Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - RESULTS! Official E3 2019 Predictions and Bets - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 226

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

Hurry to http://upstart.com/kindafunny to find out HOW LOW your Upstart rate is. Go to http://zebit.com/kinda for $2,500 of interest-free credit. We go over the predictions results, Tim talks about Mario Maker 2, Greg loves Doom, and Andrea/Fran give their E3 2019 Game of the Show Awards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, welcome to the first ever, episode 226 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Getty, joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. Hello. And making a return after what feels like forever. Yeah. Andrew. I know, Ryan. What's good, guys?

What's good. Thanks. You can find her on What's Good Games. You already knew that. YouTube.com slash What's Good Games. And then over here, FM3 himself, the best hair in the business. Oh, and it's looking extra shiny today. That was good.

That was good. Fran, where can people find you? You can catch me on Twitch TV slash FM3 underscore. One day I'll get the three characters or on the Epic store at my creator code is simply Fran Mirabella. And thank you for supporting me and helping me do this. I love it. I love it so much. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week right here on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games.

We get together. Top of video games, all things we love about them. There's a lot to talk about today because we just got back from E3. And this is the first time we've all been together to talk about E3 in our E3 adventures. We're going to do our solo films and now the Avengers of the ESM. This is it. This is definitely that. Yeah, this is like Infinity War today, maybe.

Patreon supporters at the Silver membership or above get to watch the show live as we record it. You can get the show three days early and get the full exclusive pre and post shows. Today's thrilling content in the pre show. Fran was talking about how much he does push-ups in the morning. No. Well, technically, the answer was zero, but still. But I don't, anyway. You have to go check that out.

There was a lot of truffle conversation. Yeah. Poisoning. Mm-hmm. We ran the gamut there. Shout to our Patreon producers for this month, Daniel Massey and James Hastings, making all of this magic happen.

If you don't want to do any of that, it's fine. You can watch the show on Mondays on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or roostoogeet.com or just search for Kind of Funny Games cast on your favorite podcast service. We're sponsored by Zebitt and Upstart, but we will talk about that later. Let's just get right into it.

Last week, two weeks ago, actually. We were right here at this table. we did some E3 predictions Andy It's time It's time for you to come sit here on the shock mic Oh yeah I want to know

I mean like there's a lot of There's a lot of different scoring Scores out there want you to know You know what I mean? Yeah but there's one where I'm second place Which I appreciate Oh I thought all of them are There's a couple where I'm third

But Maybe not maybe not this one Can you bring it up please? How do we just not? Can we just go Well we don't have a record We don't go do the whole thing but C underscore Anon on Reddit made this and the final scores

I am the winner with 3.9 then Fran with 2.1 then Greg with 1.8 Andy with 1.3 and then Barrett with just 0.3. So what are this out of? And you feel you can trust these scores based on 10? Out of 10? Because I saw another one I was last.

This is what happens when I'm not on the prediction show. Yeah. 3.9 is the best you can do. Well, remember the thing is that it's not a, you can get the partial points which is where it's getting so bad, where it's not out of, it's like out of a million or whatever in terms of what you're going to break it down to.

But what we're bringing it down, the key things I like is that he added all of this editorialization here. Most comments slash additions to other predictions from me, which I definitely, definitely buy. That makes a lot of sense. Fran, with the most ridiculed correct prediction. With the friend of the wild sequel. I thought you were crazy.

Oh, my God. What did it happen? It was just like, Fran gets the point of it. Point. What? That was a huge one. Gotta love it. Greg, with the most accurate with his comments slash additions to other predictions. Fixing everybody else's predictions.

And then Andy with the worst prediction ever. I mean, that's the opinions. Perfectly dark. So, Andrea, so I predicted that Doug Bowser would announce perfect dark. And, you know, usually they're always, we always wear a shirt, like a special. And I said he'd be wearing a perfectly dark shirt, which like, come on. It's genius guys. I get this company gold, Andrea.

Yeah, of course. You don't appreciate you enough. Keep your shit to KFAF.A. I'm then Barrett with the best dream come true moment with the bikini bottom remastered prediction. That was huge. Oh my God. So great.

You got to love it. I feel like that was the most ridiculed correct prediction, actually. Well, I'm sorry, though. I mean, it was only YouTube. I was. I was, dude. Hey. And I'm happy that.

I will never forget that moment, though. here at six damn a.m. for the Pokemon direct. We did that thing and then Kevin left, everyone left, it was just me and Barrett here. And I look at my Twitter as I'm making the thumbnail for the Pokemon thing and I see Spongebob come up and I'm like

Oh no. I was like Barrett Get in here right now and he came in and I just started recording And then he saw it like at any other time we would have not got that reaction video. I came into the back room and then Tim stopped me coming into the back room I was like what's happening? And I knew something was like announced or something because

you're being weird and the first thing that popped in my head was Batman got leaked or something like he totally expected to be Batman or Harry Potter and it was fucking SpongeBob which was still just as hype for me and it was fucking awesome it's huge man you got to love it but Greg what other predictions

points have you seen I'm just saying there's someone else that did tweet one where I was at number two and I was hoping you'd pull that but I didn't want to tell you that it's kind of like you know I wanted you to find the light on your own Because then they want to look like I'm trying to stuff the ballot box here. You know, I'm making myself better. I saw one where I was in last month.

I was like, I don't know how these things work. Can you scroll down? So wait. Yeah, you never actually read the scores yet, did you, Tim? I read the scores. Oh, you did? Yeah. Yeah, let's see what this one says.

Yeah, I found the one that I think you're talking about Greg here from B.J. Bernardo. Okay. And all he said was fourth place, Andy, third place, Fran. Second place, Greg, first place, Tim. And it's that thing where I've just always heard that B.J. Bernardo gets it right. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying that this is fake news.

We got tweeted one like three days ago where I was beating Fran. And I saw that and I was like, I don't think that's true, but I'll go with it. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how it works. Whatever you guys tell me, I'll believe. I don't think there's a way it works. Can we just listen through it again? I'd be like, yeah, that was right.

You can go to YouTube.com slash kind of funny games and go for it over there. That's what they did. I'll take second place though, Tim. Yeah. I like it. This is really good with the notes and the additions and the comments and the results and everything. Yeah. Let me ask you this.

Who thought Bethesda was? going to take a shot at anthem. Me. I did. That was monothe. What? Seriously? Well, it was with the Fallout 76 thing. I thought they'd make some little snod comment about it. No. But they did. Bethes is better than that. They wouldn't do that. They did, it was in the vein of Fallt 76,

right? And they did self-deprecate about it. So you kind of... I was right on all that. It was the anthem thing I tossed in there. I think it's flavor and didn't get. Yeah, and our predictions with our Magic 8 ball show, we had guessed that Pete Hines would say we fucked up on stage, like verbatim, and then he didn't. I was bummed. That would be a big.

big, big one. He tapped his leg for us, though. He did. We did. We did. He did. He did. He did.

It's true. Did you see it? No. Yeah, we called him, annually we call him every pre-show. Like, 10 minutes before they go live, we call Pete Hines and he answers every time. And we give him a pep talk,

and then it was, uh, cool. Can we were just wondering if when you go out tonight, you can tap your leg for us. And he's like, I'll try. I don't know, guys. I'll try. Sure enough, he went up and went up and went. And then he, when he went off stage,

he texted at me, tapped the leg That's awesome How did your predictions go? Our predictions went pretty good We're going to go over all the scores tonight On tonight's episode That we're recording

But Ours is just more for funsies Because we ask questions To a magic eight ball So it's not like we make specific predictions like you guys do It's more for the funny stuff As we say it was good

So you let the eight ball answer Will there be a breath of two wild sequels? and Brad the Wild too. We didn't ask that question because we assumed that there would not be not this early. But Fran, though. Surprise.

Did you have the dark part right now? You were just like almost spot on. My biggest surprise of missing games, though, was I couldn't believe Nintendo didn't say a word about Bain at a three. That was a bummer. I think it's because of Astral Chain. I think because it's coming so soon

they want to like push the platinum stuff to be a little bit more away from each other, but it's been so long since we've heard about Bain at a 3. Similar. theory because where the heck, what is retro studios doing other than working at Metro Prime now? They just put up that new thing today?

The job post. Yeah. But I got a theory that whatever, this Star Fox Grand Prix thing is probably actually done and they're holding it for the same types of reasons. Like, ah, we're going to push out and pace out later because we need to fill gaps. We'll see, man. It is definitely possible. Retro, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see anything from them.

Where is they doing for the vast? I mean, I think at this point, I think it's a safer bet to say that they were working on something. I can. Possible. Yeah. I think Metroid's the next thing we see from them.

Unfortunately. Because I thought we would have seen that this one. The next, I would rather see something soon. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Prime 4 is not for a millennia. Yeah, exactly. The millennium. The will any of them, dude. Get hype. Let's get into it. Speaking of E3.

Thanks, Andy. That's all I do you. Fine. Good job. What shirt is that? It's a good looking shirt. It's perfectly dark. Should I play that game?

Should I play that game? Yeah. God. E3. Friend, let's start with you. What was your game of the show, E3 2019? I've been strong with this one a little bit, but... Actually, before you say it, because what we did,

we did the kind of funny approved, where we gave three different games, four different games? Four different games are kind of funny approved faces, and then we had the overall kind of funny game of the show award. So I want to know what are your, let's go three, Fran approved, and then your Fran game of the show.

And Fran Poohs is like, I liked it, I like what I see it. It stuck out to me. Your top things. Doesn't even be ranked, just top things. Yeah, even the word. top I'm going to use loose because I actually didn't see a ton hands-on and I saw all the press

carverses so I don't know if you were looking you're judging stuff for the press conferences too there's a lot out there our qualifications are can we give our base award to someone physically? Okay yeah so behind closed door demo or played it so based on that Frank is just top of my head stuff

that stuck out who yeah I really liked watchdogs oh yeah tank cyberpunk and well Final Fantasy 7 remake obviously but it was hard

because like I also checked up Borderlands and was it a new demo I really liked Luigi Borderlands Yeah they added a new Moes I thought so

when we were doing easy allies I think they saw it at Xbox their stage where it was the demo we played at the event and then I was wondering if on the floor they were behind closed

Yeah they had a new new gameplay build yeah so I know I cheated that a bit but actually I just put in the honorable mention of Luigi was a really good showing

and I played Zelda, Pokemon, and that. We'll get out to all the Nintendo stuff later. I'm not asking you everything you played, Fran. I'm not asking you for your top three. Fran approved. I think I got it, right? And what's your number one then? What's your game of the show?

Game of the show for Fran. It's probably Final Fantasy 7 remake. Hell yeah, dude. It's still processing. Right answer, baby. And he lost. And he lost. So no like Mike made the right call.

Yeah. We needed a tiebreaker for our game of the show because I chose Final Fantasy. He chose cyberpunk. Oh, nice. And then we had a debate on the show. So like Mike ended up going to talk about this on the show. What's up?

I was just wondering if we're talking about those games on the show. Oh, yeah. We're talking about all of them, baby. Whatever you're asking. What have Andrea approved three games? And then what is the Andrea game of the show? So this is, well, I've been making this list because obviously we're both part of GCA's. I was kind of finding what's good.

Are you guys, does it count? Is it all games we saw or does it have to have been playable? We just do all games you saw. We don't do the playable stuff like the Keeleys do. Okay. For, okay, so for top three, oh, wait, three games I liked, and then I'll leave my game show.

Okay. I have to say, cyberpunk 277 for sure. I was glad I got to see it this year. The demo looks awesome. I am excited to play. And I really liked what they showed us in the, in the behind closed doors demo and how,

you know, kind of like really, the layers of, of world building that they're doing in that game are really impressive, especially since it's all original stuff they're not working off of like an existing intellectual property, a book series, I think maybe, no?

No, Brian. I don't think so. I think it's all like CDPR original stuff, right? If I'm not wrong. And so I think that's really impressive. And so the tech that they showed looks really cool. I was a little disappointed. It's a second year and we didn't get even like a small build

to try out and see what the gameplay feels like. So I'm a little concerned. about that. Yeah. But knowing their history and everything they did with The Witcher, I think they've set themselves

up for some success, hopefully. So that's one for sure. I also was really impressed with Watch Dogs Legion and everything they showed. I was incredibly skeptical before they showed gameplay

and before they gave hands on. And then afterwards, I was like, okay, I'm going down this path. I love the idea of like there's these three archetype classes and that there's all these different NPCs that fit into them.

Then you're kind of like building a squad that has like a mix and match of all these different kind of RPG mechanics. They've all got perks. They only have three perks, but there's a million other perks. Exactly.

You can kind of tailor it to your personal play style. Like, do you want to go all drone commanders or do people who all have stealth? Or? Old ladies. Just old ladies. Yeah.

I like that. The slowest squad in Watchdog's Legion. So I thought that that was a really impressive showing for sure. And then also Final Fantasy Sisy Evan remake. I had no interest. in this game before seeing the combat demo.

And this is me as somebody who's never been a Final Fantasy player. I was forced into playing Final Fantasy 9 on PS4 because Alexa Rae was like, you said you would do it. I was like, I did say I would do it, so I did it with her. And then I quit after like 15 hours. Did you play Final Fantasy 7 or just watched the demo?

I've never played. No, sorry, this new one. No, Brit got hands on though and I watched a bunch of people play it. But I personally did not get on the sticks and play. So I love this right now, where we're at, because you named Cyberpunk and Final Fantasy in your Andrew approved.

So what does that make your game of the show? The Outer Worlds is my game of the show. Nice. I can't wait. Tell me more. So I was incredibly impressed by everything I saw. So I've seen this game a couple of times now. Greg and I had the opportunity to see it at Judges Week, which was a different demo than the one that I saw at E3,

which I liked. They got to see a little bit different side. We got to see more of the narrative consequences and choices that are going to be offered, whereas the demo we saw previously was a little bit more combat focus and skill tree focused. What I really love about this is that they're taking everything that Obsidian knows about making RPGs, the basis for why people loved what they did with Fallout New Vegas, and then just like polishing their shit out of it.

So that they're not necessarily reinventing the wheel. Like you're seeing what CDPR is doing with cyberpunk, and they're really kind of pushing the envelope for things that they've done in their game. gameplay techniques before. What I love about what Obsidian is doing with the Outer Worlds is they're like we are going to give you gameplay that we know you want and that you love

and we're going to give it to you like super polished in a reasonable amount of time to play an open world sci-fi RPG. Yeah, I actually talk about this one right? It's like 20, 30 hours. No, they thought they said it was more like 50, 60 hours. Maybe the Golden Path or whatever is like 20, 30 hours

but like what you do? Side content. I mean, if you're in an open world RPG who's doing Golden Path anyway, really. But what I like about it is that it's not something I have to go in planning to spend 100, 200, 300 plus hours to. You're never to see the end of it. Right. I like that they made it more of a bespoke experience versus this procedurally generated

never-ending thing, which is like, that's cool if that's what you're looking for, but that's not necessarily what I'm looking for as a gamer. So I was really impressed by it. I thought the gameplay looked great. I love that, you know, it's that feeling that you get. get from any game that brings in narrative consequences with your choices about really having to make that morally gray decision about like, oh gosh, is this the decision I want to make and knowing that you're going to be missing out on something if you make one decision or another.

But another game, I don't think, can we make it five instead of four? Go for it. I think I did. Well, the one that kind of rounds up my top five of V3 is Dine Light 2, which was a big surprise for me because I was not expecting to be impressed by what I saw there, not because 10, line doesn't know how to make games because clearly they do but because the idea of a zombie game just doesn't really blow my skirt up I'm like I'm okay and like quite frankly the day night cycle stuff that they did in the original dying light was cool but it was too intense for me as a

player playing at night with all of these really crazy monsters just chasing you all the time and so I haven't seen the night cycle stuff in dying light too because they haven't showed it yet but the the BCD demo that we got 83 was really impressive from a open world traversal perspective. What they did to... What they did to upgrade the parkour in this game was really impressive from the demo that they showed.

And they also are bringing in these kind of big narrative choices that will affect your gameplay. I think he said something like... There are like 40 plus different endings that you can get or something. Maybe that's a different game. I thought it was maybe teens for this one.

But essentially like the idea that if you make one decision it could open up this whole new section of the map and bring in these new infected that you have to fight. But if you make the other decision, maybe you never see that part of the map ever in your play through. Like that kind of stuff, I think is really interesting from a narrative perspective. So awesome. Wow. Yeah. Dial-in. I just have 15 years later, there's the only number I have here. I don't have anything about the ending. I think I asked, I think I asked the co-creative director

when I was talking to him on the Facebook stage about it. And I think with that game, they said that there's no way to really compute a number because of the sheer. amount of choices that they have within the narrative of the game. Well, I mean, that was the thing with that behind closed doors demo, right? Where when, you know, they made the choice to turn on the water pumps, right, that then gave you a giant new open world area to play in. And they're like, any questions? Like, yeah.

So, like, you're talking about choices. Like, if I, if I did the choice where I don't turn on the water pumps, does that part of the world in all those quests stay submerged? He's like, yes. I was like, oh, okay. You know, you expected to be some story decision that you make, but if you don't make it, well then somebody else does something else that does it anyway. Because obviously they spent a lot of time and money to make all that.

Like building that part of the world. And they're like, no, just not there. In this playth. I'm like, all right, cool. That's crazy. Last games cast, when we did it with Easy Allies, we were talking a little bit about my impressions of Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Yeah.

Friend, you got to play it. I did. What are your thoughts as a guy that I feel like the game's a bit more up your alley? Yeah, yeah. It absolutely stood out like it was one on my mind to throw in that list. But I really like squad-based co-op combat, obviously Division 2. That's right. Right?

Let's go. New sub or new classificate, what is it called? The new specialization is out. The specialization is out there, FYI, man. Fake fan, you know what I mean? The gunner's out. Anyway. Tell me about the destiny power lord, though, you know what I mean?

So I really like Breakpoint because it is unlike Division 2, it is so up close and brutal. It is very realistic for lack of a better way to put it. So people probably already know a lot of that about it. But if you get a wound, you might get in a certain place, you got a bandage up. You have to take your time. You really can't get shot down. So I love playing with other people. It remains to be seen as a single player experience and you can play it as a single player experience.

Yeah, Sirens on our end, right? But I really like it. I like that it just felt so upclose and brutal. I thought the demo was okay, though. It was just hard. It's hard to get into a demo like that when I only had an hour. And even then, you spent the first 15 minutes like them. Here's this button and here's where you loadouts are.

How did you get through your inventory, Fran? Yeah, right. Exactly. Here's your inventory. I mean, I was kind of talking about this a bit. Like, first off, not my type of game typically. Also, I thought that was one of the worst demos I've ever been a part of. And I think a lot of that just had to do with who I was playing with and how it was all presented and how late in the show it was.

But it just, it wasn't a great showing of the game. Do one of the producers, whatever walk your people. Walking through kind of just like so rapidly it was, oh, cool, we're doing this. Now we're going to do this. Now it's like, okay. Well, it's probably because you're talking about the showcase, like, Ubisoft's press conference. After it. No, I'm talking about like the hands-on.

Oh, okay. playing at the booth. Oh, you played it at the booth? The Ubisoft. I played it. They had a, after the conference, you go to one of their event hubs. Got it.

We went and played it. I wonder if it was the same. How long did you get to play? About almost an hour, maybe 45 minutes. So it's probably very similar. Someone was on comms with you and walking you through it. Yeah. So I had the same experience.

And that's my caveat is I was like, well, I didn't really have a chance to experience exactly how I would have. Because someone's like pushing us and I had to play with these other people. And like, yeah, I would have rather directed it. even if I didn't know what I was doing because like that's the experience is making that choice.

But I did, I like the intensity of it. And I just leave it. I like some of the skills. You know, you can watch the trailer announcement for all the stuff that's in there. But basically we ended up a little late into it where you had to throw EMP tanks at this giant tank. You had to switch your load out, get a, you know, a bazooka or missile launcher or whatever. You had to make sure to get ammo for it. And you had to coordinate as a team to do all this.

And it was definitely, that was the most challenging thing. they said that was on our map. Yeah, we did the same thing as well. The rocket launchers towards the tanks. And it's funny because, yeah, the dude helped so much that I actually didn't think it was that difficult, but I could see it being difficult. Yeah, because the idea was, it's like you had your four people you needed to each bring out your rocket launcher and shoot it, but you can't all do it from the same vantage point.

Like, you all need to kind of like surround this tank and take it down. Did you find the controls cumbersome? Oh, yeah. I mean, with that type of game, though, that's going to happen. Yeah. I thought the weapon wheel, or not even weapon wheel. Well, inventory wheel. The everything wheel, right?

Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like it's your Band-Aids, it's your health spray, it's all your weapons is on the same wheel. Yeah. It's weird. Let me say this much though. I got an hour into it. I felt like it finally sunk in. That's the only thing I would just add is this is totally the type of game like, I mean, divisions

that way, like until you play for a good, honestly, hour or more, it's so hard for, you don't feel comfortable. Wrap your head around all that stuff. And yeah, you got somebody wheeling you around, go here, go here, it's really hard to process the game. I think that's why they did have some two-hour demos. going. I would have like to spend some time with that. But what I was going to add is at the very end,

I finally was, okay, now I know where everything's at. Now, oh, I just got this shotgun. I'm like, let's go. I know what I'm like, that's the end of the demo. And you had to like peel me off of it at the end. That's good. So that was a good sign for me. Did you, did Wildlands? Did you play Wildlands? Oh, I didn't get to play it. Oh, wow, wait, no, no, sorry.

Go through your call Wildlands. I don't know why I was thinking about Otter Wilds. Yeah, I played Wildlands. And I did like it. It had all the right ideas. And I think that's what this sort of helps bring together as well. Like it goes deeper, a little more serious. I thought the quest and storyline that you followed in Wildlands was not great. It was sort of tedious. You'd unlock all these different parts of the map. And I don't know if this is going to do anything like that. But again, what I like is I use the word intensity and close up. That's what this feels like to me. It gets really close

over your shoulder. It's very much about you and you can get hurt very easily. So I think it's got a lot potential actually as a squad-based co-op game. I don't know about single player yet. That's really hard to say. Wait, so you didn't, you're... It's not your type of game anymore. Not my type of game, but even then I didn't like it. I thought that it didn't demo well

and I think that a lot of the controls even if you get used to them later, it doesn't make them good. Like I didn't like how you had to equip the rocket launcher and then hold the button to bring the animation up and just like if you let go, it went away instantly. I'm like, that doesn't add up. I feel like it's at odds with itself.

I had trouble with the rock and launcher too. It's just like so early for me to say, yeah, your name, condemn that because... Score it right now. I'm used to, again, these games be... Doesn't this fall? Yeah, it comes out in September, I think. No, there's a beta in September.

And then the actual official release date is September October. I forget. I feel like it's October. Andrew's on the case, don't worry. John Bernthall and Bam-Bang will tell you about it. I'm glad I'm here, though, Tim, because you'd be like, yeah, it was conversant. Didn't do it for me.

Totally valid points. October 4th. I mean, that's not a lot of the last. lot of time to take into feedback if they are running into other people. I haven't seen other hands-on impression. I will say that everyone that was in the room with me doing the demo, not just my squad

but like everyone, everyone kind of seemed like oh, all right, cool. Like they just kept up like, yeah, okay, now equip this, no, go to that load out. Cool, go. And everyone's like, I don't know about this. It's complicated. I mean, you can't just hop in and expect to know all this. Again, I'm not defending it yet. It's

early, but I would say you should have expected that going in. It is just that type of game. that there's a lot going on. Like I definitely felt intimidated at first. It was like, where is all this stuff? And you had, you know,

your loadouts change in the menu. Yeah, which I definitely thought was, I was like, what? But I will say that the Wildlands demo was one of my favorite three demos we've ever done when it was me and Greg

and like when the first time we played and they brought us in and it was kind of like raiding the area. And like, yeah, that was awesome. It's like, it's very similar. So.

I felt, yeah, but it was less complex as I recall from a what you could do. Yeah, you didn't have to bandage. up first and then heal yourself and the way you go stealth. Like all those things were, that's fine, by the way. I liked Wildlands, but it is very, I don't want to say surface level because it was deeper

than that, but this goes really deep from what I could tell with my hands on. So there's just like a lot to learn. And frankly, like I feel like if you hop into the, we'll talk about FF7 remake later, right? There's a process where you're like, wait, what am I doing? Once it sinks in, you're good, but beforehand, you're like, does this even make sense, you know? I mean, so I feel like it's one of those games.

Got to have time with it. Sure, that's most games. Let's show right into it then. No. 5-Nc-7 remake. Yeah. I've already been talking to it. I didn't want to take it over.

I mean, people, kind of funny games cast listeners have heard me talk about Ether. It's your guys. It's your guys to show at this court. You had to watch. No, yeah. So I didn't personally hold the controller.

But I, you know, watched the presentation at the Squarion X press conference and got to see some people playing it on the show floor. I think that what they're doing, with the updated combat is really cool. I think it appeals to people like me who were never interested in a Final Fantasy game

that was old, turn-based method, right? But I'm really more interested in the Final Fantasy 15 style of, you know, third-person combat. That to me is more exciting, but I like how they've kept that kind of classic tactical mode in to kind of give it like a nod to the turn-based ways of your, or however you want to refer to it.

And the animation looks great. Obviously, like, there was still more to be seen about what is this extra stuff that they're adding in to fill out so many additional hours of gameplay. Like, how much extra narrative does that, what does that look like? What does that mean? How does it change the original storytelling of the game? I think that there's still a lot of unknowns, but it seems like people are pretty hype for it. Yeah. I would say that with everything they showed here, I feel like it's all hints of going in a good direction.

Like how they're going to fill it out. All the new stuff we saw dialogue-wise, character-wise, and even plot-wise of what was going on with Sephiroth and stuff, I think that it's very much in good hands. And I have full faith that they're going to kind of succeed with this vision of what they're trying to do of remaking this game, not just for the people that love the original, but for new people,

but also just making this just a good game without having to stand on what came before. I think that I was saying this in the last episode, but the similarities to 15, I think, are just visually just looking at it. It plays totally different than 15. It is way more action-based until you get to the turn-based. It's not so much like either or. It's like you need the action parts to kind of build up your,

so you like slash a bunch to build up your gauge to then be able to use the more. It's not turn-based, but things slow down. Yeah, the tactical mode. kind of tactical decision and a lot of strategy comes into play of using your different spells and when to switch between the characters and stuff. And I've never played a game like that that seamlessly combines the fast-paced action with the more methodical RPG elements that in a way that worked. Final Fantasy 13 tried to introduce that, but anytime it slowed down, it felt like it was a different game. This doesn't feel like a different game. Yeah, the only game that kind of makes me think of a semi-

similar situation was what they were doing in Dragon Age Inquisition where you have your party members and they each have individual skills and then you could go into that like top down tactical mode. Do you guys remember that? I do remember that. Yeah. But I mean obviously different but

semi similar. It's what I always really wanted out of mass effects combat with your squad mates with their individual powers that you've leveled up to be able to like hot swap between those characters was like the dream and that just never happened. Yeah.

Hit me, Fran. So yeah, that's good. Good point of context. Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy. Ooh, I like this. I like what this is going. So, yes, I was a huge Final Fantasy 7 fan.

So formative in my growing up. I actually only had an N64, and my friend had a PlayStation, and we had to trade. He wanted to play Golden Eye, and we'd play at my house anyway. But he wanted to have that and other stuff, and I wanted to play PlayStation. So I borrowed his PlayStation, which later led to a corrupted save file. Oh. that almost, he's my best friend probably in all of life.

So we've blasted through it. That was a tough time. It was hard to explain. I was like, I don't know what happened. It just, the save corrupted. Anyway. Fran, it's years later. You can admit you pull it out and they say.

They warn you, Fred. So I was a huge fan of F of 7. I've been waiting for this forever like everybody else. I have actually been not intentionally media blackout, but maybe unknowingly I have been. So I actually didn't see the square conference. I didn't have time. before I had a chance to play it.

So I kind of went in pretty fresh, not knowing more than what I've seen in the trailers. Okay, so just to set things up, again, as a reminder, yes, it's a remake of Final Fantasy 7. We know it's chapterized or something. Well, we don't know for sure. There's going to be more than one game. That's all we know.

It's going to split it up. They're not using the word episodic. They're staying away from that, and they're not saying how many games are going to come. But they're saying that Final Fantasy 7 remake part one, right? They're reliving. They're saying that it's up till the end of Midgar. Yeah.

That's right. This is Midgard. You're reliving the characters and the story and, you know, they're doing other stuff in there. But anyway, so I went in pretty fresh. And number one, what stood out to me a ton was actually, yes, the production value. It shouldn't surprise me. It was square. But that maybe above all is what stood out.

I was like, wow, like how close up it is in the characters, the detail of all the worlds. And actually, when you get into the boss scene, I was really impressed with just the amount of like custom, like close up cut scenes and things happening to keep you engaged. during battle. That weren't quick time events. No, no, it's in the middle of like damaging the boss. Yeah, it'll just be like, like pulls back. Yeah, it's not a quick time event. It's you did some damage, right?

And then all of a sudden it's like this scene, but it's custom. And there's like close-ups and mid-range shots, and I thought that was really impressive. I just was thinking about other games I play, and I was like, not a lot of games go to this amount of detail. Granted, this was just one boss and this one level and how much of this is going to happen, but I was like really impressed with how cinematic that boss fight felt for what it was. felt for what it was. I don't know. How did you feel about what it's happening?

I totally agree. And I mean, I feel like Square, you know, for all the shit that they get and in a lot of cases deserve. The production value is always the one thing that they knock out of the park. Like with Final Fantasy 15, it, the boss fights were that way where it's like every single one was equally momentous. Like finding the tightness. Whoa.

Exactly. And it's like 15 finally hit that point, I think, where I remember growing up watching Advent Children, the Final Fantasy 7 movie. And just being like that. like, oh my God, can you imagine being able to play this? Like that's insane. And now it's like, no, that's the case. Like, that's what this is now. And I love the cinematic camera of the gameplay

that backs everything up of switching between characters. Did you do that at all? When you switch between Cloud and Barrett, like, just the way it's seamless. Like, you hit up and down on the D-Pad and it'll just like, the camera goes out a little bit, goes over quickly and then like goes back in and it's just like, it feels so good.

It's pretty good, yeah. So you real time switch between characters where Cloud and Barrett, one obviously with like a big giant mini gun and cloud with a sword. Yeah, you just press the D-pad and it fast swaps wherever. Overall, I felt it was good. Definitely, like, any game like this, the camera's not always quite where you want it to be. But you have full control.

Yeah, I definitely... Oh, I thought it was great. It definitely got in... Like, there'd be times where the boss was, like, in between and the wrong... You just spin it around. Like, you fix it. But I definitely didn't feel like it was some perfect system, like, you know. Not that it was bad, by the way.

I was very impressed with the camera work specifically. You didn't feel you needed to adjust it. No. I did. I felt more... Because, like, the thing is you kind of... targeting on these, right? So it's, I feel like it looks more similar to like a third person action game.

And it's not that. So it's like the moment you just kind of lock on, then all you need to really worry about is like your menus of what spells you're casting. And, you know, part of it maybe is just my play style. I like a certain frame on the boss and seeing myself and also my other character, but whatever. So jump to the next point to the new combat system. Yeah, I would say that absolutely surprised me that they pulled it off in a way that

does feel modern, but still. respectful to call it the ways of your like you said it is turn based in a moment but you're right it's it's a progressive new combat system so you basically you have real time right I'm cloud I got a giant sword I can just like block bullets and stuff and get up close and start

slashing at someone so that now builds my next level right so I'm building this meter to unlock the real or the turn base style combat right that's how it works you have like what I saw there was two meters that you fill up so each one you can you have two slots to fill up right and it's not turn base

We keep saying term base. It's absolutely not. It's not, but it is the same thing. So you're why it is turn base for a moment. It's menu based. Okay. Semantical, you should work for the marketing department. I follow you.

But like you literally press a button when you build a meter. No, no, no. Don't tell Franie's wrong. He doesn't take it well. You're not taking turns. No, no, no, because you're right that it's not, but it's also semantical because I'm going to argue it is because as soon as you finally build a meter and you press the button, it does stop. Action stops.

It's your turn to make a decision. You have a moment. to, I mean, well, is it slow motionish? It's slow-mo, yeah, it doesn't stop. Yeah, but if there's not a moment where you can't act because the boss is taking his turn, then it's not turn-based. Was there that moment where you couldn't move or do anything

because the boss was setting up a spell or an attack against you? You're right, actually. You were right. The boss doesn't take its turn. Right. So then it's not turn-based. It's half-turn-based then. You take your turn, and the boss doesn't get to.

You don't get to, here, I'm going to argue, you don't get to see the boss. He's doing it. You can see it. Okay. That's like another level of role play out there. Fran, you're coming to Jesus on this and I like it. And it's also time to probably admit double dash, not a seven and higher than that.

Right. Let's just get them out. Get that weight off your shoulder, you know? Another day, another time. So anyway, I really like it though. So you build a meter and you get into this next level of combat. So both characters are building it. You can switch between and use these really cool moves.

You can also heal and take the moments to do stuff like that. So I really like that you go slow-mo. Use these really cool. moves that have cool animations and all that. And then of course you have the top level, which is your limit break. Limit break, which is your super. So you're building all this stuff and it feels great. Yeah, like you said, I loved all of the feel of everything.

So I'm pretty hyped about it now that I'm seeing it because the production value, it was fun to play, it didn't feel broken or awkward or boring, you know. It was fun to take that boss down. Boss had different parts that you were focused on. You can play your way. I actually realized too late I was focusing on just the main centerpiece for the whole time so I didn't break the legs. Does something happen, do you know?

If you break the legs down, then it's immobile and it doesn't shoot as many of the rockets. But I ended up not doing that because I was just like going hype and I was excited to play it. So really happy with that. And the last note I would make is the visuals, though, I'm still getting used to. This is really weird, like highly dithered look. There's this noisiness, not quite a film grain. I don't know if it's because the hair and some of the stuff they're doing. Some of it's good because it's not clean.

but it's got this dithered noisy look like almost the screen door effect is on a lot did you notice that? I see what you're talking about but I feel like that's always been the case with fall of S7's art style like it always has the kind of like dirty air look

Yeah part of it is it's also just the engine and the way that it's dithering between stuff anyway Not a problem but it took some getting used to I'm curious if it was a TV if it was 4K like who knows Yeah and it's not final Did you see the behind closed doors like demonstration before you got to play?

Yeah they did like the tutorial thing first right so I saw that the explanation that was pretty cool but I didn't show it didn't show us anything really different than the demo did it? So did you just do the thing whether they play the demo on the TV and then you get to go in

or do you do the thing that was like an hour long thing before you got to play? Okay cool that was like the producer playing through showing a lot more of just like what the overworld stuff looks like or not overworld but like playing through the mission not just the like let's get to the boss part Oh cool.

It's like above all this is not turn-based. Very specifically. It is not turn-based. Andrea. Yes. What game do you want to talk about here? You want to talk about Watchdogs, Legion, a little bit? Maybe not Watchdogs, because I didn't get as much time with that as my coworkers did.

It's awesome. You're exciting. Get hype. Yeah. Let me look through my notes really quick about the games that I got to play that we didn't really get to talk about yet. Well, we didn't talk about. Journey to the Savage Planet or control.

Control. From 505. Yeah, I wanted to try that in. We didn't get to talk about Oh, I could talk about Dark Siders Genesis. Hell yes. A game I haven't talked to

on the other shows about that I'm super stoked for. Yeah, so this was one of those games that was embargoed until the Tuesday of E3 when they opened the show floor and then they had kiosks for everybody at E3 to go and try out Dark Siders Genesis.

So this is being, published by THQ Nordig being developed by Airship Syndicate. We got a chance to get a deep dive with it during

Judges Week, which was great because we got like 45 to 60 minutes to really play through the whole demo. I don't know how long the demo was

that they had on the show floor. What's up over there? Kevin. Too much pizza for Kevin. Exactly. He's got the cheese

crazies. So they had this new horseman strife that they've introduced who we got to play as, But then they also have war coming back as a playable character. And so it's a co-op game between Strife and War.

I actually really preferred Strife's gameplay style because he's a little bit more nimble, more like he can tumble a little bit faster. And then he's got these dual blades, which are really cool. Now, hard pause. Do you know anything about Dark Side of Genesis? That's what I was going to say. If you could say, I think I do.

And I'm like, is this like a Diablo? Walking in, walking into it, that was my thing, where they were like, oh, Diablo Genesis. Dark Siders Genesis is like Oof, I'm not a Dark Siders guy And it was, no, no, this is a new take on Dark Siders, this is not the Dark Siders you know Yes, it is like a Diablo.

It is an action RPG You know, isometric Exactly, go in there, fight the things, get the loot, go through and, you know, get better or whatever. And I was like, oh. Yeah, so just to set this, to set it up since you guys are bringing up a good point that a lot of people don't know about Dark Siders.

So originally a hack and slash action adventure video game. We've got three of them. This is, the series is set in post-apocalyptic earth where mankind has become extinct in angels and demons battle for the world's control. Among them are the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

This is just literally straight from Wikipedia, by the way. The last of the Nefflehem who are tasked to bring balance in order. So essentially you've got these four horsemen and they're the stars of the game. And so in this one, it's strife and war. Those are the

only two playable. And I asked them I kind of was like, why you've got all these great horsemen, why don't make them all playable? And they're kind of like left it unanswered. So do they say the other ones won't be in the game exclusively? That was my understanding from the questions that I asked them that it was just going to be

strife in war, but I imagine you'll see them pop up in terms of a cut scene, they're doing their thing, they're on their own action. They appear in the game, but I don't believe they're going to be playable. Right. So it's co-op, online multiplayer, or local split screens you can choose. And then if you're playing solo, you can just

you can swap between the characters. And so it is very much that Diablo top-down isometric look. You have an AI partner if you're running solo. Yeah. Which is what we did. We were all playing solo. It's really designed for co-op then. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. So I asked them about damage scaling in co-op and they said there is none. But maybe that they would add a limiter in the future. There's a variety of vendors that you can find, that you can buy upgrades for because there is, you know, like a skill tree for the horsemen that you're, playing as. And what I really liked about the gameplay is that it really kind of did this nice combination of some traversal puzzles with really great, you know, top-down hack and slash combat,

which was just like, it was just really fun to play. Now, the build that we played had a few issues, but it was pre-alpha. So kind of, you know, we forgive builds for being a little buggy when they're in that state. And for people who are concerned or curious, I should say, about the narrative, it is a standalone story that takes place before Darksiders won. So if you're like really into the Darksiders franchise, it's after the war in Eden and after the Neffalham have been destroyed

and have, they've just become the horsemen. It's the genesis of the horsemen. Correct. Darkseys Genesis has the name. Yeah, for me, you know, again, not having any background with it, I was surprised for me with TshQ Nordic, this is the one I walked out the most impressed with and the one that I walked,

it was for that day, I think, the game where I was like, this is the one I want the most, I want this on my switch right now. I want to be able to play this on the plane, on the bus, or whatever. It was just the gameplay was so good. It felt good to hack and slash. It felt good to roll around as the different characters, right?

Strife, more fast than war. Like, right, there's actually a different thing. So when we were approaching bosses or baddies, it was like, well, what kind of, what does the approach I want? And I could switch off between it. I thought it was colorful. I thought the world looked good. Again, like you said, very early.

There was the one, I think I mentioned this at the time when we were embargoed, that I had had one of the weirdest things. happened to me in a demo. This is the game where I got to a point and I got stuck and I popped off my ear and Joe Mads and I was like Joe, what am I not doing? He came up and he was like, oh yeah, like it's your, it seemed like there was like signposting issues, right?

He's like you don't have to worry about that. You're trying to get into a secret area, but it looks like it's a main area. There's a ladder over there that's like hidden. I was like, oh, it was just like not lit up the right way. It's like great. And then as I went to put it back on, everyone else started hitting the exact same thing.

I had the exact same thing. I had that exactly ball too. Literally, it's like, it's like the nightmare for a developer. Because he literally was like, oh man, I told them we should have done something different here. And I'll put this in the demo. And everyone, of course, we all get it. Like, oh my God, it's an unfinished game. Don't worry about it, blah, blah.

And it didn't take away from it. It's still the game that I was like, this, like, I'm getting on a plane tomorrow. This is the game I'd want with me. But you did hit a confusing point. Hopefully they iron stuff. I think that, yeah. And I mean, they knew ahead of time. It was just, I mean, getting their demo ready.

That's what they ran with. Yeah, we see that stuff all the time. Yeah. But like you said, the traversal stuff was great, the combat was great, I thought the characters felt different enough. What do you got for me from me? What was the combat? I mean, is it like very super powered? Is it a lot of different buttons?

Is it simple? No, it's mostly like a two button. It's mostly like a two button system. So, I mean, you have a light attack, a heavy attack, a dodge or evade. And then you have like a powered up attack that you kind of, you know, build up over, it refreshes over time. And it's like a super. So when I was playing as Strife, you would like hit like the double, um, um, shoulder buttons or whatever, and then he would go into this giant flaming monster-looking thing

with this giant axe that you could use to do like really big damage against bosses. But what was interesting is that we were, they put us into this dungeon run mode where we got to fight one of like the big bosses because the boss we fought in that main demo was just like a mini boss, which was still a pretty tough boss, but in the dungeon run mode where we got to fight like this giant boss, that whole boss fight if you beat it and I didn't, I didn't spend them on a because we had X amount of games we had to play, would be like a 45-minute boss fight. So almost kind of raid-like,

but not because it's just co-op. It's not like a big group activity. Totally dug it. Really excited for it. For me, it's striking the same notes that I liked of why I was excited about Marvel Ultimate Alliance. However, I feel like this is the better game of those two. Yeah, to your point of when we're playing Ultimate Alliance, I feel like this game has a more, I know what this is.

There's only two characters, obviously, so they feel different. They feel it. they feel more unique, which is what we were talking about playing Ultimate Alliance 3, where it was like, I'm Cap,

but you're Wolverine, it doesn't feel like there's that much of a difference. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. I'm kind of speaking about that. I want to talk about Nintendo, friend. But before we do that,

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Nintendo, baby. Yeah. 3 booth. What did you get to play? Just the big three that I considered anyway, which was Pokemon, Zelda, and Lou EG. Mm-hmm. Did you get to play any Nintendo games? I missed the Nintendo booth appointment with the girls because I was hosting on the

Facebook stage. So did not get to see the booth. What, Won't Marble Ultimate Alliance is one of the big three. All right. You just trash talked

it next to Genesis. No, I like you a lot. I don't know. I think I've heard enough. I'm so fast. Talk to me about Pokemon. I did not play Pokemon. I watched people do the demo,

but I was kind of like, I get it. I know what this is. Yeah. Oh, wow. I know. Here's a deal. Okay.

He was falling asleep there, everybody. I'm joking. It doesn't have enough engrims for him. No. So, well, yes, that's true.

Destiny joke, everybody. Get with it. Okay, number one, I'm not, it's not that I'm against Pokemon I liked Pokemon Go and recently Pokemon Let's Go, let's go.

But I never really got into the Game Boy stuff just for a time sake. You get a lot of Pokemon's sleep. I know that I would have enjoyed it. Oh, Pokemon Sleep, that's right. Which is funny now that I just was jokingly sleeping. But anyway, long story short, I just don't think the demo was any good. It's so hard to demo a Pokemon game.

That's why I didn't wait. Let's describe what the demo was. I think it is. Why is it hard to demo a Pokemon game? Because I think it's hard to demo a Pokemon game. Because I think it's hard to demo any turn-based RPG. Okay. Let's go over what the demo was and why I just don't think it was a good idea. I felt like it was for like kids.

Don't get me wrong. It's not like it was bad. I mean, it's Pokemon. Like what did you do? Did you go straight into that gym with the switches? I didn't play it. Okay. Well, I just watched people do it.

I'm pretty sure. I'm like, I don't need to get my hands on Pokemon. So basically all you did, you would know there were two things that you did, as I recall. So one, you get put into pretty quickly after some dialogue, I think, into like a little gym with these great pathways and there's like these water pipes that are pouring water down onto the pass so you can't proceed and there's red and yellow switches

and you're going around getting just figuring out the switches and in between of course there's some other Pokemon trainers like wait a second where are you going and then you got to fight them and how fast you do it based on what you have which is already your load out so it's clearly a little bit into the game probably but I just didn't enjoy like

I've done this a thousand billion times in video games so doing some switches figuring out the puzzle and just doing some basic fights. Fights that I feel didn't really offer anything more than when I was playing. Let's go big now. Yes. Did you ever go big?

The Dynamax you're talking about? So I think it's right after this that you go into, yeah, the stadium. So they let you try the stadium out. And you get into a fight, yeah, a really big fight and you use, yeah, the Dynamax and you have this really big Pokemon. And it was a cool fight. Were you the corgi? Oh, I don't remember.

You make a big corgi? I don't remember. I honestly don't remember what. Pokemon. You would even give this game a chance. I tried all the different Pokemon. Again, I'm not a Pokemon expert. I do apologize, but I'm not going to be a fake fan of pretend that I know all the

Pokemon's names and stuff. So anyway, I don't know the Corgi's name. I'm just calling it the Corgi. So here's my brief overview, which was like I was looking forward to playing an open world that had sort of something to it that I could feel. And like, I didn't get that demo. So that must be coming later. But they did something that was just very,

It just didn't feel like... Yamber? Yampur. Yampur. