Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Grading Xbox Bethesda & Square-Enix E3 2021 Showcases - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

Tim, Bless, Andy, Mike, and Greg grade E3 2021 showcases by Xbox Bethesda, Square-Enix, PC Gaming, Future Games, and Back 4 Blood. Time Stamps - 00:00:00 - Start 00:03:40 - Back 4 Blood 00:10:48 - PC Gaming Show 00:17:16 - Future Games Show 00:27:43 - Square Enix 00:49:22 - Xbox 01:30:35 - Top 3 Favorite Games So Far Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes, joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. I will murder chaos. Oh, please. Chaos, chaos, chaos. You guys see the montage already that someone made of every time chaos was said in that one trailer and the clip takes like 30 seconds. It's great. It's fantastic stuff.

But we also have the new face of video games blessing at a yo, yeah, Jr. Yo, what's up? We have the hype master himself, Snowbike, Mike. Yo, Xbox brought the hype today, Tim. Can't wait to talk about it. It's been all day we had to hold it in for this moment, and I can't wait to talk to you, beautiful gentlemen, including the Nitro Rifle, Andy Cortez.

That was like five hours of video games. Just one, like six. I lost track of time, man. You were live for nine hours today. I mean, we're still live now, so we're moving on to that 10th, maybe, you know what is this? The brew free, die hard. Oh, nice.

Do I need to grab a truly with an orange LaCroy. Anyway, we're doing a lot of E3 coverage here on Kind of Funny. You can watch it live on Twitch.tv slash kind of funny games. You can watch Greg Miller hosting E3 itself, some other places, or you can watch us on. Yeah, I know, but I want to promote us.

YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Yeah, you're right. Twitch.t.m. TV slash E3. Patero. No.com with E3 right behind him. I love it. And Patreon.com slash kind of funny games is where you want to be if you want to get the show ad-free, just like Donovan Harkness, Omega 3, Tyler Ross, Delaney, Twining,

Julian the gluten-free gamer, James Hastings, Casey Andrew, and Elliot have done. We appreciate all of you so very much because you support us. You're not going to hear ads from Honey, Fitbit, and Canva like the rest of the people are, including the people watching live right now on Twitch. com. Slash kind of funny games because we're doing the very special thing where all of E3 we're doing our game shows live, including PSI Love You, that's going to happen tomorrow.

with Blessing and Janet Garcia. So that's very fun. They're going to be talking about what E3 means for PlayStation, what games were announced that are going to be there, what games aren't going to be on it, the competition, all that stuff. But that isn't today.

That is tomorrow. Today we are continuing to grade the different E3 showcases, the different summer game fest showcases, whatever you want to call them, everything that happened today on June 13th, 2021. Greg, you had a guttural reaction.

Was that to some breaking news or something? Or was that just, no, that was your sick fucking intro. right there where you did it so perfectly right how you put the sponsors in without like they wouldn't have to listen that was really good Tim thank you thank you

coming from you that means a lot because I you know no bullshit Greg Miller one of the greatest host of the goddamn business can you round of applause for this man not only hosting three but then popping on all of our shows it's so impressive it's so great you had to miss the games cast yesterday

Greg when we did did all the stuff so I'm happy to have you here but a little explainer for you just to get your up for how we're doing this. We're going to go conference by conference and we're grading on the classic video game scale. Okay. That goes, of course, F bottom tier. You move on up, D, C, B, A, but there is the illustrious S. We're doing an S tier. We're doing the S rank. Nothing's got an S so far, but that might change today. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. But let's get right into it. What I want to do is start with the later ones to work back

because I'm sure Microsoft's going to be the bulk of the conversation here. I'm going to save that for the end. Let's start off with the WB Games, Back for Blood Showcase. Just a quick one, 10 minutes. Got a little bit of that. Naomi Kyle.

Yep, hosted by Naomi Kyle. Was in, it was out. Snowback, Mike. I want to start with you. Okay, yeah, thanks for starting off with me, Tim, because this was multiplayer focused, right? This was an interesting one of, instead of us seeing the multiplayer PVE,

They're like held up. Let's add a PVP section to the game. And I was actually kind of wowed by this. I didn't think, oh, they would do PVP at all. I thought they would focus on what they were going to do, maybe show us more of the cards, show us a new level, a new part of the game.

But they decided to double down and show us about 10 minutes of PVP action, which is going to be, I believe, 4V4, two rounds, and it is all time-based. So how long you can hold out against the other team? And I got to say, I like that they're adding another layer onto this, especially up against very familiar games coming

into this genre later this year. And so I think they needed to create something else that will keep you engaged, keep you involved. And this PVP does look fun. I don't think I'll play it that much. I'll probably play it about 10 to 20 times. But you know what? Good on them for trying something different in adding another layer

to the game. And so presentation-wise, I'll give this a C, didn't need to be there, but you did a good job. keeping it short and simple. Could have been a YouTube video. Good enough. Greg Miller.

One quick interjection there. It is 4V4, but it's best of three. They showed two rounds to show how it'll switch over. But if you went one team one and another team, one, it would go to the third or whatever. I guess if the scores were the same. Gotcha. Time and gotcha.

Greg, what did you think about that segment? I had expected Back for Blood to have multiplayer, obviously, after Left for Dead did. I'm sorry, you know, competitive PVP multiplayer. and I was not excited for it. So when they put it on the schedule that, hey, we're doing a Back for Blood presentation, and guess what, it's going to be all by multiple, the PVP. I was like, a little bit of an eye roll on it, right?

However, it did what I think it's set out to do, which was make me, someone who's so excited for Back for Blood, but so excited for PVP, it made me actually go, oh, you know what, like, I could see us doing this. I could see us streaming this game and actually going, you know what, let's have a eight of us go in there, go through and do this switch off as we go. similar to what we used to do with Predator, similar to what we've done the past was Friday the 13th, right? I think that the, you know, beat each other's time.

I think the shrinking, you know, Fortnite-like storm or whatever or circle for a playthrough makes sense and keeps it a bit more varied in terms of, all right, cool, when you are the cleaners and you are setting up against the ridden, right? You go and you put it into an area, like, if you get pushed out of that area, suddenly your plan goes to shit and you have to kind of pivot and go for it.

So, yeah, in terms of grading a presentation on it, outside of the, and I know content's part of it or whatever, I'd give it a beat, because again, it's something I walked in and I didn't want, but I actually enjoyed myself. It didn't overstay. It's welcome. It got me excited to at least try this. And as somebody who never liked playing as any of the monsters and left for dead competitive multiplayer, this one, you know, having all nine of the ridden right out there, I was like, okay, cool, I could see me being the tall boy. I could see me being the crusher. I could see actually how, you know, me and Snowmike Mike, or I'm assuming Snowmike Mike will be one of the better cleaners of killing the monsters.

me and somebody like Andy could scheme it up and figure out how, you know, bottleneck him into somewhere. You know, he's the wretch. I crush him, something like that. Andy, what do you think? I thought it was a really cool thing. I do appreciate that they didn't make it just, you know, as generic as can be. That was kind of my worry going into it,

especially because I didn't even know they were doing a multiplayer component, competitive multiplayer component until today. So what I like about it most is that whenever, we play Predator, I never like playing Predator. And so if we're going to play around, somebody else be Predator. Like, I don't want to waste our time or whatever. But I do like that this kind of forces me into the more of the monster role. And if you hate playing the soldier, you're kind of being forced into that role too.

But can your skills on the other side outweigh your skills on the side that you don't like? And I kind of enjoy that you're kind of made to feel uncomfortable. And maybe if you don't like these roles, you're going to have to kind of learn them. and hopefully get better at them. I think it's a neat concept. I wasn't expecting, I thought I was just going to be like evolve. One player picks a monster. There's four people just have added, you know, survive for a long as you can.

I'm glad it wasn't anything like that. I think it's a pretty neat concept and I would give it a B as well. Yay, Andy. Blessing. Yeah, this was a C for me. You know, I think what they had to show is pretty good. For me as somebody who's not played any Left for Dead PVP. I'm not someone who sees that immediately and goes, oh, shoot, yeah, this is awesome.

I want to play it. And so I feel like for this stream, they kind of had the task to get me into it. And I think they did a good enough job to make me go, okay, this is something I try. It's not something that I'm super excited about. You know, it's not, I don't see this necessarily as the half of the game that is like the completion to the overall back for blood package. I'm still going to back for blood for the PVE over the PVP. But since it's there, I'm going to try it out.

And I think the thing that struck me most was how hype the people in chat were that did have that connection to Left for Dead PVP, it seemed like everybody, it seemed like everybody who had that connection was very into it and was very excited for it. And so the fact that they got that done, you know, I think that's a good thing. The one hangup I have is that I don't,

I didn't really see the purpose of this being a stream. I think this could have been dropped as a video. It being like a 10 minute thing, you know, hosted all that stuff. Like I think the production of it was good. It as a, as a, let's all tune into this thing at the same time viewing experience. I don't think was absolutely necessary.

for what this was. This didn't feel big enough for that. But overall, I thought it was good. I thought it was fine. So it's a C for me. I'm going to give it a B minus because I'm a little bit kind of in a mix of where you guys are, where to Blessings Point, I think this didn't quite hit the mark of being a tent pole must watch. Everyone has their eyes on this thing. But I want to support this type of move to have singular games be that. And I think that it wasn't a misstep. It just wasn't like a great step forward. But I imagine that in the three in the future, I want to see a calendar that has a bit

more filled out actual times with just game names. So there's not speculation of what WB games are going to be at the showcase. It's like, okay, cool. This is the back for blood. You know exactly what you're getting from it. And I think they did a good enough job of showing that. I thought the mode they showed off like the content was there. And I think reiterating the things were already new, but the date, the date of the beta and the fact it's coming to game pass, like they got the info down. And I think reiterating that in a very clear, concise way, they did a good job of that. Moving on.

Do you want to talk about GamePass really quick? You want to save that for Xbox. Let's save it for Xbox. Okay, cool. Yeah, let's say, let's say the real time. Like champing at the bit over there. God, he wants to talk about the Game Pass. Totally, man.

He's the meme of that kid who's like turning red, like holding in his words. Moving on, I do want to talk about the PC gaming show. We watched it a little bit ago. Andy, let's start. with you? I think these showcases will probably be something that we skip next time, at least

for me, like if I'm given the option. A lot of these games are seen in either Gorilla or Day of the Devs or other smaller indie showcases. And, yeah, I mean, it's a pretty long presentation. I thought it did a decent

job with sort of... I could do without all the silly bits, right. I could do without all the presentation side of it with the, you know, they're in the mech and they're doing Mika's like a pilot and stuff. I could do without all that. I think like just show us the games and we'll be fine.

