogwarts Legacy. Time Stamps - 00:00:00 - Start 00:01:34 - Housekeeping 00:03:06 - Grading Gamescom Opening Night Live 00:20:36 - Ads 00:21:37 - The Future of Opening Night Live & Highlights Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the kind of funny games cast. Of course, I'm Tim Gettys and I'm joined by the future of video games. Blessing at AEO, E.O.A. Jr. What's up, Tim? Nothing much, bless, nothing much. Joining us today as well, the natural rifle, Andy Cortez. What's up, Tim? Nothing much, Andy.

Nothing much at all. And rounding out the group today, the Master of Hype, Snow Bike, Mike. Hi, Tim. Hey, hey, how you doing? Tim, I'm not going to lie. When you called on me, I was like in the middle of swallowing a bite of a bagel. Yeah. And I didn't know if I was going to be prepared yet.

I did not know what was about to come out my mouth when I said what's up to me. Yeah. So even mustering that is like, that's a miracle. Well, I'm proud of you. You did it. You got it through it. You pushed it through. And you got to swallow your food.

How was the bagel? It was fine. It was like it was plain. Like it was so plain that I didn't even put cream cheese on there. Right. I just had the bagel bread. This is like I needed something in me. We just sat down to do KHD for an hour.

Yeah. And then do it did, opening night live. another two hours. So I needed something inside me desperately tone. I remember when you throated that ice cream. Oh, you throated that thing, well, I thought we forgot about that. If you couldn't tell, we're getting that, that energy right now. We're like, we've just seen a lot. We've talked a lot. We've been on camera a lot. Now we're going to keep it rolling.

Keep it going. Let's try to get the energy up, boys. Okay. Let's see what we got left in the tank. What's up, Tim? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is the kind of funny games cast each and every week. We get together to talk about video games, all the things we love about them. And every once in a while, when there's a video game showcase, we like to do a little post-show analysis where we grade what we thought of, the showcase contextually within the industry of everything in the world that we now have 10 million showcases a year. So what we're going to do is simple. I'm going to go around the table. I'm going to ask everybody what they would give this showcase on the kind of funny scale of one to five, one being terrible, two being bad, three being okay, four,

being great and five being amazing. Of course, you can get the show of Patreon.com slash kind of funny games that normally comes with ad free. You can get the post show and all that stuff. But you can get it later on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or roostyteeth.com. You can also get it as a podcast

by searching your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Games cast where you can get all the latest video game reviews including Saints Row that we just did last week. You can go check that out now. Give me one sec, actually. I would like to give a couple shoutouts here to some of our

Patreon producers, including Fargo Brady, Delaney, James Hastings, and Casey Andrew, thank all of you for your support over on Patreon. Also, if you don't have a dollar to toss our way on Patreon, that's cool. If you're out on the Epic Game Store, buying games, using, buying

stuff in Fortnite, whatever it is, use our creator code kind of funny. It helps us out and doesn't cost you anything else. Today, we're brought to you by Miandis, but I'll tell you about that later. Want to get right into it. Andy Cortez. Let's start with you. We just watched Jeff Keely's Gamescom opening night live, 2022.

If I remember correctly, this would be the fourth opening night live we've ever had. 2019 was the first in-person one, the first one ever. Then we got 2020 and 2021 that were more of the digital type of thing without the audience. And now here we are back. Yeah, number four, what would you give that showcase on the kind of funny scale? I'd give it a three out of five. I think that they did a great job. I think Jeff did a great job with not spending too long with the devs.

I think this presentation kind of calls for just kind of like, here's a game, here's a game, here's a game, here's a game. We're going to show a bunch of ads as well because you've got to pay for all this shit. And yeah, I'd say that it would have been a higher score for me if they were just bigger games that I cared about it. The one more thing wasn't a game like Dead Island. I think it's kind of easy to forget some of the gems that we saw throughout the show. It was a very long show, and I think that's a knock, a bit of a knock against it, but I think the dual sense edge looks freaking fantastic.

Let's see, I'm looking down the list here. Friends versus Friends, awesome art style for a cool indie title that I'd never heard of. And those are kind of the things that I'm always most excited about, like the unknowns, the games that I just didn't even know existed. And here it is, and it's an awesome, you know, art style and a cool concept. Liza P looks absolutely fantastic. Liza Minnelli is what I always think about. And then high on life, a demo that kind of went a little bit too long, right?

I think that it was still a pretty strong showing in a game that, you know, I think we've all kind of been looking forward to. And where wins meet is a game that just kind of really surprised to me. I was not expecting a showcase for a game like that. And the visuals look stunning. And put that one on the list, Tim, of the one that you watch after the showcase in a better resolution with better bit rate.

Yeah, that looked rad. I have something here. It's from a Chinese game done Everstone. That was some info that came out after the show for Where Wins Meet. It looks very, very cool. Blessing, Adioia Jr. What would you give this showcase?

