Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Greg Miller's Superman Game Pitch - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 185

Episode Date: September 3, 2018

Get 15% off today at http://mvmt.com/kinda We discuss Firewall, Dragon Quest 11, Valkyrie Chronicles 4, and Greg gives his Superman game pitch. (Released first to http://www.Patreon.com/KindaFunnyGames Supporters on 08.31.18) 00:05:52 - Jared's Hype 00:28:13 - Dragon Quest 11 00:36:35 - Valkyria Chronicles 4 00:50:16 - Firewall 00:57:58 - Superman Story Pitch 01:46:57 - Mobile Gameor Pepperidge Farm Cookie? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So guys, welcome to the first ever, episode 185 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Gettys. Join by one of the coolest series of video games, Greg Miller. Dokey, dokey. Oh, damn. This is throwing things off. And also with us, Jared Petty, what are you going to do? I want to take off the shirt, put on Spider-Man Mash.

No, now, come on. Oh, my God. Everyone knows. I'm not shirtless Spider-Man, all right? Everyone knows that. I just take the man's photos. Come on, Jared. That's good.

That's real. How much weight you love? Jared, you're doing great. Oh, no, I'm a big old, big old man. I have tiny, tiny nipples, though. You do have some tiny nipples, ladies and gentlemen, this is the kind of funny games. Why have we not done it where he comes in? We should do a bit because this would be fictional.

Where he comes in like this in the shirtless Spider-Man mask. I'm like, see? We're in the same frame. This is the kind of funny games, guys. Each day every week, we get together talking about video games, all the things that we love about them because video games are cool. It's true, in fact. Kind of funny.com slash store.

Yes, you can get the t-shirt. I love that shirt a lot. You can also go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games to watch this show live as we record it for just $1. Or you can get the VOD early on Fridays if you support us at the right level. Or you can just wait and get it for free on YouTube. com slash kind of funny games 9 a.m. on Mondays or on podcast services around the globe, whatever you want to listen to. We're there, baby. We're there on Spotify.

We're there on B. We're there on Apple Podcast. We're there on Google Store Play. You take a couple of 10 cans. You put a string between them. You pull them taught. If you listen real hard, you'll start to hear. Kevin's laugh. That's how it works. Yep.

There you go. I like to think that I guess it's morbid. But I'd like to think that wherever Kevin does get killed that in this office, he'll haunt that office. Not, I don't know if it'll be this office. It'll come back here and haunt this. I'm not going to live forever. Sure, sure you will. I'm reasonably

sure Kevin will be killed by equipment sometime in the next week. Equipment? No way. It would have got him by now. He's been working on those computers for two months straight. No, I definitely think either like the shock mic's going to get him one day which we really should get rid of because it's just not okay or he's going to be like speared through the middle like

omen style by some kind of falling like girder I think it has it more likely I know I love Kevin everyone he knows this I love Kevin he does the most around here I would say you understand that Kevin surprisingly is going to die in the most mundane fashion

he'll just pass away and sleep one day very old very small yeah because like it's the thing he would have a safe thing. He's got the leatherman. He's burning his shoes why he welds. He drives cars, sometimes doesn't have any brakes. Like, he's living on the edge all the time. It's like Keith Richards. You'd

expect him to be dead already. Right. You'd expect his crazy lifestyle calling up to him, and it won't. In fact, Keith Richards can't die. Everybody knows that. He's fucking immortal. This is like a conversation we had back in the day after we had graduated high school Tim Geddes. We went out to one Lone Star Steakhouse. Okay. Because we liked their wings a lot.

It's when we were falling in love with wings. Wings weren't a big enough place to have their own wings at the time. Also, those, the yeast rolls. Of course. Yeah, well, they had the, the ye squirrels? Yeas rolls, yeast rolls, but they were, this is the thing. This is before Outback did it. Correct me of them wrong people, but they had the loaf of bread, the brown bread that you cut and have. Oh, Lone Star? Was that? Okay, I'm getting my

steakhouses mixed up. Anyways, though, we go there and eat that. And we had a conversation, freshman year college, who do you think is going to be the first person to die from our graduating high school class? Yeah. And I picked the one girl that was like, Honor Society and awesome and super nice. Everybody's like, how do you think she's going to, I'm like,

she's going to get the mail and a car's gonna hit her. Like it's like it's not gonna be anybody we expect. You know what I mean? It's not going to be the crazy kids who get in fight

so they drive. Not that I didn't get it right but very similar. It wasn't that very nice girl it was a different very nice girl. But it was a mundane death. Well, I don't want to get into it.

Okay. But it wasn't a newspaper headline death. No, it wasn't like, you know, fucking gremlins came out and got her. You know what I mean?

Yeah. If you enjoy this type of great content, there was a lot more of it in the pre-show. Greg actually told a really good story about his infamous layer at IGN. And like there's a lot

of details there that I did not know. It's really interesting if you're into video game media history. Here's the epilogue for you, of course. Is that I don't want to say the name because I feel like I know it. Do you remember the guy in charge of Factor 5? No. No, I want to say, Kevin won't be able to Google these words.

All right. Anyways, the guy who was in charge of it, I'm going to say Julian Eckermbright. Does that sound right? That sounds right to me. I don't know. Can you give me a search on that, Kev? Does the dude's name matter?

No, well, yeah, because it was a kind of funny best friend. In early, early, early beyond fan, went to that GDC where they debuted it for the first time with real controls. And he walked up and he was like getting. He's like, oh, my gosh. He's like, oh, Larry. And he's like, yeah, you know, try the new control. And he's like, wow, this is so much better.

It's Greg Miller was right. And the guy literally was like, like, like, just like dead. Like, get out of here. Oh, oh, man. I said, who do you think ran? Factor 5. I think it was Julian Eckerwright. And what do you bring up is the vector

man Wikipedia? I didn't hear you. The second time I knew that I didn't hear you rights, I was just like, fuck out of it. Have some dignity at least make a game freaks Pulse Man. If you're going to bring up Oh, man. Keep going the show. I'll find it myself. Oh, I don't do it myself.

Sounds to Patreon producers. I was right. I was right. Julian Eggerbite. Warren Moore, Eric Heights and Tom Bach. The lucky three, the big three. Tongbuck? Tombuck? Tombuck?

Yeah. Hot. Tombock. Thanks for that. Tombock helping to keep cop blip afloat, too. Thanks, Tom. Before we get into the games that we've been playing, Jerry.

Yes, sir. We've just been having a moment in time. You know what I mean? Big fan of hype over here. Tim Gettys. There's some hype. And there's been a lot of hype going on. Like, let's...

Here, the platform is yours. The platform is mine, and that that guarantees that I have absolutely closed the window that I prepared to have ready for this segment. Because, You can count on it off right. To ruin the hype. Out of nowhere. They just decided, oh, hey, we're just going to put out a remaster on every system, including

the switch. Yeah. Why? How? They finally listened to you. They knew you wanted it. You've been predicting it forever. I'm extremely, extremely excited about this, obviously.

Of course. Oni Musha won. A classic game in my history. Yeah. Very short game. About five hours to get through the game. I'm looking forward to that. That sounds like a great amount of time to play a very old video game for me.

especially on the go, that sounds great. But the big difference is they're adding analog sticks support. So finally, it's not going to have the horrible tank controls of the old Resident Evil games. And it'll play like Ani Musia 3, Demon Siege, where you had analog support. And this is going to be great. But that means you're probably going to get to the game even faster. So I think it's going to be a three-hour game. Well, you know what, a good three-hour game?

I'm in? Yeah, I'm in. I'm in totally. And I love a good short game. And I apologize for not being ready on the draw there. Tim Geddies, I had this brought up and somehow close that. Here's the hype. ladies and gentlemen, something weird

is happening to this world. We got a game show host for president. That's strange. There's a lot of other weird things having to Berenstein Bears or the Berenstine Bears, some other weird stuff like that. Who knows what's taking place? Wait, hold on. Tim went wide-eyed. Are you aware of this? You know the Berenstine Bears, right? Yeah. How would you say it?

Berenstine Bears? Right. When you actually look at the cover of the book, it's Berenstein. Like, everyone says it the wrong way. Everyone thinks it's one thing. And it's actually, they've all... So there's a lot of theories that we're living in a simulation and someone went back and re- like retcon to that. And we all remember the way it was,

the Berenstein, fucking Bears. And then now that, but you look at the book covers and then it's clearly spelled differently. Yeah, it's just clear as day, but all of us remember something different. It's weird. I remember them singing this off.

Yeah, it's a little strange. So, what's happening in video games? We are getting sequels and or spinoffs. Or just remakes. Add upon to HD. Grandia, Langrasser, a sequel to Dragonstrap. And yes,

I know there was a monster. for World Four. I've played it. I love it. Et cetera. Please don't keep telling me that. It was for the Sega Genesis. Oh, actually it was for the Sega Mega Drive, etc. because it was exclusive to foreign markets. But anyway, it's a wonderful game, but we're getting a sequel to Dragon's Trap.

And I'm saying it's a sequel to Dragon's Trap because it was inspired by the success of Dragon's Trap on the Switch and other platforms, etc. We're getting a sequel to freaking Windjammers. Streets of Rage 4. Shenmu 3, Samurai Gun 2. Coming to Switch, where it belongs. Ladies and gentlemen, the best.

four-player combat game ever made by people. Yes, I include Smash Bros. Earlier. Power Stone's great. It's not coming yet. Samurai Gun is perfect. You can understand it in two minutes, and you will never, ever, ever get tired of it.

It's so perfect. It's Towerful, but Federer. Speaking of TowerFell, also coming to Switch, and TowerFull's amazing. As you mentioned before, Onimusha, then we got things like Mega Man 11, Mega Man's back, what the heck's happening there? We got an X collection coming out.

Wait a minute. Does that mean we're going to get an X sequel? Megamint X-9? It's going to happen? Killer Queen Black? Arcade game coming to Switch. Got a freaking Dragon Quest 11 single-player Dragon Quest game on a console for the first time since Dragon Quest 8. That's happening right now. Octopath Traveler brings back that classic Final Fantasy style gameplay. Falkyria Chronicles 4. Valkyria Chronicles 4. Who'd ever thought that was going to happen much less as a mainline AAA-style game. Wasteland 2, one of the best games nobody played coming to Switch now.

What the heck is going on? Battle Toads is getting a sequel. Then we've got things going on like all these retro-inspired games going on. You had this wonderful, wonderful circle of the moon. Or, geez, there's a mental fault for you there. Curse of the Moon. They're not sequel to Castlevania. Of course, the messenger going on right now.

So everything old is not good. As a matter of fact, most old games suck. Yeah, that's true. But the ones that are good are really good. And this bizarre thing is happening that hasn't happened for like 10 years where people are putting real money behind sequels, remakes, and retro-inspired games. And I've got a theory about this. Lay the theory on me, Ger.

I'm going to lay that theory down on you. I think that what's happened is that these have gone from being a novelty or a marketing gimmick to a genre of their own. Retro is now kind of a... Remember the genres are sort of made up anyway, right? They're not real. Retro is kind of now a crossover between a well-established style of indie development house, 2D side scrolling or RPG gameplay that's relatively easy to make resource-wise, coupled with

those nostalgic beats or looking to old things for inspiration or just being able to walk into a meeting and say, I want to make a punchy fighter game, we won't fund that. I want to make Streets of Rage 4. We will fund that. Why will they fund it now? Because these games are selling better than they have in ages. I've been talking to people throughout the industry about the release a lot of smaller retro-e style, retro-inspired games, compilations. They are selling ridiculously well right now. Switch has a lot to do with that.

Other factors have a lot to do with that. So you can go to an investor suddenly, or you can go to a venture capitalist, and you can say, look, yes, you can invest $50 million in producing AAA game. Yes, you can invest $50,000 in an iOS game and there's a one in a thousand chance you'll make any money on it.

But if you do, it'll make a lot. Or you can go to us, you can give us a half a million dollars, a million dollars, and you will double your money in a year or two. And we can pretty much guarantee that. That's so rare in this industry. It's happening right now. And these games are that sweet spot gateway.

I do not know how long that's going to last. Forgive the sermon. I'm excited. This is some hype. It's a great time because these games, generally speaking, have been good of late. That's the crazy bit. They're not cheap cash-ins. They're high-quality examples of genre that's been building for a decade and has now reached

that kind of wonderful sweet spot development peak. Sort of like when 2D platformers started on the NES and at the end of the S&S area, they were just like sublime. Do you think part of this is, we always talk about trends and you can trace things back, right? Are we seeing the fruits of Shovel Night's success right now in terms of Shovel Night really came. I mean, don't remember wrong, there's tons of retro-inspired games

that have done great. But Shovel Night was the one that seemed to break through everywhere. Everyone loved it universally. It was on everything. It continues to be on everything. They're still adding to it new modes and fucking shit for free all the time. Yeah, he's everywhere. The world that Cave Story created, Shovel Knight made profitable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they built those relationships. I think we're seeing the synergy of a lot of independent development. I mentioned Cave Story, a bunch of other things in that space and Steam, which there's always been a market for this stuff. With the mainstream, highly recognizable success of something like Shovel Knight, with Nintendo's decision around the same time all that was happening to kind of make a couple of high profile 2.5D games with Switch. And it's all coming together at exactly the same time. And just meeting in this kind of perfect sweet spot where there's a market for these games that didn't exist even a year ago,

or at least people didn't recognize it as existing. People are ready to spend some money on good quality revisitations of old style games with new mechanics. Because that's what the best of these are. I mean, you play Curse of the Moon. It's not just, oh, this gives me the feelies. It is a ridiculously well-designed 2D exploratory slash straightforward platformer with a lot of really innovative game elements. And that's like Celeste for me where it's like it's not just like, oh, here's this nostalgia-driven 2D platformer.