But yeah, again, many of these games have been featured already. I was already kind of tired by this point as well. So that's definitely a factor. And yeah, I would give this like a C plus. Wow. I would give it a D. A very, very, very very, very solid D. Okay,

I'm fine. I'll go to see minus fucking. Correct. Look at how easy it is the role. Right. And he kind of nailed it with what he was saying of just like, you know, there was all there was cool games here, but there were very few cool games we hadn't already seen in other places.

And I don't think that this showcase showed any of those games better than we had seen them before. And in addition to that, it was on the long side. And it also had way too much production value in the wrong ways where, you know, in opposition. to Devolver that kept it tight and kept it interesting and the production value added to the experience and was the glue between the six games they showed, all of which were interesting.

This kind of just felt like a distraction for time's sake and it really didn't vibe with me from any type of production level, comedy level, any of that stuff. And like it definitely didn't enhance the games or make me more excited. I kind of just wanted it to be over. Yeah. I agree. I think when you're, when the games that you're showing, aren't necessarily more exciting than the presentation that you think the presentation is.

I don't know. It just kind of felt off for me. You know, if we're going to get kind of the the kooky presentation side of it, I want bigger announcements and more badass looking games and nothing really kind of blew my socks off. This is one of that I skipped. Actually, I ended up not watching this one. One, because I really needed a nap in the middle of the day. but then also for the thing that Andy mentioned earlier, that PC gaming show, one in premise isn't necessarily speaking to me as a player,

but then also historically hasn't had much to really get hyped about. I think the most hype announcement they made at the PC gaming show was last year when they announced that Persona for Golden was coming to PC. Like that's a really cool thing. Outside of that, there was never anything. That substantial coming out of this show specifically, and so I tuned out.

Mike. Yeah, Tim and Andy said it so well. I'm going to give this a D plus. The production there just wasn't quite right. And I think that's what we're going to see a lot of on these kind of like mid-tier shows, not the big boy shows of, you know, Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation. If you're coming in a day or two days afterwards and there's already been three different indie showcases and a Jeff Keely showcase, your number of games that you're going to showcase

are going to be about 90% the same and then maybe about five totally different games. and they got to really wow people to get them to draw in. At this point of the E3 slash Summer Game Fest cycle, this now becomes a go to IGN, read the article, scroll through the little YouTube videos of it, and find the ones you like. Unfortunately for them, they're just coming in about three days too late

to have any real significance in staying power and wow factor. But I will give them one positive. The thing that really picked me up off of this 90-minute presentation was one game that did connect with me from my childhood, which was Heroes of Might and Magic is getting a game, like a spiritual successor called Songs of Conquest. That's just something that stuck with me, and I'm happy that I saw that, but I could have found that in an IDN article.

So just a little too late, all the same games that we've already seen, and that's going to be a tough one for both of these conferences we talk about next. And Tim mentioned it earlier that this whole presentation was kind of the kind of funny games daily version of, here's what's out today, you know, like just in video form. I thought that was a really solid point. Greg? Yeah, I don't need to echo or beat the dead horse with you guys. I would go D as well.

And for the record, I am grading on the new IGN scale, which is, you know, none of these half points or anything. So I just go, I'm going full letters every time. No pluses, no minuses, all right? Just putting everybody into buckets. You know what, Andy? Some people need to explain the scale. They need to explain the scale sometimes.

But yeah, like I think we're all on the same page about this one, right? Just really long. I think when I look at the PC gaming show, I look at a show that I'm glad exists. I'm glad these smaller games have a chance to come out and get an audience, right? But the problem is I think that I look at it and I go, man, this is what kind of inspire the kind of funny game showcase. Remember, where we would do 62 games in under an hour. And it was that idea of let's get you through this.

We understand attention spans and how much there is. And this really did drag on for a while there. And it sucks because for me personally, like, right, there's two games that I like out of it, Lakeburg Legacy and then Sacrifier, that JRP that's got a different, you know, inspiration to it. A game I went and backed on Kickstarter, which I haven't done in a long time, right? So there is good stuff in here. I appreciate that there's a place for these smaller games to go,

but I think it could do with some editing and like actually punching everything up a bit more. Tim, you're gone for Sacrifier. Sacrifier is a sort of, yeah, here it is. It's very similar to Octopath. But, yeah, it looks like Octopass. Oh, cool. that's kind of interesting.

Yeah, they have dynamic combat. There's an article up on PC gamer that I was tweeting about. Dynamic combat, 20 to 30 hours. There's no, he's not, they're not making you grind. It's inspired a lot by vagrant story. So like it looks like what I love about Octopath and the art style and then also like, hey, let's, you know, have a, I like the idea of a modern RPG with a classic take. Moving on to the next one.

Right after this, we had the future games showcase. This was the one hosted by Tr. Troy and Laura. I am going to start this one off. I similarly think that this had a lot of the same issues as the PC gaming one, but I would give this a C, probably, like a whole step above the other one for me, because I think that this was a lot more similar to the kind of funny game showcase we did, where they did a good job kind of like having fun talking over the games and like keeping it moving.

The only problem is they kept it moving for like what felt like seven hours. like it was just way too long there was just way too much and I feel like kind of pruning and getting some of the filler out of it would have like really really really helped because there was some really cool game shown it ending with the immortality that game looks looks awesome

that was a fun one more thing but yeah otherwise it was like okay we've seen a lot of these games a whole bunch of times I think presentation wise they did a good job definitely could have been better though bless yeah this is one that I had on

in the background. I enjoyed it fine. Like I'm with U-Tem that I'd give it a C. It did have immortality by San Barlow. And I think that's a great way to have a pop toward the end. Even though that's, of course, the game that's not going to speak to everybody watching. But for the people that did like telling lies

or did like her story, for me, I was like, oh, shit. I was not expecting to get this here. And I'm very excited for what this is going to be. So I think that's an exciting thing. I think the way they presented it was really good. It felt very well-paced, especially compared to like, compared to how you guys are talking about the PC Gamer Show, right? Like being able to dole out games in a pretty quick clip and not spend

too much time on any specific thing is a very good thing. But this also did have the issue for me of games that I've now seen multiple times in many other places. Like how many times am I going to see Allie Allie World? How many times are I going to see dying light to stay human? How many times am I going to see a certain number of two-point campus? Like I think this might have been the fourth or fifth time we've seen two-point campus. Stuff like that, I feel like kind of brings it down when we get to this point of E3 where we are days in. and we're looking for new stuff and we keep getting more the same. That said, you know, I think it was a very, very fine presentation,

and they had a few cool things here. Mike. I'm going to give this a D. I did like the presentation. I liked having the host really do a good job, but unfortunately this is going to fall victim again of we've already been there, done that too long for 90 minutes to sit there and only see about four games we didn't know about.

It really just slogs through and makes your presentation just not that, fun to watch. They did show a cool little dinosaur game at the beginning instinct. I'm looking to see what that game is going to be all about. Instinction. Thank you, Greg. See what that's all about and what word it is. But in all honesty, this was 90 minutes of games you've already seen. This is a D. This is a skippable one that probably when we look back next year, we're going to have this conversation of when the fat gets trimmed. Maybe these things aren't around, these conferences. Andy. well I would go around D plus

you know I'm glad that we got to see Jurassic World Evolution too hadn't seen that yet really happy that we got a first look in a new and such a deep new look at it yeah yeah totally world premiere game play allie Olly World as well thank you for bringing that one up the last two point campus for sure yeah I'd give it a D plus I think Laura and Troy and the

way that it was sort of formatted in the way that Tim was mentioning earlier. The pace was kind of kept going. There wasn't too much time of like, you know, Laura and Troy are trying to steal the show. It's just, let's just keep on showing more games, keep on showing more games. And that's why I would give it a D plus. If it was

anything more, I would probably give it a worst grade because it would just drag on too long. Craig, did we already get you on this one? No, you didn't. I got to go with my boy Snowbike Mike and put a D on it as well. uh yeah travis travis troy and laura are great and i love them and i thought they had some funny little bits in there similar to sean and mika um but it's the same thing where i think the you know criticisms criticisms are interchangeable with the fact of just like it went on a really long time there were a million games in there that i don't think uh you had enough standouts to make it actually have that be a good thing where again like you know it's so similar to look at my page that's just like the page that was for pc right where i have more than 30 games you here in what I have three circle that I think look great. Lake, which I've talked about, and we've seen before. Two point, two point campus, which I put on here. Obviously, immortality, the Sam

Barlow announcement, huge, loved her story, loved telling lies. And honey, I joined a cult from Team 17. But even that was shoved into a Team 17 montage of a bejillion games. And so it's like that thing where you're putting things in and some are breathing and some are just so forced in all over the place. And yeah, I walk away and it's a blur and it's didn't have the excitement to keep you fully invested and have your full attention. We also saw that eldest souls game that was... Aldous Souls, yeah. Like, it was just the story kind of cinematic

that was really not good, and don't do that, developers. Please don't do that. You have, like, just show off screenshots if you want to and have the dev say, here's kind of what we're looking at, or try to get a couple, just less than a minute of footage.

We don't need the time of the drive, Dragons is in it. No, like nobody gives a fuck about that. That just kind of gets lost in all the noise. Just show us the way the gameplay looks. It's probably something I'm going to be into. It's a top-down hack and slash dashing game. And I would have rather seen that than get this big lore dump.

Totally. Dump. Before we move on, let me tell you about our sponsors. This show is brought to you by Honey. We all shop online. And we've all seen that promo code for Yultonis at checkout. But thanks to Honey, manually searching for coupon codes is a thing of the past.

Honey is the free shopping tool that scours the internet for promo codes and applies the best one it finds to your cart. Honey supports over 30,000 stores online that range from sites that have tech and gaming products to popular fashion brands and even food delivery. Imagine you're shopping on one of your favorite sites when you check out the Honey button drops down and all you have to do is click Apply Coupons.

Wait a few seconds as Honey searches for coupons that can find for that site. If Honey finds a working coupon, you'll watch the prices drop. Kind of Funny loves Honey. Tim Geddes tells you all that time to click that dang honey button. It saved him and many of us here are kind of funny, plenty of money when we use honey. Honey has found us over 17 million members, over $2 billion in savings. If you don't already have honey, you can be straight up missing out on free savings.

