Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Mario Rabbids and Life Is Strange Review w/Steve Gaynor - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 134

Episode Date: September 4, 2017

Steve Gaynor joins us to discuss Tacoma, Mario (Released first to Patreon Supporters on 09.01.17) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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they're sent to you for just a few bucks a month. The offer's exclusively available at dollar shave club.com Gamescast. That's dollar shaveclub.com slash gamescast. Dollar Shave Club's high quality products will have you covered from face cheeks to butt cheeks. There's no better time to try out the club. What's up guys? Welcome to the first ever. Episode 134 of the kind of funny games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes. joined by one of the coolest dudes of video games. Greg Miller.

134. All's missing is two. Damn. Because it would be one, two, three, four. Right. But it kind of sounds like. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's awesome. This is you too. Like, it's a nice thing. It sounds like one of those nice adages somebody would have. Oh, I think you're going up that, that one, one, three, like the love and pager code, but that was one four three. No, I was thinking more in the vein of seven eight. Steve Gator, hey, Steve Gator. How are you doing? Yeah, you guys are having me out. Yeah, you just launched a game. No big deal. You got to talk into that. Kevin's going to yell you. You got to.

I'll rotate with it or Kevin will yell you. Kevin's just like, I won't. I don't care how it sounds. You don't know how he treats it. Yeah, Tacoma just came out just a little less than a month ago. And I actually finally have time to like come down and visit you guys. Thank you. Thank you.

Doing them big things. Yeah. So yeah, it's out now. People have been playing it. Yeah. People been liking it. Yeah. It's good.

Good reception overall. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Greg liked it. I did? Yeah. Have you not watched my review?

Do you not know my feelings on Tacoma? Of course. You better have, yeah. Well, you were like texting me about playing it. Well, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know this boy likes it. Yeah, I liked it.

Yeah, like, because the bad part would have been if you were like, hey, started playing Tacoma. And I just never got another text from you. Just a heads up. I've been playing it. I'll talk to you later. Talk to you later. It's a game.

It exists. Sorry, no, I got busy. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. Anyway, what are you been up to? Nothing. Playing other games, yeah, hanging out, yeah. But we want to talk about your stuff.

Cool. We're talking about that. What is the topic of the show? you're saving all the show. Absolutely. This is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week. We get together, talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. You can watch it early by going to Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games, where you can watch

it live or you can just get it early on YouTube and that's a fun thing to do. Or you can just wait until Monday and watch it for free on YouTube. com slash Kind of Funny Games. Or you can do a whole bunch of other things on Patreon. It's a great place. Like Tom Bach, Patreon, producer, The Man, the Myth, the Legend. Good dude, that guy. Great guy.

Thanks, Andy. Andy likes Tom Bach, everybody. Yeah, that's true. What were you about to say, Greg? About what? I don't know. You're about to say something I cut you off? Oh, where's Todd?

I was going to be talking to Steve. I have a lot to say about Tacoma. We're going to have a lot of questions about Tacoma. Yeah, but we're going to see her to games cast. Yeah. Everybody loves you, Steve Gainer. All the kind of funny best friends love you. You're a requested guest.

They enjoy you. Well, I mean, it's all, it's the love is mutual. I'm very happy. Good, good, good, good. What you've been playing, Greg? What haven't I been playing, Tim? That's a good question. You know as well as I

That there's a fourth mic here Now I can go I'm at a fork in the road I can choose one path and get one guest I can choose another path and get another guest Where do you want me to start? I want to derail you entirely I'm gonna talk about what I played because you've also been playing it And roasted Mario plus Robbins

Mario plus Rabbids Yeah kingdom battle Oh you think that would throw me for a loop Nice try Kevin God damn it Get your ass in this seat No one's been playing

more Mario than Rabbids than this guy right here. He's been playing so much Mario Plus Rabbit. He looks like a rabid. What? The offense. It is... Cool, Greg. Is this mic up? Bring this mic up. Talk. No talk.

All right, yeah, now I'm talking and using words. I'm actually... How far are you right now, Mario Plus Rabbit? Not super far, but I'm playing a lot of it. I'm at World 2-7, I think. Okay. Okay. Where are you? I don't remember what world is, but I'm towards the end of the game.

Oh, okay. I thought you'd play more than... I mean, I'm playing a lot of it. I see you play it all the time. You get name bar's wrong when you're playing all the time. I'm doing a little bit... No, no. The name bar thing, come on. I'm adding this up.

You've been playing it a lot. You're not very far. You're terrible at the game. No, he's pretty far. He is pretty far. I guess I'm pretty far. I don't know. Who can gauge how, like, how many worlds there are?

There's no, you know? There's no... Where I come from, there's one world. Do you have any interest in playing it? I do have interest in it. If you have interest in it, I highly recommend you play it. This game surprised the hell out of me.

I think it kind of did everybody, right? Like, it's such a weird concept, but I've only heard really good things about it. It's supposed to be really cool. I was like, you know, you guys have heard my opinions on it. But the flight to Vegas is when I was like, I'm going to sit down and actually like play this. Sure. Got addicted to it. Couldn't stop playing.

It was in the hotel room played for about five hours. I'm so on this. And the whole flight back. It is a great game. It is not perfect. And I feel like the more I play it, the later levels aren't as good. I feel like the... What does that mean?

The fun of the challenge hits a peak and then you just kind of plateau out and it just becomes more about... There's just more. You're just doing it again and again where I'm going through the motions of, oh, I know exactly what to do here.

So it's not even a challenge anymore. Whereas the earlier levels, I feel like they did a really good job of ramping up teaching you the gameplay mechanics and in the beginning it's very, very, very simple and about halfway through World One it's like, oh, there's a lot of shit going on. A lot of different types of character abilities

and upgrades. and the different weapons and the effects they have, whether it's the push or the sticky goose shit or whatever. It's cool. It's a official name, Steve. I know you haven't played. They went in different direction. Mario's sticky goo shit going on.

Already they were like, you know what, rabids, it's cool if you have Mario and the princess and everything. They're also like, we're just going to call one of Mario's power is sticky goose shit. It's canon. It is. It has changed. But immediately I was impressed with this game when I turned it on with the opening cinematic. It took it in such a different direction.

that I thought this game was going to go. And I was like, all right, cool. Like, there's some, some cool production value being put into this. And the game is fun. Well, what was like, what was so surprising about the intro? Oh, oh, I see. It's unexpected. And that's why you know.

You're trying to let me have that beautiful. I want you to have that. All right. My only issue with that part was that I have no interest in the story at all. And it sucks because it's just constantly like, here's more story. And it's like, I don't care. I'm still this room. I'm still going around.

It's like, dude, you were the worst part of this game. I don't want to walk around the worlds with you. Can I just fight things? So the thing with the world map section, which does take up a fair amount of the game, was my, that was my biggest issue with it with all the demos that I've played. It does get better playing through it. I feel like the puzzles in that section become interesting. However, the controls suck for that stuff.

When you're controlling the Roomba, the inability to always move the camera. Why do you guys keep saying something about a Roomba? Like, I mean, you know so little about this game. You're a Roomba? The character you control is this Rumba thing. In the overworld, you have this little circle robot that you drive and then all the guys like conga line behind. His name is Bipo. Bibo is his name.

Bipo. Justine Bipo. But it's kind of like Final Fantasy 8 where you control one of the characters. And then there's... Beaver reference is going to be a second. It took me a second. It took a long time. It's not there.

It's not. I move around. See what happens. You're going to do that. You're going to move the thing. I'm going to do it. There's some fun. There I am.

There's some fun little... There's some fun little... I got little rabbiage. When you're exploring the worlds you can do, but it is hard where, especially like the, the ones that are in like the blue bonus things. Yeah.

Because you go and you have to, you're timed on some of them. And if you're not standing in the right place, you can't move the square the right way. That's the problem. It gets really frustrating. The way that the controls move because it's kind of isometric

and the way that the camera is never exactly where you want it to be, when you're pushing boxes with the rumba, it can get confusing because even though you're holding forward, it should just push the box forward. Your Rumba kind of like pushes against the edge and then you end up going off the box. And it's frustrating and it feels like clumsy design.

So I don't really like that. The game world is beautiful. Yeah. I love that. I love the look of all the different worlds and all the different kind of. What's the word you always? Oh, here comes Andy.

It's a season game development term called a biome. A biome. Yeah, there's a lot of different file. Steve knows what I'm talking about. Steve knows. Game developers, and these guys, yeah,

biomes, yeah, the biomes are cool. But I do not like the, the character models themselves. Really? They're a step back from...

Well, I don't know if I'm ever going to get used to this. Like, there's a rabbit peach. Come on, there's a whole thing going on. That's what the internet says. Two Cs. Fair point. But no,

I feel like the... They're really dumbed down compared to what we saw in, like even Mario 3D world. Where those characters were very detailed and looked awesome, whereas this kind of, it looks like a generation behind whenever I'm seeing them in the cut season stuff,

so I don't really, I don't fuck with that. Another little issue I have with the game is, I feel like, you know, whenever you find a crate or something opens up and you get a prize, I had no point I've been like,

oh, fuck yeah. Yeah? I agree. I agree. What are you get? I mean, there are different things. Like,

there's a whole bunch of shit for like the museum where there's just like, oh, you can see. Now go to your gals. Valerie and watches. I'm like, I don't fucking hear.

I don't care. So I did this. I'm here to beat piranha plants to death. You want to see a picture of an invincible star? It's 3D. Spin it. But the gameplay is, it's fantastic. And I think that this game is going to teach a lot of people

about a genre of game that they've never experienced before. And that is awesome. I feel like that's something that Nintendo's really good at is taking something that is a tried and trude game genre and introducing Nintendo qualities. And I feel like the fact that, this is a Ubisoft game is very impressive. It is unlike any Ubisoft game I've ever played.

And they, I think they really were up to the challenge of being like, this is a Nintendo game. People are going to look at this as a first-party Nintendo game, even though it's not. And it feels like one. And that is the utmost compliment. Yeah. I think the thing that it reminds me the most of conceptually is like back

in the Super Nintendo era when there was like Super Mario RPG. They were like, hey, you know, Final Fantasy team make a Mario game and it was totally different mechanics than you know, you'd ever seen with Mario before, but it had that sort of same thing if he could bring that core experience to an audience that maybe has only played Mario as a platform game. Yeah, exactly. It seems really cool. Because I love tactics games like this. Like turn-based

games like X-com and stuff, it's cool to have another one of those. Because there's so few of them, really, I think, that they get the full kind of like treatment. Well, what's fascinating, of course, is that the X-com expansion slash standalone thing came out the exact same day. Yeah. So my question, I know you're a big baby, you never will. But you, as you're getting your feet wet here, do you see yourself beating that and then wanting to go play the X-com one? Fight some aliens, be a Marine? I'm not sure. I'd definitely be down to try it, but I don't know what I'm liking so much, whether it's

the gameplay, because there's definitely frustrating moments. Sure. So I don't know that'll transfer over, or I just, I've gotten hooked on it, I'm going to keep going. What is the X-com? What is that on? Right now, just PC, I believe, right? Or did they put it?

Andy, I'm looking at you. Yeah, it's not, I don't think they made it to console yet, but it'll be there eventually. The X-Coms, I'll make it over. The main X-Com is coming out on console, hasn't it? Or has not even the main game yet? X-Comps. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This new one. No, but I'm with you in the gameplay of this one. What I found interesting about playing Mario plus Rapids on the plane ride to Vegas to him was the fact that I'd play and when I'd get, I'm still stuck at the mid-boss, the Piranha plane one, the first time it really gets challenging. And it was that thing of like when I got, I haven't played it since the plane rides back or whatever.