It's like this is up there with Super Mario 3 for me where I'm like these are both equally good games. It's just different time and different experience you have with them. But shovel night, I think the key thing it had going was that it wasn't the first. It was the first to get it right and really find its audience and the audience being the hardcore gamer that doesn't want paid DLC and doesn't want this. And they're like, look, we're going to have a great core game that is inspired by this or that. But it's not Mega Man. It's not Mario. It's kind of a mix of elements that make sense from all of these into a great game.

And then we're going to have a DLC plan where the DLC is free. And when you treat the consumers correctly, they're going to be there for you and support. you and that's why with shovel night they've seen such success on I would love to see a breakdown chart of how many people that own shovel night own multiple copies yeah because I feel like the I would say that probably not the majority but I would say a good 30% of people that own shovel night own it in multiple buy in every place to come to or buy in multiple places to support the to support yacht club because they've proven that they're not giving up on this this game came out in yeah 2013 2014 I want to yeah 2014 um and there's been

10, three expansions that are full games after that. They were given in the same thing. And then the Treasure Trove eventually they kind of retroactively packaged it. But if you own the game before then, you get all this stuff. Then they announce more. Yeah. It's just the gift that keeps on giving. And I think you're correct on that.

I own at least two copies. I think three of shovel night. Love it to death for that. The other bit that these have in common, you mentioned shovel night is an original IP. And I do think an original IP was what this needed to kind of make this. oh, let's go back to the sequels to get things funded thing. I mean, for example, you know, Dragons Trap, Streets of Rage,

that's a guy who took literally a 30-year-old game and remade it now that, like, we'll take something else because you proved your aptitude on that. We'll trust you with another beloved franchise. But another thing that's happening is a lot of these have been dormant for a long time. They have not gotten sequed to death. Sure.

They got sequeled to death back in the day and people pumped out more and more and more and more and more and more cops. It's kind of like what happened with Tomb Raider, where they made five of them in like, you know, five years. Sure. And then the series vanished for several years. These games have had a long time to sleep. It's a great point.

I mean, that's one of the reasons I think you see messenger resonating with people, right? Of like, oh, my gosh, it looks like Ninja Guidon. And when was the last time you had that side scrolling? That's how it is. Full disclosure, of course, Jen works in that game. But like, you know what I mean? Like the reviews speak for themselves, I feel. Yeah.

Well, two-d platformers went away for an entire generation. Yeah. You know, like on the N64, PlayStation 1 generation, it's like there, of course, There was a handful of them. Yeah, you got a stall and mischief maker and things like that. And things like that. But it's like there wasn't this, you know, where 2D platforms were kind of like what video games were. Yeah.

On the N.S and S&S generation. And then there was such a long gap. I mean, when you just look at Mario games, there wasn't a 2D Mario game. 1996 Super Mario World 2 came out. We didn't get another 2D Mario. And even that's like debatable of if it's a core Mario game. We didn't get another one until new Super Mario Bros on the DS in 2000. 2005?

Like, that's a big gap. The long way. There was this idea that they were unmarkitable. People wanted to highlight the technology. It's hard for us to remember this now, but there was a time that 3D was so new that some people picked up the controller and didn't understand it. Sure. They liked that about it. They wanted you to be mystified by what was happening.

Wow, Mario was a cartoon, and it was mind-blowing. You guys remember this. Oh, yeah. Oh, got you. But they didn't want to make the hardware seem less powerful than it was. So there was some deliberate suppression, especially early on, of making this kind of game for that kind of play. platform. That was old style. This was new style. It was only when people realized that you could make games cheaply and people would still buy them because these games do or did at least cost less to make,

generally speaking, than a state-of-the-art 3D platformer. And I think that remains an advantage to this day for this style of gaming. Also, RPGs, we've been talking a lot about platforms, but a lot of these on here also have an RPG edge to them. And that's something else. I mean, Grandia is going to, I'm going to get a lunar game. I know it. We're going to get Dark Cloud eventually. You know, and that's, I, I, I, I, I, I, Or maybe more exciting, maybe eventually we're finally going to see a Golden Sun. And that is, we're building towards that. And I feel like especially when it comes to the Switch and it comes to what Nintendo kind of has a hole in its first party lineup, it needs a JRP.

And I feel like Golden Sun would be the right answer for that. We can stick Golden Sun. We can finally stick Wall Luigi and Golden Sun because it's Camelot where he belongs. So again, I'm just stick him over there. I guess. Sure, Jared. But with the games you're talking about, there's like multiple tracks because there is the, the 2D retro games that we've seen like at this point a comical amount of over the last 10 years

in the indie scene. But then there is the JRP's side of it where a lot of these games are getting second chances, third chances in a lot of ways. And there is an audience of people that want to play them on something like the switch. But then there's the other side of things where it's not so much a retro realization of 3D games being like brought back. But it's more in terms of like from the indie side of things. Like I guess we saw ukulele and a couple attempts, but they didn't hit in the same way of just like a simple remaster, Crash Bandicoot being a good example of it coming out.

Still, like I think it just got beat from the Amazon UK from the number one. Yeah. Yeah. Since it came out. Like that's insane. But there is a nostalgia now, an intense nostalgia for PlayStation 1 era. And now even up to Onimusha,

like there's a nostalgia for a PS2 game. Yeah, right? And that coming out, I can't believe we're getting on Emusha because of all the licensing issues of the Actors likeness like you I don't you might know this you probably don't know this there for the remaster that they're putting out They need to change the entire soundtrack because it was discovered that like years after on Emusha came out that the composer plagiarized Oh, I didn't know that on the music in on Emusha so they had to put like totally redo and recreate a whole bunch of stuff That's the type of effort that I'm like Capcom's not going to put that into this. Yeah, that reminds me like the Ayabrea stuff around third birthday where like they can't call it Paraside Eve because that's a novel title so they have to call it third birthday and

suddenly like same characters. It's so weird but when you look at Capcom over the last like I would say five years ago we're all looking at Capcom like are y'all on the way out yeah exactly making a lot of bad decisions here and like I don't know about this and then in the last two years you know from Resident Evil 7 through Monster Hunter world through now to like a Mega Man 11 that for all intents of purposes, people say as good as the other ones from what they've played? What I have played of Mega Man 11 is dope.

That's mind-blowing, based on how it looks and based on how the reveal kind of came off to people. But there's a pattern that we can look at where they released Resident Evil remake one, the original one, on HD systems, and then they released the

collect, like they went through all of them where it's like you can play Resident Evil 2. You can play Code Veronica and and Resident Evil 4, 5, 6 were released as downloadable titles, right? Yeah. And then eventually we get 7, and now we're getting remake too. Sure. So you're thinking the same thing for your own, Emusha?

I'm hoping, beyond hope. But moving over from that, it's not just Resident Evil, because Mega Man, we get Mega Man legacy collection. We get Mega Man legacy collection too. Mega Man X collection. Now Mega Man 11. Double may cry. It's, I mean, it's, like, when we were all like, are you going and we're doing? You're making bad decisions.

They understood. They saw the financials. They saw the critical reception. They saw their audience and understood that as well. It's something that's rare. And to rare, and I mean in the way that I don't, I don't think it's ever happened before in my career. But it was, what was the, what was the Resident Evil before?

Resident Evil 7. Resident Evil 6 came out, right? And didn't set the world on fire. People didn't like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somewhere. Sold like a motherfucker. Sure.

But again, we're talking about drifting in the wrong direction, right? And not knowing what your roots are and stuff like that. Capcom after an E3, and I mean after an E3 day where we did the whole live show at IGN and all that shit, came in and I was introduced to these people at time and I don't know them since or whatever, but they were heads of Capcom. They were high up in the food chain. They came in and sat down with me, Per and a couple other people from IGN just to talk. It wasn't like this, but it was like, what are we doing wrong?

What do you see that we're not doing right? And we kept bringing up Resident Evil of like, well, you know, Resident Evil isn't at all. Resident Evil anymore and that was thing blah blah and it was I think a tour for them of let's talk to the people who are talking to the people yeah like it's hard to separate the wheat from the shaft right when you're talking about sales is great but like reception's not and this isn't happening blah blah blah and Twitter and that and the boards and Capcom unity and like where do you go to try to get it and it seems like they understood that all right cool let's not simplify but go back to basics what it what makes us Capcom what makes our franchise is Resident Evil and Mega Man and so on and two two parts to the to that if you're working inside a large game company I think one of the reasons they came to use that you need expert leverage if you're going to get things changed in a place where decisions happened by consensus if you walk in and say well the data shows this somebody else might say well the data shows that we're going to say we set down with the experts yeah yeah yeah people that have their fingers all these different sites yeah yeah and we come back with that you know somebody's

much more likely to listen to that report and actually make measure changes even that they have internal vested interest in doing otherwise also kept them kind of cut lightning in a bottle you mentioned Mega Man Legacy Collection. We had Frank's following on here just a couple of weeks ago. He was the director on that game. And Frank, or director or producer, hold on, one of the two. Anyway, Frank talked about how, I mean, that game sold gangbusters for them. Some of that was the TLC that went into it. Some of that was an unanticipated amount of demand for it. But Capcom's been very public about the fact that Mega Man 11 happened because Legacy Collection blew up. Right. I mean, they also just, they made a small project that turned out to be a

superb undertaking and people flocked to quality. Who knew? And, well, it's timing too. I think that they're not being a virtual console right now is definitely creating this gap for kind of archival collection content. And especially when it's done right, like this is not the first time there's been a Mega Man collection,

but they weren't done right. Like on PS2 and GameCube and stuff, they've had the buttons mapped incorrectly. Oh, Lord, that would the GameCube one where you can't can't remap the buttons is still one of the worst things that happened. Why would, why? And I feel like a lot of collections back then, the Sonic mega collection back then had similar issues where it's like mistakes would be made.

And I feel like now these collections are being looked at as premium content, not just like, eh, there's an afterthought. Some of them are. Some of them. And yeah, of course, there's really bad examples. Well, we, I want to think about that for example, but even there's something in between too. There's really bad.

There's really good. I mean, look at, you know, Fantasy Star is going to be re-released with freaking auto mapping. That's going to turn Fantasy Star of them. an unplayable for most people, high-quality old RPG that they're not going to try to a game that you can actually play with modern sensibilities.

Just like Oni Musha. Adding analog support to Anamusha is a game changer because I don't think that game would hold up at all if it was still tank controls. Will it hold up even with analog? I don't know necessarily that the first one will, but elements of it definitely will. And there's just something cool.

That game was, it felt like a horror game because it had its Resident Evil roots, right? Yeah. But it's just like it had such a different vibe than things that we've seen before and then I feel like it only gets better with two and three. No, I do want to walk this back for a second,

though, to talk about this collections and the between space. So Mega Man Legacy Collection, ridiculously well put together. All those challenges, jumping into any boss fight, huge museum. Legacy Collection 2,

not produced by the same people, much less of that stuff. Mega Man X Collection, X Collection 2, great games, but not nearly as much of that stuff. not quite the same degree of really in deep TLC on it. So we always have to be vigilant about this stuff

because it wasn't immediately, you know, no, they didn't try to hide anything, but if you're just a consumer picking up the box, it may not be transparent that it's not quite as lovingly crafted as that first one was or something maybe like, you know, Disney Afternoon Collection might have been. And that's where we got to keep our eyes because people, we all like to make as much money as we can

and you don't want to let it slip either. So, you know, keep making good stuff. It is building the message towards we want a sequel to this. We want to see more of this. So it's like I'm going to buy On Emusha on Switch because I want to show people that I want on Emusha 2. Definitely want Anemusha 3. And this is like one of those year of dreams to get high moments.

If we ever see it on Amusha fucking 3 remaster, I'm going to be shocked because Gene Reno, like, alone, I think is going to limit that from happening. I got cynical. I love this industry and I remain very optimistic about it. But you spend enough time in it. Sometimes you do see wonderful things happen. You see miracles happen.

You believe in and they keep you going. But you also see a lot of things die in the vine. Some things you can never talk about that you watch Die in the Vine. Get really close. It's kind of like movies. You know, there's movies. The thing with movies is movies get announced first. I can't remember who first pointed this out,

but I was talking to somebody about it recently. Movies get announced and then they never happen. Video games are the other way around. Video games get worked on a really long time. then to get canceled before they're ever announced. And outside of footage, you'll eventually leak on unseen 64, and you're like, what the fuck. Exactly. And so we hear about it behind the scenes from people sometimes, but we never get to talk about it, or it's just rumors flying around. So people don't realize how many things get close and don't happen.

A long period of that, combined with the fact that I realize that my own interests are very nation-narrow. I like certain kinds of games more than others, and those tend to fall in maybe a smaller bucket. make me think that stuff like this just can't happen very often. If you told me three months ago, we'd be having this discussion about this lift. I would have laughed in your face. You would have got fought. Ten years ago, yes, this was happening. There was a lot of money to be made in it, and the sky seemed the limit.

Now, weirdly, it seems that that's resurging again. God bless the switch. That's what I got to say about that. Jed? Yes, sir. You've been playing some video games. I haven't played some video games. You reviewed Dragon Quest 11 over at IGN.

Echoes of an elusive age for ye old IGN. My review up there right now on IGN.com. What was it? It's real good. I gave that game a great rating of 8.8. Hey! That is the score. That is a superb, meaty, wonderful RPG.

Have you ever played the Dragon Quest game? Just Builders. Just Builders. Builders. Is it? This is great. I'm in. That's a great game.