It's literally free and installs in just a few seconds. And by getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting this podcast. I'd never recommend something we don't use. Get honey for free at joinhoney.com slash kinda. That's joinhoney.com slash kinda. Also brought to you by Fitbod, getting caught up in the same workout routine can get tiring. Don't get stuck doing the same workouts. Making progress towards the future you means overcoming new challenges. Fitbod creates a fitness program that continually adapts with new exercises and dynamic intensity that adjust to how you're progressing. So you'll be challenged to meet your goals at your own pace.

There's no perfect body that everyone can achieve, but what we can do is continually become a better version of ourselves. No workout is one size fits all. Fitbod creates a fitness program that continually adapts to you, so you stay challenged with new exercises, pacing, and intensity based on where you are and where you want to be. Kind of funny knows Fitbod well. Gia and his friend Danny uses it religiously. Fitbod understands that the path to achieving your best looks different for everyone. Fitbod creates a program based on your unique body, experience, and environment.

Their algorithm uses data and analytics to help you build on your last workout. to maximize your results. Whether you're exercising three days a week or twice a day, every workout is scientifically proven to be better than the last. FitBod workouts are balanced to avoid overworking muscles with varied exercises to keep you sharp. No equipment, no worries. FitBod has body weight routines for those looking to get fit at home or on the go. FitBod is super easy to use and even has HD video tutorials to make learning new exercises a breeze.

It integrates with other fitness and health apps like Apple Health, Fitbit, and Strava. Personalized training can be tough on a budget, but FitBod is only $9.99 a month. That's $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year. Sign up now and you'll get 25% off your membership. Pick up the pace on your fitness journey with FitBod today and your future self will thank you. Get 25% off your membership at FitBod.me slash KF Games. That's 25% off at FitBod.combe. Last but not least, we're brought to you by Canva.

Listen, design? It's hard. I'm talking about art design. Even making thumbnails and Photoshop can be hard for me sometimes, but that's why I'm excited to tell you about Canva. Kind of Funny loves Canva. Tim Getty himself says that it's super dope and easy to use. It makes all different kind of design stuff.

You just pick the styles you like and it does all the work, super helpful for creators. Canva Pro is the easy to use design platform that has everything you need to design like a pro. Whether you're a professional designer or you're just getting started, Canva Pro can help you boost you and your team's productivity and creativity. It's a quick, easy, and affordable way to design whatever you need. No matter what you're creating and sharing, camera pro has everything you need in one place including a collection of over 75 billion premium photos, videos, audio, and graphics. Plus camera pro comes with time-saving tools that simplify and speed up the creative process. You get all this and more in just one camera pro subscription. One of my favorite

camera features of how you can stay on brand. Preset your brand's fonts, colors, and logo for a unified across all designs. There's no idea too big or too small for Canver Pro, whether you're like me struggling to make video thumbnails or you're an entrepreneur or even a crafty mom, design like a pro with Canva Pro. Right now, you can get a free 45-day extended trial when you use my promo code. Just go to Canva.com.me slash KF Games to get your free 45-day extended trial. That's C-A-N-V-A-M-E-S-KF games. Canva.coma.mee slash KF Games. Now we're back. We're moving on to the Square Enix Presents showcase 33 2021.

Andy, I'm going to start with you. This one was kind of weird. I think it started off insanely strong with Guardians of the Galaxy. I thought that game looked fantastic. It's kind of exactly what I was hoping for. We got a single player game, which blows my mind. I cannot believe that they didn't do the... It's single player, or it's multiplayer, but...

It's multiplayer, but you could play it by yourself if you want. I could have sworn we were going to get that bullshit. And I'm so glad that you are just Star Lord. You're commanding the rest of your crew in the way that I love Dragon Age and Final Fantasy 15 and how that combat feels really frenetic and high energy. It looks pretty damn good to me. I was not expecting it. I was, of course, I think Avengers kind of made me think that every kind of Marvel

tie-in game might be a six and a half to seven out of ten. this looks a little bit above that. I'd say Tim said this, you know, if this is an 8 out of 10, I'll be so happy. I think it looks a little bit better than that. I'm kind of excited by the prospect of actually having a really fun and interesting Guardians of the Galaxy story.

And again, the combat looks fantastic. So that started off insanely strong. And then we went on to War for Wakanda. I think Black Panther looks awesome. I don't, will not play it. But it seemed like Greg was kind of sad about

not getting a release date. Which we ended up getting. They thought about something. I got plenty of say about Avengers. Oh, okay, we got to play anything. I don't know how you want to do it. I'm letting you have your peace here at your moment. The biggest disappointment I would say is Babylon's fall.

I think the way that we were, the way that game's been, you know, kind of in the background being worked on, I was expecting a bit more for this game. I still think it looked pretty decent. The biggest bummer, though, is I told myself, you know what? I'll go watch that trailer on Squares.

YouTube after the fact in higher quality and it still looks like shit. This is the lowest compression video I've ever seen at 1080. So hopefully they re-uploaded and we may get a better look at it, but it's still an ugly looking muddy video quality.

So unfortunately Babylon's fall still kind of looks not great. Don't care about life is strange. Final Fantasy origin did not look good. And I was hoping for more of the Soulsborn type of influence that was kind of hinted at. and rumored, but it is

kind of just like a devil may cry type game, which is not what I wanted from this. And so this is going to get a C plus from me. C, let's go see. Let's go see. It's easy. Let's get you off the bench. Hold on one second.

Do you want me to go while he's... You never know, is it a bit? Or is it... Definitely not a bit. No, that looks real. That looks real. That looks like. That's what real Greg feels like. He's about to get kicked out. He's about to get kicked out.

Sorry, I'm the last person here now at E3. They'd give me a hard out at 7, they said for the staff, so I'm going to stick to that. So yeah, for this one, right? I mean, like, man, it's such a weird thing, and it's that weird thing, too, where I feel like, how do you ever grade these things? What we would have done, expectations, yada, yada, yada. Let's jump into Avengers because we started that conversation right there, right? And it's the idea that Avengers did not deliver what I wanted it to.

Like, I think that, you know, again, I know you don't want to do a deep dive on your video game, that your ongoing service for your campaign or whatever. But like, it's the same thing of like, Andy's not going to play at. And I think so many people I've talked to when I mentioned my, you know, joking about my obsession with Avengers and whatever, they're like, yeah, Black Panther looks cool, though. That is exciting. Did another cinematic today give us any context to why you should be excited to play it? Like, and how is that going to work? and like, what is this expansion entail in terms of missions?

Like, it didn't answer the questions that Avengers has plaguing it. Of like, what is the long game? How much content is there going to be? Is this, how long is this single player portion going to be? How is this different than Kate and Clint's missions and things like that? I think, you know, the scene looked great. I liked, you know, I like the narration. Have we lost three Black Panthers already?

Or I've seen three Black Panthers die. You know, him talking to his sister. Then Claw getting involved. Like, that was all cool. I'm excited to see how that plays out. But, like, why not give us the date in the thing? thing because again, they didn't give it in the presentation, but then they tweeted it's coming in August. And the same can be said for when they're talking about the Cosmic Cube stuff with Scientist Supreme, right?

Like, again, they're actually delivering on the roadmap. They started off at the beginning of the year, right? When they're like, here's what we're going to do to bring Avengers into something you need to be a part of. That's great. June 22nd's the date on that. They did not say that in any of their messaging today of what's going on with that, which I found to be a bizarre choice and not serve me as a fan and not serve. I would think most people who are like looking for a reason to give Avengers a chance again. Guardians, I thought, looked

fucking awesome. I think that looks so cool. That looks like so much fun. Again, single player and narrative, I wasn't expecting the choices. I wasn't expecting single player, so I wasn't expecting the battle system to be the way it is. I want to get more into that. I thought the jokes hit. I think Star Wars hair looks weird. I think there's a few different little character choices like that

that are interesting that I wouldn't have gone for, but whatever. And then it's that thing of, okay, I'm not into any of the Final Fantasy stuff in general, right? So Pixel Remaster, whatever, Legend of Mano, whatever. they go into all this mobile stuff I don't care about Babylon's fall I was probably never going to care about about it. Babylon's fall as a live service came out of the way.

Fuck, I forgot. Oh yeah, dude. I got a lot to say about that. Okay. And then we get into Life is Strange, which I can't wait for Life is Strange true colors. But I felt like they didn't give us anything that was really new about it. And I guess really, I don't know what it's left to say. They gave a demo.

They showed some stuff. They had, you know, the voice, the singing actress there to walk us through it or whatever. But at this point, it's just noise about Life is Strange. Like, it's like, okay, cool. That's coming out in September. let's just get it there. And then, yeah, Final Fantasy Origin, obviously didn't look like a game I would ever want to play.

And that's not me shitting on what it was because I don't have anything to say about what a Soul's Mort should look like or something like that. But yeah, it was a weird conference where I think, you know, I think Imron put out, like even knowing exactly what they were going to, Square was going to show, they still managed to disappoint me.

And it's, I feel that of like, it's a weird conference that I think Guardians was so well done and answered so many questions, that Avengers didn't really move the needle for me as an Avengers fan. Life is Strange is a Life is a Strange fan. It was like, all right, cool. But like especially grading with the rest of the class for today. I don't feel like it goes into

the D block the way NPC Gaming and Future did because this was shorter. It was in. It was out. I think Guardians was presented extremely well in a way that gets me excited and it is like my most, out of today, my favorite game. I'd probably put it into the C category too, I guess, alongside Andy.

Yeah, I go straight D. And I think it's because when we grade these things, we grade them all for what they are not necessarily against the others, or at least I do, because I have more expectations out of us where Enix presents than I do for a PC game showcase or a future game showcase. And I think that what they did with Guardians was great,

but that whole bit could have been, I think, better served at a Xbox showcase. Or I know PlayStation wasn't here, but like if that was part of those, it would be really hype, it'd be, you know, great. This, we really, besides Guardians, which I am very excited about,

it has its issues. Andy said earlier, like I was talking about it being an eight, and I'm excited for that. I hope it hits an eight. I do think that it has a chance to be closer to the seven range, and God forbid, less than that. But I'm stoked about it.

I think that it's the right level of MCUness, the right level of comic Guardians and it being single player. Like, this is the game I'd want from Guardians. I can't imagine it look being much better. It doesn't seem like it's going to hit the highs of a Spider-Man, but I'm okay with that. The combat looks fun enough. It's a little floatier than my tastes,

but I feel like until I get my hands on it, I won't really be able to tell if I like how it feels or not, obviously. So right now, definitely one of the games I'm looking forward to most. I love that it's this year. Like overall, it's just like a lot of good news coming out of Guardians. But then yeah, like Greg was saying, as you start moving on, it's like life is strange.