I'm also at a three out of five. It's funny, as Andy was going down, his list. I have my own list and I have games that are highlighted that specifically I'm like, oh, these are standouts and Andy hit pretty much all the same ones, right? Like friends versus friends, I think looks really cool. Great taste, you know, both of us. I mean, you know, great minds take a like. I described that one as neon white meets void bastards. I think the art style is cool. The gameplay looks really interesting. Liza P. looks dope as hell, right? And that's one, that's one that we've seen before, but one that like, so far I'm not tired of seeing. Every

trailer for that one has me like, oh shit, like I can't wait for this game to actually come out. High on Life, high on life, it's a game that I'm looking forward to, but this trailer both brought me up on it, but then brought me down. Like, seeing the gameplay, the gameplay didn't look as fun

and dynamic as I wanted it to, but it still has that Justin Royland level of humor and, like, voice acting that had us laughing during the trailer. So I think, you know, that still has some love for me. And then, yeah, where wins me, I think looks dope as hell.

So for me, I think the way that I would boil down this showcase is it feels like swimming in sevens, the showcase, where there's nothing that's like a banger, right? There's no games here where I'm like, ah, shit, that's going to be a 10 out of 10. That's going to be a 9 out of 10, right? Like, here and there, you got your list of protocols that look super cool.

And then you have a couple of other games that I think look pretty cool, but this showcase was just filled with games where I'm like, oh, that seems like a swimming in sevens game, right? And I think that's fine. I think for me, that made for an okay showcase. Snowbike, Mike. You know, I'm right alongside these two guys right now. I'm at a three out of five.

I think this was a good showcase here for the, summertime. A great kickoff into games com, right? When you really set yourself up, this is a Tuesday night out in Germany before we kick off the big week. And I think this is a fun way to do it. I think Jeff did a really good job. Once again, I think we learned our lesson two summers ago or last summer, really, when we had our first summer games fest and we just complained about the ads. This summer, he really worked well on making the ads less or at least feel like they're kind of baked in and they're not obtrusive. I feel like this summer with Summer Games Fest, and especially now, the ads weren't that bad, right?

We felt like we kind of went through. A couple of Red Bull ads kind of stuck out, but most of the other ones were just fine with me. And I liked the flow. I think the two-hour time mark for me felt really good. It was nice to spend an evening or an afternoon really here looking at games and hanging out with friends, right? And the first hour did go by pretty quick. I think that hour to hour and a half marker is where it started to slow down a little bit

and I started to look at my watch. But for two hours, I had fun. And there were some standout games to me. And I'm actually a little bit different from these guys. You can just see the tastes in the team and what we like, right? For me, a couple standouts so far, the outlast trials, of course, getting to see that and know that some of us will be able to play that early here in late October. Park Beyond. You will.

That's going to be a ton of fun. Yeah, we're going to play it together. Park Beyond looks awesome, right? If you like Planet Coast, do you like those games? You're going to love Park Beyond. The Expans with Telltale, right? Telltale, that storied team that we used to. to love the name, those games that you think of, and mashing it up with the expanse is just going

to be an awesome experience for me, who's a big expanse fan. And then I go down my other list on the other side, under the waves. This is that quantum dream published game that reminded me of subnotica, but it's going to be a little bit different than subnotica. But exploring the oceans is always something I get excited about and I really, really like. And my final one is Moonbreaker. This is the team that made Subnotica funny enough. They're making something different. But I think what caught my eye was the idea of painting my mini figures, right? I'm not the biggest turn-based guy. When I think of those games, I want to play X-com because that's the game I really like the most in that genre. But the idea of painting my own mini figures and just kind of zoning out and having

fun with that, I think is really, really cool. They brought up Firefly and one other thing was their kind of inspiration. And I felt that, right? And so I had a lot of fun with those games. And some of those were my standouts. But I thought this was a good three out of five, good pacing. good games on afternoon slash evening. One more to throw in there, Tim. The finals is a game that a lot of us are like, what the fuck is that? And it was such a quick showing of it.

I'm watching it on loop here on Twitter. And that's a game that I'm immediately like, okay, I really, I'm excited for the next sort of announcement, which I think Kili's hit was in September-ish. I mean, it's got the style. It's using the compact, the bold plain font. So you know that they mean business. Hell yeah.

And it's going to be a game show first person shooter. I just kind of like the whole vibe of that. Yeah. I do too. And I think that I feel like we have a unanimous decision here. I also think this was a three out of five showcase, especially for gamescom. I think that I like to look at the context of these showcases. And I think that what Jeff has been able to do with the opening night live in particular is kind of make games common,

exciting thing in any way. Whereas like for decades, it wasn't unless you were there and able to play games. That was kind of like, a unique thing to the thousands and thousands of people there that gets to play games, and that's great. But from a games media industry perspective, there was rarely any announcements of consequence. And Jeff has changed that, right? Like single-handedly, there are now announcements being made, release days being revealed,

shifting around, games being announced for the first time that are of bigger impact and even some smaller things. But I like that this showcase was not perfect, I think, far from perfect in some ways. But I think it's a step in the right direction. And we talk a lot about the different levels of the showcases where, like, there's the Nintendo Direct, but then there's a Nintendo partner showcase. And it's like, you know what the difference is when they talk about that. There's a state of play for PlayStation, and then there's the PlayStation Showcase. And I feel that Summer Game Fest needs to be the PlayStation Showcase.