I loved it. I loved it. Builders wonderful. I think I didn't realize that, Greg. I didn't know. You weren't a builders? There you go. Oh, we should have had a builder's club. We should have. You excited about builders too? No. No? No. I had my fill with Builders won. I got crazy for a second

like I was going to platinum it and had all these things saved web browsers and never ever did it. See, there's things I would have fixed about builders that I bet you builders too quality of life stuff will make him more fun. I'm looking forward to that. But yeah, what do you want to know about Dragon Quest 11? I want to know how long it took you. Okay, so the main quest took me about 65 hours. Oh, shit. And

it could easily have taken me longer. Yeah. I didn't like black. through the world or anything like that. But I also didn't super take my time. I went around and I smelled the roses and I did some optional content here and some optional content there and hunted some things out.

The thing is the optional content isn't always overt because, yeah, there's side quests, right? And yeah, there's hidden errors. But what I wanted to find was the secret stuff tucked away in corners. Sure. That's always my favorite part of a dragon quest. It's just stuff hidden everywhere.

And it's not collectibles. it's stuff that makes you stronger. Always. Everything you find is either a weapon, item, piece of gear, or a crafting material that will lead you to better weapons. It's worth it. It's items or pieces of gear. Yeah, and it ain't none of this cosmetic.

This is all, you go to the casino and play the casino games. It's about winning unique prizes. You can only get there. You go and you hunt MIDI medals down. They're hidden all over the world like collectibles. You can cash those in for awesome equipment. Everything is about getting stuff. And Dragon Quest ultimately, and this really goes all the way back,

is a kind of a very friendly, semi-story-driven, colorful version of that classic dungeon crawler formula from the early 80s, the wizardry and Ultima kind of games that are, you know, get the character, build the party, explore the wilderness, find the stuff, enter the dungeon, beat the boss, get the treasure, forge the items, go to the next town, do it again. And it's so, they have this down to such an art form now.

I mean, after doing this for a long time. This is a great entry point for the series for people that have never played. Okay. That's the story. It's not so great. It's fine.

The earlier parts in particular kind of weaker, you are the hero of legend. And boy, they are, let me tell you what, you are the hero of legend. They're going to remind you. you at every turn. You are the hero of legend and don't you forget it.

So you're kind of a blank slate and that's very deliberate. Actually they kind of make some jokes about the fact that you're the silent protagonist. It's very... And that is a deliberate. I love Dragon Quest games. I've played quite a few of them. This is a throwback really to the first Dragon Quest and the first three

Dragon Quest especially. And so you get a lot of that playing. Your party members are fine. Their personalities are kind of... They are very tropish and you kind of you see most of the surprises coming. Mechanically, they're really interesting. Your characters are all very different

when it comes to getting down to what they can do. They all feel great. They're customizable, but not too customizable. You can tech them out the way you like, but it's not like Materia in Final Fantasy 7 where you can make them anything you want. They're still going to feel like them. So they have a unique feel to all the main characters,

but you can tweak them the way you like with gear and skills and stuff like that. Some of the stories are downright, silly. There's one in particular that comes to mine. They're almost eye-rolling cringy. Like really? You're saving the orphans so that you can

not take the steroids because that's bad. But the second half of the game story gets better, much better. And the post game story is downright intriguing because unlike the rest of the game, it seems like an honest to goodness mystery. I'm still in the post game. And it's a big old post game.

That's awesome. And it's a story-driven post game. And so there's That's cool. There's something going on where I'm like, I still don't quite know what's happening, but I like it. That's a start. What else you want to know about it? Is it worth playing for people that haven't played a Dragon Quest game before? And maybe don't, maybe let's say Octopath Traveler was the first JRP they've played in a while.

This will be very different. It's pure turn-based combat. And some people immediately turn off their brains when they hear that. And they're like, no, no, none of that. There are no action-oriented elements in the fight-shash. You move your characters around. It has literally no tactical effect at all. It's purely aesthetic.

But the combat is still, and I said, this is my review, nail-biting. Not the everyday encounters where you bump into a guy and your farming stuff. Those are over in 30 seconds, just like you want them to be. Except when you occasionally run into a surprise, get in trouble and they're like, oh, crap. But they're all unique. They're still interesting. It's not just I hit the monster and that's that, because every monster and the monsters are gorgeous. and there are hundreds of them,

hundreds of unique monsters, all with different abilities, all you have to approach a different way. It's almost like little mini puzzles when you're fighting them in battle, and yet they all happen quickly. But then when you get into a trouble situation and those pop up pretty, it's like,

I mean, you're one turn away from death. You know, you're like, so you're sitting there, you're like, what do I do? Do I switch my party? Because you can switch party member. Do I switch them out? Because this guy would be better for this.

Or maybe if I can, if I wait one more turn, my guy will get his pet power and then I can do a chrono trigger style three person copy. that might boil me out of this, but if I take the same thing, but if I heal that guy and you're doing, and you got all the time of the world to think,

but you're kind of, oh, sure, I'm sure. Yeah. It's great. It's absolutely great that way. So yeah, I think this is, even if you played Octopath, this is different enough. Find the treasure, hunting every corner, break every barrel, peek behind every building,

go down every path you see on the side, build your stuff, get in, when you start the forging game, you're gonna be like, what's this forging? This is lame. And then hours later, when you have like 12 unique forging powers for these super complicated template mini games where you're just like, even that turns tense. You're like, I'm going to waste my items, but I'm so close. Do I keep trying to make it perfect or do I get?

You know, it's, it's all about being ready. It's about building up. It's about tweaking the perfect party for the situation you're in. And it's about if you make a mistake, and it's very forgiving. if you make a mistake, go back, try again a different way. I like that about it. It's very friends. So in addition to reviewing it, I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Hori, the creator of all the Dragon Quest games.

He's been making video games since he programmed a tennis game for a Japanese computer in the early 80s. He made Portopia, which is the game that Hideo Kajima calls one of his biggest inspirations, and hidden the Metal Gear 5 source code. And he's made all 11 dragon quests. And Hori's still in charge, and he's just delightful, mischievous guy. And there's an interview on IGN right now. It just went up today on Wednesday about that. Cool. Check it out.

Yeah, talking about it. But he said, it's a friendly game. He said, you know, these games are friendly. Little games. It's true. The slimes are adorable. And it's, but he wasn't just talking about the adorableness. Oh, the monsters, they look so good in HD.

They really do. Yeah. And they have incredible animations. But he points out. that if you keep trying, you're going to make it. There's, you know, you literally can if you have to power through. It's a good slogan for life, but it's not grinding. He also said, my favorite thing of all was the very last question of the interview.

I asked, you know, it's just like, are games magic? And he like leans back there. And he's just like in Japanese. Yeah. Sure games are magic. I like, yeah, I like that guy. He's awesome. The games are magic.

Yeah. Greg Miller? Yeah. You've been playing. a little magical video game called Valkyria Chronicles. I have, yeah, I haven't in good authority. We're going to have the ability to play more soon. So I finally did what I've been talking about doing forever,

which is take Octopath and say, I'm sorry. We're done. No, we're not done. I will get back to you, Octahs. It's demo time, baby. I got to jump into the Valchia Chronicles 4. Of course, your demos, it goes, what, through the end of chapter 2, and like your progress carries over and all that jazz.

So it was like, all right, it's time to get serious. Let's get in there. Let's get a save. Hopefully get Valcaria soon and be able to just keep going, right? And so, yeah, it took over my switch and I'm so goddamn happy it did. Because we talk about it all time, you and me, Jared, how much I love Valkyria and how excited I am for more Valkyria. And so to get back into this and relearn what I forgot to be reminded of things that I

had totally forgotten about. I totally forgotten about like leveling up your troops. You know what I mean? You're like coming back out and going into your camp and applying the XP you've earned to make your shock troopers better or to make your scouts better. I know, right? But it's not that I forgot. It's just like when I think of it, I think of the battles.

And I think of the cutscenes. And I'm like, You forget the moment to moment how everything changed and where it goes, let alone now, like, talking to people in the mess hall to get new things to get new options and things like that. The kind of persona-ish, light elements. Right, yeah, of what's happening in the world and the flashbacks to who these guys were before the war and what their relationships are and, you know, the introductions of characters, you know, how in like, you know, you're playing as Claude or getting it from his perspective. But, you know, the introduction of, you know, this Miller that shows up, this woman named Miller who shows up and like there's clearly something there. It's like, wait, what is it about and, like, trying to figure out, like, they're good at actually giving me a hook of like, wow, she hit him. Why is she mad at him?

Like, what's going on? And then, like, have to go on a little bit to find out what's going on and what his relationship is with his subordinate who's acting like an ass man. Is she Andrew or Renee? No, Andrew Renee is Minerva. Have you seen this? No. The kind of funny subreddit, obviously the demo is out you can play right now. And, like, there's a character in it named Minerva, who has red hair in these, like, black cream glasses.

And, like, they put a side by side of this one photo of Andrew Renee. I missed the sound of the road pretty often. Huh. Fuck. Yeah. That totally does. Like Andrea. Yeah.

So it's just been fun to get back into it and start putting your R&D in and like making better weapons for everybody and seeing it. And then, you know, similar what you're talking about with like the combat, right? And it's, yeah, you know, I'm running over there. I can sit there and sit there and survey the battlefield and then make my moves. And then when it doesn't go right or they do something I'm not expecting or this, that day or they'd be like, all right, cool, quit out. Restart.

Like, I'm not how this is going. You know what I mean? Back all the way. I want to fucking. And it'd be perfect, but I want to make sure I'm doing this the way it's supposed to be, and I'll make a stupid move or do something stupid. You got to love it about those type of games. Sure.

Like, it really does give you that feeling of like, man, I can do this better. When I end a mission and I get a B, it's like, ah, motherfucker now. We need to create a world where the two of you just sweat. You play Valkyria and you play Fire Emblem, and you're both really happy. Sure. That needs to happen. Or you just both play into the breach and get the same experience somehow distilled down into like an eight-by-eight. A little grid.

Yeah. Yeah, I can't figure out how that, that gets, speaking of great things on Switch. Yeah, yeah, shadow dropped. Shadow dropped. Today on Switch, yeah. Been playing on Steam and it's, it's rad. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, Valcari is great.

I can't wait to get deeper into it. I will get back to Octopath. Like, Octop. The Switch is, I mean, in the last few months, my primary console, right, in terms of, like, when it was Fortnite and Octopath. And now Valkyria, I do see when Valkyria is done coming back. Let me ask you a real question. Lay on me. I'm not trying to be an asshole.

I'm not trying to put you on a spot. Sure. Which is the real thing. if Atlas was like, we're doing persona 5 crimson or whatever

on the switch. Yeah. Would you beat it? Oh my God, yeah. Yeah? I mean, here's the thing about it.

Here's the thing about it. Is the whole reason I get back. Why do you laugh like, not even the devil? You laugh like a little goblin. You're like, you're fucking running around David Bowie's knees right now.

Somebody photoshopped that one. No, I would because that's the whole thing with Octopath, where I legitimately will get back to it because Octopath's great in the way it's the opposite of Catherine, where when I put Catherine down on PS3 and tried to come back to Catherine, I was like, fuck, what is going on? Where Octopath is such, it's so easy to digest. It's so, cool, it's a JRP. The stories are re-explained. That's on the concern. It's not, there's no gameplay mechanic in this, just like in persona where I come back and I'm like,

wait, what the fuck am I doing? How do you fight in these games? I don't know to fight a turn-based RPG, right? And so when I'm done with Valkyria, I'm the first top of, of the list is to go back to Octopath unless there's something else I need to play on switch at the time but for as much as we travel like that's the whole point of why this switch is amazing and why it's been getting so much playtime. It's not getting playtime because I'm abandoning my PlayStation it's because I'm on the road and there's so many great games there right now the thing that I'm jonesing for when I'm on the plane playing with it is like I wish fire pro fucking wrestling world was on this right on the switch because I love fire pro on PS4 it's so great

the creations are so good everything's going well what what happened why are you on it keff can we time code this for fire pro yep Thank you. Oh, sorry. I didn't know. I didn't know. Switch the transition. That's fine.

And it was just the thing of like, I have such a good time with that game that I wish it was here. You know what I mean? I don't get me wrong. I love, we've talked about this before where the PlayStation for me is the I'm sitting down. I'm playing this HD AAA, whatever the fuck you want to call it a game, right?

It's like why I'm excited for Spider-Man, right? Reviews up next week, everybody. Or if you're watching this is up Tuesday. 7 a. I guess no matter when you're watching a Tuesday, 7 a. We're playing, you know, Spider-Man. I'm going to be in this thing for hours on end. It's a drag on me on.

You know, these things are like, I'm excited for Shadow the Tomb Raider, Red Dead or all that kind of thing, right? FirePro walks this interesting line of FirePro looks like a very nice S&ES game. And that's great. And it's awesome and amazing. And I would love to have it on Switch. So it's just there, like, wherever I am and ready to go. Yeah. Do you think we get sued in here?

Because he's got a huge spot in his heart for FirePro. He wrote one of the earliest FirePro scenarios. It's really close to his heart. Do you get him in here to play FirePro? That'd be amazing. Sure. What's the, what's his game he's working on right now? There's a game.

Brain dead. I don't remember. I was talking to somebody about it of like, yeah, when he's through here, I want him on for a second. The sequel to Killer 7, Killer 8. There you go, Killer 8. So yeah. Have you had no more heroes right now? Great. Is he working on that?

Yeah, Travis strikes again? Yeah, Travis strikes again. You're almost 2 to 51? Right. Yeah, he's on. He's probably no one. All right. Yeah.