But I'd go, I'd get hit, and then I was like, all right, cool. And it was like, for some reason, I wasn't motivated to jump right back in. I was kind of annoyed that I had lost that. So I put it down and then I'd come back and I lost again. I put it down. And it's just that whereas like with, you know, we're going to talk about everybody's golf or whatever. Like when I fuck up a course, I'm like, oh, fuck, I want to play it again.

I want to get right back in there and try to learn from my mistakes. Whereas this for some reason, I don't know what it is. It could just be me. It could just be how I was feeling when I was playing it on the plane. I wasn't stoked to jump right back in and play the same thing again. I really, really enjoy this game. In the last couple years, Nintendo's had maybe a little too much Fire Emblem. But I'm very excited for next year when there's a proper entry on the Switch.

Like, I'm definitely going to... That is going to be time for me to go back to that. But I think if you like this, you're going to love Fire Emblem. It's exciting. The thing that I like most about it is, in comparison to this, is it's always clear where you're going. Like, the grid system is a lot more just one-to-one. Whereas with this, there's a lot of times where I'm like, I'm not clear if I'm in the line of sight of an enemy. and the biggest problem is I know that it has like the percentages

and it'll tell you like 50% 100%. That icon isn't always visible. Visible. Yeah. And that seems like a big issue. You try to move the camera around and it's like, no, it won't move. And it's like, well, all right, cool. I guess I'm just going to take the 100. Yeah. I'm 1,000% wrong. It is on PlayStation 4 and Xbox 1. All right. That was sticking in my crawl. I had to check it out.

Corey to Kataku at least. Nice work. Nice getting out of your crawl. I might have it then. You don't have it. No? Excom more of the shows and you didn't get that. I mean, just came out Tuesday. Oh, never mind then. No, nope. I was wrong.

All right, well, thank you, Kevin. No problem. You are dismissed. Fairly well. I said fairly well. Now what else have you been playing, Greg? Where do you only start? It's up to you.

Jen! Oh, my God. I need you to come here, babe. We're bringing in the left-handed pitcher. The left-handed picture. They call the lefty. No, it's fine. Hey, how you doing?

Oh, hey, I'm great. Good. This morning, this morning, this morning, Jean-Vie of St. Tongue. I played Life is Strange before the storm. This morning. Episode one. I don't know, you know, a lot of people want to talk shit about Greg Miller and his dedication to the games cast. Yeah. Because I came home last night, had my Life is Strange code. And I said, I should play this for the games cast. Instead, I'm going to play five hours of everybody's golf. And I did. However,

then I set an alarm at 12.05 in the morning to wake up at 6.30 in the morning to go play Life is Strange before the storm. So I could talk about it on the show. Thank you. And she was with you. Of course. Yeah. So I watched him play through his first run, which was great. Yeah. I was so annoyed because he, one, he gives me motion sickness when he plays video games

because he's always fucking spinning around. I'm not there, I'm not there doing the E3 presentation. I'm there to find the hidden things. I want the trophies. I want to talk to every person. I want to get around it. I make demos for a living. I'm like, no.

I'm trying to enjoy. this game. Well, Greg is a gamer. Maybe if I hit this fucking law five times in a row, I'm going to get a trophy. Yeah. Because you know, Steve, troves are important. A lot of people, I don't know if that don't understand. It's important that trophies are in games and

sometimes games have a plight and trips. You'll never hear the end of this. One day you'll set it right. One day you'll set it right. No, so top level, Life Strange Before the Storm, Episode 1. Joey and I had gone to a preview event for a few weeks ago.

played it. My initial impressions leaving was, is more Life is Strange. Okay, cool. It's one of those games when we started playing. It was like, oh, fuck, I missed this. I forgot that I missed this. It's been gone. I haven't thought about it. But then it was also the fact of jumping into that demo, we immediately meet Chloe, who's got a different voice actress. And it was like, okay, she's close to Ashley, this is pretty good. And then when we met Joyce and David, who are her mother and stepfather, who we know so well from the last game. Did you play?

Did you play Life is Strange? Yeah. Okay. And you did. Obviously. You worked at square at the time. I'm sure they made you. Unrelated though. Yeah, of course, I know. Just put it out there. Full disclosure. I feel like Jen was giving me a look like you didn't actually believe that I played it. I played that entire first. I'm sure you did. I did. I'm not lying. Which I am I blinking around. All right. But it was that like Joyce and David in the demo were like very, ooh, like that's not. I know David's supposed to be, you know what I mean? It wasn't who it was supposed to sound like because he is so distinct.

Oh, they had different voice actors for all of those characters? I assume it's the same story as Ashley because of the strike. Everybody had the strike in against square. Because David is the kind of like ex-military. Yep. And then yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I think and it's a, I like those characters a lot.

Joyce, I believe is Sissy, the woman from Firewatch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyways, though, my hope was that when I played the real game, that would fade away. It did. I jumped in there and immediately like you get into it and everybody's going and it's fine. It's great. So then as I'm playing through it, I'm playing through the sections of the demo we had

already played. So that's always disappointing, right? When you have to play a part. something you've already seen, you already know how this part's going to go. But as I'm playing, I'm playing, I'm playing. I was like, all right, this is good. This is cool. It's more life is strange.

Like the big twist of the episode or the big cliffhanger part, not even cliffhanger. The middle section that spurs our characters on their way, Rachel Amber and Chloe, I telegraphed what was about to happen. And then it was like, it was that thing where it's like, oh, I can't interact with this because that's going to be very important in a second. Then it was. And then it was like, I immediately put together what's happening, whereas, like, Chloe hadn't. So it was like that weird thing of like, let me get to the dialogue. that explains whatever, blah, wow. And I was all right, this is still fun,

this is still good, it's life strange. And then there's this right turn moment where it was just, and I turned left, but right turn moment. I was talking to you guys. I was thinking I wasn't going to say it. Thank you, thank you. Audio listeners have no idea what's happening.

Where it was like, oh my God, like what a powerful scene. And Jen started crying. And I was like, holy shit. And then it goes on. And I was like, this is another example and we're blessed to be able to say this so many times this year.

This had no business being this good. It was, it exceeded my expectation. Now granted, I think my expectations were lowered in the fact that, ooh, we're coming back to life is strange. We're telling Chloe's story. And I know a lot of people didn't like Chloe, but I did. But I don't know if I like her enough. There's no superpowers and there's these different things. What?

Was not a fan of Chloe. Because in the first season. Yeah. But then this one episode just gives you such a different perspective on her journey. And it's like, all right. You really felt like you changed your feeling on her from this episode? She's a bitch in the entire first. series and you're like, why are you like this?

What is your problem? Your dad died. That's really sad. Sorry, spoilers for the first game. Oh, come on now. Come on now, kids. We can't hold your hands if you didn't play the original life. Andy, come on.

What do you want me to do here? But yeah, so in this one, it's like, all right. Yeah, no, I get it. I get why you're acting this way. And that was the funny thing of a tight rope line of walking it is playing through it. And there was a point where I chose to be mean to mom. And I turned to Jen. I'm like, I'm role playing.

Because it's like I love these characters. And also we know how their story ends. And we know who these people really are, at least in times of crisis. So to come back now and have to be like, I'm 16 and I hate everything. You know what I mean? Like I need to be a dick I feel like in this moment. Does they throw like a weird little southern accent on there? Arcadia Bay in Arkansas, turns out.

We didn't know that. We all thought it was up north. No. Just like new information. This game is a three episode? Correct. Plus then the fourth farewell thing. They got all the hoop, hullabaloo about the church.

trophies. But this is just episode one you're talking about. We're talking about episode one. Wait, you were upset about trophies? I was, believe it or not. Someone else. Who would think? It's funny, because here's what happened.

Another talented developer, deck nine, almost fucked up a platinum trophy. But they listened to the sage-like wisdom of Greg Miller. And that didn't happen anymore. We got around it. It was all fine. What's Kevin's a big box? What's happening? No, I don't know.

That's just box. Oh. For me? Did I do that? No. Should I open it? Yeah. You want me to open it?

Yeah, you open, you tell me if it's good. But no, yeah, there was this whole thing with trophies, and they fixed it, though, because they listened to their audience. It was really spectacular. You know what I mean? They sound like great game. It's great to see developers, like, listen to the audience. Really, yeah.

Jen, you played it again, though. I went to work, you kept playing it. You played it again on your own. What did you find this time? I was really interested in one figuring out, because you mentioned the graffiti, right? And I kind of wanted, I wanted to be cool Greg for a day. So I'm like, I'm going to chase. Cool, Greg.

There's graffiti in this game. And like that's the first game, you know, tagging. Like, yeah. Yeah. Like tagging? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Oh. No. Is it bombing cool? Greg? Oh, they call it bombing? No. In the first game, you took photos as collectibles, right? You did that.

But here and this one, you walk around and tag things and stuff. But I didn't find any of those original way around. You went to an edge thing for a team to do. Whoa. No. No. Okay. What?

Sorry. You can't. You can't be excited. Only, only, only kept can be excited. Oh, okay. So what, how does the graffiti work in this? one. It's essentially the same system as the photographs, except it's on surfaces that are more often than not hidden from plain sight. How does it compare to Mark Echo's getting up on the PlayStation 3? I was literally just thinking about Mark Echo's content's under pressure. Yes. Yes. I love it. And I was wanting the same thing. Wonderful game. It was.

Okay. So for full full disclosure, I was a certification tester on that for PlayStation 2. So I spent a lot of time in that game in a different way. then you did. Do you get to choose what you tag on each surface? You are given an option, actually. It's pretty sick. Pretty sick. Pretty sick. Pretty sick.

Can you just do this hell of thing all the time? They also explain the provenance. Wow. Are you like French? Canadian. Of the word, the use of the word Hela. Because in the first game, everybody's like, you're not killed from California.

Where do you keep selling Hela? And they said, you know what? We'll retcon it in. We'll tell you why she says, and we'll make... Metaclorious. No, they went back and, yeah, they did that. And that's the thing of, like,

what's so special about just this one episode is giving glimpses of that, seeing Chloe still just being a grieving daughter and then evolving into this, and then seeing it interact with people and not just be a bitch like she was in the other one, because, you know, you're playing as Max in the first game.

There is, this isn't spoilers, I don't think. It's not story spoilers for sure. Okay. No, the D&D stuff. Oh, My God. They have... They have...

Such... Such an amazing scene. Where you walk... There's this girl. You get to the school. There's this girl. You're gonna get a DVD from. She's a GM.

You go over there. What is GM? Game Master. If you never played... I thought it was a DM, a Dungeon Master. It's either... Okay. It can be either.

Okay. She calls herself a GM and I thought they were trying to... I thought they were avoiding getting copyrights... It's possible that Dungeon Master is a great term. Yeah, exactly. Anyways, you go over there and she's doing a game. with this one kid or whatever and they ask you if you want to join you can totally blow them off and tell them to fuck it and it was that thing of like you don't you if you want to you join in

well but as far as like role playing as Chloe goes there's no way she would be like i'll play some but that's what but see that's the thing is like i think this Chloe would okay this Chloe you know isn't blue hair yet this Chloe is still like figuring out punk and stuff like that she's only wearing one studded bracelet she hasn't the warped tour yet no no no there is she would never go to the warf tour the first thing is she goes to a fucking run down barn to see somebody play. All right, Tim? Steve Gainer, help me out. The warp tour isn't in town.

Is the warp tour punk? Chloe would go to it. Is the warp tour punk? It was. I wouldn't say so explicitly. Thank you. That's all this. That's the leading question.

Anyways, this D&D. I definitely just think about Blink 182 and I think about the warp tour. Sure, of course. We all know how punk they are. Yeah, like that. The D&D game you join in on and you get to play,

they give you a character and you go and you make choices. And did you go, there's a boss, there's prisoners, and there's like an encampment. You play like a full on like D&D like encounter through the dialogue system?

So I watched the first, for the first time with them, right? And we had this play through. Sorry. You're cheat. You keep covering your face with your hair. You look like cousin it. I'm trying to help you out here.

Goodbye everybody. No, so the first time I saw it, I was with you and like you made the worst decisions possible, which were influenced by me. Well, yeah, because we were trying to get, I had two hours to play before I had to come to work. So I was like on critical path here. I was like, I should have told them no, I'm not going to play D&D. But it was so tempting I had to.

So good that I played it twice. Because I wanted to see what the prison and the training grounds were. Yeah. So good. Yeah. So don't ruin. I'm going to go back and play. Literally the thing that you're talking like, the D&D campaign is the thing.

It makes me like, all right, this goes on my list. Like just now, I was like, I will do that actually. Just because of like Chloe playing D&D&D. It's like me playing the indie. I have no idea what's going on and I don't give her shit. So I'm just gonna punch people in the dick and that's what she does and it's so good. That sounds really fun. I mean, cause like for me I'm sort of like, you know, I did.

I played through the whole first season. No, but I played the first season like for me I'm not sort of like, oh, I need to know about what happened before this. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The pretty cool thing for this isn't just a natural like thing that I'm like, I have to. But hearing about being able to do those kinds of things within that, world sounds like really fun and like that would be cool to yeah so they leave sorry can I talk I know this is your show but you know all right I've played this game more now than you have kind of like everybody's golf even playing more everybody's golf than me

speaking of everybody's golf how you like no hold on real quick but no but it but hold on so you get to go but before we get to everybody's golf we have to rewind to a mark Echo's getting up, Compensitner Pressure. Good. I also have more things to say about life to search to everybody. So basically, Greg, just like, we're having a podcast here.

Thank you. Exactly. Discussion. Stop hosting. Let us do it. About life is strange. Oh, man. So many things.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Like, like, graphic. Yeah, exactly. I always thought the environments were gorgeous. The switch to unity. Really?

Well, what were they on before? Unreal. They switched from Unreal to Unity. Yeah. It's uncommon. Yeah. That's interesting. Well, did they switch or is it because

deck nine's a different studio? I don't know. I don't know that, like, I don't know those guys. Yeah. Because it's literally the first thing you see when you watch, when you open the game.

It's like unity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but it's beautiful. Exactly. I just want to drive home.

The story's beautiful. I think the graphics are great. As usual, the soundtrack's awesome. Like I, I was not saying I wasn't looking forward to this game where I thought it was not going to be as good as the first, but the first,

but the first did set such a high bar that to come in and tell a prequel that honestly I wasn't asking for. Whereas I got, yeah, Chloe and Rachel Amber, I think I've pieced together what they were

and why they were important to each other. But now to play through that and have these connections and do these different things. It's really fun. And also they balance out the fact, like the lack of superpower by back talk,

which is... Oh, right. I didn't even mention it. Feature. So they have this, yeah, so there's no rewind or anything if they've given you something more

than just dialogue choices. Yeah, power... Well, yeah, Max had it too. don't forget. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, I'm just saying. It wasn't an idea. Sure, sure, sure.

In the world before. So, and Tim, you like this too. This is actually something, even though you're bored with me and you walked away from me and you hate me. I just need water. I'm just so hot. It's like 70 something degrees in San Francisco and I can't handle it. It's hilarious. So the back talk system they put in here.

It's hot. It's too hot. It's way too hot. It's breezy in here. So the back talk system they have is this. When the dialogue choices pop up, you have them and then you have one that has like blue lightning bolts around it. And you click on that.

And then basically, as you know, you know who Chloe is. She says, take no shit. I'm going to get in your face, blah, blah. It's an insult system, basically. Right. Where you start with in the center is like the point where when you get here, you can finally get like the knockout of talking. But then on the other side is your opponent and you.

And then you each have circles that you have to fill in to go. So some battle rap shit. Exactly. And so you have to listen to what the person says and then all these. Spot keywords. Yeah, exactly. So like if they're talking about like, well, there's weight to the situation. You're going to look for like a fat joke or something to that.

to play into the perfect insult to fill this in. Well, it's not even puns as much as just angry. Just active listening and jumping off. Yeah, and you're going to be witty. And what's interesting is that when you pick a word, because the choices you get are not full on sentences, it's like a hint of what you're going to say. Sometimes it's completely different from what you would expect,

and you're like, ooh, shit. Like, she went really hard. That's awesome. It's great. The game's awesome. Could you play it without playing the first one? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Should you? You probably would feel less attachment. or like to the story. If somebody hasn't played any life as strange now, they have the really interesting opportunity to play the prequel stuff first. That would be the thing about it where I'd be interested in doing it because playing through this one,

I am like, oh right, and I hated David, but I'm like, oh, but he came around in the end. But I'm like, why did he come? What was he? I can't remember that. It would be really cool to see it chronologically. Yeah. So when you are tagging, when you're bombing.

Um, so you get to choose like, per location what design you use or. Either or. Yeah. Yeah, you only get two options, but they're tied to what you're tagging on or what the context around you is. So in Mark Echo's getting up,

content under pressure, released I think in like 2004, 2005. It's a game about parkour and tagging and fighting. And train. So like an unknown version of Jet Set Radio. Or it was, infamous second son. It was definitely influenced JetSat Radio I think just as far as all the graffiti stuff goes and like all the

parkour was very kind of Assassin's Creed ish you know or you asses this weird so I guess it's more like Prince of Persia santa time right anyway but as you go you get to choose which tags you put up in different locations but you're building up a palette of them by like when you beat bosses you get to use their tags so you know you go up and you're like here and then you choose from your kind of selection so like a few levels into the game there's a boss whose theme is that he's a basketball

guy and he's like you go into his personal like basketball court and layer. His basketball layer as basketball players call him and you Andy says that checks out. Yeah. You battle him, you defeat him and you get his tags and one of his tags

is simply the word balls. Yeah, nailed and then the two L's when you've created graffiti it, it looks like balls. Why not? Get it up. Mark Akega.

Yeah, it's a discourse. Yeah. And so being a tester, the only reason because it was doing my job. E-S-R-B, Jesus. No, no, no. They had the rating. They're good. But I had to see, you know, what happens if you really push this game to its limit.

So every, so every time, so after I got that, every time I had the opportunity to put graffiti anywhere, it was just balls. Hell yeah. Everywhere. To the point where I was like, I was playing the game and testing the game, playing the game. And I was like, all right. balls and it's on the side of a bridge or something and there was another tester behind me and I just see him go, what's wrong with you

dude? You're just testing the features, man. Was being a tester great or terrible? It was good. I didn't do it for like a super long time. I was a cert tester for only six months because you're like a temp. I also

got fired and then I was an internal tester for like another year after that. You'll never make it in games kids. See you later. So I was a tester like on a project and development after that. But being a cert tester was really cool. I mean, I wouldn't want to do it forever. But as like a first experience in the industry, it's sort of like, here you go. You have to play this game that you never would have touched for like a week and like really understand it.

And that having to do that over and over gives you a lot of perspective, like design perspective. I'm just like, oh, here's why this game works and this one doesn't. Here's this thing I never would have played. But like I kind of get what it's about and I never would have exposure otherwise. So shout out to testers. Yeah. Because they're honestly from my perspective, the best people. I ever worked with because they know the game through and through.

And there is nothing that get past them. So like when you need to have a super specific answer, you go to them. They're the best. Yeah. My favorite thing is before we started doing this show, like before we went live today, Cool, Greg's I. So when we're going to talk about Mark Echo's getting up? And I love that we spent at least headed it's talking about Mark Echo's getting them.

There you go. He was a tester on the game, Greg. Here I am. Right here. Really? Awesome. He'll sign it for. on the way out.

I will sign it Mark Echko. I met Mark Echko once with Greg Miller at Comic-Con and he was promoting some weird mobile game with the dude from Dexter. Dexter. And everyone was hell excited to hang out with Dexter.

I was hell excited to hang out. Mark Echko will be like what's getting up to coming, bro. We got to make it happen. It didn't happen. No, we didn't. We didn't even happen. Okay, so are we done with Live is Strange? There's one last thing that you feel is worthy to mention is the collector mode because

holy shit if you want the trophies what does that mean it's delicious it's great again trophies are really important collector mode allows you to get back into any scene because the trophies in life is strange as you remember

are tied to either the photographs or the trophies right you got them all you get the platinum or in this case I play it on PC I'm a PC gamer Greg oh look at this cool steam card I got for it. Oh, it's a rare one. It's a foil

card, Greg. You can turn them into badges. What were you saying? Jesus. So yeah, you can go back, select any chapter you want, and then it's like the best fucking thing ever because you got the chapter selection screen at the bottom.

They indicate how many trophies are in each scene. So like it's zero out of one. You got one thing to tag in there and then you get it. And then you can skip all the dialogue. It's so magical. I remember you.

You've ruined her, Craig. You've ruined it. You broke her. I've been scarred. I've been scarred by Hellblade trying to go and get those 44 fucking

picture photographs, whatever they were with no chapter selection. So I played through the whole game like two times because I miss one. And then if you miss one and you go elsewhere,

they switch order so you can't follow a guide online. Oh. So the tags being able, and they did this thing where no matter what you say, it won't affect like your progression. So it's like you can be

a total bitch and hit square throughout the whole dialogue tree and it doesn't matter. So it's like, oh, uh, uh, skip, skip, skip. Yeah, it's so good. Life is strange has never fucked up their trophies. It's great. Good Lord. Well, Jen, thank you very much for joining us. No problem. Should I leave now? What's

happening? Yeah. Right? I would want her input on the next game as well. Just straight up. Yeah, she's played a lot of everybody's golf as well. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's true. Andy Cortez is in the room. Andy Cortez and I do not have holes in one.

Andy, come over. You're going to get, it's everybody's golf time. It's time for the real shit to start. It's time for the real. There it is. Look at there it is. Oh, you got all that one. Andy got all that one.

No, yeah, totally say. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't think you're to stay for that long. I don't know. We can kick Tim out if you want. Yeah. Get out of here. Get out of here.

Get out of here. Yeah, everybody's golf. Yeah, all right. So here you saw me play it earlier. so you're already further ahead than time. It's not like he's seen you play it. Here's what I'll tell you, Steve Gainer, about everybody's golf.

Yes. After the first 15, 20 minutes of playing it when I got it, I put it down and went to get a cup of water. And if I'm lying, I'm dying. This is not a Greg joke. I literally almost teared up and cried. Because they nailed it. I've loved this franchise for so long.

And I've seen it on PS3 in Vita. This is while you were away getting the water? You were getting the water and you were like, I got up and I got up from the game and five. And finally it all kind of settled. There was this crazy overarching story and a dad dies and it's like really,

wow. You have to play the golf to avenge him. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but like this game nails what I want from everybody's golf slash hotshots golf. Like to get here after what I feel like is a Vita version that was not up to snuff

and a PS3 version that was not up to stuff. To get here and have it on PlayStation 4, deliver, be able to create a character that looks just fucking like me, to be able to get in there and play with Andy and do these different things, the daily challenges, the coins. It's eerie.

What about it? You don't think it looks like me? I mean, I think yours looking a lot more like you. You're in a very bad mood. Well, Jen's character looks mad. That's what I look like most of the time. Greg's head is like twice the size of my waist, and I hate it. And I want him to make his head smaller.

But I like, I like being mascot Greg. I look like a college mascot version of Greg. That's the worst. I'm fine with that. Andy, how do you like everybody's golf? I'm in love. I'm addicted to it. I think the last hot shots I played was like PS2 maybe.

So I don't have a huge pass with it. because I didn't play on PS3 or on Vita or anything like that. Yeah, but I was really into Tiger Woods. You guys also a tester on PSP. Really? Really? Wow.

Pretty sure. You've done everything. Fucking All-Star here. I'm here for. I mean, just mention games. I tested it. Pong? Tested that.

First Ultima. Sure. I was right there. Ultima online too. Yeah, but I got really into Tiger Woods when I was like in, like, leaving high school going into college and I bought like everyone for every year. crazy like doing the my face scans and all this. Yeah, I take a photo like and it was like uncanny how real that shit looked.

Um, he's so real. Yeah. It's a good callback to party mode. But yeah, I'm loving it. Initially I was like, okay, I unlocked this golf cart. This is kind of stupid. What am I going to drive around this little small home base for it? Yeah, you do.

Get a trophy for it. Thank you. Thank you. But then, Achivo? Achivo. Stop it. Get, get them, Chivos. Just goveling up chivoms.

Yeah. I come from the PC world too, okay? You're all horrible people. But then I realize, but then you sort of introducing to the open course mode, which is something that when we were playing before it came out, it was nothing that I like, I'll probably never play online or whatever. But open course is really cool. You just sort of have this like free row mode where you can run around a different

holes. Yeah. So the idea with open course, if you haven't started playing in the idea of Hotchots in general, is you have your home area where you enter into tournaments there that then give you leveling up XP to increase your gar, you're. golf is golf rank and then your level is different to. So that's all. It's weird.

It's really weird. The level, the golf rank is the overarching. I think there's six according to the trophies. If I could be incorrect on that. And that going up showing how much you've played and how much you've unlocked. And then the level is, you unlock a new course.

Yeah. So yeah. So that's how. So it must be six or seven. Right. And so then the leveling I think is just to keep that care of the stick of like, oh, see, you're still increasing your overall level,

even though you're not, because your rank takes a while of it. increase it's otherwise. So that's great. But then you can go play private matches, which we did with the kids on Twitch and stuff. And you can do no XP, anything game there, which sucks. But then you can go to open course. And when you go to open courses, you just walk out into a golf course. And there's other golfers on there online, real people running around doing their thing. And you go and you play these holes. And you can choose either do nine holes at once or you can just go one,

one by one. And the holes all have a daily bonus on them of coins. So if you can get below par, You earn currency that way. If you, at one course, I'll have a super bonus on it, where if you play the nine holes, you get even more four. There's collectibles hidden around it. And so it's encouraging you to go out there and do it,

but that's where you use a golf cart and really drive around between the holes, how you want to play it and do that. The on open course, it doesn't affect your overall like, all right, cool, here's my level or my rank or anything. But what I love about this hot, or this, God, it's so weird.

Everybody's golf. Hey, it's years and years, all right? It's the fact that you level up your clubs as well. The more you play. It just used to be hot. It's always everybody's golf in America. I'm sorry, always everybody's golf in Japan. And then it was hot shots here.

And then this time there was like, some bruntler said, we gotta make this more American. Yeah, exactly. Nobody understands Americans hate being with everybody, but they love hot shots. That's what it was. It probably was.

Yeah. Hate togetherness. They love God. They only like one guy, one guy to rise up. So, but you go through in the, whether you're playing in your home base or you're playing in the online open course mode, you're leveling up your clubs as you go to.

you know you when you hit a good drive your power goes up and so then you can over time drive further and then some of that back spin that backspin's big part of it yeah yeah that back door yeah yeah that back door yeah yeah sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry well there's an mpc who like you walk up to he's like do you know about the back door excuse me sir is there a glory hole somewhere yeah yeah no for him back door is uh it's one of your putter stats or i guess it's any of your your clubs but mainly your putter that it'll help the ball if it's like going around the rim circling to actually drop it. When you go around the rim gently.

Yeah. You know, rib jabs are gone. Finally, you do a few terms and you finally get in there. Right in there. Right in there, squish. Oh yeah. Now, Jaumviev Saint-Thainz. Where that one come from?

Knocking boots. What? How many golf games that you played before this? Real life or? No, no, no. Video game golf. No, I want to hear the answer to the other one. So, back when I was working at Frima Studio, we had these yearly

summer kind of golfing tournaments. One quick second. How many Freeman games did you test? What is that? Okay, it was a published. Young Thor, zombie tycoon. They made a lot of PSP stuff, you wouldn't know. PSP minis were the shit.

I agree. Trust me. I made... Shout out Martin Brouard. We're a shot of people out now. So wait, I'll say now. How many golf video games had you played? Zero. Okay, so when I came home and was obsessed with everybody's golf, what did you think? I was very confused.

You remember my face asking you, how do you play? But you said you played IRL golf? Yeah. It's not the same. Believe it or not. It's a lot different. It's a lot harder. Stance.

It's a lot more expensive. Yeah. A lot more expensive. Also, it's, it seemingly does not make sense the way you're supposed to hit the ball in everybody's golf. But once you nail it, it totally makes sense. It all starts making sense. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

The IRL translates directly to digital. So what were you expecting to play and enjoy this? Because there was that night where I came home and you're like, what do you want to do? I'm like, I want to play everybody's golf. You're like, okay. And I'm like, are you okay? And you're like, yeah. And then five hours later, I was like, do you want to watch something instead?

You're like, yes. Please stop playing this golf game. I mean, yeah. But now you love it. I love it now. You were playing it while we were starting to record this. It's great. It's just for somebody who's never played a golf game, it's, I feel the step is like very unattractive.

Not high. Just unattractive. It feels like there is a lot. Just like looking at it with you. just like a lot of interface, a lot of different things in the game. It seems like it has a high complexity level, at least when you first encounter. It's like fishing games, right? I think golf is unattractive to most people anyway, and that's like so to...

Not to everybody. Well, not... Nice. Get it now. 4999. Or how much is it? $39. 40.

Yeah, 40 bucks. That's 40. Okay. But yeah, so I've... For somebody who has never played a golf game and now you're into it, that's kind of mind-blowing. That's a statement. That was my thing, too, where I mean, like, it's a statement. for everybody.

It wasn't everybody's golf, but Mario Golf on GameCube was the first time I ever played a golf game. I was like, holy shit, this is fucking great. Like, this is so much more fun than real golf's ever looked. And it's because, you know, it's easier to jump into. And it is fun. And it is, I think even though it looks crazy when you look at the screen, once you start playing, you understand enough of it.

Real golf course, fire doesn't come out of the ball. It's bullshit. Yeah, yeah. Can you get that super backspiners? No tornado cups. No tornado cups, no mega cups, no teeny cups. You don't know what a good ass golf video game is. Sure.

There's a full-on, stand-up put-put golf arcade game that I've seen at like bars and arcades

in Portland where they build full like there's the haunted golf course and there's the like

Sasquatch theme golf course and you go up and you stand there and it has it's like golden tea basically

where you kind of like do the track ball but then it has all of these crazy obstacles and like bats fly out

when you put the ball into the castle and stuff like that that yeah exactly you're like What what putt putt course are you going to go to where they just keep bats in the castle?

I mean, come on. That's a lot of bats shoved in that castle. Come on every time. Yeah. This proves it. So yeah. Downsides. That's my recommendation when it comes to golf video games.

For everybody's golf, we've sat here and we've kissed it a lot. We've made love to it. But the things we don't like about it, Andy, long load times. Long load times. I'm only getting to a part now where I believe there's some semblance of like villains. Oh, yeah. It's really cool.

Have you gotten to the bunny suit? I keep seeing the bunny suit online. Are you rank four? Yeah. Me too. Yeah. And that's the first time wherever they were. So it's like that's where it's exciting me because again, I've said this like five times already.

But it reminds you of Game Boy Color, the Mario Golf on there where it's like it's like a total like anime story of like this new kids in school. And I'm going to. I hear he's going to try to challenge us like no way he could beat me. Like it's totally. I love that shit. Like I eat that cheesy shit up. It starts being about dramatic golf rivals. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Totally. Yeah. I like what I'm here. My other problem, of course, is that it doesn't make any sense to me

that private matches can't allow you to get XP. Like, it's golf, right? And I was thinking about it, I guess technically if you and me, you and I wanted to play,

you could tank yours by hitting it off, right? And so I could get the points. But even then, it's still gonna come down to strokes. Like, can we not like it, in private matches,

are you at least able to level up your clubs? No. See, that's something I would lose like. Yeah, exactly. And so that's the thing of like, and online tournaments

are supposed to be coming. I think that's what that middle purple area is. Somebody was saying online. But it's great. It's fantastic. If you're at all interested, you should try it. It's surprisingly good.

Okay, good. And also, yeah. The music is pretty great. You're shredding to it. Music fucking kicks dick, dude. It's awesome. When I got on that tropical course,

rank four last night, and it was like, oh, yeah, all right. Here we go. Yeah, all right. Shake it up. Let's go south of the border. I'm just picturing that like Sting is like a featured artist on it. Like, I would just love to hear him just jam out a fucking baseline on that.

Yeah. Fucking, like, doon, do, do, do. It's so dope, dude. It's great. So, everybody's golf is great. Also, Shuhay, Yoshida, greets you. Yeah. In the home, like, place.

You can unlock him. Yeah. I don't think, I think I beat him early on, and then I haven't seen him in my area. He doesn't. He's just hanging out. Well, he's a gallery member. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, we're getting in the weeds. Yeah. Tim! Yeah. Thank you, Jean-Viev, St. Oh, you were not kicking any out.

you're kicking me out. Oh, no. Andy's getting up and leaving on his own accord. I know how you are, though. I miss you so much. We're in love. Yeah, didn't know.

It's adorable. You're back, Andy. Oh, hello. Oh, fucking tricked you, dog. Damn. Just real quick. You've been playing Destiny 2 beta on PC. Yeah.

I played here at work. Using up my, working on the clock. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's occurring content for this podcast. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I only played through the intro stuff, the intro part,

which is the same thing that they showed us at E3. I mean, it's fucking awesome. And it runs so great and it's beautiful. And running on an awesome PC is just so cool, dude. And I'm running at like 83,000 frames per second probably. Wow. That's high. It seems a lot of frames per second.

How many of those frames can you see? Dude, the human eye, man. It's crazy. Human body. but I have not been able to do any of the strikes yet I mean there's only one strike it's the same strike that was available on console and it's the other same two modes

I do want to know if you can get us access to the social because initially on console there are three things you can do you can do like a regular like fucking casual match you can do a super competitive match or you can do a strike which is your PBE mode later on when console was doing beta they added a fourth mode which is just the social sort of like come hang out with other

with other players and this is like with other guardians but it's like the tower it's like that but it's the new version of it okay and you can only do that if you've pre-ordered the game but I saw people at IGM playing it and if they can play it we should be able to play it yeah sure sure sure well you know next week actually if this goes up on Monday this week we're streaming this game we are

we're just say the universe all the all the all the important adults are gone so we're just gonna play games every afternoon here. No adult supervision. Yeah, exactly. But it looks great. And if I had an awesome PC to play with,

I'd probably play on PC. And if I had, the only thing holding me back is I don't have all my friends on there. It's a big one. But yeah, that's Destiny 2. All right, Destiny 2. Thanks, Andy.

Can't wait. That's a wrap on Andy. Can't wait till next week. So Steve, hello. 49 minutes into this episode. What have you been playing? I'm just here to game, everybody.

I thought you were even playing Mark Echo's getting up. I mean, I've been testing it. I have been in my heart for the last 12 years. Why haven't you streamed that, Cool Greg? Cool, Greg! I'll do it for you. Why, why haven't you streamed it?

Getting up, getting up, boy. Oh, he's platinum and hit and run. Nobody can hear him. Frogger's quest. Get over here. You just sit here. This is Mike off. No, he's going to turn it back on.

Hold on. Cool, Greg's running back on. This is the guest episode. I love it. I love it. Yeah. I mean, just like, keep it flowing. Keep it moving.

Yeah, let's keep it tight, you know. Just like, I'll, 15. Don't you love it? So that's why they call him cool, Greg. Oh, yeah, he's cool. That's up, guys. Yeah.

So, so what's your plan for streaming games? So when I got hired, it kind of funny, I noticed this guy loves platinum them, like all of them, right? So then I was like,

all right, what game do I love that I haven't beaten yet? It was hitting run. I always got real close. Like, the first, like, three levels are platinum. To be clear,

you're talking about Simpson's hit and run on PlayStation 2. Yeah. Okay, that doesn't have a platinum. You're just going to do everything. It doesn't have trophies at all. Yeah, 100 it. But you can 100% it.

Yeah, 100% it. And then, you had a side, you know, it's the time. And then you guys, perfect place to live stream video games. I was like, all right, fucking, I'm going to do it. And then great quest, I just need to find. I don't have it anymore, which sucks. So, okay, a couple things for you to know, Steve. And then a couple things for the audience to know.

Okay. When my brother's talking about streaming games, he's not talking about Twitch. He takes this. Because to be clear, we run a streaming Twitch operation from here for about two and a half hours a day. Yeah. So what we do, or he does, is he will take his phone and Instagram live video

but just the feed not even a feed just the footage of him playing on PlayStation 2 Why don't you want to actually stream it? I mean I just don't have have that level of talent I feel that Oh no no

People show what to be playing I don't know I don't think that's true And then people got to talk You know you know you gotta play And you have to like have the conversations You know like these guys Andy They're getting it in and just like

You know so what are you going now Now you're going to go for the bridge See if you didn't go for the bridge to put you back later You know, but me, I'm just over here like, fuck, I want to fear. That's good strange. But then the other thing that everyone needs to know is that one of my brother's favorite video games of all time, I shit you not, is Frogger's great adventure on the PlayStation 2, which is a 3D platformer based on Frogger. And he's just obsessed with it.

He got a good one of the better ones, right? Oh, it's one of the better frogs. Is it? I think. I don't know. It looks different than the rest of them. You know, he's like, you know. He wears clothes in this.

Hey, hey, yeah, you guys, stay tuned to cool Greg's Kind of cool Greg on Instagram For all of your, uh, getting up needs So Frogger wears clothes Frogger wears clothes in this game, yeah Oh, Jesus God Johnny has his back What's up?

What did you play? You can hang out if you want I like Steve so much Steve's great, no Steve, what have you been playing? Um, I, so as we may have mentioned, I shipped a game very recently so I haven't been playing that much. I am catching out so I have two things.

one, I started playing player unknowns battlegrounds. Oh God. And that's like the only thing that I played for like three months. Because when you're shipping a game, really stressful, you got a lot on your mind, you're working a lot of the day. You still want to do something instead of just working from when you wake up to when you fall asleep. But it's really attracted to just be like, let's do another battleground.

Sure. And the thing is, like you were saying about when you were, almost. But it said it was the Mario and Rabbids thing where you were like, you've lost to a and you're like, oh, I'm just done. I'm demoralized kind of. I feel like it has the opposite effect when you're playing battlegrounds and you die and you're either like, that was hilarious, that's fine. I want to play that again.

Or you're like, fuck. I'm going to do it again. Exactly. I know what I did wrong. We're battlegrounds fans. No, no. You don't know what you did wrong. What you did wrong was play battlegrounds.

Like you're going to die. For me, it's usually that I was standing up, running around like in a jackass. I should just hid in the building. Or like you saw some guys and you were driving a Jeep. You're like, I'm going to go get them. And then they just shotgun you out of the driver. See? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It is your fault, usually. But I, but, you know, it's that kind of thing. It's just a very easy, very attractive, like, either something funny will happen or will almost win or we'll die really quick. Then we can just play it again. So I did a lot of that. And I just started playing Zelda. I just got a switch.

Oh, okay. Like, I just bought a switch like a week ago. And I played maybe like five hours of Zelda. And it seems cool, but I'm still like getting off of the tutorial. Yeah. That's interesting. There's a lot of people I seem that because switches are becoming a little bit more common in stores now. So there's like a second wave of people playing Zelda.

That just excited me. Well, that was the crazy thing though, because like, you know, I, I had just opted out of even trying to buy a switch for a long time because I'm like, I don't have time for it. There's a bunch of other stuff that I want to play and I haven't done that yet. But then I got around you, I'm like, everybody loves the Zelda. I want to play the Zelda. Sure. So it was just on our random like Saturday. I was like, can you just like, because I just wasn't even paying attention. So I was like, can you just buy a switch now? Like maybe like shouldn't you be able to? And I went on a. Amazon's like no. I want Best Buy. I was like no. And I went on GameStop.com and like their

giant like header image was like switch in stock. Okay. So I clicked and in Portland there was like 10 stores that it all said they had in stock. So I was like, oh, okay. You lucked the fuck out. Well, but the thing is. Locking it at that moment. Right. Well, but I was like, okay, so I guess it's like every store in Portland has it. Cool. I can just maybe I'll do this later. So I just like mess around for the morning and then came back and refresh it. I was like, Maybe I'll go get that switch now. And it was like three stores. I was like, oh, oh, it's like that.

So I called one of them. They didn't even have it. They searched the local inventory. The only store that had any in stock was like a 40 minute drive away. So I was like getting in the car. I made you want it even more. And so I got out there. And yeah, I bought one of the like two switches they had in stock or something.

It's crazy that you still can't just buy a switch. But I mean, I guess I got lucky. And yeah, the Zelda is cool as hell so far. I like a lot. The Zelda's awesome. Yeah. It's so good. And I want to get that gosh darn rabids now.

You guys talking about a sweet, sweet rabbits. Get Mario card next. That's what you need next. Really? Yeah. Did they make a, did they make a switch specific Mario card? It's a port of the Wii one, right? Yeah.

And if you want to hold off a little bit longer to see how it pans out, because we talk a lot about everybody's golf. Golf story comes out next month, September. Is it like a story about golf? It's an RPG. It's a golf RPG. Nice. I like that.

Exactly. What is a golf RPG? We're all going to find that together. It looks eight big. Have you played Mario Golf on the Game Boy Color? No. Oh, that's what it is. It's like Pokemon, but with golf.

I want to play the new Mario game that's going to come out where you throw out. Odyssey? Odyssey, yes, you possess them. Inhabit their bodies. October 26? Turn weird. We close.

That's happening. Is there anything else you play, Jen, that you want to talk about? What I want? I don't know. I'm not with you. I don't know what you do ordered it in the day. Oh, I tell you whenever I play games. Sure?

Yeah. Whatever I do anything. She's just been obsessible. All right, now it's time. I'm a very, like, focus. Just insight into this relationship. This week in gaming history. All right.

Oh yeah. Two years ago on September 1st, 2015, Metal Gear Solid 5. Two years. Wow. Can you believe that? It honestly feels longer than that. Really? I mean, I played like 60 hours of that game or something, so I like got deep into it.

I shipped a game since then. There's been a lot of shit that's going on. That was two years ago? Oh my God. And it came out on PS3, PS4, 360 Xbox one PC. And that's something that I forget about. That game came out cross-gen. and was good.

Yeah, I forgot that it was on like PS3 and 360. Yeah, that's wild, man. Crazy. Yeah. Utterly crazy. Yeah, it feels like it's been longer. That has been,

I've played it on my Xbox one game. Whoa. Look at you. And that's really like, I'm gonna make a game for this. That's the only, you know was last year. It feels like last year.

Yeah. Metal of Solid 5 is so fresh in my mind. The gameplay of that game is going to go down in history as one of the greatest loops of satisfaction that you'll ever have. Yeah. Story will make. not like going like a we need more resources I need fuel resources get out there I did really like

being able to visit all your animals on the base oh sure that way yeah yeah yeah but also yeah for some reason the game did not hook me oh yeah but again like very how far did you get into it oh I think it takes a little while because once you get into that core loop of like you like surveil a base and then you infiltrate your way in from any angle and like take it over it is really cool and satisfying at the same time I'm not like historically I haven't played any other Malagir games. And I get spooks very easily. I hate being chased.

I hate being like targeted by something. The beginning of MGS5 is spooky. I would just end up being like crawled up against a wall and waiting for people to stop being alarmed. And then whoever I like knocked out would come back up alive and like fuck this.

It is pretty stressful. I want PUBG with MGS5 gameplay. Okay. You're not going to get that. I don't know. I'm not going to get it. Don't worry about that. Oh,

you're telling me that metal gear survives is not going to be that. I want the controls of it. Like with, I want to be able to like go down. The running. You'll dive right into prone. Because PubGGGG is so many times when I'm playing. I'm like,

this feels good, but I wish it was metal gear solid. I want to run around on a small little Walker Mac. Yeah. One of PUBG. I take that. Well, you just want Metal Gear survive,

which is coming for you. God. God. It's coming. It's got me. Oh, yeah. 10 years ago on August 27,

2007, Metroid Prime 3 corruption came out on the last good Metro game to come out. 10 years ago as well on August 27, 2007, Warhawk came out on PS3. Fuck!

Yes, Warhawk. What do you have on? Do you remember Warhawk? I mean, I remember Warhawk. I don't think I played Warhawk. Warhawk for me was, you know, when I started at IGN. Is it a flight simulator? No, no, no, no.

It was the... It was the... It was the... It was both. What it was was the first... Hey, the PlayStation 3rd... has multiplayer and here's an exclusive that's all about multiplayer and it's awesome. And it was that I started at IGN and I start in 2007 and it's just a few months after the launch of

PlayStation 3 in November. Yeah, it was basically, it wasn't exactly a launch title, but it was exactly. But when I got there, this is when they were doing betas for it or whatever. And so we were all in it and we would jump in and play there and like, we would shut down the PlayStation team, me and Roper and Jeff Haynes and Dunham and eventually commets to play this and run out there. And it was just, it was totally grasping at straws and the fact of just like, oh man, like, PlayStation doesn't have anything like this. They've never had anything like this. This is fun to get in there where it was,

there was a strategy to it where I was really great on the ground, but I was terrible at actually getting into the Warhawks. So I never did, whereas Jeff was great at being in Warhawks. So he'd be up there and I'd be down there running tanks or trying to capture flags or do whatever. But it was just like an awesome, hey, downtrodden PlayStation 3 fans slash people who have to cover PlayStation 3. Here is this thing that's awesome that Xbox doesn't have.

It's like, what's going to be. Dylan Joba. 14 years ago. On August 27, 2003, SoulCalibur 2. Holy shit. Came out on GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. And now, for those of you that don't remember, this game was a big deal because Soul Calibur,

arcade game, Dreamcast game, 10 out of 10s all over the land. All over the land. But a lot of people miss out on it because... Even in Canada. I'm his hype man. I was hype man. All over the land. I'm back in a month.

A lot of people miss out on it because not too many people had the Dreamcast. So the sequel coming to all the main consoles was such a big deal. And it was an even bigger deal because each one had a console-specific character. So Link on GameCube, Spawn on Xbox, which was really weird. And then Hayachi from Tekken. I wonder how they fought that out. Like, you know, did they have execs from all the studios being like, yeah, I want Link or yeah, who the fuck wants Spawn? Nobody wants Spawn.

Well, Link was a slam dunk. When you got over there and they're like, I have to spawn for X-Bers. Spawns still cool. had chains all over him. But Spawn was so cool. I mean I don't know if he is fine. Either way it's fine. What was it the next one where they started putting our Star Wars characters in it? Yeah, Yoda and Darth Vader. Okay. Yeah. But man, Soul Caliper 2. I wasted so many hours in my life in that game. And I say wasted. I was not good at it. So I was just button mashing for the sake of it. There was a story mode. I think was called conquest mode in that game. That was a lot of fun. Anyway, Luke, my boy. I've got more like slight overlap slash I'm old news, which is My main connection in Soul Calibur 2 is I worked at Circuit City.

Did you test for them too? No, it was too early. But I worked at Circuit City in the electronics department, so I was running the demo stations that had Soul Calibular 2 on them. So I spent a lot of time looking at Soul Calibular. You're like that really high-level NPC that's like in the video games industry. I like that no matter what. You're just there.

Throughout the history of video games. He's an NPC that just keeps showing up every sequel. It's that NBC has been there since the first one. Maybe you're immortal. I mean, this was only like 16 years ago. It wasn't that long ago. 15 years ago. I was 12, 16 years ago.

On August 27th, 2013, 2003, 2002. So calm, U.S. Navy SEALs came out on PlayStation. And changed the game. It did, man. The vocal support,

voice support. Sure. Yeah, that was one of the first, like, yeah, online game. That was the one when you, yeah, you went out and you bought that adapter for your PlayStation 2, so you could actually play with other people.

Me and Po did it together. Did that we went home? Is that an internet? That was dial-up. Good God. Back there. Oh yeah. Yeah, it was just a network adapter.

And I remember buying that to be able to play Tony Hocs Pro Skater online. Okay. T-HPS4, I believe, was the first one to have proper online, but three allowed you to. The game I wanted to play that was on that was Resident Evil Survivor. Is that what it was called? Wait, no, no, no, not survivor. It was a, it was a umbrella corporation. No, no.

That's the more reason one. Umbrella corporate, anyway, whatever. The one I'm talking about is a PS2 game where it was really interesting. at least theoretically. I don't know if it worked really great, but the idea was it was a Resident Evil game where each player played as just like a totally normal person in the city who had got trapped when the zombies came out. And you could play it online, but it was kind of like Dark Souls where you couldn't do like any chat or anything. You just like motion and like leave symbols for people and stuff. But it would be like, oh, I spawned in and I'm like the baker and I just met the cab driver and you each have like things that you can do that the other characters can't and you're just trying to survive in the same. city and seemed really interesting, but I didn't have the network adapter. I never played it. Oh, wow. I would see we went to go back and watch videos. Po and I went and we went and bought the socom and the network adapter. We came home and plugged it and played it for like two hours. And it's like, who this is not for us. This is not a game for us at all. And that's the thing where it's like there's still such a

hardcore group of socom fans out there. And I respect them. You know what I mean? Like they're doing outbreak outbreak. Outbreak. Okay. They're all over and they, you know, law these games and want Sony to make more and have there, there hasn't been a so Kong name recently. Right. Well, that one from zipper that closed on zipper. That was the last one. Was on PS3? Yeah. That was the, right?

That was the final one was on PlayStation. Yeah. It was a PlayStation three and it had some move support. Yeah, was so come for it actually had a cool story in the problem was that it launched during the blackout when the PlayStation network was down for like a month or whatever or it launched and then a two days later the network went down forever. So the thing about so calm for me that I remember about it is it. Yeah, that was online was one of the first big network adapter pushers.

Uh, but it was also. if I remember correctly, the first game to use the, the mic and the headset. And even if you weren't playing online, you would talk to the game. So it was like, hey, you Pikachu on 1964, but it was so calm. So you'd be able to. Bravo team, breach the door. But yeah, you would say things like that. And like, that was fucking awesome.

Like, because that was such a novelty for console gaming back then. And I remember playing at Kevin's house like, I guess 15 years ago. Yeah. God. I remember being in high school and they had a similar thing with the ghost recon game that was on the original Xbox. It was like, okay, we've got network and you can do voice, but they all calls you could do voice commands in the single player game to like direct your squad. And I was over and my friend's little brother was just like a total stoner just like always.

And he was just playing Ghost Recon on the Xbox. I was just watching and like his squatters. And he just just like move or some shit. And the guys are just like moving. And they like nice work. There's a thing. They knew a large part. of their target audience is going to be totally blazed when they play the games. They just like whatever man. Very forgiving. 15 years ago on August 28th, 2002,

Oni Musha 2, Samurai's Destiny came out on PlayStation 2. And now Colin's not here anymore to, you know, argue. Talk is bullshit and, you know, argue whatever. Obviously, Onimusha 3 is superior to two and we all know that. That was the one of the giant enemy crab. Gene Reno was in it. No. Giant enemy crabs?

Wasn't that only one one misha? Uh. Oh no. I know you're talking about it from the PlayStation reveal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, that was not. Historic battles. Yeah.

Was it called a Genji? That sounds right. It's a different game. Okay. It wasn't on Emusha. So only did not have Jerry is enemy. Crabbs. It did not.

It did not. But you were fighting demons. It was like a supernatural kind of like feudal Japan. Yeah, exactly. And then a cam. Was that a series? It was a Cappcom. Yeah.

Right. One of the few franchises. Where's it at, bro? Bring it back Capcom. I'm ready. That was the only. the only major PS2 era franchise like trilogy that didn't get the HD treatment on last gen, which I think is really weird because it's so good, so damn good.

They're just, there's letting it sit so that when they bring back ony moochia, everybody will lose their mind. I don't lose my. That's my next crash. That's your next crash? That is. Save the only. I can actually totally see them doing that like at a Sony press conference being like,

and now, Oni Musha's back. Yes. I would be so stoked. Uh, 17 years ago on August 30th, 2000. What the fuck? No, how long ago? Spider-Man. He's pulled out the Spider-Man on PlayStation 1.

17 years ago. 17 years ago. Spiders came out on the PlayStation 1. I'm looking at this jewel case. What a great game. Tagline is you don't just play it. You live it. There you go.

I'm pretty sure you just play it. Real talk though. This game is so special. Recently I popped back in to try to play it and it does not hold up. It is utter trash. There's so much fog. But there's a gameplay reason for the fog, just like Superman 64. Of course.

It's like, all right. What's the gameplay? What's the story reason? Well, not gameplay, story reason. Yeah. Where Dr. Octopus let like poison gas into the city. That's something Doc Ack would do. That's canon.

Hold on Steve's got some more stuff. I mean, he spins a web, swings across the sky and lands of the somersault onto the Daily Bugal Building. Who is this masked hero? It's you. Oh! You do live it. Do you remember the final boss of this game, Greg?

No, I remember playing this game and loving this game. I don't remember OPM in August 2000 saying the best superhero game ever, but at the time. Yes, it was. The final boss was, I mean, I disagree. Doc Ock. X-Men arcade, but. Doc Ock with Carnage. Oh,

combined. Oh. Oh. Carnage-Arnage, like, took over his body by, yeah. And it was amazing. That was so good. But this game, even playing it recently, although the gameplay doesn't hold up, everything else about it is fantastic.

The presentation, Stan Lee doing the voiceovers. Oh, yeah. So every level that he introduced. and every level has its own comic book cover that like is designed just for the game that's cool. There's so much love put into this shit. They had a bunch of cool costumes too, right? Yeah, so many.

I think it was like 50. 50 different Spider-Man's? Mm-hmm. Wow. Spider-Man. How much can you change this fucking suit? You'd be surprised, Jen. A lot.

It's basically just body paint. And this is a big episode for me in terms of this week in gaming history. You do you do because- Well, I mean, that's true, but like, it's some weeks, I don't get a fucking about any of this shit. Oh, there's a lot that I don't get to fucking my idea of this shit. There's a lot that I care about here because so 17 years ago in August 30th, 2000, Spider-Man came out. But a year before that, also by NeverSoft, the world was changed. Oh, God.

By you. On August 31st, 1999. With Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1. 18 years ago. Wow. That's insane. The game that changed my life made me who I am today, Tony Hoss ProSkator 1. Pretending I'm a Superman.

That's what I do. 18 years ago, on the same day, August 31st, 1999, Dino Crisis came out on PlayStation. Oh, there you go. Another franchise that Capcom. used to fix. That's ripe for comebacks. Yeah. I kind of want to play. I don't think I ever played Dino Crisis when it came out, but it was by the creator of Resident Evil. Yeah. It's about dinosaurs. It's the first one like on a ship. I think that's the that's the third one. No, three ones on space space. I think it's just a crisis. Oh shit. Okay. Yeah. Dino Crisis was like a

weird game. It was a weird game. Was it actually good? I don't I don't think it was. I don't think it was. I wouldn't say as I recall, I don't think it was actually good, but I think it was insane. Yeah. Pretty cool to play at the time when they weren't a lot of games like that. But I feel like it's time for a Dino Crisis game. Yeah. Like I feel like there'd be an audience. Oh, you could do a lot of crisis in 2018. Yeah. 2019. Let's make it happen man. Let's make it happen. They're making Jurassic Park and the guys, you'll be fine. You can get a down of crisis. This is a really big deal. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Okay.

Guess what came out 21 years ago on August 31st, 1996. 21 years ago on the PlayStation. On the PlayStation is a real big deal. Oh, crash. Mm-hmm. Vandikers? Crash motherfucking bandicoot. No. No.

I'm that NPC, girl. It's a big week for Tim Gettys. I knew it. I knew it. You're the timeless NBC. I love it. Steve Gainer's seen everything. He was there for the creation of chess.

Crash can now drink, so everybody is happy for him, 21 years ago. And then finally, 28 years ago in August 29th, 1989, this is for you, Peanut. Turbographic 16 launched. Wow. What's turbographics? Exactly. It's a lot of old that no one gets to do they? Do they?

Do they? Don't you start. It was, okay. So here's what it was. Turbo graphics. It was, so like the NeoGeo was the one that they were like, it's an arcade machine and a home machine. You can buy the arcade games and play them at home.

And like that was a big deal. I feel like the turbo graphics, it was the very first 16-bit console. Like they were like, we're going to be out before Super Nintendo. And so they really pushed that they had 16-bit graphics and everything. Didn't necessarily have good games, but it had,

I was gonna say I couldn't remember who was with bonk anymore. Yeah, no, he was a caveman with a big head, he would bong things with his head. That's great. This reinforces my theory that you're a timeless in this thing. The evidence is mounting. I'm simply 10 years older than you. It's not that hard. Timeless.

I feel so shamed by this list though because I grew up in a console-free household and I'm like, all right, all these games. That is true. You could be pulling a lot of stuff that like could have been in the PC or No, you couldn't. I'm absolutely not. Oh, there's where, here's where Solitaire debuted. And here's Mind Sweeper. Oh, everybody, 20 years ago today was Clippy's birthday.

You don't fuck out of your PC. Shut up. There were so many good games. Hocus pocus. Hocus, Pocus. Hocus, Pocus. You're out of film. Hocus Pocus.

I'm going with Huckus Puckus. Yeah. All right, now's time with topic of the show. Topic of the show. Which is you, Steve Garner. Yeah. It is Tacoma. It is all these.

Is that another disguise way to kick me out? No. If you have questions for Steve Gator or Tacoma, you're welcome to. There's four microphones. You should probably just hang on. I'll think about it. Wow. Okay.

I mean, or you can leave. That's perfectly fine. So Tacoma, it's out. Yeah. How do you feel? Very good. Good. I'm glad to be here talking about it.

I'm glad to be not making a video game for a little while. We worked on the game for a long time. How long is a long time? Three years. Oh, wow. Okay. But I mean, certainly people worked on games for longer. Sure.

But for our team, it was a long development cycle. I mean, it was because A, we spent some time figuring out what the game was early on, and B, we were doing something that we really hadn't done before. Like, the game is about these big kind of augmented reality, like 3D scenes that the characters move through. And so figuring that all out was a learning experience. It was just like, how do you tell a story that way? And how do we build it and, like, how do we make it into the game?

And now it's a thing that people are playing. So it's a really good place to be at this point. I feel like, you know, you guys had gone home. And that was such a explosion of critical response. And that was one of those, one of the very few games I can look back on and be like, it went from no one knowing about it to everyone knowing about it on every blog overnight.

Yeah. There was a lot of pressure. There's a lot of a huge standard there for making this new game. Do you feel good about it? Do you feel like that Tacoma has lived up to what it needed to? Yeah. I mean, I think that the, like what you point out is, is something that's a very different part of releasing this game is like,

with gone home, it's sort of like, maybe, maybe people had heard of me or followed me on Twitter or something, but it was not like, this game was like, gone home was not like a big hyped title. There wasn't the expectation there was for Tacoma. And, and like, the, having made one game where people are just like, what is this? And having that experience on its own is a very different feeling from like every Tacoma review is like, so the Gone Home people made another game. Here's like two paragraphs about Gone Home. So anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of weird because I knew there, you know, you know that there's going to be a comparison, but having it be the context for basically everybody's reaction is very different. It's interesting. It was important, I think, and interesting, because I know leading up to it on this show, Gamescast and then Kind of Funny Games Daily, there were so many conversations and readers writing in of like, why isn't Tacoma getting a bigger marketing push? Why am I not hearing about Tacoma right now? And it was the argument of like, well, leading up to Gone Home, you didn't hear about Gone Home either. It's the fact that now you're aware of what Fulbright is or who they are. And the fact that you're looking forward to this game, whereas just like Gone Home, I think this game needs to get into the wild, get people playing it, get people talking about it.

Oh my gosh, you can't believe that this happened or that happened and go back. Yeah. And it's been really awesome seeing people's response to it because I feel like what we wanted to do is make a game that felt like it lived within kind of what we do, you know, aesthetically or with story. but that just didn't feel like more of the same, that it felt like you're having this story experience in a way that you haven't had before. And we've seen so many people just be like, it really surprised me.

I was amazed by getting into this story in a new way and just kind of, the highest compliment we can get is that people are just sort of playing and it comes very naturally and they're part way through. They're like, oh, and this is like a really crazy way to tell a story.

And it just, it feels natural, but when you step back from it. Well, that was the weird thing about play. playing it for me was the immersion aspect of it. Of playing through it. And I forget, we started together and Jen got distracted. She had to go do something, I think, for her family coming to town. And when she came back, like, 30 minutes later, she was like, or 20 minutes later, she's like,

so what's going on? And I paused the game. And I was like, well, and I named all the, I only know them as colored, you know, out, outlines, thank you. And I've read their emails and I've done this. And I was able to each one of their names without ever having to sit there and go, okay, remember that this is this person. Right.

This is this. I knew everyone's storyline where they were. what was happening, why this was important. I was like, oh, before I unpause it, was like, oh, this is a good story. Like, this is a cool thing of, like, walking into a room and I identify everyone at the party. And now I'm just paying attention to what's happening.

Exactly. I mean, that's what we hope that, I mean, I think that's what we want to do with our games is just have people be able to have this kind of very focused, like, kind of, you know, they're short games, but hopefully they're just like very dense with you learning about people and learning about these things that happened and kind of, I don't know, I hope that if people are really into it, that they kind of get completely immersed in this experience while it's happening. And then you kind of walk away from you. Like, oh, oh, well, you know, like this whole thing just happened to me.

I was there for something. Yeah. And then breaking back out of that world, I think if we can put the player in that space, then it really feels like you lived through it and you knew these people. Which hopefully is something that's pretty special. My question for you, and this isn't a spoiler. I swear, anybody's listening. hasn't played Tacoma. You should go play Tacoma, period.

Why the decision to tell us early on in the story that everybody, that everybody was evacuated? Because for me, that was my thing. When I finished Tacoma and put it down, I was like, oh. And like, that was fun. That was cool. I enjoyed it. And that's what I said, you know, that's what I've told everybody.

But it was that thing of like, I felt like there weren't stakes, right? And gone home there was always, well, there's the attic. I can't get into it. What is it? What is everybody? Is this place on? Is this one early on? there was something where it's like crew evacuated and it didn't make it sound like and maybe

I read into it. Right. It's like, oh, everybody survived. So then playing through the game and it was like, even when there was a few things, I was like, oh, fuck, oh no, everybody's okay. That's okay. Okay. I mean, I think that some people had the same response to gone home as well, because I know that we definitely heard from people who are like, well, your sister left you a note at the beginning that said like, don't try and find out where I am. She obviously ran away. So then when the ending was like, spoilers, she ran away. Then there were, there were some people. And I think that some of that comes down to an individual player's interpretation of like, sure.

Like, do you believe it or not? And I think part of what we were hoping to instill in people was this idea of like, you start out with like, well, the company's told you this and this is the real story. And as you play, you're like, well, that's not really what happened. And this isn't. This isn't. So is the crew really okay?

Are they just telling me that to give me as little information as possible? Because there were certain ominous points. Oh, there were plenty of ominous things. They're like, ooh, the AI. Did it like turn against people? Well, that was the whole way through of like Odin and like when you're going between things. And I swear these aren't real spoilers. You're going between screens and it was like the messenger would garble and it was clearly trying to tell you something.

I was like, is Odin a good? Is Odin bad? Where are we going with this? Yeah. And this is, I mean, this discussion is probably a little spoilery, I guess. I mean, just generally speaking. I can just fucking play Tacoma. What a how many times?

Damn it. It's on Windows, Mac, Mac, Linux, and Xbox One. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I think that. that's one of the things that when the focus of the game is the story and like an interpretive story, I think that's part of the challenge that you run into where you're like, well, some, like, if you put information in front of a player and you're like, oh, but they're supposed to like be suspicious of it, you also have to think about, well, what if somebody

just believes this. And then, you know, if it's like, oh, well, if you just take our word for it and then you end up in a place that's not surprising as we intended, it's like how many people are going to go down which road and how can you make it satisfying kind of regardless of what your initial. Like my wife Rachel always, well not always, but like very often, she is like really good at like seeing the first act of a movie and just being like, oh, so that guy's going to have done the thing. And I'm never that person.

I'm always like, oh, no, who did it? Obviously, join the ride. And then after the movie, she was like, well, yeah, when that thing happened in the first 20 minutes, it was like, well, he did the thing and she's going to end up having been dead the whole time or whatever. I'm like, oh, really? Well, I guess you're right. You know, and so I think that it's, you know, it's always a challenge just to like find what players and what part of the audience is going to take certain things away and whether that still adds up to something that's satisfying. Sure, sure. So lately in the news has been a lot of talk about Xbox and Xbox

exclusives and, you know, the lack of them. Yeah. Exclusives. What is it being, what's it like being one of the few exclusives on Xbox through the rest of the year. What? What is it like being one of the few? What is it like being on the like okay. Like working with Xbox like working with that. Yeah. How does that come about? That's always been my question. I think we might have talked about it privately, but I've never, I don't know if I've ever heard or seen the story of like did they, were you already working on Tacoma and they approached you or was? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was, I think it's the, you know, it's one of those things where when you're an independent developer and you're going on to console, it can be really valuable to basically have a partner

that's really invested in your success. And, you know, as we all kind of know about this console generation, there's like more PlayStation's out there. You know, I think that there's kind of an expectation that games will come out on that platform. And so looking at working with Microsoft, they were, they're in that space where they're sort of like, like you're saying, how can we find exciting, unique titles to come out on our platform? And so they had that motivation to be like, if you guys are, you know, launching with us, we're going to give you a lot of support for putting your game out and also for promoting it. I mean, we were involved with them at E3 like three years in a row.

Right. That was crazy. I remember the first year was like, wow, what a step for you guys in terms of like, you know, gone home, this smaller project and Fulbright, this smaller studio to being on an E3 stage. And knowing the numbers in the back of that, that's significant. It's really expensive. Right. And so, you know, it's like on the one hand, you can say,

we have the confidence that we're going to make a game or we're just going to put it on whatever the bigger platforms are. But the flip side is, you can say, if we work with the platform that's like really trying to build a catalog, there's just all these kind of other things that are going to be about that relationship that I think can be really valuable. And we've been really grateful for all the support they've given us. And I mean, as a small studio,

we definitely wanted to launch on only one console. if we were launching on console at all just because like it's hard. We don't have a lot of people like getting a game out on a platform is just like a lot. And so, you know, the group that approached us and was like, we want games like this on Xbox. We're like, okay, let's talk about what that means. Because being out on console has its own advantages. And then, yeah, the specific version that you do kind of I think comes down to what the project is when you're launching. You know, like, because when PlayStation was first starting, they were very much like every indie come to us.

You know, and now they're sort of like every big thing. That's what we're about. You know, I mean, which like makes total sense and it's cool, but it means that, you know, what you do kind of is like, are you making those decisions in 2013 or 2015 or 2017? You know, like, what is the landscape? So talk to me then. This is a painful question I know. And I don't know the answer. We've never talked about it.

You talk about launching on one platform. Yeah. You talk about your smaller team and it's easier to focus and stuff. how quickly on you put the game out it launches does this start button thing the tap a to go start what does that happen how do you hear about it and how do you know something's wrong I mean that was so that there for for people's reference there was this bug that hit some users for Tacoma on Xbox which was just when you pressed a to start it just wasn't responsive it didn't do anything and the it wasn't found in that form when we were testing

until it went out to like a critical mass of players where it's like well now thousands of people are trying to do this and so dozens or hundreds of people are getting it because you know if you get something that's like one out of a hundred times you might miss it in test but then yeah anyway so it came out

and like I mean that's another thing is that because we were a title that Microsoft was really involved with or you know invested in and because we had to start investigating that bug like when the game launched they actually threw a lot of people into helping us be like,

we're gonna debug the code, and we're gonna see where these calls are going through and what's actually causing this. And then, you know, like, having to fix it, and then test it, and then get it through certification and get it out to people, you know, is like its own thing that the advantages of like just being a PC game, or you can just be like, all right, we hit the update button,

now people are downloading it. And obviously, console holders need, you know, platform holders need to be able to say, like, we have to make sure this isn't gonna like, like delete somebody's hard drive if they download the patch. So you know that was really stressful because we had people who were like I pre-ordered the game and I press A and I can't play. Well I can only imagine I mean like you've worked on something for three years. You're incredibly proud of it. You literally flip the switch or Microsoft flips the switch and I have to

imagine you finally sit down. You're like here comes a quiet moment. Let's look at reviews. Let's see. I'm gonna have a drink though and it's like instead of any of that it's I can't start your fucking game. And like Jesus. And you know like we really you know apologize for people having to deal with that. And we worked hard on finding some workarounds that people could use in the meantime, but those didn't even work for everybody. So yeah, it was, it was like, it was one of those very stressful things about game development and releasing a game. But luckily, it's fixed now. If you buy the game, you can press 8. It starts. Yay! It's so heartbreaking, though, because that's part of game dev, like, we've experienced it, too. I don't even know what it is, but I saw,

like, news stories about Destiny 2 having a saxophone error. Like, what? Apparently, like, there was something that, you know, had, like, I only know about it because I saw, like, headlines about it or whatever where a lot of people were, like, trying to log on or something, and the error code was, like, error code saxophone. And, like, saxophone. You always have one dude inputting stuff that's, like, temporary. No one will ever see this. Or, like, no, I'll fix it later.

And then they forget. And then it's like, whink. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, but that said, you know, we're really grateful to people who had patience and then we got the patch out and then they actually played it. Hurray. But yeah, sometimes it's just so unpredictable what's actually going to happen when a game goes out in the wild. I mean, I'm sure you're more familiar with such huge games with such huge audiences.

Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's so hard because you know the amount of effort that's being put in the games and then your devs are tired. They've been working nonstop. Just to get, like, whether or not they've been crunching, there's always this final stretch at the end of the production whereas everybody's just trying to fit everything through the door

and then the QAs are exhausted and then it's certification time and that's in itself is a huge nightmare. And then there's always this question of as you mentioned there's such a huge volume of people who will play the game that's not even comparable

to the amount of QA you can do internally or like with even with like larger structures such as square. There's always something that's going to slip through the cracks. And then that's going to blow in your face. And you're like, all right. But then, like, at the same time, it's like, right now, like, since then I've always

expected it. I'm like, something's going to happen. There's not a single launch day that's going to go well. There's always either from the marketing side where you have premium placement that does not show up or that is somehow fucked up visually. Yeah. Or you get this game breaking bug and then everybody's crying. Right.

And then like it's just a nightmare. Game dev is a fucking nightmare. There you go kids. Making games, it's hard. Releasing games. It's even harder. Oh, it's, yeah. That's my life.

So then for this, you know, obviously you worked on Bioshock. We've talked about that. But for Bioshock, you're working in a big company. Minerva's Den is D.L.C. Gone home launches, it's a groundswell, grassroots movement, right? Of like, oh, people are starting to pick up. It's gaining steam. Yeah.

For Tacoma, it's all lies on you all eyes on Fulbright. What does that review embargo night look like? Because I always wonder about that. On the other side for us when we're putting up a review, whether it be, you know, a YouTube video back when I was at IGN, it's always that last minute check of is everything fine. Is it going to, is it going to post the right time? I don't want to break embargo, blah, blah. For you waiting for 1201 or whatever the embargo is to hit, what does that look like? I mean, I don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess you try to keep your mind off of it until the time comes. And then you just start.

So are you looking at Twitter? Are you looking at, yeah. And I mean, you know, you've got your team who is also looking for stuff. And like, this review just went up or this one. Or, you know, I, with these, I don't think I've ever been involved in a launch, either a big or a small one where like there wasn't some review that went up early. And you have to be like, oh, hey guys, that was the wrong time zone. You can you pull that back down until the time or whatever.

But sometimes that's interesting because it's like, oh, this review went up early. Oh, it's really good. That's cool. you know. It's kind of like that pre-Christmas, like you get one present before Christmas morning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also, like, believe it or not,

I feel that's happened to us too, and I think it did set the tone for some of the other reviews. Because people are, it's like influence, right? They look at the review and they're like, oh, oh, they really liked it. All right. Maybe that biased, like, their opinion at the end of the day.

So it was always good. Oh, come on. Oh, I mean, like, are they locked for, like, how far out? So if you're not, you keep talking. we, we, we. Not like Margo night, like later down the... Okay, down the line, sure, that's true.

That a tenor can be set that reviews posts and they are generally positive, generally negative. Oh, one, it's all been written just making sure we're on the same page. I'm making sure being clear over here, yeah, yeah. Are you trying to explain me my job? I'm trying to explain to them where it's like, yeah,

if somebody pops their review at 11 and somebody's supposed to be midnight, it's like, well, fuck, go up a point. They really like this shit. Rewate the damn thing. No, never knows the text doesn't match. It's just the number. Sometimes there are the, like, there's sometimes, like, it seems like kind of tiered

embargoes where it's like some sites put their reviews up a week ahead of time. Yeah. And then the rest of them go up, like, on launch day. Sometimes there's early access. Like, especially I think, especially when there's some, like, big companies where it's like, everybody's going to come to our office and play it and write the review based on that. And, like, that group gets to post their reviews earlier or whatever. But, yeah, it's a whole crazy process.

Apology wants to know For an abrupt change of pace Do you ever feel like making An all gameplay light on story game? And do you ever play games like that? I mean, I definitely play a lot of games like that I mean, as noted, Player Unknown's Battlegrounds has like been my thing

for months, which if that game had a story, it might be hilarious and I might love that. It might also be the worst idea in the world. But it kind of doesn't matter because it's like you're not, you know, it's a hundred prisoners have parachuted onto this island. I know, I love it.

One man will walk free. like a Russian island apparently. But yeah, I mean, I think that there's something that is attractive about it conceptually, but also when you think about it, you're like, anything that you make just is going to take a lot of work. Like even a really small thing, you know? And I think that like you can make like a Game Jam game or something and that's cool. I think that for me, I'm mostly focused on like making the kind of stuff that I feel.

like we're uniquely good at because I feel like there's tons of other games that are you know there are on totally different vectors that I can play and enjoy and not have to also be like I love Spolunky I'm gonna make a Spolunky like game I'm sort of like there's people who are awesome at that I'll play their games I'll make my things with the little stories of them it's all good Tyler Gesselman says what's next for Fulbright I don't mean the next game but do you just plan on to stay the course and keep making similar games like you've been doing well I mean I think that The thing that we need to, or that, you know, we're looking at is just like, what, like, what territory is kind of surrounding what we've already done, you know, because, like, with Tacoma, I think it was like both a big step, but also a pretty straight line. You know, we're sort of like, well, it's not just walking around and finding audio diaries anymore, but it is first person kind of like single story, you know, linear story game.

And, you know, I think that at this point we're looking at what we've done and what we could do and saying, are we going further down that road or are we kind of going, you know, off of a little branch that speaks to things we're good at, but isn't exactly one of those and how far off is it? But we definitely don't know, like, it's this, you know, starting tomorrow. I mean, does anybody know? I'm going on to listen to you?

I love it. So, I mean, like, right now in terms of, and I don't know, are you guys, is everybody taking time off? Is everybody working on something? Do you guys not pre-production on the next game, whatever? I don't know. What can you say about what's happening at the office?

I mean, we're working on more patches and stuff for the, for, for, for Tacoma, just sort of like, you know, things that are not critical bugs,

but they're like, oh, we should fix or improve that. And we, we're looking at maybe what kind of stuff we could add to the game in the longer term. And, yeah,

looking at what the months following that look like. Because we don't want anybody to have to be like, you know, you're really, release a game, there's stuff that people kind of need to be getting done, but also we don't just want to be like, we never got a break. Like even if people are working on patching stuff in, it's still kind of like part time, not as intense as trying to get the thing out. So, you know, it's a lot of, it's basically post-release support and then planning in the longer term, but not being

like, everybody back to it. We're starting on the next thing. Let's go. Let's get the crack in the way. Right back into it. LLR, Nick says, what are your general thoughts about the switch lineup? Also, is there any chance to Tacoma coming to switch? I mean, I, so like, we don't know anything about, we don't have any announcements about other platforms or anything. At this point, any other platforms at this. If it ever comes and you don't give it a fucking platinum, I'll know you're doing it just to fuck with me.

At that point, I'll know you're doing it just to fuck with me. Like, if that were to happen, everyone would know that Greg is absolutely correct. But, so I just got to switch recently. I feel like it's like, with a lot of Nintendo platforms, it feels like the platform, I mean, kind of like we were talking about setting the tenor for reviews. Like, I feel like the perception of any Nintendo console can be set by the first game that comes out for it.

And so, like, I think Nintendo is in a great place of having released Zelda as their launch game, which is, like, universally considered an amazing game. And I think that that has encouraged a lot of other people to, like, actually say, like, well, well, we should put stuff on the Switch. You know, it feels more like the Wii, like the first Wii where everybody was just like, We sports, I have to play it. And so there was a lot of titles that I think went on to it from other publishers. And, you know, Nintendo just did that cool.

Like, here's all the indie games that we're going to have on Switch, which I think that does kind of say like, oh, okay. Like people are saying, this is something that has an audience that we want to bring our games to. And yeah, I'm looking forward to Mario Odyssey and like, I'm excited about the other stuff that Nintendo's doing. So, yeah, for sure. And I want to play that dang rabid's. Yeah, I do it me. I mean, honestly, no offense to Rabbids or Ubisoft or anything, but like, I never pictured myself being like, I can't wait to play a rabid.

I'm right there with you. Fuck these rabbits. They're dumb. That's how I felt. Then I got the game. Like, I still don't like you that much, but I don't hate you as much as I did before. That's really, put it on the box. That's right.

Final question comes from Bob Shiggity. How do you have time to make good games and be good looking? I can barely want to talk. It's true. It's true. A lot of how you look. look is based on like your jeans and you don't have to

spend any time on it. Yeah? And the other half of it is, I don't know, get a haircut, trim your jeans. Sure. Do you ever think about growing the hair long again on one side? I like that look. I could. I mean, any day is just like don't do anything to your hair for six months. Sure. Okay, there you go. It's done. All right. I like that. Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much Bob Shiggity for that.

Bob Shiggity. Bob Shiggity. This has been the kind of funny games cast. It's been Steve Gander. You can follow him at Fulbright on Twitter. At Fullbris. You should do that. You should buy Tacoma. Available now on Mac, PC, Linux, and Xbox One. That's right. Do you thank.

Jen, thank you for joining us. Thank you for letting me invade. Absolutely. Does the rest of the team feel like, is there a chip on their shoulder that you were so conceited that you took Fulbright, the name of your studio, but it's your name on Twitter. It's the other way around. I had a blog called Fulbright in 2005, six. And then it became my Twitter handle. And then when we were naming the company, we were like, what should we name?

What should we name it? And everybody's like, well, it's not gonna last. So just take your fucking Twitter handle. Whatever you want, Steve. No, I mean, we were sort of like, oh, that's like a word that's kicking around the people have heard of before. And it sounds cool. Let's throw it on there. Okay.

And actually, like, at some point, I had kind of argued, like, maybe, you know, maybe we should change it from that. Like, kind of between gone home and Tacoma. I was like, well, we could, like, change the name. Because it's like, because, yeah, it's just my Twitter handle, basically. And we kicked around some ideas. And then like other people of studio were like, no, we like Fullbright. That's us. Like, and I was like, oh.

And you're like, that's me. You're part of me. No, but I was, you know, I had the same thing. Or I was sort of like, should we, should this be something that's more about like everybody? But like the, I think the name is also kind of like taking on its own identity too. So. Sure. You know, but yeah, it's weird.

Tim, real quick, before you close out, because you're literally in the mid, like, we're at the three fourths here of closing out. Worth pointing out. Yeah. If you, ladies and gentlemen, don't know a lot about Steve Gainer. We did a one on a one. back at the old studio before Tacoma, obviously, but about your entire career, gone home and everything else.

And it's excellent. I think everybody should check that out. Yeah. Yeah. That was, like, it was like a two hour long, like just full like career retrospecting.

Same, here's what I want you do. When you do the pointing thing at the end of YouTube, you point to it. Okay. All right. Thanks, buddy.

That was a really cool. I'll slip you a five or later. Good. But yeah, that was a great discussion. Sure. People should check it out. You're going to have to get them the link to that,

though. Cool Greg's not. He got it. He cool Greg a long time ago told me that was a slapin interview so it's fine slap in all right bye guys thanks everybody see ya