It kind of starts feeling like deja vu over and over where it's like, okay, we've got a lot of that at Square Unix presents recently, right? Then Final Fantasy Pixel remastered, just a truly bizarre, bizarre presentation. Like kind of cool, exciting news. not see what the remastered version looks like, what a pixel remaster even is, and what the actual games are, this is only on Steam and mobile. Like, what? And afterwards, they said that you have to buy each game separately. It's not a collection. It's not a collection, which is fucking ridiculous. Weird shit, because it's like, why didn't you say that?

Say that. You know, like, there's just a lot of those type of things with Square, including going into this section of mobile games that is just extremely unclear. I don't really really know what I was looking at for about two and a half minutes. You know, they showed, they showed him at sniper. They showed near reincarnation. They showed fall fantasy, like cross war of the visions. I'm not even really sure. You know, and I don't know if any of you guys are.

It was just, it was a lot of stuff really quickly with really bizarre names and no consistency of dates or, uh, information, you know, it was just, it, it was baffling. And then we started getting things that we knew we were going to be here like Babylon's fall. and that was just a major letdown, I think, to everybody. Like, that wasn't a game I was necessarily looking forward to, but that showing was piss poor and really seemed to dampen the hype that anybody had for it to keep going through.

And it ends with the Strangers of Paradise, Final Fantasy origin, like, you're not doing the game any favors calling it that. Like, that's fucking weird. But then you look at the game, you're like, well, shit. Like, this also doesn't look like what the people that were excited for, all the rumors want. to see from it. So why do these three people look like they belong in three different video games?

And not a Final Fantasy game. And on top of that, there's just, there's too many Final Fantasy games now that are like similar to this. Like this was supposed to be the Souls type game. And it's like, well, this doesn't look that different than a lot of the games we've played recently. And I think that it kind of lacks a very important and necessary identity to make it stand out.

And instead, it kind of just starts to make everything feel like, like square annex mush. So I'm going with the D despite really, really, really being into Guardians. Did you guys hear about the demo fiasco or like the demo was available today and the files are corrupted for this demo and they're still corrupted as of right now? So no one can actually play this demo for origin. Great.

It's really bad. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you if you had showed me a run a show for this presentation beforehand and you went through all the all the items, I would have thought, oh, this is going to be my favorite conference. You're telling me they have Guardians of the Galaxy from Otto's Montreal. Cool. You're telling me they have more Life of Strange content.

Sweet. You're telling me they have a Final Fantasy Souls-like game. Oh my God, let's go. You're telling me they have Black Panther in Avengers. Sweet. Hitman content. Near content. There's so much in this presentation that should have spoke to me. And the only thing that spoke to me was Guardians of the Galaxy. Like, Guardians of the Galaxy was such a strong

start for this thing. And the most impressive thing for me with that game is that toward the beginning of them showing it, I was like, I don't know, man. This doesn't look the most beautiful game ever. Oh, it's single player and you're playing just as Star Lord. That seems like a weird, weird choice. And the more and more they got into the presentation for that,

the more and more I was like, fuck, this looks really good. The idea that you can control the other members of the Guardians of the Galaxy, almost like an Atreus type thing with commands, that's a really cool idea and a really cool way to get around how do you make a Guardians of the Galaxy game? That doesn't feel like you are losing out on the polish

by switching between characters and not having all of them have the same level of TLC, but then also feel like you're missing out on it being co-op. I think that is such a unique, such a great idea in how to tackle a gardens of the galaxy game. That having choices in dialogue and having actual like tail-tale like systems in here, another very fascinating choice that I'm excited to see play out

because that is a very, that is a very unique decision for this type of game. The actual combat of it looked like it could be really fun. You know, I don't know if it's going to be the most innovative thing in the world, but it doesn't necessarily need to be, as long as it's a good Guardians of the Galaxy game that's fun to play and has a good narrative, has a good story, then I'm all the way in.

And from what we've gotten out of all the cutscenes and all the dialogue stuff they showed in the presentation, the jokes hit in a way that I was not expecting the jokes to hit. So I'm very much looking forward to this. Babylon's fall, huge disappointment. The fact that they showed off that game, or they revealed that game, what, like three years ago in a presentation, got people really high because this platinum is the same team that did near Automata. it's a game that looks really cool and they pieced out for years

came back and showed this which looked not great it looked way different than what you would expect it to be then coming out again announcing Babylon's flaws this thing coming from the near automata team I would have had no inkling that it's supposed to be a live service game and they came out and they talked about it being a live service game they talked about it

they talked about how you can do co-op multiplayer which I'm not going to hate on but I'm at the point with this game where it just feels so much in terms of what is it? You know, like the combat looks like classic platinum combat, I guess, but even with that, I look at other platinum games and I'm like, those look better.

You know, I'd rather play Astral Chain. I'd rather play NIR. I'd rather play plenty of other platinum games that seem like they're doing very similar things in a much better way with better graphics. Graphics, give or take. I know Near doesn't look amazing, but still, like, looking better than the way this thing looks.

This was a letdown, and then, yeah, like, the Final Fantasy thing, also a let down. I think the premise of giving Final Fantasy to the team that worked on the Neo Games, Team Ninja, I think that is such a good idea and the execution of it.

It's such an easy win. It's such an easy win and there's so much potential there, especially when you think about what makes a Souls like game great. When you think of what makes a game like Neo great. It is that slow methodical combat. It is the mystery of the world. It is being able to explore

that world through not just straight up like having a bunch of dialogue and all the stuff that you get traditionally from a final fantasy. They could have used this as a shot to be like, hey, let's fucking get weird with Final Fantasy. Let's build this world. That is a fantasy world. We don't need the over-the-topness anime sort of voice acting. Yeah.

We don't need the main characters bantering back and forth with the cheesy voice acting and the cheesy lines. Literally the voice of all might coming in to like be one of the characters here. Yeah. You don't need all that. Like there's so much potential in that idea. And I mean, it is what it is, right? And looking at it for what it is,

I could have been to the place where I'm like, okay, this is different from what I expected, but I'm still into it. But for what they showed, I'm like, yeah, this looks like Delphum May Cry, but not as good as Delphamay cry. You know, like, it does, it's just not speaking to me,

and it should speak to me for what it is. And so overall, for me, this presentation was a D. Yeah, just disappointing all around. One thing I want to point out really quickly about Babylon's fault, and now that I'm looking more into it, is it looks really shitty on YouTube because the art style is supposed to be this kind of, I don't even know, like, painterly, watercolor kind of look. And that just doesn't translate well to uploading a video with a lot of high motion.

So that's why it looks even worse than it does. Like, I'm reading all the comments. First off, the Babylon Fall trailer on Square Unix's YouTube page has 467 likes and 2002 dislikes. Jesus Christ. Dude, all of this stuff they should have have a high. eyes are blurry watching this. And it's just, yeah, it's a mess, dude. This is a big, you know what?

Fuck it. This is a D. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm pissed off. This should have been a B plus. This could have been A. Like, based on everything here, all the ingredients make up an A. But it's like they mix that shit in a way that just didn't work.

And then they served it and we're just sitting here like, what the fuck is this? I ordered a hot dog. A big issue with Square is that they're so tied to Sony. And that's a good thing because that means Sony conferences are even bigger, because they get a lot of big square exclusives, but that means Square Inix presents, maybe it doesn't need to exist. Mike, what do you think?

You know, Tim, for me, I don't identify much with the Square Enix portfolio, right? I'm a big two-meter guy, and then after that I kind of fall off a cliff when it comes to these games. But as we've always talked about, and as, you know, the team has told you and Greg,

when you hosted the event, this E3 conference every single year is for veterans of the Square Enix world and for new people to get involved and get excited about. this. And yeah, Gardens of the Galaxy was great. And I'm going to hold that on the side because I loved it like everybody else did.

But on the presentation side, yes, we are content creators and we got a different version, but to not have music going through this presentation was a gigantic miss. To have offset music with the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer was a gigantic miss. This is my first time

seeing these games and hearing your presentation and to have gaps without the music, to have the wrong music playing, especially when it's so important to the game, was just like, what is going on? This is abysmal. And so, yeah, I'm going to rewatch it. And I'm sure I'll enjoy those trailers.

But when I look at Square. It's way different, Mike, for sure. That's our decision. Here's the tippy top, Xbox, Nintendo, Sony. And then there's the second tier. And that's Squares in that second tier. And you've got to do better. I don't care if I'm a content creator or not.

You got to figure out a way to get around that. And you got to do better as a presentation standpoint. And I mean, yeah, yeah, we take. that on ourselves, but at the same time, like, they should have done better and figured it out. Xbox figured it out. They could have. So on the same time, I'm going to give it a D. I was very unpleased with this.

And as somebody who wants to get into the portfolio, wants to dive into all these games, you didn't sell me at all. And so that was truly disappointed. Yeah, the least it could have done is find some royalty-free music instead of just dialogue only to make it the most possibly awkward situation you've ever seen in a video. And a lot of it reminds you last years and prior years, Kingdom Hearts videos, where It's just loud music, no sound effects dialogue. Andy, I'm pretty sure, and I can't.

Go for crack. I'm pretty sure that, yeah, even Avengers dialogue got cut out of the streamers thing. Because when I went back and was watching part of it on my own, I was hearing way more from Captain America than I remember during the Cosmic Cube section. So yeah, I'm with Mike a bit where I was like, I'm not a Square Inix catalog person, so I was on the stand staying back a bit more. And now I'm like Andy, you moved it to a D for me too. you, with everything you've brought up or whatever it is.

Something who just wanted to hear about Avengers and Guardians, it's harder for me to make it something, especially because like Babylon's far, I gloss over. You know, Final Fantasy from Team Ninja, I gloss over. Like I said, I am the last person at E3, 2021. It is 7 o'clock, and I want to let the crew go home so they don't have to do this. So I will end with saying that Xbox was S-tier. I think for maybe on a personal curve, it would have been a tier for the number of games I found in it,

but I found a lot of games in it I love, and I can't argue with the execution of it. of how great the presentation was, was to open up, have the faces of Xbox, then game, game, game, game, game, game, game, game, game, a couple more faces, game, game, game, game, game, game. They brought a bunch of different games. I look at this list of my stars, right? I'm talking about Starfield. I'm talking about Sea of thieves. I actually finally want to play.

I'm talking about 12 minutes. I'm talking about Somerville. I'm talking about going through and seeing every other one. I'm talking about flights him. I'm talking about the Ascent. I'm talking about Red Fair or Redfall from Arcane here at the end. Like Xbox was NS here for the day for sure, but I think in general. of what you want from an E3 press conference.

I love you all. I will see you tomorrow. We're proud of you, Greg. Go and kill it. Andy, you brought earlier when Mike was talking about the square stuff. You're like, well, that was our decision. And like, yes, it was our decision. But I blame them for that decision because it is on Square. Last time we did a presence, they told us like, hey, mute the stream from this time to

this time. And it fucking ruined her shit. They just didn't tell us. And they gave us like wrong time codes for that as well. Wrong time codes. They handled it so poorly. And this time is like somehow even worse. Just like, we should have.

just use the other thing. The fact that they gave us this and said, this is the one you want to use and they did a poor job producing it. Like, I'm, we're not doing that again. We're going to use just the main one because that's the one they're actually editing and producing. And I don't think that would have majorly affected our

thoughts on this thing, but it took something that was already, I think, kind of like, offensively bad. And it made it like, okay, it went from not great to like offensive. And it's just like, come on, guys. To Mike's right like other conferences that figured it out Xbox we didn't have to do anything like that

the only game here and at Square and this conference that I'd give it a password would be Guardians of the Galaxy since that is so tied to license music and it'd be hard to license some of the songs that they would have for a Guardians of the Galaxy for the rest of this stuff it's like you're literally working with the with the musical artist that you're showing off in the presentation for Life of Strange why couldn't you get that cleared for content creators that are watching at on YouTube. I feel like that is such a weird thing and that feels like that feels way more like hey, we just don't want to do the legwork. We just like we're we're just out here trying to like put this thing together and barely put it together seemingly. And so yeah, I'm right there

with you. Like that was a very disappointing element of it. Before we move on, actually no, let's fuck it. Let's move on. It's Xbox time. Like how are you feeling about that? Let's start with you. You know what? It was really nice to hear Greg giving an S and that's really exciting to hear somebody who has been so ingrained in PlayStation but is a true gamer and respects what Xbox does to hear him excited and hear him vibe with what they did. And I think on the presentation side,

they took in all the criticisms. They listened to the fans. They understand now what needs to be shown. And that's games, games, games. We don't need a lot of talking heads. We don't need big dev diaries. We don't need a lot of monologues. We're here for the games and we want to see that catalog

and what you're bringing. And I love that Greg Gavin and S. I'm going to give it an A because I do think that Xbox Microsoft have an S-tier conference coming to us very, very soon. But I'm going to give it an A right now because I will say they did an incredible job at not showing us games that are coming on in 2023 and 2024 that we were going to moan about with CGI trailers. They did a good job at saying, here's the games coming to you now in 2021. And here's some games coming in 2022. Everything else will talk about later on. And I think that was a great move for them to keep those cards close to their chest and say,

we'll play this at a later date. But we're still going to make this fun and exciting. And to see Todd Howard come out moment number one and establish, hey, here's Starfield, Bethesda is here now. And it's exclusivity, right? This has been a question ongoing. And yeah, Phil had a pretty vague but close statement. No more.

It's exclusive. Get ready for that from this point forward. And for Xbox fans. and for gamers all around, thanks to GamePass, you should be celebrating this. You should be excited about this because Xbox got a portfolio that makes you want to take note and makes you want to look at it. And I've been impressed with that 90 minutes.

There was no lulls. There was a whole lot of games. 30 games shown. Three not on Game Pass. 27 day and date on Game Pass is a big freaking deal. And I got to say, this is an A conference. They did a great job. Wes.

Yeah, I'm with Mike. This was an A plus for me. I think this is absolutely fantastic. Greg mentioned it well that the pacing was so good, right? Where it was here's some talking heads. Opening up with Todd Howard was such a power move. That felt like such a strong start. And opening up with Starfield again, such a strong start.

From there, it didn't feel like it stopped. From there, it just kept going with game after game after game after game. And I felt like that was such a strong way to do it. They've had that good pacing for years now. But this one felt like it was somehow even more. refined. And when you look at what this conference did for them and building out what their portfolio looks like for this year, the next year, and years beyond, they did a fantastic job, especially when you keep in mind that every single thing here, or not every single thing,

most things here are going to be Xbox Game Pass day one. It was 27 out of 30 things. And the three things that weren't Xbox Game Pass day one were things you would have expected, like Far Cry 6 and things like that. Like those make sense. The fact that they were able to have, have such a banger conference with game pass day one titles. Like when you look at the rest of this year, right, you're looking at Dungeons and Dragons, Dark Alliance, the Ascent, 12 minutes, Psychonauts 2, Arigami 2, Sabel, Scorn, the Anacruces, which I keep shouting out, Back for Blood, Age of Empires 4, Forces Horizon 5, Shredders, Halo, Neighbor 2, and the gunk. That is a banger rest of the year. That's a great rest of the year, right? Like, especially when

you look at the big ones being a Halo Infinite in Fortress Horizon 5. Fortress of Five looks fantastic. So shout out to that. But yeah, I think they also did. good job of showing off Halo and showing people the stuff they want between, you know, like a new great cinematic for a single player and then the reveal of multiplayer and really emphasizing that, hey, this is free.

Like, you can jump into this fall. No cost. No game pass. Like, it's yours. I think that's such a strong move. And yeah, like even the new stuff that they announced that they didn't have a date on, Outer Worlds to you, super high for. I'm so glad that we got confirmation that that's coming at some point.

And the trailer for that had fantastic writing, really funny. And then Redfall, for me, was just a fantastic reveal of a game. Like, I kind of guessed that we were going to see. Actually, I believe it was rumored slash reported that they were going to show off Project Omen. And, yeah, like, there was the inkling there, too, that for Arcane Studios, it's about time. With Arcane Austin being the other team that's still working on stuff, they usually are dishonored and Prey came out kind of back. to back when they came out. And so this makes sense that this is probably going to be ready by the time we get to

2022. And the game looks really cool. You know, I love that they're doing something different. I love that they're doing something fresh. And Arcane does such a good job of having a very distinct style with their games. And they lean in so hard with what that style is when you look at something like dishonored or you look at something like Death Loop and How those are really committing to what they are.

I can't wait for this game. And I think, again, overall, this conference was fantastic. I want to go next before Andy. because I want to see if he has some reactions to what I have to say. I think that presentation-wise and production value, this is an A-plus. This is pretty much a standard of how to do a conference, how to not waste our time, how to make every single moment count and really have value, really build an ecosystem. That's what they're selling at this point.

And on top of that, what you guys are talking about, Todd Howard starting the show. What a fun surprise. You know, it's like pacing and kind of sequencing of how you have these announcements. It really does add to the overall. all experience. And I think starting with Starfield with Bethesda, tying them all together was a straight up power move. Having Halo in the middle, straight up power move, especially ending it with a one more thing. And I'm not talking about the fridge, although that was amazing as well. But the one more thing being Project Oman, being what is actually called? Red line. Red

Fall. Red fall. Looks cool. You know, it's an exciting announcement for sure. I do think content-wise, though, I would give this a B. And I think that somewhere there, I don't know where my final ranking for the conference lies. It's between that. B and A plus. So I'm between a B plus and an A minus. And my reason for that is Starfield, later release date than I kind of expected there. We're talking over a year away. Fun thing to look forward to. CG trailer, that was, it was cool. But we don't really know what this game is still, right? We know it's going to be an RPG in space. We're expecting it to be on the level of the good fallouts and elder scrolls type shit. Great thing to have for the end of next year. Very excited about

that. But when we look at Halo, this isn't the god of war that we've all for years now talked about what we needed Halo to be. And that's just a fact, I think. Looking at this, I think that this halo looks just like more of the same of what we got before. And that is not a bad thing. I'm so hyped about playing this game. Watching the multiplayer trailer they had, I was like, I think they're kind of giving up on making this, the crazy revolution. And they're just like, no, let's just make a freaking bangor experience and give the people exactly what they remember loving. and let's make it as accessible to as many people as possible. Having it be free to play,

the campaign on GamePass, the hints we got at the campaign, even that, I love the much more simpler story. Let's just deal with Chief, dealing with the AI, going on from there. We get a little more hints from the pilot.

I'm all in on this. It just isn't going to be that next level that we've seen Sony take the last couple years with a lot of its franchises. And it's not the showstopper, holy shit game that Halo used to be. And again, I'm okay with that because I am way more excited for Halo Infinite right now than I was yesterday.

From what we've seen before, the gravel hook looks awesome. All the things they're showing look great. Can't wait tomorrow for the actual multiplayer breakdown going through stuff. Can't wait to play with you guys. Seeing the flag. Capture the flag. Yeah, that's going to be back. That's going to be awesome.

The multiplayer stuff definitely brought me back to the days of like Halo 3 and spending hundreds of hours in the Halo 3 multiplayer. And that's like, I think, even. though it's not the groundbreaking stuff, uh, they were talking about of like God of war, like being a recreation of that franchise and stuff. Like, it,

the infinite's got me back with that multiplayer showcase where I'm like, fuck yeah, I'm down to play a bunch of multiplayer with, uh, with Mikey and the boys here. So, yeah. Yeah.

And then as you go through, I think they had a lot of hits. I think game passes, undeniably a fantastic value that if you like games at all, you should get there proving it here. There's so many great, great games that they're offering, whether it's third party,

whether it's in all the Akusa games, they announced. That's insane, including like a dragon. Boom, it's there. And as you go on, all of the Xbox game studios, all Bethesda, everything, it's like, wow, this was, this was fantastic. They really, really showed a lot of cool stuff. But there wasn't, and here, what is this? It is not last night.

It is replaced. It's replaced. Oh, that's replaced. Yeah, yeah. Really excited for more information on this, but this is another one of those games that I don't trust I'm ever actually going to play. You know, it's kind of like a cool thing to have in a showcase, but we've seen this happen before where something looks cool and we don't get it in our hands. Like where's the last night?

You know, but yeah, exactly. And just moving on with this, I think that it was very, very well-paced. Forza Horizon looks insane. Going back to the YouTube video and seeing that in 4K, it's like, God damn, this is a beautiful game. But it's more Forza. And I think at the end of the day, a lot of this didn't solve what I, not, not, it didn't answer the question of what is Microsoft going to do to compete with the PlayStation exclusives

lineup. And I think it's just more clear than ever now. they're not going to. And that's okay because they have such an amazing offering that is going to be accessible to more people than ever. And it's going to be an extremely high quality at a very high-paced clip of quality and quantity on Game Pass. Seeing them have that lineup that they've been tweeting out about everything in 2021, what's in 2022, what's coming to 2023. We're starting to see something that's like, okay, cool. We're getting month after month. There will be something that'll be like the tent pole. Everybody plays. Everybody has a conversation about.