And I feel like they haven't quite hit that mark yet. They're working towards it. I think that that's kind of something that they will do eventually. I think that all the cards will allow. and they'll be able to play their hand perfectly. But I think that this is a major step in the right direction for what a Gamescom event can be, something that is in between the summer season and game awards,

like just kind of an update show, right? Where like, hey, let me introduce you to games like Andy say and like the finals that we're excited about. Next time we see it, we're going to be more interested. It's like, oh, we saw that at Gamescom, right? Like, that's cool that we're introduced to that. We get a couple surprise announcements that are genuinely cool to us, like the PlayStation Edge Controller.

We get looks into games. People wanted to see a bit more of Gotham Knights and Hogwarts Legacy and, you know, those kind of bigger titles, right, that like wouldn't otherwise have a place to be. And I think that it's cool that now there's a place to talk about those. And sure, that's not going to be the most exciting thing ever. And there's going to be a lot of reveals for things of like, hey, that team that you heard of from that worked on these other games that put out a logo for their studio, well, Now they have a small CG trailer for a game that might come out in a couple years.

Like that there needs to be a place for those things. I think that this is a good place for that, bless. Yeah, Tim, I mean, I think you absolutely nail it, right? Like, as we're going through the showcase, I had similar thoughts in terms of, wow, last year, the big headliner for opening night live was Saints Row. Right? And this year, the big headliner, the big closer is Dead Island too. And you go through the list and it's like, yeah, you're not getting the PlayStation showcase level of like polish and big AAA video games. being shown, but I do think that summer game or opening night live does occupy that exact place

that you're talking about where it is kind of a dip, right? Right before the showcase, you know, Mike was asked me like, yo, when is it that we, that we feel the same way about opening night live that we feel about summer game fest in terms of hype and excitement, right? And on one hand, I'm like, I don't know if we can. I don't know if that's the purpose. But on the other hand, right, I mentioned that I think this might be the one. And for me, this is the one where I think they really lived up to the potential of being that

place where in the way that an. E3's past, you would have the PlayStation showcase, you would have the Xbox showcase, you would have a billion different showcases, and that would encompass everything from the AAA to the, to the AA, right? And you would have announcements like, I don't know, looking at the list, moving out too, that might randomly show up at an Xbox thing, right? Or high on life, I guess high on life technically did show up at an Xbox thing, right? But like, where wins meet, maybe that could show up in a PlayStation showcase. I feel like as we've gone and as E3 has become more and more low-key and as it's slowly dying, Jeff has done a good job of finding the

replacement events where game awards is always kind of been game awards right but we're saying bigger and bigger announcements happen there summer game fest feels like it's growing in terms of the big announcements that happened there right last year we got uh elden ring along with the release date for that and we've been seeing you know games like tiny tina and some of those bigger titles appear there opening night live feels like the last bastion of okay we have a bunch of games or nowhere to go right where do we put like all the the exciting uh quote unquote like exciting double a games that could appeal to some people might not appeal to others right like where do we put the Sonic Frontiers of the world or the new tales from the borderlands of the world, right?

Or even the Colistocle protocol or something like the Lords of the Fallen, which I remember hearing about Lords of the Fallen. I knew that was a game before. I think I know a couple of people that played it. But that's not something I would ever anticipate at a big showcase. It's showing up here and it looking fantastic, I think, does a lot for that game and does a lot for what this showcase is as a, hey, we got two hours. We're hanging out and we're going through just a bunch of announcements from dying like two

DLC to the re-reveal of Liza P to Atlas Fallen and a bunch of other stuff that you may or may not care about, right? And I think for what the showcase is, I think it really does work. And it does lend to us all being like, it's a three out of five time. You know, it's okay. But I think in this case, okay, it's fine, right? Like, okay is good. I don't think Jeff Keeley is aiming to knock this out of the park necessarily. I also, yeah, I want to also shout out.

I thought Hogwarts Legacy looked great as well. That was one earlier on the show that I had just skipped by. And to kind of further your point bless, yeah, I think that Gamescom can eventually maybe get to a place where whatever is revealed in maybe a title treatment or a CG trailer at E3, maybe Gamescom can become the gameplay.

Here's the gameplay thing. Hey, you saw this back at Summer Games Fest. We showed you a snippet of a character with the title screen or whatever and the logo. now we're going to, you know, like Tim was mentioning earlier, it's like an update show. Hey, remember that show, that game we saw during the summer?

Now let's kind of, you know, have a little follow-up here and see exactly what that game's all about. Yeah, Jeff is also in a really interesting predicament here. When you look at his three showcases that he does, they're all on the back half of the year and they're within like six months of each other, right? So we're just coming hot off of E3 and Summer Games Fest, right? What is there really to show here? Sure, of course, Game Awards is an award show, but like it's only been less than three months.

It's almost been two and a half months since we did Summer Games Fest. What is he really bringing to the table that could wow us each and every year? And that's my worry when I look at this, right? It's like he's just doing so much, so close together here. And what is going to be the wowing thing after we just came off of the summer hype of E3 and Summer Games Fest? How do you do this? How do you make me care about this two and a half months later, right? And we saw it here.

We talked about it this whole year, right, of COVID playing a factor on certain games and publishers and developers and having to push those back. And they kind of be a scrappy year of a lot of indies and not a lot of AAAs. Maybe the next year we can bring the hype and the energy with some big titles and those publishers and developers can deliver for Jeff. But I think this year's a tough one for him when you look at it going, man, you just did this three months ago. And we didn't have that much already. You kind of put it together here. Dead Island, too, being the closer is tough for me to be like this was. wild and crazy. But, you know, he did it. And I thought the show itself looked good and ran well,

which was. Yeah, I think Dead Island, too, being the show closer is, is what this show is. You know, and I feel like, and that's why I'm higher on it than I potentially would be if I was judging this as like, if this was a game awards or something. Yeah, if this was a game awards, I'd think it was bad. And if it was SGF, I would think it's bad. But it being what this is, I think that there's a lane for it. And yeah, you know, two hours is tiring. Like, it definitely it was it was a kind of rough to get through towards the end but i will say like they did a good job of trying to keep our interest even with the things not that weren't that interesting like it starts to feel samey after a while of like so much cg stuff that like we're questioning like what it

actually is and all of that like i feel like uh for for better or worse and this is kind of a point mike was making um i know that these things are just all ads at the end of the day whether you like the ads or don't like the ads is like kind of how you're grading it but this one felt like there wasn't so much of a break unless there was the Red Bull thing of like, oh, this is clearly the commercials. And like, there was a couple times where I was like, wait, oh, this is a reveal. You know, like, I went to the bathroom. When I came back, it was the destiny thing.

And I was like, oh, this actually looks kind of dope thinking it was an ad, you know, but it was like, oh, no, this is the destiny segment, right? Like, and I get that that's kind of in between her. But I thought that the pacing of this and the way they presented it was, again, a step in the right direction. They're still working on it. And I think that you can clearly see the lines from the last four of these events, the Summer Games Fest, and the Game Awards. Like, they're trying to work with what they got and with the industry where it is,

which is in some ways more vibrant than ever in some ways, you know, kind of inconsistent. And plans are just going, changing every single day. I think that we're moving in a good place. And I'm excited for that because I, this was better than I thought it could be. Not as good as I would wish it would be. Of course, I wish every single thing we get to five out of five. But I don't think you could, I mean, you can't do that. You just, you simply can't.

And we get so kind of used to seeing things and expecting so much that like, when you look at this list of games, it's like, there's a lot of substantial stuff here. There's a lot of like, not substantial stuff. But it's just like, you know, we can't expect God of War III announced every single thing. Andy. Yeah. And I think as the, as the industry continues to kind of become a bit more and more normalized and workflows and pipelines

start to get a little bit more figured out towards the end of this sort of COVID thing we've been dealing with. I think a lot of these presentations will become better. But like Tim, what do you what do you want to see from next year's O&L? And yes, I'm calling it O&L

because Jeff Keely made it a thing. He keeps trying to make it a thing. Because we had SGF in the summer now, now we got O&L right now, bless. I like SGF better. He calls it ONL. He calls it ONL. He calls it O&L.

He does. Yeah, but he's trying to make O&L happen though. Oh, and L. I'm saying it. I'm along. I'm a long. It's not, it's not streets ahead, Barrett. You know? Yeah. It's no, it's no dead coast. Oh, wow. The Dead Coast would have been a great name.

All right. Dead coast would be a fire name for Dead Island. Because they're not on an island. They're on a coast. Oh, man. You know, we'll get to a lot more of this, but real quick, let's take a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by me undies. Of course, I'm Tim Geddies. I love me undies. It is very. very rare, if ever, that you'll see me not wearing Miondi's head to toe. I'm wearing the Mendi's shirt.

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Yeah, no, I was just, you know, I was agreeing with you, Tim, and I was also just kind of putting myself in the shoes of me not being in the industry or keeping up with it daily and just thinking, this is really special. This is something that is good, right? I walked away. If I was working my nine to five job and I wasn't keeping up with the IGNs and the kind of funnies of the world every single day, this is a dope show. Think of the presentation that Jeff puts on in two hours. If you came home and you were able to watch this, you would be filled in on cool new games. you'd get excited at the end of the summer. Like, I think for the casual audience,

this is a great show and a lot of fun to watch and enjoy. For us, it's different because we're in it every single day, right? Yeah, and I do wish that the pacing was a little bit better, especially for us, who do keep up with it every single day. There are quite a few trailers. There are a lot of trailers, actually, that were just pure CGI trailers. Or they will start off with a lot of CGI and then transition to a little bit of gameplay.

And when you have enough of those, I think it bogs down the entire experience, because it is you're watching some cool ass CG shit in space and it goes from that to oh it's a farming simulator and you're like oh all right cool I didn't expect that right or you go from like a big fantasy thing to

oh it's a top down strategy game and of course like I think those games look fine I think those games are going to speak to certain audiences but it's a lot and I won't call it bait and switch because I don't think they're trying to bait and switch but as an audience member watching it it kind of has some of that energy of oh this looks cool what is it oh it's a genre that I don't care about or it's a game

I never heard about or it's a you know thing that might not interest me when you actually get to the gameplay. I do wish that there was a bit more focus on, hey, the games that are coming out in the next six to 12 months, we have gameplay and we're going to lead with gameplay. And for the stuff that is CG, unless it's something big, like, Dune Awakening, I understand. I forgot we saw Dune. Yeah. For Dune, I understand that being a, okay, this is a CG trailer and that's all we have and we're going to spend time with it because it's literally Dune, right? And it's an open world survival MMO. That's a big announcement. But for up that's a little bit more smaller. I don't know if we need to hang out with a lot of

CG, you know, cutscene imagery, right? I'd say, you know, cut past that or had the CD be tight and short. We don't need all that. Yeah, it's rough. I feel like I'm torn on this because I feel like, Mike, I disagree with you a bit about it where I don't think this is for casuals. I think that this is a show that is designed for the us of the world that like kind of get it, kind of understand the Dead Island two coming back is a big deal and like being able to get the references, get the Kojima, making a podcast means something. And unfortunately, you know, there's a lot of like advertisements and things to pay the bills to make it happen. So even though it's for us, it's also giving us a lot of things that we go like, oh, I don't want this.

I don't want this. You know, but like I don't think there's a way around that. Like this show wouldn't exist if those things didn't happen. And it's, I think to Andy's question of like, what do I want to see? It's like, I just want to see this refined more. Like I just want to see this like get even more and more refined. Like I don't think the answer is gameplay. everything. I think that I would much rather see a quick in and out CG trailer for a bunch of

games instead of having to see their their gameplay unless they are Callisto Protocol, unless they are high on life. Like I think that this did a fairly good job of focusing gameplay in the right times because gameplay can bog down the pacing of these things. And it often does. I'd think back to getting Call of Duty every single year at E3 during like the Xbox showcase. And it was just like, we get it. You know, some of these things can go on a little too long. And at the end of the the day we all need to realize different strokes for different folks people are looking for different things here so it's like um i don't think that um i try to look at these showcases and i try to grade them on like what they were intending to do what how the expectations were set for them the and like

the level of surprises the level of like deliverance of what they they did that we expect to see from these things and i think with that they kind of delivered for the most part in terms of like giving us release dates we're looking for again genuine surprises here i I want to see that next year amped up a little bit more. I would like a couple more things as exciting as the PlayStation controller. And I know some people would be like, it's a fucking controller. It's like, no, that means a big, that's a big deal. Like that's something that we've been looking forward to.

And that would never happen. So getting it here, no one rumored that. No one was talking about that. Like, that's really damn cool. So I want to see more of that. I think that, again, the more power Jeff has, the more people that buy into this, the better the shows are going to be. And we'll get more things ranging from return to monkey.

Island all the way up to, you know, Clist of Protocol, everything in between, and the surprising things, or not the surprising, the things we don't know about surrounding it, they're going to be there forever until they don't need to be because the things that pay for it are the bigger deal things, but that only happens if the industry buys in.

I think one reason why I am so high on this showcase is that there weren't, at least on my Twitter timeline, and a whole lot of probable maybe rumors and leaks and this. Like, I didn't have my expectation set super high for this anyway. So I didn't go into this expecting to see a silk song or, you know, that type of, that caliber of title. I think we saw a lot of awesome games that didn't necessarily, you know, blow anybody away.

But there was a lot of really good titles that I think still make a really good showcase and if it was and if this were at e3 um amongst all of the other sort of showcases the future game show the PC game show all those sorts of uh showcases that happen I think this would have been one of the better sort of showcases just based on the caliber of games that we did see um but yeah I'm with you tidied it up a little bit cut it down by 30 45 minutes and I think great I think it's a damn good show solid hour 15 minutes especially Mike you were saying of like this being two and a half months after summer game fest. And that's why I always say like never expect anything big from Gamescom

because it's always so close to the actual big, more relevant summer showcase. And then a few months away from Game Awards, gamescom always feels like a weird place for big announcements like that. And that's why I always have like this weird thing with opening night live the last couple of years of like, all right, what do you do with this show? Definitely don't make it two hours. That's something that I think we've learned the last couple of years. But yeah, I think it would benefit.

benefit it greatly to cutting it to like an hour. I mean, I think even an hour and a half would do a lot for it. But for me, I didn't really feel the two hours that hard. And like compared to other showcases that we've done that had been two hours, I know there are others where I've been like, oh, this is still going. Oh, we're still here. I didn't really have that here. And I think that comes back to a little bit of why I'm feeling a little bit more high on the showcase.

As I look through all the notes that I took of all the announcements, My thing is this looks like a fire KFGD episode, right? Like the announcements we got, right, if I go down the list, you know, everywhere, sure, why not? That looks like an interesting, weird, metaverse thing. Dune Awakening, that's a cool announcement, right? That being an open world survival at MMO. The dual sense thing, dope.

Callisto Protocol, having a mutation system, right? I think that's a cool thing to dig into. Lords of the Fallen, I'm sure that audience is probably going crazy. And even if you're not in the audience, I think us watching it, we're like, oh, that looks really cool, right? At least the usage of music in that trailer was extremely cool in the way that they transitioned from the license song into like the cool orchestration in them back. Tortuga. Tortuga.

Tortuga. You know, continuing going down the list, you know, moving out too. That got Mike hype. I got me a bit excited. Hogwarts Legacy. There are quite a few people in chat that are popping off for that. New Tales in the Borderlands. I'm really curious about that.

I think that trailer was a pretty good trailer for a game that I'm a bit nervous about. Dying Light 2, DLC, looks interesting. Looks cool. Sonic Frontiers. you know, me and Tim are going to play that game. It comes out this day before God of War. Why not? Real talk, a lot of people are going to play that game.

Like, jokes aside, like, this game is going to sell so, so well, despite its release day. It doesn't fucking matter. The headlines that I think you pull from this showcase are good enough. Like, I think there's a lot of good headlines here. And for me, that is what makes a decent to good showcase if we come away from it. Or we go onto Twitter and see IGN people hyping it, right? Not hyping it, but like, people in the chat react. to the announcements because they are speaking

to different people, right? Think about how many people are going to be talking about, you know, Liza P or even the word song, weird song, we row song, we never figured that out. That is coming from developers from, was that the one that they were like, oh yeah, fallout, Outer Worlds, all these RPG people are

working on it. That's going to have a lot of people talking, right? That's going to have a lot of people interested in what it is, even though I don't think they showed it that well. So for me, I think the headlines are good enough out of this to make it a thing worth doing. Right. Like, I would be sadder if this game's combo skipped, I guess is what I'm saying. Like, I'm glad they did it.

I'm glad it panned out the way it was. I think it could be way better. I think, you know, the ceiling is way higher than what they hit. But like, you know, looking at this, even the Kojima podcast, I'm like, oh, that's for me. I'm going to listen to that shit. Totally. The Pokemon car. I'm going to drive that shit.

Remove Friday the 13th devs from the killer cons from outer space as like, imagine you didn't know that. Doesn't Greg Miller seen like such a killer clowns from out of space fan like so such a grimy like wrestling fan into killer like that's what Greg Miller is to me and I feel like if you were here he'd hop for that

game. Yeah. Oh for sure. Absolutely. I do want to go back to talking about the pacing because again I think sometimes people hear pacing and they think that if something isn't like entertaining every single second that it has bad pacing. But I think that this show is demonstrably better paced than

almost any Jeff show that he's had so far because I feel like a problem in the past Jeff shows are pretty much like very top heavy where there's always this moment of like the first 30 minutes we're like oh shit oh shit yo this is actually a great showcase and then we get like an hour and a half of just like oh damn there's nothing interesting and there is no one more moment at least this had a one more moment and again Dead Island too

not something that we're all like holy shit about but I mean there is industry relevance to it it and it that is like a it's it's newsworthy like that would be a headline on uh games daily right that oh dad allen two is announced like that's big enough news that it's it's a gamescom level one more thing 100 100 percent yeah and i think that that is an it's an important thing but at least we had that we haven't had a gamescom level one more thing at the previous opening night lives so yeah and when i was going to say to be yeah when we compare to other kelly showcases the amount of times we've been like wow what a great showcase.

If only this third game would have been the last thing they showed, or if only this fifth game would have been towards the end, because yeah, they do get kind of top heavy. But I also think that's just a product of them being so long. Like I don't know if you should have the ability to have like a top or a middle or a head or a bottom heavy sort of showcase because I think that's a product of it being a two hour long show that you have,

you're going to have these lulls. you know what if there weren't the lulls you know what if they were you know what if they were you know brought down 22 you know because it's like if there if there weren't the lulls there'd be no show because the lulls paid for the show and that sucks that's just like it's the sure reality of it man and like even then the two hour showcase it's like yeah we're complaining about it and look i'm complaining about it too like i want it clear i don't like that i wish that wasn't the case it's just there has to be a level of understanding of i would rather this happen than not happen and it's for the people in the room as well there are thousands of people at games

and there's the awards, and this is, it's not an American-based thing. Like, this is the, the amount of non-American devs being featured here. Like, that is such a unique thing that we don't see much, especially on the European side of things.

So it's like, there's a lot of elements that I think we need to keep in context for what this is. And again, does that make it my favorite thing? No, I didn't give it a five. I didn't even give it a four.

I'm giving it a three, because it was okay. How much money is Homeworld Three throwing at Jeff? Who, a lot. Because, like, they just got funds, don't they? They got that, They got that Saudi money.

They have to, right? Like, they got, yeah, whoever is funding Homeworld 3, like, maybe, maybe don't fund them that much. Like, I don't know Home World 3 needs that kind of budget, right? I feel like they got more budget than like some AAA games out here with the marketing. But yeah, I do, I wish there were less of those. And I, and to Tim's point, I understand why there, why there are those because they do help fund the whole project.