Then yeah, I'm working on it in progress. Valkyria, great. Can't wait to play more of it. Yes, I would. If persona was there, it'd be the exact same thing of, wow, perfect. It's why I got so lost into persona for Golden, right? why so many people did. I've like, great, it's there when I need it

and burst and turn it on, turn it off. Whereas, like, I just don't, I want to do that when I'm at home for some reason on my PS4. So then FirePro Wrestling. Fire Pro Wrestling. Yeah. A game that never,

it didn't click with me the one time it crossed paths with me. I always wanted to be the Game Boy Advance launch generation. Remember when that came and it had a FirePro on it and had all these different things. I was getting ready to go to school at Mizzou. And I remember just not being able to justify it with my money and not wanting to ask for a gift.

So I never did. And I'll never forget EGM having all these awesome photos with it. What a fucking launch lineup, man. Shout out to the GBA. Yeah, yeah. GBA was, that thing was dope. And so I never, I missed it there. And of course, as everybody who watches this, I'm sure knows, like, I was Mr. Wrestling

fucking video game guy, right? Like, that's what it was all about. I mean, when no mercy in WrestleMania 2000 came out, I fucking took the days off school. You know what I mean? Friendships in college were built on. I left my room once in the first. week of Missou and heard the Smackdown PS1 menu music and ran room to

room till I found John and like we became friends. Did you import six minutes grandbow back in the day? What I imported and I'm so rusty on it and I imported it wasn't a fire pro but it was one that was lauded on N64 as being amazing and I imported it

and printed off the giant guide and I'm so bad at I don't remember the name of it but I remember the biggest thing was there there was a dude and he could green mist on people and I like spent but I'm like fucking reading these translations trying to figure got how to do it. I had to go in and unscrew the things in my, my, uh, N64 to be able to put the import games. Yeah. That's great. And I got an email back from EGM about it because I wrote in. I'm like, I, there was, I ordered it.

Went through all my EGMs because I remember reading one of them where they said how to do it. And I could not find it. And I had hit them on like, whereas it turned out it was like the magazine before my collection began. It was like something stupid and ridiculous. But they told me how to it. Um, anyways, I was always missed wrestling guys. Went to IG and reviewed all the wrestling games there. And FirePro came to PS2 while I was there. And God. And God. it and had no real context for it. And it wasn't what I wanted, if that makes sense at the time. At that time, it still was cool that the THQ WW series was looking more and more like product. Like it was looking like we were watching TV, right? Whereas now I think that's actually a huge

detriment to the brand that's been around for too long, where it's like, we are too hung up on making everything look photorealistic. We are too hung up on the moves being like, hey, we want these animations that go on for everyone. It's like, why, we want it. The systems are too complicated about right now as I say all time on these shows right rubber banded back stop what you're doing just put a small team together to make a no mercy clone for lack of a better term make that system again put that out as a downloadable game it will sell better i think than you would then you'd possibly believe especially if it's on switch i actually believe you could probably inject the entire w w e with that philosophy and all their product right now when it's been approved yeah but

it's just like hey make that game that was so simple to master everyone who had ns 64 has a good memory of playing those wrestling games because it was strong gap or weak grapple strong strike we got it cool understand jiggle the stick to pull all my special yeah great and that's what fire pro basically is yeah you know there they're there when i got it the fire pro uh world here and i popped it in i was so excited they have a tutorial in it that i don't remember the ps2 when having when i reviewed it so like and i don't know if maybe i'm just rusty on that which is very possible but you're going through and like getting it even then i had to go and read a forum of like what am i doing wrong what oh when i was like when you're like when you're

you go for the collar and elbow and the foot hits the ground, right? That's when you put in your button command and that's whoever gets it first. And it was like, okay. And once I got that to click in my head with this version, it was like, now we're off to the races. Now I get what to do. It's just, again, coming from the current WW games that are not button mash, but hit a whole bunch of shit to this one where it's like you're making choices of what you're

doing. You hit the button to make a choice. Don't fucking button tap. You're not going to get anything right. They're going to fucking clean your clock. Yeah. I jumped in and started to get the feeling for it. I love it.

I love the controls. I love the systems in play. The detriment I had having it early was the fact that since it wasn't out in the U.S., there weren't many U.S. creations getting uploaded, right? When I look at FirePro world, obviously been on PC forever in early access. Or just out. Early access. It's been on, you've been playing on PC.

I bought it on PC, never even turned it on. But I was super stoked, but my money where my mouth is I want to play this game. The creations people have made, right? when you look at this, like, on the fire, Tim's a test, if I actually care a lot about a game, I, of course, immediately signed up for the subreddit. And the subreddit's full of, like,

montages of people who have made Raw is war and are having the attitude-era fights, and I'm watching Sean Michael's super kick the undertake. And I'm like, that's awesome. This is what I want, but it's not on PlayStation yet. This game just dropped on PlayStation Tuesday,

so now we're starting to see the influx. I had seen through, I can still use that when it was pre-release for everybody, and I was playing, I could still upload, I could still build, and I can also bring down the Japanese creations or creations other Americans had uploaded. They couldn't make wrestlers yet, but I have the ECW fucking ring apron and all the turnbuckle pads. I made the party mode ring.

And that's the thing is like there was a weekend when you were playing this and you're just uploading everything you're doing. I was blown away by how good it looks. Because it's like it has that S&ES aesthetic. Yeah. It's so HD and pretty looking that I was blown away by the custom, like when you made the party mode ring, the quality of the ring. the quality of the ring is. It's insane. Dude, like that,

and that's the thing about it where I was playing it that weekend and Jen's watching me, similar to when Jared saw him, he play luminous and fucking just be so happy, Jen's watching me regress to being a sophomore in high school playing N64 for hours on in, just doing, because it's the whole thing.

I'm just playing matches and building the story in my head of what's happening. I'm just sitting there explaining the feud and why we're doing and what the pay-per-view is. And like it was literally... You're playing the Sims with wrestlers. Totally. And it was the thing of like, I, you know,

it was like, all right, it's time for bed or whatever. And I'm like, I'm not really tired. I'll just do some work in bed. And what work was is building the rings and making graphics and doing this stuff and uploading to the site. But you know what you didn't take time for, Greg Miller? What's that?

The part-timers. I know. I know. What is this crap? As you know, as I've just said here, Jared, we're on a very tight travel schedule. So, like, I had my fire pro weekend, before launch. And now it'll be the Fire Pro life when we come back. Because now we've got packs or

whatever. I just know where I fall in the pecking order in that. And I fell about a month behind. But here's the thing is like, oh, I made, if it makes you feel any better, nobody has custom movesets yet. I just made all the kind of funny seven. No, it doesn't make me feel any better. You'll be the first part timer I make then, all right? But I can't wait to do that. I can't wait to see what other people have created. I can't wait to do a party mode with everybody. I can't wait just to download all the WWE superstars that I grew up with. I'm talking about Attitude era people, right, and put them in there.

Because they have like all fucking Scotty 2 Hoddies moves. They have the worm in there. Like you watch these kids what they've made on the subreddit. It's like this is what I want. I want no mercy again. But since I can't get it, this is what it is. And that's what I want. That's beautiful.

Baller. Yeah. Greg. Yeah. I want you to tell me about one more of these games before we move on to your Superman pitch. Oh sure. Yeah. Do you have one that you feel like we,

want to get done this week, the rest done next week. I mean, the one right now that I want to say, like, I want to talk about with my big dog, Kevin Coelho, Firewall, Zero hours? No, what is it? Firewall. Zero hour. It just doesn't sound right when I say it. PSVR game.

PlayStation VR game. I don't think, and Kevin, I want you to correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say this is the current play. PlayStation VR Killer App. Whoa. I think it. I think he's right. I think it competes with Super Hot,

which had the honor beforehand. It's somebody who likes PlayStation VR and did the show. Different games, though. Just want to be clear. 100% different games. 100% different games. But just imagine me last night. And it was,

we talk about video games and entertainment and excitement, astonishment. Are they magic? Yeah. Last night was magic. It was me in, in VR with my. with my aim controller, the plastic gun, you know what I mean? Sharp shooter.

They call it an aim. This generation, it's aim. The PlayStation AIM controller or whatever. Oh, it's not the sharpshooter. No, that was last generation. With Kevin Butler and all that, yes. Anyways, though, it's me and VR in this aim thing on a team with Kevin and two other kind of funny best friends.

And we are just in a lobby that keeps cycling us into another lobby to fight four other people, right? And we did it for a while with the same opposing four. Just 4V4, Rainbow 6 Vegas, for lack of a bad, better turn just to put you in there in VR and it all works and I'm talking to Kevin and it works and I'm making video clips and editing them and uploading and it works in the same room yeah what do you mean doing the same room together talking to no I he's in his garage I'm in my house so you can see each other you're looking over I look over at Kevin and the other two

kind of funny best friends there and everything they're doing with their gun is happening they're customizing their character I'm seeing it switch out and then we jump in there and it is like cool and like yeah one point Kevin says it was laughing it's like it's just like the commercial because it is of like oh fuck they're coming out the front door all right i tossed down flash mines all right and i're playing with people who are way better than us so we're like i don't know what to do should i use a shotgun but it's like it is this thing of like oh fuck they're there and like getting up against the wall like i need a heel i'm tossing down the pack and da da da and then like all right we put prox mines up here and it's like oh i hit level four i can go customize this

and blah blah it's it's just that amazement of and what we've struggled with with vr of playing a game that feels like all right cool all right cool. This is what is going to continue to happen. This is and it's because you're going to play and it's like, oh, the graphics aren't that sharp or this, that of the other. And like for some reason, aiming down the sites with, like, it's for some reason, technology and the limitations of it, I'm sure. But like aiming down sites, I have to like move it a little bit like this. So like I'm, if that makes sense where in real life I'm aiming a bit to the right, but on the screen that I'm looking straight down. And I'm like, that feels weird. It all, and that's the thing of it feels weird when we're in the lobby when I'm like, I look down at the aim controller and I go to put my hand on the PlayStation button and I don't see my thumb. on the controller, but I'm like, it's all there and it all makes sense. How do you move in the game? Is it one of those? Oh.

Real quick. I'm not wrong about it. I'm not overhyping this. By the way, hashtag game provided by PlayStation, they sent us this. Yeah, that's true. Everybody sends all the games to us, but PlayStation makes the same for FTC rules.

I did an Instagram story where like I took a picture, like a video of the like downloading it. Yeah. And somebody hit me and was like, oh, what are you playing? I was like, firewall. I'm like, well, what do you think? And it's like, this is what I had hoped

the future of gaming was gonna be. Yeah. When they talk about VR, right, this is what you hope. So up till now, the most impressive realizations of VR I've seen have actually been third person games.

They were not games already seeing out of my eyes and looked at first person. I'd played plenty of those most and didn't impress very much. But things that went into the third person have been very impressive, especially in single player.

However, what I haven't done is played anything really cooperative like this. Yeah, me neither. So is it that, is it that, you know, obviously there was interest from Facebook and stuff on the future of being able to sit in a room

with somebody else and communicate and VR and that being a thing. Is it just that element of Kevin being there? Is that what's making the difference? Not as an enemy, but as an ally, is it having, being able to socialize and a virtual space kind of fill in the fun factor in your brain? I mean, for me, I think it's, it's all that it works. And I know that sounds weird in like a low bar, but think of it this way. And I was talking to them by it last night. It's the fact that I'm upgrading my menus. I'm changing things out. All right, I'm waiting for, I'm waiting for them to ready up. And I'm turning. And I'm, I'm, I'm, talking to Kevin.

I'm turning in this video game fake space and looking at Kevin's character to talk to Kevin. And I said it like right of like, I don't know why I keep turning to you guys as if you are like actually like right there. But it does feel that way. It feels right. Yeah, totally. I was also doing the thing. I was a little frustrated because my character like the character on my right, I know that he like turns the opposite direction.

So he wasn't looking at you guys. But I was. Every time I was talking to you guys. Yeah. I was looking at you guys. The other thing I was when I was playing it and feeling it, it was that wonder that wondrous experience

of playing something new in being like I'm in my house this feels like an experience I would go like when they talk about the void that I would go play it at the mall or I would go play it at an arcade where it's like I shouldn't be able to get this

quality I shouldn't be able to get this experience at my house but I was and it was all there and it was going the way it should you grew up in Chicago some of the time right do you ever go to Battle Tech Center back when that was like a thing no I was on the burbs I was doing like a Chan of Castle and Galaxy Zone Stuff like that. Okay, I wondered about that.

Real quick, I just wanted to go back to the motion. Yeah, oh yeah, because Tim As about controls and then ran away. Like a coward. Initially, I did the tutorial, right? Yeah. And I didn't like it. The controls felt really clunky. And it's one of those things where, like, you use the right analog stick to do the quarter turns.

Yeah, you do quarter turns. And then hold down L3 to run, right? It didn't feel right. But once you start playing, it just fits. And see, that's the thing is I had the opposite experience where Kevin had been playing for a while. I was finishing up Donut County. Platinum did. Great game.

Really fun. Funny too. When I jumped in, he was, I was like, oh, let's just go. And so it was, and granted, I played at a preview events. That's why this was on my radar and all these different things. But it was like, yep, this is natural. This is fine. And then it's even the moment of like, again, we've played games with sticks so long.

And so quarter turning, right? So I don't get, you know, I don't turn my back to the TV or whatever. But then it is that moment of even after a few, maybe hours, but maybe. more like 10 or, you know, 30 minutes or whatever. Of remembering that like, oh, right, I can exist in the space without having to quarter turn. If I just want to peek around the corner, if I just want to look over, if I just want to do this, I can move myself around too.

It's, it's amazing. It was a lot of fun. Kevin signed off to go hang out with his wife like a smart guy. And it was like that. I was like, that's cool. I'm like, I don't feel like playing more. And then I woke up this morning. I'm like, fuck, I started downloading at the desk.

I'm like, if I have a couple minutes, I'd love to get back in. And like, tonight, Kevin, I'd love to play more. I would love to. Yeah. I'm booked through packs, but you've sold me. We've got to play this together. Do you have a VR unit home? When I get back, so we will make this happen.

Okay, great. Yeah, I'd love to get a full squad of us. I mean, I'm going to keep tweeting out. If you have PlayStation VR and you have a firewall for sure, we're going to do some stuff with it there. Be ready. Of course, hashtag game provided by PlayStation. Kevin, put time codes all over this because you have to put up that bar, I think. Well, put it in front and the back. No, when we talk about it, game provided by PlayStation.

I do that to warn you, though. I am really bad at video games. This will be proven at the kind of funny inner website. attorney. Sure. Sure. For the Pear Schneider. Yeah.

With the Parish-Snyder Cup. I'm bad at video games. So I will weigh you down. Oh, don't worry. We've never played it to be good. We play it to have fun. Yeah. I famously,

every single game was the first one to die. Kevin's like, I'm not signing off until I get a kill. And he's like, fuck it. I'm signing off. Three or four matches later. Ladies gentlemen,

this episode of Kind of Funny Gamescast is brought to you by Blue Apron. You probably know this already. Oh, what? Go for it. What do you got for me? I was just going to go, Mm-mm.

Oh. Oh, okay. You look like you were like clearing your throat. Oh, no. Oh, no, no. I was like, um, num, num, numb, no. That's better. Um, num, nom, no.

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We made her, um, Ah, shit. Korean food. She put some Korean recipes in there. Thank you. That's it. Yes. I could not pronounce that.

Little sandwiches. They were delicious. So check out this week's menu and get your first three meals free at blue apron. com slash gamescast. That's blue apron.com slash games cast to get your first three meals free. Blue Apron. A better way to cook. Yeah, it is.

Oh, man. Always my favorite part of the room. Yeah. Great. Yeah, buddy. This weekend. Right. Well,

this weekend if you're watching live or Patreon. on early supporter at the $10. It's Pax. It's Pax. It's Pax. All right. Yeah. Or Pax just happened.

You guys are doing a panel. That's right. With Corey Barlog and Kat Bailey. Correct. And Sidney Goodman. Sydney Goodman. Sidney Rubens now? I don't know how that works.

Talking about Superman. That's right. Superman. Jared had this idea for this panel. What is this panel, Jared? Oh, Superman is somebody that's been treated very well in most forms of entertainment. He's had his good movies and his bad ones. But he's had some good ones.

He's had his wonderful comic stories. Yeah. But in video games... He's had plenty of bad comics stories. Yeah, he's had bad ones too. But he's gotten his good moments in most media. Yeah. Even television.

He's had good moments. Close and Clark, come on. Absolutely. But Superman not so well treated in video games. Sure. Why? That's what we're going to be talking about. So first, why haven't Superman games work so far?

Second, each member of the panel giving us the elevator pitch on their perfect Superman game. And that's where this game's cast enters the fray, Tim Getty's. as you know for a long, long, long time. I've said that I have an idea for a Superman game and I want to make it into a video one day, right? And I just never have. Because guess what? The day-to-day work around here.

I'm sorry. Exactly. And I want to do other crazy projects. And I want to do it right and stuff. But when Jared came to me with this idea for the panel, I was like, I can't not be on the panel. I'm fucking Greg Miller, Mr. Superman video game guy.

I cannot not be there. And so rather than let the panel debut the elevator pitch and all that stuff, I thought I would come here and talk about my pitch. I owe it to you kind of funny best friends because I've done it so long. So where I'd like to take you guys is just, I'd like to step back in time just a little bit. All right. Do I need to close my eyes or is that optional?

You don't need to close your eyes. We're just going to go to October 24th, 2013. Okay. So how many years ago is that Jared? That is five years ago when I wrote this document and began my idea for what it would be. And it's, and this is a script I was originally writing for IGN.com that I am now stealing and just using as our own thing. I'm sick of defending Superman.

Every time the guy comes up, a hater will roll his eyes and say, he's boring. If you can do everything, where's the challenge? I don't blame these people, but I can talk about magic and the internal conflict between Clark and Calell until I'm blue in the face, and all they'll remember is Christopher Reeve, rewinding time that Superman is a god. It's this belief that has led to so many terrible Superman games. If he can do anything, which you can't, what's the game going to be about?

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Folks say Superman can't make for an interesting game, and then he doesn't. It's a load of crap. And if no one else is willing to pen a design doc for the definitive Superman game, I will.

And the doc goes on like this for quite a while. But of course, I'm just gonna talk. We're talking here. And I want you guys to input on it. You know what I mean? One day maybe I still make

something crazy about this and do it in a different thing. Right now we're in the brainstorming tree. The tree of trust. Brainstorm tree. All right, here we go. So my Superman game, my Superman pitch,

of course, for me starts with two things. It's adaptation, and then it's piggybacking off something everybody knows. I feel that Batman, Arkham Asylum, did this incredibly well. Where it was, guess what, everybody, we're taking the cast of Batman the anime series for all intents and purposes and giving a story that loosely could be a sequel. They were very much in the beginning, could be,

and then it eventually became its own thing, but it was in the beginning. Just imagine it is. Who don't you care? You know all these characters. You know all this stuff. Go for it, right? We're going to drop you in with what you already know. Right.

that's a big part of mine. And then I think there are so many great Superman stories out there that people can use as templates. And I know so many people want to do crazy stuff. Like they talk about the DC movies of the spinoffs of like, cool, let's do Red Sun. You know what I mean? Let's give you something completely different. An amazing story that everybody loves. Let's jump off there.

Death and return of Superman. That's been done a lot, Ravala. There's a story of Superman that I talk about all the time in terms of what I recommend you read that I think doesn't get the credit it deserves. And even though, and it's got its foibles and problems as a common. comic book, but as a game would excel on so many different fucking levels. And that one, of course, is Superman Last Son. I brought it in here, of course. It's one of my favorite books. I recommend you guys read it all the time. It's Jeff Johns and Richard Donner as the writing team about it. That's really well. I mean, the art by Adam is amazing stuff. But of course, Jeff Johns, I don't

think I need to explain for most people. But rose ladder really quickly at DC, wrote so many great Green Lanter things, went over to the movie division. Now he's spinning off and doing his own thing. but has done so much awesome comic book writing. Richard Donner, of course, the director of Superman the movie, and for some of Superman too. Yeah. Hopefully why he has his own Donner cut of that and stuff like that, right? When they sat down to make this book,

it was very much that it happens in current continuity, but it kind of plays with it in two of like reintroducing General Zod and Ursa and Non and all these people from the movies where it's like, again, okay, it could be in continuity of the current Superman. story, Lois and Clark are married. It could also be its own little sequel to the movie. It could be another, it could be Richard Donner.

It is a Superman story. Exactly. And you can jump in. And for me personally, that's the best blueprint we'll follow for this. So if you haven't ever read it, go, because today we're going to move quickly. My elevator pitch will move even quicker. For me, and as I've talked about at length, and I'm sure people have seen it on Game Over Gregie Schauer or Greg's comic book club, Patreon.com slash kind of funny.

Superman is a human. Superman is American. Superman is, of course, from the planet Krypton. He is an alien in our world, all of stuff. But he identifies as one of us. He is a person like us. This book wrestles with that in such a great way, where again, he goes to the fortress.

The theme of him being Kryptonian is in there very much. But it's also the incredibly human trait of wanting to protect a child. It is the incredibly human trait of he can't have a woman, or he can't have a child with the woman he loves. These are all themes that are wrestled with in this story, right? I want to piggyback off that and I want to give you an interpretation of that

and I want to give you a place to jump off from the fans will be behind as well that's why for my Superman pitch for my Superman game for my Superman universe we are doing the same thing they did with Arkham Asylum but we're using Smallville and what we're doing is Tom Welling is

Superman Erica Durranz is Lois Michael Rosenbaum is Lex It's for me personally it's one of the best ways Rosenbaum and Tom Welling did panel not too long ago where someone in the audience and they started spitballing about doing an animated series of Smallville, right? Same idea where Tom Willink doesn't have to stay jacked all the time and be worried about being shirtless next week, nor does it matter that they've aged up. They can still

do the voices. And I want to use that as you're jumping off. Because again, in my personal opinion, in my lifetime, Smallville is the best interpretation of Superman live action. Yes, Smallville's 100 episodes. And I would say the overwhelming majority of those episodes are garbage. But the ones where they get it right. The relationship between Clark and Lois, the way they are partners, the way they love each other and rely on each other, the way Lex is in that universe, right? There's so much great shit there, and they've shown they can do it,

but they never got to do it as Superman. I don't know much about Small thing, but I do know. For the record, full stop, you don't need to. That's what I'm saying, very much in the Arkham Asylum way. You can jump into Arkham and not have watched the animated series, but you're going to be like, man, this guy's a really good Batman. He's got a really good rapport with Joker. You know what I mean?

Like, for me, the Clark and lowest dynamic is what Last Sun is about on a lot of levels and is what this game really needs to be about as well. I like, no, I mean, I just want to piggyback on that. You can jump into Smallville and just be like, oh, wait, I understand this instantly. Yeah, you don't. Contextually, it is not confusing whatsoever. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I watched the first three seasons, I want to say. Sure.

I was going to ask, there's season 11, correct, is a comic book? That's two in the weeks. If you were going to come to me, and I was doing the press tour for this, right? I'm Brian Intahar, but I'm Brian Intehar for the same. Superman game I've created. I'm going to be straight up with you. This is not a sequel to Smallville. This is alternate universe, fan fiction, whatever you want. We're not going to get everybody back. We're not going to, you know, I don't even know if Erica Durantz wants to be lowest. But in my perfect world, I'm building this thing, yes, but I'm telling you from the jump.

No, no, I'm casting them because they're great of these characters. I'm getting so excited right now because I didn't know which pitch was. You know, you've kept the secret from me too, but Sydney's largely coming to talk about Smallville. Love it. So this is going to be great. Well, see, and so that's my thing, right? I am giving you. I am giving you. I'm giving you the best Superman game of all time. That's my goal here, right? Yeah. I don't want to fuck this up. I want to prove to you while it's right. I want to deliver a story. I want this to be, I'm not going to go as lofty as to say as a naughty dog story, but I'm talking about like, I want you to feel as we do this. And I want, because that's when I read the book, there's scenes in

here that I fucking feel that we'll talk about here. No, this better be as good as a naughty dog story. I expect nothing less. Where do we open for this epic? Insane Superman story involving all sorts of aliens and villains, Tim. The answer is simple. The supermarket. We are inside of a, side of a metropolis supermarket, right? And we are doing a slow dolly shot coming down the aisle. We were at ground level. The linoleums coming past you. You're seeing all the soda cola on the shelves.

You're pushing past all these different things. At the top of the aisle, they come around. A shopping cart comes around with the wobbly wheel. And it's a pair of high heels and it's a pair of loafers. And they're walking down in their dress clothes. And you see that. And it's a conversation between a husband and wife, right? And sure enough, of course, she said, well, I don't know, small villain.

You pan up. And it's them arguing about what they're going to buy. Not arguing, but giving each other shit about it. He's very much like, well, it doesn't matter if we get it. It's, you don't need to worry about it being fat-free, but I do. We're not getting those cookies, get, you know, blah, blah. And they're having this mundane conversation. She's calling someone like, he's calling her low.

They're having this fun thing. It's our first chance seeing Tom and Erica and years do these roles or whatever, right? Not seeing them, of course. Just voices. I'm not at all saying it's their likenesses or anything like that. Similar to Arkham Asylum, right? Where it was like, Batman looks like this now. He doesn't look like animated series Batman.

All of this going on. This is one of the first of the first of, many Easter eggs, you don't need to understand him, but would go a long way with a fan, right? We're talk, talk, talking, right? And then just out of the blue, e-e! And it's this, that high-pitched noise we know from Smallville

in the beginning of the Kryptonian key that went in the ship and the way the... No, no, not that one yet. That will definitely be on the radio at some point, and they're going to turn it off. I hate that song. But it's that e-e-that only Clark can hear. And so they're there and they're

having this conversation, and he just drops to one knee, grabs his ears, and you can see it in his face, and we have the, the camera comes down with him. We're shooting up and he's like this, face going red. And it's like, small, get up. Small will get up. What's wrong? And she drops down on like, what is wrong? He's like, it's the noise. It's the, it's the, I haven't heard this. She's like, I got it. And she's like, I know, go. And that's when, again, this, we're doing, we're fucking, we have unlimited budget. Nobody fucking cares. It's our world. We're

fucking around that everybody understands, right? She's like, I know, go. And he's like, all right, thanks. starts to rise and you get do do do do do and it's like slow as he gets back up pulls his shit together turns kisses her on the cheek turns around starts walking to the back of the grocery store looking around you know what I'm then it's into the back room of the grocery store then it's fast

then we're going then it's the door flies open he rips open the chest it's Superman right it's him then jumping into the air now in full garb right we're up into the air and this is where we're undies or no undies we're doing undies yeah trunks are back bad at it's

Trucks are fucking back. Flights and tight. He's coming at the camera. The camera spins back around and you are in control of Superman now. You are shooting up into the thing. He does the Bidip into his ear and he's like, I still feel ridiculous wearing this and it's lowest.

And she's like, I know. And I understand that you can hear me wherever you are. I can't hear you though. So you're going to get used to wearing this. And it's like, all right. She's, I know you're, we've talked about this before with other games and stuff, right?

She's the guy in the chair. But she's not limited to that. She's a reporter. She's his partner. Again, that's the whole thing. right. She's talking to him, of course, what's going on? He's like, I'm shooting off. She's like, what do you see? He's like, I see this thing coming. Yeah, she's like, I'm getting an alert right now, of course, from Star Labs. There seems to be some kind of, there's some object coming in

from space right now. It's coming in hot and heavy. They see it. Is it a meteor? As an meteor, he's like, I don't know. I'm coming up on it. Even my vision right now is obscured by breaking through the atmosphere, blah, blah. As all this is happening, you're getting the flight controls. You're feeling it. You're on rails, in quotes, right? Of I'm sending you up to it. You see it. You know, you're breaking through this all happening. that's happening though all of a sudden you get flanked by dudes over here you look over their lexcore guys they've got they've understand something's breaking through too and they're like superman step aside we've got this is like what's your whole conversation here like what's your

jurisdiction they get into it they're not humans they're robots of course that you know he can just smash you up tear apart not do it this is where you're in the field for the controls how you know light and heavy attacks work how you can use your heat vision at this point yeah when these guys engage you got a quick cutscene of it's still hurtling at you guys but it's far enough away that you can be like, guys, I really don't have time for this. And you start, and it's the tutorial of like, you know, whatever it's going to be. Right, bumpers, heat vision. This is that.

But, but what? Because you have your powers. I want you to have your powers and your Superman. What is the gameplay, though? Like, give me an example. You're doing, it's, it's Arkham, but you can fly. Okay. You know, I mean, you have third person, it's a third person action game.

Action adventure game. And I am also piggybacking off of the thing that I think gets lost a lot when people talk about Superman. Superman, the animated series, right? One of the things I found really refreshing about it that never really gets touched on in the show is that for all intents and purposes Superman could be killed by Earth

weapons in animated series. He's strong. He's fucking, you know, he bolts bounced off of him and all stuff, but a tank coming to town, the apocalypse weapons, people use, all these different things. He could go down. He should show where. He's very much an early post-crisis iteration of himself. Exactly, right? He's not like, I'm, he's not Christopher

Reeve. I'm going to rewind time. I'm not going to eat fucking kryptonite. I have weak, I can struggle here, right? And so Lex's guys, of course, are using, we'll have a whole sub thread here of that this, he's been Superman for a while, Apocalypse Tech has made its way down. So they are using guns that Lex is manufactured and sold the gangs and done all the stuff that can like, not like one shot kill you, but they're wearing you down and you're dodging you. And like, you should, especially in these early

stages of the game, feel like, all right, I got this for the most part, because I want you to feel it. Anyways, you fight all these dudes, right? Things still coming. You take back off. Finally, you know, you get up on it. He's like, it's low. It's a meteor. It's coming. It's coming. for it's coming right down, you know, to smash into Centennial Park. We've got to stop it. All right. He gets up. You, you run up to it. You get up to it. You slam into it. And when you slant, you know, you come up, Superman Pose, grab it like this.

You grab into it and immediately it slams you back and you're out of control now and you're spiraling and it's got you pinned against it. You're, you know, it's this giant like, if you look at the comic, it's this giant like oval, not Oreo, but like, like, think of an Oreo with like things down. It slammed into you, this giant rock and you're spinning off it. You spin past

it too far. You're behind it. You're catching up. You're trying to grab it, but it's rock. It's breaking off as you do. We're using QuickTime events. You're doing all stuff. But it's frantic and you're not just fucking nailing it. You're not Superman just nailing it. Like, I want the amazing animated series pilot from the pilot moment where the plane's crashing and Superman for his debut flies up and grabs the wing and the wing riffs off and the plane and just goes, nice idea, Clark. And then it takes off, right? Like you're still a part of this. Eventually, though, you're back in the front. You're pushing back on it. You're Happing Square, whatever the hell, I'm going to use these commands to be, right?

Because I want it just to be cinematic. You're pressed up against it. You're breaking the fire, there's rocks. You slam into the Centennial Park. You're pushing against it as you go. Daily planet's behind you. We see it from behind. It's smashing.

It's cutting. It's tearing up right there. We smash the Superman statue that's been there. We go up. We tear it up and finally stop it right at the steps of the planet, right? We don't smash into the building. You've done it. Congratulations.

And it's that moment of just him going, and like pressed up against it. And then when he turns, like you, we finally see that, like, the rock's broken away and it's a pain of glass. And on the other side is the little boy. And so he's there like, hi, right? And then it's this,

this is where we're setting up the plot here to begin with of what last sun is, is that a boy is rocketed to earth. The government immediately gets involved, obviously brings him to a location. Superman goes in there as talking to the generals. It's probably at Star Labs, but it's, you know, the government's super involved.

Right. And I'm trying to run through this quickly now, of course, because this is a big game. Sorry, huge game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we've covered the first half hour. Yeah, exactly. It's so fun to talk about, sorry.

But it's the scene from the comic, basically, of talking to him, and the kid's not talking. He's not saying anything. And the Superman finally going over him, just like, hi, how are you, blah, blah. And the kid opens his mouth and he speaks Kryptonian, right? He's reading Kryptonis. And they have this conversation. And, you know, and the guy's like, what is he speaking, cryptonies? What did he say?

He's hungry. You know what I mean? And it's like this cut of then, then we're going back. And it's Clark and Lois talking about it. This kid's, you know, he's, you know, but, but, but. it's all the stuff from the comic here and these are cut scenes and we're moving around and stuff and I'm trying to move to obviously but like you know what does that mean Clark you know what I'm just being quiet and like what means like I have to take care of them right like this is how it is and it's him

and Lois not debating but Lois being like you're the last you know as in the comic it is like right you're the last son of Krypton and he's like yeah I was until I think in the comic it's like a year ago Supergirl showed up right right like maybe I'm not maybe this kid is da da and so the next thing big plot point in terms of, I mean, you're playing stuff, like, I don't know, you can interrupt me at any time to ask questions. And like, this is not... The one question I have, sure. Why is this video? Everything you've said so far, sounds like a movie.

Sure. Well, I mean, you're playing it. I mean, I feel like if I laid out the plot of Arkham Asylum, right, it would still be like, that could be a movie. I think that, you know, where my thoughts go, sorry, didn't interrupt you. I was going to say that, like, the... What's the gameplay? Is that what we're losing? But yeah, I just... You know me. You know me better than anybody. I'm trying. I'm such a

story horror that I'm giving you the storyline. All this sounds great, but I feel like what made the Arkham game special was that they were, and you know, if you have other good examples of this, the first real game to do Metroidvania in 3D well. I think

this game, from what we've played of Spider-Man at preview events and stuff, I think they rip me off. That has more to do with that than it does with Arkham in terms of that. So let's pull back, pause the story, don't worry about it. You have Metropolis, Metropolis is your playground. You have a giant island that it, or not island, but island like Manhattan, it's an island. But a very uncharted

style opening here at the beginning. Of course. To establish and then unleash you into your open world. Where it is that cool, here's what's happening. You have Metropolis, it's bright and sunny. There's the yellow mission. That's the story mission. There's side missions that are going on, investigations that are going on. There's the normal. We're going to do it in tears where there's the normal in the beginning. All right, cool. There's a crook. There's a robbery. There's a bank robbery. There's this side mission of Matalo coming in and doing this thing. We're bringing in Toy Man's gone rogue over here. The beginning. part of this game in this section is traditional Superman of what you'd expect. All right, cool, right?

We're in Metropolis. There's all these things to do. That's happening. The first thing I wanted to get out and I have it in the original design doc, right, is the idea, of course, that whenever, when people played, when I played, Superman Returns, right? What do you try to do when you're Superman in a Superman video game? You immediately try to break it and show that the game's dumb, right? So you shoot up into the sky straight up until you hit the ceiling, right? My thing is, and there'll be a shortcut, obviously, through the touch padder, start menu, or whatever. But when you do that and you shoot straight up and you, fog. You kick it into super gear.

No. Funny. When you kick it into super gear, right? What you do is you shoot all the way up. And again, the camera whips back around you and you're up in, you're up in the stratosphere hanging there, right? Exactly. And your cave hangs there. And you, yeah, you look down and you see it all spring up on your map. The icons, you're hearing it. You're seeing it with telescopic vision. It's like, cool. You can do that every time or you can hit it,

which will, you know, kick them the map. But it's basically this. is you being a satellite looking down, seeing the information lowest is reporting, scanners are reporting what you're hearing in terms of domestic disputes, little things that are going on, all this shit, right? And the nuclear man attacks you from behind. And the nuclear man comes up and he scratches you on the back of the neck. Oh, I'm sick.

The other way, of course, would be, all right, cool, we're on an island. For Spider-Man, it makes sense. He can't web swing over to the next borough or whatever, right? So Superman's going to shoot off to the sides. I totally want you to do that. You can totally do that. Later on, for when it makes sense, it might, what I've toyed around with is that it would change, like, time of day or whatever.

But it doesn't even really need to do that. It is you shooting off, right? But then it's you coming back. And I want something obscene. I want something obscene like 350 lines of dialogue that are to torture you if you want to actually try to test us. But it's him going off and him coming back and be like, man, I can't believe Hal needed help taking out Sinestra.

He's fought him so many times. You know what I mean? I'm glad I can help Diana take care of at Cheetah. I'm glad, you know, it's like, it's always good to catch up with Bruce. Little lines of like, yep, you shot off to the side trying to break the world. But no, there is a DC universe happening out there. you were a part of it, that all went and happened. But as you come back, that's happened.

Is your rewind feature just flying around the earth enough time? No, we're not doing that. We're never bringing that up. It ruined everything for everyone. All right. So that's like the first part of what the gameplay is in terms of open worldness. So there's all that stuff happening, right? The story, of course, is the big mission that's moving the plot along, but also then

moving the world along. Because we're going to have different phases of Metropolis for sure, right? And it gets weird because I don't, you know, I know the real realistic expectations of how much a developer can do for how much it actually. actually going to see her play. It doesn't matter. Obviously, this is all pie in the sky stuff. All that's happening. But as the plot advances, right, Superman goes back to visit the Kryptonian boy. And when he gets there, the place is cleared out. Have you read this? I forget. When he gets there, the place is cleared out, right? And it is that thing of like,

in my game, when he gets there and finds the block and he picks up the block and the kid's gone, we do the slow pan. We do that. And we spin around from him holding it to do it. And it's just, he's got the red eyes. You know what I mean? That's always like, oh, shit's about to get real, right? And so what it is, is him like, shooting off, you're in control again, and we're kind of keeping you on rails as we fly, but it's lowest being like, I see you're on the move,

what's going on? He's like, they took him. And he's like, what do you mean? He's like, they took the Captonicor and find it. And they've taken it to an army base,

right, that's like three or four awesome panels in the comic, where are the kids underground, they're watching when they just hear, foam, fom, and it's just fucking Superman knocking down the doors and the guys turn their AKs up.

They're getting him just turning the rifle barrels up. And like, you, he's basically like, you fucked me, no way. takes the kid and goes. This one, you get to play that, right? So it's now Superman attacking the U.S. installation, right? And of course, not killing anybody. Yeah, not killing anybody.

So in these moments, obviously, I imagine you're going to be moving. You've already articulated a lot, the difference between the power fantasy of being Superman, the surprise disappointment, you know, reaching for something at it breaking, not also being evocative of the storytelling, the combination of power, challenge, vulnerability, invulnerability, when you're doing something attacking an army base, is this a power fantasy? Are you vulnerable in any way during this sequence? I want you to be yes. I want there to be mortar fire. The gameplay is you're dodging, you're, you know, going from. I don't know

if there's a fail state to this. Yeah, because this isn't like the gameplay, right? This is a moment I want you to feel I'm Superman. I can't believe they fucking lied to me. Like, I wouldn't find them, right? And so I do want it to be that you're overpowered and I, but I do, it's also a thing of I don't want you killing people. So it's like

you're dodging the mortar fire and then you're I'm assuming I'm going to have it where it's like, you know, you've dodged enough, a thing pops up, you shoot in in to go to the tank, but it's like, you know going down swimming through the treads coming back up ripping off the top grabbing the guy tossing you know what I mean like it's very clear yeah Joe parachutes everywhere well not parachutes he's fucking tossing to the ground yeah I get the what about um following up on that tension I mean if I understood your initial pitch for the kind of uncharted opening this thing and then the city

opens up it's largely about Tim asks why is this a game this is about experiencing the emotional gravity being Superman right feeling like him right grab except again not working being surprised being put in the headspace of Superman how does that play out in sequences like this? How does it make you feel like Superman? How are you going to make him feel the urgency and anger to break these rules? That's why I think this isn't, this is probably a no-fail state thing.

This army is very interesting, very specific instance where it is like, maybe you've taken too much time and it's like restarted or whatever, but it's like you're dodging the thing. You're making the commands. Maybe it is even choices, right? Where it is, all right, cool, I'm going to take out the treads in this tank,

or no, I'm going to go through this watchtower and knock that out but save the guy or whatever. because what I really am trying to do is get you to smash through the doors, smash into the ground, get there. I still want the moment of turning up the guns and probably a really cool cinematic. But it is the agency of this, Lois, like trying to probably calm me down as you go like, don't. She's like, I know you're not going to do anything. But remember, like these guys are on our side. He's like, they just had orders.

Yada, yada, yada. Get down there. Get the kid. Get out. Right. And then in terms of the plot points here and what's happened in the story, right? This moves us to Clark being like, this kid's cryptone. We need to take care of him.

No one else will take care of him. It has to be us, right? And Lois being like, we've talked about, which is from, I'm just pulling all this from the book. We've talked about this before. We're not, with our lives, we're not equipped to have a child. Like, this is not what we can do. This is, we can't do this, smallville, right?

To which the story leads to that, well, the kid speaks English now and he's like, why? And they're like, oh, my, you're picking up quick. This leads to them going back basically to the government and being, all right, fine, take them. But they're doing it on a, in a giant, like a press conference. which is this awesome scene or whatever. Like finally guys like why the show and he's like because now you can't fuck me.

Everyone knows what you're doing. You know what I mean? Like this isn't something happening behind closed doors. I'm turning him over. You're explaining this. But blah. You know, while the press conference is happening in the game world and story like we've we've definitely hinted

at this before that like Lex is paying attention to all of this, right? Like Lex is seeing this is an opportunity as usual to push his, uh, the anti-alien agenda, you know, the Superman's the cause of all this is all the problems. In the comic, what happens is, Lex unleashes Bizarro, and that's what will happen here to give you a boss fight inside of Metropolis. But it also pushes forward the story here of, it's amazing in the book. Bizarro, you know, the lowest, the press is all there. Superman turns over the kid. He says goodbye to the kid and Bazaar just comes out of the ground and fucking pancakes him into the ground and through the end of the sewers or whatever. So the fight starts there.

Meanwhile, it's just. Yeah, if you don't mind me interrupt you. So I'm trying to save most of the questions for the panel, obviously. Sure. And in my elevator pitch will be much quicker. No, no, I don't worry. But what I, what I'm thinking about here is this is another problem, Superman games run into is what happens when you do fight the super menace. Yeah. You know, there's very few things that can go toe to toe with Superman. Right.

How do you capture that in this game? How do you make that work? I mean, this is a boss fight, I think, set with stages of it, right? We're starting the sewer. We're fighting there. Eventually, Bizarro gets the upper hand because he has to, well, his whole goal is that Lex has dispatched him to get the Superboy. And there's this brilliant moment in the book where when Lex, or when Bizarro knocks down Superman for a second and gets away, goes up to a random child and goes, Are you Superboy?

And picks him up and the kid's arm breaks. He breaks the kid's arm. And he goes, you're not Superboy. Superboy, no break. And throw him away. And like, Superman gets the kid and takes him to the hospital. And like,

so like there's these interstitials between the fights. So it's, we're fighting in the sewer up there. Superman saves kid. Fight there. And like this is where it is like, bizarre can knock you out. And if he knocks you out,

he's going to take, it will have the scene of him grabbing the kid flying away and like, Lois being like, no, and Superman down, right? Like, this is the fail state for this boss fight.

Again, it's like, We'll have health meters. It won't even be health meters. We, you know, red encroaching from the sides and shit like that.

But you're brawling and you're fighting and we're mixing it up between, you know, obviously he has the power and he's throwing you through buildings and you're trying to stop. And like, obviously,

when you're in these things, there's great moments for, instead of going to engage them, there's people, or something's about to fall. You've got to get over there and stop that and save that and, you know,

push the agenda and what is core to Superman of like, do no harm, right? Like, he's trying to stop this guy, but he's not going to let other people get crushed in the moment, right? So he is stopping things from falling, getting people out. Things are falling all over the place and all this shit's happening. And like, as it's happening in the stories, you go from sewers to probably, it doesn't matter. Suers to in front of the daily planet to

up in the air to back down on the ground, right? There's this awesome moment in the book, right, where bizarra picks up a school bus and throws it and Superman does, hits Bizarro, but the bus gets away and it lands on the kid. Right? And the kid's Kryptonian, so he's fine. Like, we've already seen him fly. We already know he's got the powers, right? And Superboy, no break. It lands on him. And Lois, like, somebody's got to help him. And the bus lands on him because she saw it coming. And she gets over there. And it's one of the most beautiful moments, heartbreaking moments in the book. But she gets over there and looks through the, the rebel, right? And it's the kid standing there, bus on top of him, but all, like, peeled away from him. Like it clear. And it's just him tears streaming

on his face. Because he doesn't understand what the fuck's happening. He's still just a kid. Somebody's through a bus at him. He doesn't know that the bus is going to, you know, what his powers are and stuff like that. You beat Bizarro, right? You knock him. I congratulations everybody. But then it's the moment of Lois saying like, she's with the kid and it's again pulled right from the book of just like, I know we said we can't, but I want to try. And then it's a jump to Smallville where there's a knock on the Kent's door. And so we'd have the moment in the house to knock on the door, the door opens. And it's all three of them. And it's Clark just like in the book of just like 30 years ago, you took him a boy who crashed from another planet and made him off, passed him off as one of your own,

teach us. You know what I mean? Like show us how you did that. And so then we have this interstitional in Smallville where Lex is doing more shit back and Machoplas gathering all those forces. The kins are teaching you how to do this. You pick the name Christopher as a great Christopher Reeve note. All these awesome moments, right? But all right, cool, we're doing it. We're in.

Everything's great. While that happens finally, like, the ship that brought him to Earth, like sets off a pulse or whatever, and then that opens a thing up in the sky, the galaxy on the Oscars of the universe behind the moon or whatever. And more, like, just tons of those ships come through. come tearing out of the space, right? And they come in and they land in Antarctica outside the fortress of solitude.

It's Zod. It's Ursa. It's a non. I guess actually in the beginning here, I'm sorry, it's just the three of them. And they come out. And the storyline here is that the kid is actually Zod and Urs's kid. He doesn't know this when he gets there. He's not, he's just a kid.

He doesn't understand what's happened. But he was the tether from the phantom zone to get them out of the phantom zone. Right. So with them out of the phantom zone, right? They make their move to Metropolis. They come there. They fight Superman. It's another great scene of him being,

him about to rip open his shirt and non just smashing him through a wall and his suit's tearing apart. His like, Clark Kent suit is tearing apart. It's revealing a Superman suit. And it's this thing that eventually what it is at the penultimate is like they needed to get there to get something from Superman. I forget what it is from the book. But again,

we're just playing pretty close to the script here. And what this does after they get the thing they need from Superman and get reunited with their son is give them the ability with the phantom zone projector they got from the fortress of solitude is to reopen the phantom zone tear that they came through. and bring out all the other ships.

So this is where I was talking about before. Tons and tons and tons of other ships coming out that contain Kryptonian villains, the worst of the worst here, right? And that's when they turn the phantom zone projector on Superman and project him into the phantom zone. Right. In the phantom zone,

the only person they left behind because in my world, not current continuity, Brainiac is the thing that destroyed Krypton is Brainiac. Brainiac is still trapped in there. Yeah. So you get there and it's a completely different world.

It's weird. Superman's way depowered. He's trying to live. It's brainiac kind of rules. this place and has his robots and his giant thing. So you're dodging this, trying to stay out of that. You're making references and not being sure how much time's gone. In the book, Monel

is there who people might know from Supergirl, probably there as well. So you have a counterpart there to kind of catch you up in what the fuck's happening here. And like Brainiac's rule and that they left him and Brainiac behind for different reasons. Eventually, though, you get into a boss fight where it's you Monel versus Brainiac. You're able to do it. That then does this. That gives you the

crystal to get out of the phantom zone and you come back. When you come back, and this sounds crazy because I know I've talked almost probably an hour already about this fucking first part of that is literally the first half maybe third of the game because when you come back time is past and just like it has in the book and what's happened is this odd has established himself as pretty much king of the world this is one of those things i'm still fishy about i don't like in the book in the book they have a couple throwaway scenes of them like bringing in supergirl and power girl batman and cuffs and

shit like that and i'm like i get it i don't need that i know but if i've established those other people i need a reason that they're not trying to stop it or have failed and i don't don't know if I like a dome over the city like Candor or something like that. Can you can you have a continuity where superman's the only hero on earth? I mean is that going to be problem for you? I could, but I like the idea of remember of him flying in and out. Now he could be flying out to the side instead of saying something by Diana. He could be like, man, glad I stopped that, you know, drug gang in Columbia or glad I stopped that earthquake in Columbia or whatever. Doesn't matter. That's a moot point, right? But when we get back now, what we found is I want you to have had enough

time in the open world metropolis to see, oh, it's like comic books. It's bright and it's cheery and it's beautiful, but there are gang. There's robberies. There's cooks and all the stuff. When you come... There's cooks, too. Huh? There's cooks. There's, oh, there's plenty of cooks, too. Too many cooks.

When you come back this time, though, this is where I want it to be. It's a darker, desolate place. People are living under the rule of these Kryptonian people. Lex has his own army. He's established of, you know, the robot, bad guy. Not even robots. I don't want it always to be robots.

I hate that shit. It's guys that are wearing apocalyptic or apocalypse armor. He's, you know, lifted and tweaked or whatever. And he's still trying to be. Lex is always a bad guy, right? But he's always a bad guy who has good intentions. He's like, I'm trying to protect humanity. I'm trying to save the earth here.

And but what happens is like, and this is another thing of, I don't know how many guys I've done. We have, we'll say six mini bosses, mid bosses that rule parts of the town of Metropolis now. And so at the center. So now it's crackdown. Honestly, and don't get me wrong because this sounds bad. It's more like Prototype 2. Oh.

Remember in Prototype 2, a lot of not great things about that game. one of the things I did like is that they had encampments that you'd go into and you'd fight a mini mid boss that would then give you new ability stick with me on this Zod has established himself as king the world or king metropolis whatever you want it to be right and he's organizing these forces and he leads all the kryptonian villains right similar to Zelda I assume he's taken over the daily planet as his HQ right and it's him there at any point once you're back from the phantom zone you can march your ass right into the daily planet and try to fight Zod and I want him to fucking literally kill you I want you to walk in there and him Because what I want this to be is what I always talk about with Man of Steel. And what hopefully you would have seen in the fight when they all came down, right? Of basically, no.

Yeah, you're Superman. You've been Superman for two years. You fought a whole bunch of great guys. I am a bread warrior. I am a Marine who now has superpowers. So when if you go in there and you fight him, I want it to be that you throw a punch and he like grabs it, breaks your arm in the back way, does all the stuff.

And finally it's just like, you were a fool to come here. Cal Lent stomps you in his game over. And so what I want it to be is that we've, established that fact that, sure, Superman's fought a whole bunch of Calabac and weird people and all these different things, right? Darksides, minions, all these things, but like they weren't on this level. I love the idea that you kind of have like Mike Tyson from Punchout in the center of New City and the cheat code right there. And so what I want you to do then is go out and like there's still the random crimes of Lexis people and they're harassing humans and other humans still need your help and you're doing all the stuff. But you get into these mid boss things where you go in and fight them and as you fight them, you learn a new move.

you learn some kind of new combo or whatever some sweet new move that you can then as you'll eventually figure out you're putting this all together to fight Zod that you're gonna come in a double dragon heart system building yeah exactly right right and so you do

all of that to eventually go to Zod to beat Zod and throw him back to the Phantam zone and by throwing him back and whatever he took from you that will then trigger everyone to go back which of course includes Christopher who you don't want to send back but you have to actually close the hole in the same vein as the comic Christopher knows that and you know sacrifices himself

to go I feel like I spend so much time setting up the beginning because I want it to be awesome and make sense. And then I get the ending is so by the numbers. But I'm just trying to get you to where we're going and not talk to you for 20 years. That's the hard part of doing this. No, I love what you're describing here. I love it story-wise. I like getting the summation of the Donner story.

I also think you've thought it through mechanically pretty well. Obviously, there's still some places that need polished up and thought. Oh, plenty. Oh, my God. I do think that the choice of an action-adventure game. Why are you leaning into that? Is it because you love that kind of game? Or do you think that's just what best suited the solid-old?

It serves the thing. You know, I think it serves the product. And it could be, you know, open world is always interesting and weird. It could be more of an uncharted where it is open areas. You know what I mean? You're starting somewhere and then it's funneling you. The thing for me, like going back to the like, why is this a game? Why not just a movie?

I feel like when you take these video games, especially the ones that are way more narrative focus where the story matters. And like that is the pitch for this of like in this game, the story is supposed to make you feel and stuff. I feel like the reason Uncharted succeeds is the, pretty much the moment to moment gameplay is built on a lot of the parkour and a lot of the climbing and it's fun to get from one area to the other. And that is the point. Here's a shootout, whatever. Yeah.

Shooting's fun. Not great. It's fun and you just keep going. And there's never too much of it before you get to the next cutscene. That's your reward for what you just did. With this, I just, I can't wrap my head around what makes the gameplay fun. because with Superman specifically, does he ever touch the floor?

Does he walk on the floor? Or is he constantly flying? I think if you want him to, he touches the floor. And if you're flying, how does it control? Because I've never played a game where it feels good to be moving in all the different axes while also fighting for extended periods of time. That's why I feel like the fighting in the air

is something that's happening in specific moments, like when we're coming up in fighting. Because sure, that's a pain that I ask, right? For a lot of things. Like the Dragon Ball Xenovirce fighting games, I feel like do are very good. job of the kind of three-dimensional or like yeah three-dimensional but also 360 with the not x-y the z-axis like moving around um fighting but that is very contained moments because it's a fighting game

I mean so stick with me I think that there's I you're not wrong I feel for in terms of like flight it's going to control and fly like Lego Batman too did which I thought it was an open world game and it was the best Superman game there's ever been I like I like that contrast because it is like you you it makes sense and it's natural and you get to go do it and that you you you you get to, and it was fun to, for me, it's like, that game was fun to be Superman in terms of exploration. I want to go get gold bricks and I'm flying around. Oh, there's a gold brick. There's a red one. How do they, like, stop and hover and, like, survey the situation and come down and use it if I had to and walk. Interesting. It's the same way, though, in terms, you're making great point.

But I think it's an analog to a Batman, Ark of Asylum, where it's like, cool, there's Batman brawling levels, and then there's Batman detective levels, right? And I think that is the fact of, I think, personally, I think flying's fun. And I think we could have fun with that right and it is that thing of will there'll be some care at the end of stick to keep you more like neo in the matrix like in between buildings rather than going up and just going over which you could do but i want to keep it the other way and i don't know if there's some not kryptonite fog but like something there's some other somebody somebody somebody's going to be definitely a joke about somebody far smarter than me can figure out a reason that's happening but i

think making you crisscross the city in the same way of like what we've played of spider man right at preview events like but i feel like that's why like spider man works for this type of thing Because it's more grounded, more limited. I guess Spider-Man is the best example that I was trying to bring up with Uncharted, where Uncharted, like, it's these bite-side things where the traversal is the point, it's fun, and it's almost a puzzle of figuring out the path following the cracks, as Nate of Drake, so it doesn't fucking fall off like an idiot. But with Spider-Man, swinging is fun.

Like, swinging, it gives you a reason to be in between the buildings, and there's the momentum and the physics of it and all of that. Whereas, like, when you're just flying. You think you're autopilot flying. It kind of just feels a little too, too autopilot. pilot and or else it feels a little too, too open. It reminds me of Star Fox 64 where I love the on rail stuff. Once you get to the all range mode, it always just feels a little bit too.

But there is a way to take that in between too, I think that could be well executed. We keep thinking in terms of, of DM or trying to deter someone from going high, for example. What if instead of trying to deter someone for going high, we try to incentivize them to stay low? You know, if all the collectibles, if all the power ups, if everything is between the buildings. There are reasons to go down between the buildings. Go up to spot like Superman does. Then go down to grab.

And while you're down there, interesting things are happening that make you want to stay down there. Maybe it's not about making you want to get high because I do think air combat. One of the things that bothers me about death and return to Superman and the way that he fights Doomsday. You're talking about the genesis game? No, actually, I'm talking about the comic. Oh, okay. I apologize. Is that I've got a lot of problems with that story.

And one of the ones that always drove me nuts was that he spends half the time, ground pounding with Doomsday. Yeah. Makes no sense. Superman is at home in the air. You know, you can fly. You belong in the sky. Lois said it.

She's right. I mean, he is a first and foremost a flying character. The air combat would have to be perfecting to this. I do think he could nail that. There's not a lot of reason to go to the ground outside of drama

in a Superman story. But see, that's what gets so exciting for me is the moments where you get to turn it on its head where I've thought about it or the developer has thought about it, right?

So it's like you're fighting bizarra, right? and you want to take off and you go to take off and you have that, we have awesome animations, right? If him grabbing you're in, Hulk smashing you to the ground, right? Of not doing that. Or even if you're, when you're fighting Metalla, right, of whatever he's doing, if he has, like, basically an EMP of Krypton that he can set off

that drops you before you can get out. And there's a way to... There are contextual ways to make that work. And you can knock him down and stun him and then you can go up and then you can come down for smashes and shit. Like, it's just that I totally get it. And these are real problems. My game has real problems.

I like it. What I'm bringing up is the... Original question here of like, why isn't there a good Superman game? Yeah. I think it's these reasons, right? Yeah. Because it's like, I feel like a lot of people have a problem with Superman as a character. And you're addressing that with the story.

Yeah, yeah. But does this make a good video game? Sure. I feel like that is, that is the thing that I would be shocked if we ever see a good Superman game happen. The way you'll see a good Superman game happen is the same way you'll see, hopefully, a good Spider-Man game happen. And the same reason you saw a good Batman games happen, right?

Is, hey, we're not going to make you do a license, cash-in, weird thing. Take your time. Make this work. And like that would be the thing. Like, right? When you talk to people who are making superhero games or just games in general, right? There is that we know we had to get something right. And what it is, you have to make flying fun.

You have to make it fun. And it's that thing of like, you raise great points. And it's been fucked up and it'll be fucked up again. And like, I hope we wouldn't be the people to fuck it up. But it would have to be that. All right, cool. Like stories and cut scenes and all that shit's happening. Let's really fucking focus on flying and what makes flying fun.

And how do we keep you there? Are there kryptonian sunstones on the ground? and that's why you're doing it? Is it that Bibbo's running around doing this? Are you collecting the other planets? Yeah. I think that what you're describing here is probably a five to six year AAA project.

Sure. I think that's realistic. I do think it's doable, especially the budget behind it. I'm going to ask you a long question. Sure. Short answer to a long question. Yeah, well, we'll see how the answer is.

So when I think of Superman, I think, faster than the speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings and a single bound. Look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's a plane, yes, Superman, straight, rich visitor from another planet. It came to earth with powers and abilities

Far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can med seal with his bare hands, change the course of mighty rivers, and who disguised as Clark Kent, mild manned reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, in the American way. Does your game encapsulate that?

I like to imagine. You know what I mean? It's obviously a work in progress and stuff. I think the albatross, right? Or not, that's not that right word. The mountain I have to overcome is getting people to the same page I am. where Clark is Superman.

You know what I mean? Like it's not, I hate that Kill Bill, uh, volume two story, right? Where he's like, Clark Kent is the mask and Superman's the person.

And I'm like, oof, no, like, that's not my Clark. My Clark is Clark. And he puts on the ass and does all these things. But he goes,

when he thinks of himself, he thinks of himself as, I'm Lois's husband. I ride at the daily planet. I do, I do the good things I could. But everybody's Superman. Everybody should do the right thing,

right? And so it's the, I think you get the powers right, even with the problems we're talking about, right? I think that it is, of course, he's not going to be as fast as some people want him to be. He's not going to be as strong as some people want him to be. I think it comes down to giving you specific missions that don't cut off your powers. Don't like not let you access your heat vision or your breath, but give you a reason you can't, right? That's what it comes down to in making it.

We've already established how fast he can be, right? Yeah. And we understand that he wants to keep a secret identity. So I do see that, you know, that he's at the bank trying to get something done or wherever he's at and a hostage situation pops off and he's Clark. And it is that thing. Fuck, I'm surrounded by people. Heat vision, yes, super breath.

Maybe. No, yeah. I mean, like super. Yeah. I hate it when they use super breath like that. Like heat vision could work. But then it's like giving him these creative ways. Or it's the other way of like, yeah, you know, we could use super breath, but we're in this

enclosed area and I don't want not this mission. But that's classic Superman storytelling. Right. I mean, that happens in a third of the comics he's in. He finds himself in a situation where he can't use that as powers. You know, the ying to the yang, right, is the fact that when you're doing the open world stuff and you are engaging street gangs or you are doing this, that is totally how you want to do it. You know what I mean?

But I do want it to be that in these specific missions we're giving you a reason you can't use that and it makes sense to you. And you're not feeling like I'm taking it away from you. I'm making you think outside of the box on why you have to do that way. Now, you've already talked about articles of agency, ways that you can choose to hit different areas before going to Zod, things like that, incentives for doing. that. Is there any final agency in your story? Is this the last of us where you make a choice? I'm sorry, yes, it is the last of us. We're telling you a story. I feel like when games in a video,

when video game stories succeed for the most part, it's that they're telling you the story. You are you are along for the ride and you are doing things, but it's not going to be some weird choice at the end. Because again, I think there's only one choice to make. You know what I mean? Like it's not Superman's going to. Is he good or is he good? Yeah, you know what I mean? I think that there's a really interesting game in letting Telltale do that. I would love to pitch a different game that is a Superman Telltale game, where it is just choice-based. And it is. Did you hit the right button?

But what crook do you want to go to? You know what I mean? Two bullets are coming out and you can only get to one because we have established how fast you are. But in this situation with the game I'm pitching now. Two missiles, perhaps, one head for Hackensack, the other for the San Andreas fault. But you can only stop one. I know. My mother lives in Hackensack.

Exactly. I could go on and on. Oh, yeah. That was not making fun of the time. No, no, I know. That was from Superman. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

No, no, no. I was right there. If you want more of that, it'll be at the panel at Paxe this weekend. Is it being recorded? It is being streamed on Twitch. Dot TV. They have not said anything about recording that. Well, they'll be able to find the Twitch Archive.

Yeah, well, do. No, definitely put it up. Do what we do. Where you can, I want Kevin to take our panel. I'll work on him doing yours, too. We use OBS and put it up. Okay. I didn't know what I didn't quite know what the parameters were now packs doesn't care they want you to promote packs

All right great now it's time for everyone's favorite oh forgot game with the podcast that's right it's time for It's no game it's no I feel like it's been a duck stage since I played mobile game or bullshit in a while since you've been gone I have won Greg yeah I'm no longer a complete loser that's right for the most part you beat Andre Seeger's I did Tim getting to the ground a game of mobile game bullshit. And you want it pretty convincingly. Yeah. Wasn't even close. Yeah.

I wouldn't even close. But what you have yet to do is defeat Greg Miller, who might or might not be the champ at this point. I don't even know anymore. You know, we have too many championships. Yeah, it's a little, it's a little confusing. It's a little confusing. Maybe it's the international but not the intercontinental.

I don't know anymore, man. Intercontinental champion. Man. That's how Edge used to say. What's that? Don't worry about it. What's this week's theme? Ladies and gentlemen, today's theme is Mobile Game or Petbridge farm cookie? That's right.

Mobile game or Pepperidge Farm cookie? Can you identify the difference between them? Ladies and gentlemen, we have five mobile games. Some of the descriptions are real. Some of the descriptions are fake. You really won't know until the end. Greg Miller, you're going to go first because you are technically taking on last week's champion. Are we doing the same thing where one's both?

Huh? Are we doing this time? Not this time. This one is a cookie. This time? No, I decided to do. I do have a tiebreaker if it comes down to that. But did decide to lean off on that.

So, Greg Miller. First one, mobile game or Pepperidge Farm cookie? Township. A super positive game. What crops will you grow? That's a game. That's a mobile game. So that's a mobile game. Tim Gettys.

Township. A super positive game. What crops will you grow? Cookie. Cookie. Yeah. Tim Gettys. San Juan.

The exciting card game based on the award-winning strategy game, Puerto Rico, now available for your Android device. San Juan. I'm realizing now. How much I don't know Pepper's Farm of cookies that aren't Sausalito. I was going to say, aren't they just Milano? San Juan. San Juan.

Cookie. Cookie. Greg Miller. I'm saying cookie as well. Cookie as well. By the way, I want to let you guys know that I tried these out on Joey Noel before the show. She went five for five. Fuck.

Yeah. She totally no mom. Never let her play this game. Number three, Greg Miller. Yeah. Chessmen. The knights have stepped off the board. That's a game.

That's a game. Tim Gettys, chess man. That is a cookie. That is in fact a cookie. I know it's a cookie. You know it's a cookie. You cheat. That's inside information and I will not give you that point.

Chesman cookies with the little pictures of the chest people on it. They're good cookies. Number four. Do you like change your vote, Greg? Tim Gettys. Sanabel. Sanabel. Cookie.

The lovely Sanabel. Maiden of the border town. Cookie. I'm going all in, baby. I say cookies, well. Cookie. Number five, Greg Miller. Yeah.

Tokido. Each player is a traveler crossing the East Sea Road, one of the most magnificent roads of Japan. Hokkaido. Hokkaido? Or tokydo? Tohido, pardon me.

Hokkaido is an island. I'm sticking with a game. Sticking with a game. This is the one that's making me think it might be a game, but ladies and gentlemen, I'm going for it. Five for five, cab. Cookie.

He wouldn't do that two weeks in a row. Cookie! Ladies and gentlemen, going down the list. Township, a super positive game. What crops will you grow? That's totally a mobile game. Yeah. San Juan, the exciting card game based on the award-winning strategy game.

Puerto Rico, now available for your Android device. Totally a mobile game. No! Yes, indeed, and really based on Puerto Rico, an excellent board game if you never had a chance to play it. We still differ here. This is our most divisive one. Santa Cruz, on the other hand, totally a cookie. Yeah.

Yeah. Number three, Chessman. Tim Getty's correct. Cookie with Chessman. That cookie. The Knights of Steffield off the board and into Tim's stomach. Oh, yeah. Number four, Sanibel.

The lovely Sanibel maiden of the border town, totally a cookie. We both got that. It comes down to number five. Number five. Tokido, each player is a traveler crossing the East Sea Road, one of the most magnificent roads in Japan. Tokido, ladies and gentlemen, mobile game. Yeah.

Fuck you, Tim. Hit this song, Kevin! I win three to two. Yeah, he did. You did. It was a good, hard-fought battle, though, Greg. I appreciate it.

I want some chestnut cookies right now. Oh, man, that sounds good. I also challenge the audience out there to make an animation or, like, intro video that goes along with the, with the song to that. Because I feel like there's some talent. It's a lot of fun.

I want to thank somebody, while you guys were gone, sent in Star Trek, mobile gamer Star Trek episode, and we had a lot of fun with that a couple of things. I want to think, I don't remember whose idea it was, but thanks,

Fantastic. That was a good one. It got us with those cookies. This one, Angie's idea. Yeah. Yeah. Good job. I was like,

what should we do? And she was like, Muggle Game or Pepper's Farm cookie. She didn't wait to spell like a beat. Gotta love it. Gotta love it. Yeah. Well, ladies and gentlemen,

if you are in the Seattle area this weekend, Greg and Jared will see you at Pax. If you're not, we'll see you here on Twitch. com slash Kind of Funny. Games. Games. Yeah.

Kind of funny games. You said Twitch. com slash Kind of Funny games. You're right. YouTube. com slash Kind of Funny game. I love you. Hey, hope you liked that episode.

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