And I think that that is going to be a very unique gaming experience. You're only going to be able to get on Xbox. And Phil Spencer ending the show coming out and saying, we have some of the industry's best RPG storytellers working on Starfield, avowed, fable, Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 76, Outer Worlds 2, Elder Scroll 6. And then continuing to say, we got iconic Xbox shooters, Halo, Gears of War, Wolfenstein, Perfect Dark, Doom, Forza, Horizon 5, and Turn 10 working on Forza Motorsport.

It's like, y'all are building a, story. You all are building a case for the IP you had. I mean, I think they're there. I think they're there. I kind of disagree about them not, uh, like not having that first party slate that, that, that can that they're satisfied with, I guess, compared to PlayStation. You know, I'm not going to say one is better than the other necessarily because they're both just such different first party slates. Like Microsoft has so many studios and they're so varied studios. Or this PlayStation has PlayStation studios and they're, they're, they are focused and they're, they are focused and they're, and they're, they are focused and they're, and they're, They're very good at what they do. But I think for what Microsoft game studios is, I think the mission statement that Phil Spencer put out at the end of the conference was perfect in terms of, hey, we've hit it.

Like from now on, you're going to get GamePass games coming to GamePass day one monthly. You're going to have temple titles coming through seasonally. I think that was their statement that they put out last week or a few weeks ago, where they were talking about how they want to have a big first-party Xbox game on Game Pass every quarter. and yeah, this fall we're going to get Halo and Forth Horizon 5. Next year you are going to get Red Fall and you're going to get Starfield and you're probably going to get more games.

And the games that they're showing off are games that people are big fans of. Like, people are big fans of Arcane. People are big fans of Outer Worlds. People are big fans of Bethesda Game Studio and Forza. Like, I think they've reached it. Like I think this is pretty much the max potential for what Xbox Game Studios is. in terms of what their vision is and how they're completing that vision

connected to Game Pass. Just to counterpoint that, I kind of feel like I'm seeing a lot of the tier of Kenna Bridge of Spirits here. And that is not at all with that thing. That's great. But we're not seeing Last of Uses. We're not seeing Ratcheting Clanks.

We're not seeing horizons. And maybe we will. I hope that we will, but I'm not seeing them here. I give this full grade above what 10 did. I think presentation, everything is just perfect. The pacing, it's just trailer after trailer, I don't need a beat a dead horse like Greg was mentioning earlier.

I think that that's an S. But, and we've seen that in the past from Microsoft, but the content wasn't always there. They've learned how to make a good conference over the last several years and have, like, Phil Spencer come out, and then it's 10 trailers in a row. But they weren't always the most exciting games. I think this is an A to an A-plus lineup.

It just, like Blessie was mentioning earlier, it just kept on going. And I kept on getting more and more excited. Starfield looks fantastic. Announcing Plagale, the sequel to that, Requiem. We got a different look at Far Cry 6, which got me back after the last thing seen at Ubisoft's thing kind of brought me down back a bit. Atomic Heart, weird-ass looking game that I had no idea was really a thing. I think we had seen maybe a glimpse of it before, but I hadn't recognized it.

replaced immediately became one of my games of the show. Sure, we may not ever get to play it, Tim. I think we will because I do think this is their answer to people asking, where's the last night? This is a totally different game made by a different studio, and I think it's them saying, hey, yeah, we forget about that one. This is the new thing that we are going to offer you

that looks this way and has this really neat aesthetic. We got Outer Worlds. I was not expecting a sequel to be announced to that whatsoever. Forza looks absolutely fancy. I cannot wait to play Red Fall. Apparently it's not really what we think. It's more of an open world type game. I thought it was just going to be more of a back for blood,

left for dead style kind of four-player co-op shooter. It is more of an open world type game, which we'll see how that works with four different players. I think all of the content was there. And reading up on Jeff Grubb's tweet from earlier today, you know, 22, he says, wow, Redfall, in 2022 is huge. Here's what we should expect in 2023.

A Vowd, Fable, Perfect Dark, Everwilds. Hellblade 2. It's kind of a big game that I think will be on the level of the naughty dog type style game. Now, whether the subject matter is there for you or not, you may not care about that story or that world, but I think the presentation is going to be on what you expect to see in an uncharted or a naughty dog or an insomniac game. I think that's going to be the one that really shows that.

but it wasn't here today. That's all I'm saying. Oh, sure, thousand percent. But what we saw today, we're not seeing that. I expect Hellblade to be that, Andy. Yeah, that. I would say Starfield is that as well, though, right? Like, people will be showing up for Starfield

the way that people show up for a PlayStation for Sparring in a thousand percent. Oh, 100%. Oh, yeah, no, but, I mean, different types of games, though. Like, I think we're talking more of the third person game that is not a massively open world where not every character gets the same level of love and care as the main character would like Senua does with her the crazy facial capture type tech. You know, I think Starfield's going to be

a really, a much more improved version of their past titles. And hopefully they fix a lot of their issues that, you know, things that I just never really liked about the Fallout or the Elder Scroll series. But as far as Halo goes, Halo fucking blew me away today. I was, I just felt so hype

with all of you, you know, watching. And not even just the multiplayer. stuff, watching Chief talk to this newer AI that isn't Cortana but is Cortana and having just the music hit, like, Halo just means so much to me as a franchise. And the multiplayer stuff looked insane. And

even when Barrett was playing it earlier, I'm getting hyped up again watching that grapple hook snipe midair, drop down, throw a grenade. It just looks, it's what I want and I want to play it right now. And I don't I agree with you, Tim. I don't think it will ever be on that God of

war type level that we want, you know a halo game to be and i think a lot of that just comes down to the subject matter i think it's you know it's a it's a space marine with aliens that are cartoony you know like you can't really take that seriously and have it like i don't know they just don't feel the same it's hard to compare them you know i also think it's just not that type of game you know like one of the one of the big temples of halo is multiplayer and like you're if you're if i'm microsoft and i'm working on a halo game i'm like cool make multiplayer the best can possibly be And single player kind of, at least for me, I'm not the Halo person.

And so Mike or anybody else who loves Halo, you can correct me if I'm wrong. But I would see campaign as being secondary to making sure a most player is fantastic if I was them. I mean, they need to do both. It's Halo, dude. That's the face of Xbox. And it's like at this point, PlayStation has multiple faces. Nintendo has multiple faces. And Xbox is trying to get to that point.

And they have a major shortcut now with Bethesda. And that's absolutely true. Starfield's going to be a major system seller. And again, I love that they put a date on it. It's crazy. I don't know if we've ever in the history of video games had a date this far out. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong on that? I think that's kind of cool.

Will they hit that? I don't know. But like I do love that it like there is this looming thing that anytime we do predictions, anytime we talk for the next year, November 11th is going to be this thing that we're talking around of what that means for Xbox. That's dope, right? But you know, the way you guys are talking about, I don't know if this works for Halo. it's like, God of War wasn't God of War

2018 until it was, you know? And I always say that's more of a hell. I think that's more of a Hellblade story, to Andy's point. Like, Hellblade, I think, has the potential to be something like that. Whereas Halo is going to do. Halo went from Halo 1, 2, and 3 and Reach and all that stuff. And then it had 4 and 5 and it lost its luster of what people thought about Halo in the same way that God of War did when it got to ascension and all that stuff.

Like, then needed to do something that is like much bigger for the Xbox brand as this pen pull. And I think that they're, again, to reiterate what I was saying earlier, it's like, they're not doing that and that's fine. I like that they're going back to just a bit more classic stuff and like, let's just nail the fundamentals. And I just hope they nail the fundamentals. Yeah, let's not reinvent the wheel. We know what's fun. We know that when we're, like, you can tell that the people 343, when they are in these play sessions, they are having a blast playing these, you know, trying to figure out what sort of extra elements can we add to this multiplayer without and making it too much.

We don't want to, you know, when I think of how, you know, earlier, later Call of Duties added, like, little jet packs and all this other random shit, like, let's not get too wild with it. We have a really solid formula. People love playing Halo. It feels good. It looks good. It's familiar.

Let's not get too wild with it, but let's not be afraid to take some risks here and there. And, like, I know that those plays sessions that they're having are a fucking blast, and I can't wait to be a part of that whenever, hopefully they announced like an alpha soon or a beta soon. That would be absolutely fantastic. And to your point, Andy, like what I saw about this Halo thing that gets me extremely exciting is that

grappling hook doesn't look like they're adding gameplay stuff for gameplay's sake to try to just keep adding like the Jetpack stuff that you're talking about. That looks like it adds to the Halo gameplay, that floatiness, that, you know, desire to kind of jump around to get shots, the amount you're jumping and shooting in the air. It's a different type, like Halo gameplay, Halo multiplayer, has a feel to it.

And that grappling hook looks like it adds to that feel that we want to get back to. So yeah, it's like, I really think that for what they showed of it, it was like, damn, I'm just as sold as I've been on infinite, if not more. But it's just like, okay, cool, when is it coming? Like the fact that there wasn't an actual date on it, I get it. Like that's where we're close to this. Somebody said they had some info from Jeff that I haven't seen yet. Oh, Jeff came into our chat and talked about Halo.

Is that what you were pointing out? Yeah. About their release date and why we don't see a release date also why we didn't get too much footage on that. He says that the team is really heads down hard at work and they didn't want to deviate time and assets into creating a huge E3 presentation when they really want to stick the landing here and focus on the work that they're doing is what he told us during the live stream. Oh, you're talking about YouTube.com slash Jeffrey Grubb or Twitter.com slash jeffree grub. Yeah, that's Jeff Grub. And I mean, it's really, it brings a smile to my face to see everybody get excited about Halo after last year's outing and everybody nitpicking that and tearing it apart as it should have been. And look at us where we're now.

They didn't show us much. I was actually surprised that they sandwiched it in between everything before Jeff Grubbs comment and giving us that insight of like, man, that was a minimal showing out of Master Chief Spartan 117, our icon here on the Xbox side. in the middle of this 90 minute presentation, and that was four minutes of Halo. They squeezed that in, and it could have been gone in a blink of an eye. And to hear everybody's so excited about seeing that multiplayer and seeing pieces of the campaign,

I'm actually on the opposite side. I think 343 has one goal, and that's to nail this campaign. And I think they're going to give us something really stunning and special that we're going to talk about for a while, especially coming off of four and five, where the campaigns were almost forgettable now. I think this is going to have a lot of horrible.

It's going to have a lot of big Spartan 117 moments where we're going to build off of that and we're going to move forward and we're going to remember this as the big moment here for the Halo franchise because it is do or die for them, right? We've had two now. This is number three. They know they have to stick the landing. And I think that this right here, everything we've seen is showing a different side of Halo campaign that we haven't seen from four and five, something that could be really, really special.

And I'm really excited for what they did. But man, it's wild to think that everybody is geeked up and hyped up about this when coming into it. We thought maybe they give us a deep dive. Maybe they give us 15 minutes. No, they gave us four and a half minutes pretty much. And they were in and out. And it's still got people excited, which is great. You know, I'm wowed by that.

Let's continue the legend, man. Like, God damn. It's just so exciting. I can't believe that, you know, several months from now, it looks like that date had leaked on the Xbox Brazil side of November 9. I, man. No, no, no, no. I got confirmed. Not true.

Yeah. Jeff R. Timson, the Xbox PR dude. He's fucking awesome. The homie, he, he replied to that. It was like, this is an error. Like, this has nothing to do with it. My source says he was lying to you did.

Oh, shit. Oh, yeah. Wow. To close this out. Oh, go for it. Go for it. To close out Halo or to close out everything? Because I got a lot more on Xbox that I want to celebrate here.

Oh, hey, we can definitely do that. I was going to say to close out. I want to talk about like if we each had to rank our top three games that we're excited for me give me five let me run it down for you really quick go for it down because I think we're not giving enough love right now to Xbox and this back for blood game pass deal I think back for blood yes we're excited about and there's a lot of eyes on that game but honestly if that game came down came out with $60 as a price tag or 70 on next gen there would be a lot of question marks.

I think that player base would really kind of get a little bit smaller quickly on that. So hitting this on Game Pass is a huge deal over on this side of the fence. Of course, we always kind of break down that. But having that on Game Pass is a huge deal because $60 for that, a lot of people, yeah, I know you're hyped for it and you've been enjoying it, but like you're going to play this for probably two weeks hard. Like you're going to run through this campaign. And then you're only going to play it so much after that.

And so game pass for me, massive deal on that one. Sea of Thieves continues to elevate their game. Hoking up with Disney and adding Pirates of the Caribbean with Jack Sparrow is going to bring in a lot of new eyes and going to really cater to a new different kind of audience. And I think this team continues to bring the hype. They continue to get too excited about Sea of thieves where we were saying before this, man, there's a lot of samey enemy types. We'd like to see something new. we'd like to see something exciting. And man, oh man, when you bring in this look with Pirates of the Caribbean and what we're

going to see with Captain Jack Sparrow and the different ships, the different enemy types that we're going to see as well, that was a huge one right there. And I'm absolutely in love with what we saw there. I want to take a moment and talk about... Real quick, Mike. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely Battlefield. Fuck, I forgot to mention that.

But so the Sea of Thieves segment, is that going to be a single player kind of? kind of campaign? Are there, like, because C of thieves doesn't really have a whole lot of that, does it? Isn't it just kind of

you and your friends fucking around, doing your own thing on your ship? So recently, Andy, they've added in campaigns to kind of allow players to follow more

of a structured mission and kind of story that they are known for. So, yes, this has actually been around for a while. There's a couple others

in previous updates that have been entered into this. So this will just be an ad on that you can go do it won't be single player like that. It will be just a piece inside of it, which will be really cool.

Got it. Oh my gosh, Battlefield. Dude. Let's talk about Battlefield. So there's a lot of question marks here on Battlefield, right? I think we're all excited to see the next generation of Battlefield. Me and the team got to see it behind closed doors. And now we see gameplay.

And it is exactly what you would think out of a battlefield. And it's hype and it's exciting. But the big question mark here is $70 for a multiplayer-only game. And this is going to be a big uphill battle. for this team to get into this market spot and really establish themselves. I know it's a well-known brand that's been kind of, you know, so, so recently. But in all honesty, I think Game Pass would be massive for this team, especially with EA playing where we're at.

If we could somehow get this on Game Pass, it would be gigantic for Battlefield and EA because $70 is a huge price tag for a multiplayer-only game. And I don't know about that. I also don't know if now would have been the time to show it because you would have taken a lot of heat from PlayStation and PC gamers if you said, hey, it's on GamePass now. But I would not be surprised if we have this conversation two months before this release on possible Game Pass because multiplayer only is a big deal here for $70 only. I totally agree. It's a really big ask.

I don't know if a lot of players see the value in that, especially with so many other games going to Game Pass. And I kind of worry that maybe that's the direction that we're headed where, you know, pretty much any game that doesn't go to Game Pass now is going to be like, ah, fuck that. I don't want to pay $60, $70 for that thing. You're kidding me? 70 bucks on my PS5? It's just a multiplayer game. So I could totally see the criticisms there. But I was pretty blown away by the gameplay.

I kind of wasn't expecting to be this into it. I've never really been a gigantic fan of Battlefield. But, I mean, the verticality looks. fantastic, the environments. I mentioned during the live reaction, you know, there's a segment that we're about to watch here where the tornado is pulling in a bunch of different enemies and cars and vehicles,

and I don't know how the hell that's going to function online. I can't imagine this working well or smoothly at all, especially when, you know, you play war zone and, you know, shit just happens there for dumb, reasons and why am I lagging? God damn it's stupid frame rate drop. So like this looks like a really crazy dynamic experience. What we just saw right there looks like something out of a single player sizzle reel of like

do do do do and it's showing you all the crazy shit happening. But that's apparently multiplayer and we'll see if that actually happens. But I was I was pretty wild by it. But $70 for a multiplayer only a big ask. $70 is a huge ask. And I think if they want to justify it, they really, need to make this game incredible. Like it really needs to be, you are getting those

exact moments that you're talking about, Andy, where it's like, damn, I've not had this. I've not had this anywhere else. Because I feel like at this point, right, like you look at the first person shooter landscape and you have games like Fortnite, you have games like Warzone, you have games like Apex Legends, and the move is free to play. The move is Battle Royale. The move is

finding ways to get people into that, battle paths, find ways to get people into that ecosystem so that you can build a community and be the talk of the town and make money that way. for them to come out at full price, that means that I think that would mean that they have to be something like an Overwatch

or something like a Rainbow Six Sege and be an experience where it's like, I can only have this in battlefield. And that is a thing that only few games do, games like Rainbow Six Sege and games like Overwatch, which are 10 out of 10 games. And so, yeah, like, it coming to Game Pass would be such a magnificent move for this game.

And I really, I hope it does it because I think in a fall right now that is filled with first person shooters, they need to do something to stand out. Yeah. We also, yeah, we also only know about one of the three modes, right?

There's three modes in this battlefield. And as of right now, today, you only know about one mode, which is the all-out warfare that has two different game types in it. And so right now, if I'm looking at it as a general public, you've only shown me one mode

with two different game types, seven maps for $70. That is a huge situation going on. And yes, they'll show two more later on at EA, play, but like, we got an uphill battle over here that we got to discuss. And I think game pass would be huge. And I can't wait to see the reception online of what people think on the other side if this does come to game pass because it's going to be a lot of heat, but it's the right move for

battlefield, in my opinion. Want to keep it going with a couple more games really quick for you, Tim. An awesome show, of course, was this one. Sorry about that. I've put down the wrong one. Party animals. Party animals. What a great way to get a back.

in front of everybody. I forgot that was here. A red hot demo over on Steam for about one full weekend. This game is awesome. This game was so well polished. This game was fun and good to play. Like it ran well during this demo weekend. And I'm actually a little upset.

I'm a little frustrated that this has a 2022 tag on this. This game should be on Xbox game preview. It should be on Steam Early Access. This game should already be out. and taking over the globe because it's that good. And it's nice to have it come back and show off here on the Xbox stage, which is great. Get it back in the cycle.

But a 2022 release is outrageous for a game that ran so well during its beta. It looks good. It plays good. This should be out, should be on game preview, and it should be ready to go. But a great get for game pass as well. And I think everybody's going to have fun. And the beta was like last year, last winter. Yeah, it was a long time ago.

Like, that's a long time to. put and again just like you mentioned like i watched a lot of different streamers play that game and it looked like a game that would be out in six months maybe not a year and a half kind of bizarre go ahead tim gang beast if you remember had a similar thing oh you're right you know it it was in a playable state that we did let's plays on it i think three years before it came out yeah and like i couldn't tell you the difference between what we played and what we played now but there's definitely clearly something there and obviously corona and all that stuff but yeah i I'm with you that that was a, that game looks fantastic.

Really, really excited for it. I can't wait to play with you, boys. Mikey, give me the big one. Give me the big hitter that I know you popped off for. Okay. Okay, I'll give you the big hitter first and I want to swing back to a couple more because there's some really great ones. But of course, I want to swing back to the big hitter.

Let's take flight this summer and flight simulator with freaking top gun. Are you kidding me? Flight simulator is incredible. And to see this team bring it over to X. box and we finally get it on the console side. Are you kidding me? This is epic. This is awesome.

And to add Top Gun on top of that to give a little sprinkle, a little vibe, a little hype, this is awesome. And everybody's going to love this on console. And to be able to play it this summer to take flight is outrageous. I'm so happy. I'm so excited to finally make this real because it's one, you played it on PC. It was a gigantic download. It took a lot to chug your machine through it, which,

Let's all be real with each other. It was crazy, right? But for that team to not only make the download size smaller over on PC, but now get onto the console and show off the power, I mean, let's freaking go and Top Gun. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I'm doing sick freaking barrel rolls and flips backwards. Me and my guy Goose are going to be going wild, bro.

So, yeah, that is a great grab right there and really, really hype there. Was that it, Baird or should I give you another couple? No, the one that you, Mike, Howard, I know for a fact, popped off for. I'm talking shredders, baby, shredders. Okay, yeah, I was going to get the shredders. I was going down my list. All right, let's talk about shredders.

Because we live in a world where there's no EA big. There's no SSX tricky. My guy gave the axe to Amped, and I am so sad that I can't go shred the gnar with all of my friends in this incredible snowboarding sim. Ripped down the slopes. Let me rip with you, Andy, because I'll tell you, I have played almost every single snowboarding slash skiing simulator there's ever been.

I played Sean White where you grew Red Bull wings and you shot yourself off the side of the mountain. As did I. So there's games and there's a thing Tim talked about along with Gary of like they want SSX. I'm on the opposite side where I want a grounded, realistic snowboarding game. So when me and my homies get off the slopes, we continue that vibe. We continue that realism. But what was steep?

So steep was close. Steep was good, steep, but didn't have a focus, Andy. See, Steep has a lot of different extreme sports into it, but this has the focus of we're going to nail snowboarding, and that is the simple goal. They're taking inspirations from AMP 2. They want to be the spiritual successor to that, but they want to be better than that.

And this is something that everybody should have on their radar because we all love skates and getting you out on the snow for a winter sports is going to be absolutely incredible. And I'm so excited. for shredders. This looks great. They did a great job with that. And having this game on GamePass is massive as well because $20 would be a tough

sell for this game. GamePass eliminates any sort of selling on this. You just jump in and try it. Keeping it going. Here's a game that will get you all to pop. Hades, finally coming over to Xbox. And that's a big freaking deal. This was the hottest game last year.

Everybody talking about it. And it was on Switch and PC only. Xbox fans were like, where's this game? Why can't we talk about that? Hades coming to Game Pass. This is something we've all been pumped up for. And I know everybody here on this panel is excited to play again as am I. Like, let's go, y'all.

Get ready for this one of the year. Go play one of the top games ever made, man. That's the thing I wanted to shout out to you. Like that is a very high game of the year award winning game coming to game pass. Like right after the year it came out, which is pretty ridiculous. Yeah. That's it. I mean, I don't want to bore everybody.

I'll get on the X-Cast this week and we'll share the hype and we'll go game by game. But I'm so happy to hear this whole panel and Greg really excited about Xbox. And I'll tell you what, this has been the best Xbox conference in years, maybe even close to a decade. I watched back about seven years of E3 footage from Xbox and they're all just kind of middle of the road to okay. I only think of Keanu. Exactly. I can't agree with you guys at all, man. Like the last couple of years have had some freaking bangers.

It's like genuine surprises coming through left and right. I do think again, presentation-wise, this is the best. This is the tightest that they've ever had. It had the least things that felt like they didn't need to be here. And I do agree that a lot of those years did have those moments. But I think they had a lot more big like, oh shit, we didn't even know about this things. had those. I think the end of this with

we knew Project Oman, I honestly didn't expect to see it here. I know all the rumors were like, oh, it's happening, but I didn't expect it to happen at this E3. So I do think that that was a standout moment I want to give him credit for, especially the one more thing is so important. If you're going to do it, it better be a fucking banger. And they brought a goddamn banger, man.

Yeah. Again, Tim, I, I, we can argue all day about like what past conferences have had the better games. I just, in terms of bang for your buck and the most amount of games that I see on screen and go, that looks dope as hell, I want to play that. This is the one for me.

Again, I always think of Keanu's coming out on stage and that being like the huge pop and that's the most memorable thing. But just in terms of quality, quality, quality, quality, like all across the board, and not that every game here is, you know, going to be a game that I'm going to want to try out. But there's a large percentage of them that I think are so much better than in the past where the presentation's always been on point. but the games haven't necessarily always been there. And I think this is one that like, just really exciting across the board. I think this is,

I agree with Mike. I think this is my favorite Xbox, uh, you know, presser or showcase, whatever you want to call it in a long time. I think for me, you know,

the reason why this one, I didn't give it an S is because it didn't have, like, it didn't reach max hype, right? There wasn't a, by the way, here's a fucking,

I was going to say Saurapunk, but I guess Sirefunk doesn't work now anymore. Like here's Half Life 3. Here's like the jikeykees. thing that we didn't see coming. This conference didn't necessarily have that. And I think there have probably been more hype moments at Xbox conferences, but I think the thing that this one did for me is it, this is the most I've ever believed in Xbox as like a brand and like a company going forward. This is the most where I've been like, okay, yeah, they got it. They got this on lock.

They know what they're doing. They're paving a road that's going to be very successful for them if they're able to keep this up. And I think for what this conference is and how they communicated that vision, that is what worked for me so well in this conference to make me go. this is one of the best ones they've had in the last decade. I believe in Phil. I believe in the future. Yeah. Shout out to Age of Empires 4 on PC.

All my PC homies are going to be playing a great one. Welcome into the team at Bethesda. That was a huge statement there. And just an all-around great time. And get ready to spend some Buku bucks because we're all buying mini-friges, everybody. And that's all I got to say, Jim. Get over the next one. I'm done.

Can I expense that? Those bridges look fantastic. I hope we get one. Yeah. I mean, they didn't put a price out. Did they? No, not yet.

They didn't show much. They'll show a lot more soon enough. When it gets time to buy your wallet, they will. I want the full gameplay demo. I want the E3 camera spin of that damn fridge. You know what I mean? But anyways.

One more thing. Don't forget that Sarah Bond also came out and said, all of those game pass games that we saw and all these games, they're optimized, baby. Optimized. And that's all that matters. Next gen. Honestly,

that's what we want. Actually, it's key. And like, dude, like we've been just building every single damn year since games pass has been announced of like wow like back in the day it was like look game pass is a thing every single first party title is going to be day and date on game pass and it was like that's unbelievable i can't believe the next gears is going to be that and then it was right but at that time it was cracked down three we were still talking about now we're looking at this year next year the year after that we're looking at a lineup where it's like it is all of bethessa games it is halo it is the next gears that they talked about you know they talked about perfect dark they talked about perfect dark they talked about perfect dark they talked about about all the shit that is going to be part of this amazing program and amazing ecosystem. And like, yeah, it's like Microsoft earned their place in the industry many years ago. But like they have earned their place this generation, I think 10 times over. And they are almost unrivaled when it comes to production value on putting on a good show

full of games and full like look at it. At the end of the day, these are all commercials. This was a fucking fantastic commercial for GamePass. And that's exactly what it was. And they did it. They sold Game Pass. One, two, three, video games. You were going to throw something out there earlier to like kind of close out the show.

What was that going to be? Oh, yeah, just real quick. Close it out. We'll just go with three. Like what all of these three, all of Summer Game Fest so far, what are the three things that y'all are just most excited for, period. Blessing. I can go first because I already wrote mine down. Eldon Ring, of course, for sure.

It's probably my top one. I'm super high for Eldon Ring. I've been thinking about that gameplay trailer every day since we got it, and I'm very excited for that. Forks of Horizon 5 is another one that I'm very excited for. I'm legitimately filled with life for Fort's Horizon 5. Everything they showed off, I'm in for it. It being, like, it running on Xbox Series X, you know, like, of course that's the case,

but I'm looking forward to seeing a game that a franchise that's as beautiful as Fort Horizon shine on this next-gen console. And then Guardians of the Galaxy is the third one for me, that I was shocked. they sold me hard on this game as hard as they sold me on it. Andy? I'm going to go, Eldon Ring, obviously. Duh. Fucking Miyazaki just knows the weight of my heart.

And then I will go with Halo multiplayer. That looked absolutely amazing. So much fun. I'm going to put on Death Store and then a secret number four that I didn't tell you all about is replaced. that sort of the last night remake of it that aesthetic is just so my shit and I cannot wait to see if that game

actually comes out I'm right there with Andy pretty much my number one is Halo Infinite I while I would have loved for them to knock it out of the park and reinvented it to be something different selfishly I'm kind of more happy this is what we're getting it is just going back to what I liked about Halo so I couldn't be more excited about that

Number two, it's Guardians. I didn't say this earlier, but it reminds me a lot of the Deadpool game that came out on the PS3 era. Where it's like, I guess, yeah, I think the reason I'm so excited for it is that we're in that kind of Deadpool, Transformers War for Cybertron, Follow Cybertron type level where it's just like what they're nailing for me is the dialogue of the characters and the situations that the gameplay puts you in. less so than it being one of the greatest games of all time and it's working for me in a way that Avengers didn't and it being a focused narrative experience

like I want to support this type of stuff because I like this type of game and my number three is right there with Andy the game that I keep fucking forgetting the name of because it's not the last night it is replaced man I hope that game's real I hope it comes out in the next

year would be super nice because I really just want to play a game with that art style We've seen so many games with pixel art style. And even Gary Weddow, when we were looking at that, he's like, every game looks this way. And I think that he was just reacting to like early shots of it before we got into the real tilt shift and the way the lighting works and the way that this all is just so cool. And what I like about that replaced compared to last night is the use of the camera.

The camera kind of shifting here and shaking as he shoots and as he hits. It looks so good. It's insane. Like this is a dream video game that I can't believe. will ever be real because it just looks it looks perfect y'all are bringing up some game that i i don't know but there's like when this popped up i was like damn this seems like an evolution

what like where i want katana zero to go and it's like sequels and shit like it just it's got so much of that vibe and i can't wait for it i'm on that oh i also want to throw down that tetris top down game fighting uh... loot river loot river also another big surprise that bro throw it out bro that you just i just had to clap for that one again was like shit this is really creative and innovative and for the millions, it seems like, videos that we've,

or games that we've gotten at, this E3 of top-down hack and slash with the dash mechanic that Andy just totally loves, adding it this weird kind of traversal to strategize and get to different places of the environment, I think is just really creative and a neat little, I don't know, a neat little added dimension to make a game stand out

and make it feel different than the other ones. This is so good, because I can't wait to now start refining my list of the games I loved so we can talk about it at the very end. But quickly off the top, shredders, Halo, Forza. I'm going to give y'all one from the left field. You ready for this? Wayne Brady in Cuphead, y'all.

Super excited about that. When we don't talk enough about the Netflix geek week, but you know what? That was fun. That was exciting. You put Wayne Brady in anything. I'll be there. And my final one is the most important is the faces of Xbox. Todd and Pete coming out along with our guys.

Phil Spencer, but the most important and the god-starved coolest Sarah Bond, she's the best, and that's all that matters out there. It's her face in front of that camera, kick an ass for Team Xbox. That's all I got. Also shout out Rainbow 6th extraction. I forgot about that one. I like that one a lot.

Oh, yeah. God, there's a lot of good video games. Yeah, a lot of good games were a real. Oh, man. One, two, three, video games. Video games. We're going to return tomorrow all day, Twitch.tv. slash kind of funny games. For us, it's going to start at 10 a.m. Pacific time with Kind of Funny Games Daily.

We're going to be talking about all the biggest news so far in E3. And then at 11 a.m. We will be watching. Guys, I am so excited. The Halo multiplayer breakdown. Let's go. So hyped. And then after that tomorrow,

we will also be covering the E3 official indie game showcase and the Capcom showcase. And after that, live on Twitch. shot tv slash kind of funny games ps i love you blessing and janet garsia talking about what this e3 means for playstation should they have been there what would they have shown all that type of stuff it's going to be fun till next time love you guys bye