But I think those are where we really feel the lulls, right? When the ads come in, that's where we really feel the lulls. And like, you know, I enjoyed Melly. I don't know if Melly's segment was needed here with the awards because the awards very obviously weren't for the audience watching. Therefore, the audience on the show floor. And like, for us, that didn't make sense, right? It's like, why is Liza P getting nominated for a most anticipated PlayStation game? Right. Like, is it at the show floor? Like, it's on game, it's on game pass. Why is it not nominated for Xbox? There's so many questions there that for us as the viewers are left unanswered that I'm sure maybe makes sense to the gamescom people. But I feel like stuff like that could be chopped or edited and help bring down. a lot of those little moments. I do also just really want to shout out the quality of lies of P. When we were doing during our ad break, I continue to kind of be blown away by the visual quality of it. And I know that I shouldn't be surprised by it anymore because I think we've seen enough of it to know that this is the game and this isn't me being fooled by maybe like an extreme vertical slice.

And all these environments look really, really damn good. and just the quality of it looks insanely AAA. And like them or not, souls games are here to stay. It's the battle royale for the single player thing now. Like you're going to see a million devs making Souls-like games because they are so popular. And unfortunately, a lot of them are pretty middling, right?

A lot of them are going to be six out of tens and they're not going to be the most crazy good experiences. But I think this one looks like it can finally be one of, break the mold and say, hey, there's a smaller dev out there making a Soulslike game. And it isn't, you know, it isn't Neo or it isn't one of those higher caliber devs. But this is actually one to keep an eye on because it does look promising. And really enough, I'm engaged from like the plot perspective. I'm like, oh, shit, they're adapting Pinocchio.

Seeing Chapo in the trailer. Hearing, what's his name, little guy. Cricot. Yeah, Jimmy Cricket. Yeah, hearing his voice. I'm like, oh, I'm actually kind of curious on what is. That was a weirdly get hype moment of them confirming. Yeah, it really was.

The chat pop, let's go! Jimmy cricket! Andy, to your point, we talk about this a lot, right? When we talk about showcases, specifically things like state to play or Nintendo Directs sometimes, where, you know, we're there for the big ones. We're there for the Insomniac games and Noddy Dog and Nintendo EAD and like the big hitters,

right? But in order to have those, you need to have these smaller announcements and well-placed smaller titles, whether they're indie games or just smaller games, like they can kind of like really kind of feed off the energy of it and become talked about titles that actually means something. And I think in this, we had a couple of them with friends versus friends with Life of Pie or Liza Pie. Lies of P.

Lies of P. But the problem is there's so many of those games in this that it does start to feel like noise. And I think that that is the thing that I don't know that there's a good slide. solution for just because of the realities. But I do think that making the showcase better just in terms of what it's actually setting out to do if you didn't need to worry about money, you didn't need to worry about all those X factors.

Like, yeah, it would have been a lot cooler to have, you know, Hogwarts legacy, Gotham Knights, the Clist of Protocol and Life of Pee, like all kind of just next to each other. Liza of P. God damn it. You did this to him. You started that. Just say Liza Vanelli.

Just say Liza Man. Nally, man, Jesus Christ. But you get what I'm saying. Yeah. Michael R. O'Leary in chat says, I know I'm annoying with this stuff, but it's not Jiminy Cricket. Jiminy is a Disney copyright. It's an unnamed cricket in the original story.

I love that. Jeffrey Cricket. Jeffrey Cricket. Thanks for clearing up that copyright law for us, Michael R. O'Leary. I can't wait for life. Yeah, I can't wait for this dual sense edge, bro. For real.

Go. Here's the thing, man. I know that for a while there, I think Sony still has a lot of things that they need to fix when it comes to being more accessible to the gamer, right? We always applaud Xbox for just how user-friendly things are whenever you're, and it's mostly just transporting saves, let's be honest.

Like, we always hear about the issues and struggles people have when it's, I got to delete that version. I got to get the PS5 version and the save. I got to, like, it becomes a whole thing, right? And I feel like they're kind of turning the corner where, hey, we're putting our games on PC and we're going to be coming out with a PC launcher and we're coming out with an elite style controller. I feel like they're finally kind of riding the ship in a way where under, you know, I'd say like a year and a half ago, I would have said, man, this leadership, I don't know if they kind of, I felt like every day on games daily,

there was a story about how leadership just didn't get it. And leadership was fucking things up and making the wrong decisions. But now I feel like we're kind of like course correcting a bit and we're making the right decisions. And I hope to kind of see those decisions keep on being made in the future. Yeah, so the PlayStation blog has a little more info on the PlayStation DualSense Edge Wireless Controller. Not too much, though, but it's everything you kind of expect from what we saw in the teaser of ultra-customizable controls, ability to save multiple control profiles on controller user interface that has a dedicated function button that allows you to easily adjust your setup

while staying focused on the in-game action, quickly being able to swap between preset control profiles. Three types of swappable stick caps, standard high dome and low dome. Two swappable sets of back buttons, half dome and lever. Can be configured to any other button input, putting more essential controls at your fingertips,

built-in wireless controller features, retain the signature comfort and immersive experience of the dual sense and some other stuff. Tim, when you pull a bow for a bow for a bow, bow and arrow will it feel like a bow probably not on the back thing but sure still yeah I would maybe I don't know but there was a thing going around Twitter I saw that it people are guessing that this game's going to come out in or that the controller is going to come out in November aligning with

Ragnarok because here there's a quote saying whether you're facing Norse gods and monsters and God of War Ragnarok or rival players and all my battle royale if you're going to drop that they you know probably would want to time it around it so set the Set the Dodge button to your back right button. We'll see once we get it in hands. I'm a big, me and Andy, I know hype up the elite controller a lot. And everybody, I kind of funny, really likes that. We'll see, you got to have hands on the controller,

but I don't like the look of these back buttons at this time. Right now, I think Xbox really found the way to have those back buttons kind of on the handle grips, as opposed to if you've ever used the scuff advantage controller, those back buttons were on like the bottom middle. And that one just never felt as comfortable. and as easy to grip and get a hold of those back buttons as opposed to the Xbox Elite Controller. So I am hoping that it's not like that because if it is, it just doesn't feel as good as getting them on the back

handles itself. So we'll see. I'm hoping for some color customization eventually, right? Like if this is opening the door for design lab, meaning. And that's where that's kind of what I mean by like the course correction type stuff. Like don't be, don't be so afraid of what Xbox is doing. Don't be afraid to emulate it. Like, understanding and I feel like leadership in the past may not have admitted that Xbox is ever doing anything good.

Like that just always kind of in the same way that Greg talks about how IGN employees were like they would never talk to GameSpot employees because it was like such a rivalry there. Yeah, I feel like at this point, let's try to adopt some of these products at my. Microsoft is doing over there because a lot of them are very not only user friendly but just like I love customizing controllers and I love having a the design lab and everybody wants that everybody wants their own colors on their dual sense controller it just makes sense I know we're talking a lot about a god of war

Sonic Frontiers and Skoll and Bones as being like you know the big trio that is going to shut down November right these games coming out on the same two day radio is going to break everybody Dwayne Wade Chris Bosch and LeBron James yeah exactly that's what they call them that's what they which one is LeBron James probably Sonic uh you know don't don't underrate uh October 21st because as of this showcase on October 21st we're getting new tales from the borderlands scorn and Gotham nights so look out there we go all right look out of everybody all scorn is the real wet one right a lot of wet and juicy nice real wet and juicy that's gonna sound real good

with like 3d head to you know how in life was supposed to come out that same day to you would have got delayed seven yeah Any closing thoughts on this? No, I had a good time. It was a really fun time to spend it together with the kind of funny family. You guys in the chat, and I'm sure around the globe, people enjoyed gathering around and just having some fun. I think Jeff Keely did it again.

Another fun showcase to enjoy the summer with. Just bring us together talking about games. I'm very happy with what I saw. Cousy P's saying that Sonic is 2011 LeBron when he got locked up by J.J. Berea. It's such a joke for like 12 people, but I like you said it. You're saying that like I understand what any of those words mean. To end this, though, I'm in a real mood for a specific reason based on what we shot.

So I want to sit here and share this with you guys. That's the 2014 Game of the Year. You're talking about Game of the Year, right? You're talking about any of the experience that changed the industry. When you talk about story and scope and gameplay, that is Goat Simulator. Wait, is this genuine? No. Okay.

There's Tim with the impact font. I mean, it's kind of like a dog. It's not a dog, though. They need help write that. God, doesn't this take you back? When I think about goats. God, I hate him. The goat.

He looks exactly the same. It is really an analogy for life, you know, just trying to keep all four legs on the ground at the same time. It's powerful. 2014 was a rough year for me. I want to uppercut him into space. I hate him so much. And of course I retreated to video games.

I needed an experience so rich that I could get lost in it and just forget about my problems. In Goat Simulator, you know, there was no Medicaid to worry about it. There were no hospitals and waiting rooms. I had to go sit and there was just the driving goal of when am I going to get my next bail of hay. Can a game about goats win IGN's game of the year? Well, goats eat cans. so goat can do anything goats have four feet

but no hands I think deep inside we're all like goats That's a great joke Altona All goats can make cheese Goats Oh my god Papa Goats Goats

Fucking love it dude Very good It's very good For years We would walk around Just be like goats Goats I love it, everybody.

Thank you for hanging out with us all day to day. Bless you and I can finally get off camera for the last eight hours. But thank you all for hanging out with us. This has been an absolute blast. We have a whole bunch of showcases coming up the next couple months. We have the D23 Game Showcase, the Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm movie showcase. Ubisoft forward. I'm sure there'll be others as well.

But we'll be reacting to all of those and the Game Awards in December, which has a date now. So that's fun. It's December 8th, I want to say it was. Sounds right. So yeah, that's going to be a lot of fun. Thank you for hanging out. Thank you for chilling. Until next time, love you all.

Goodbye.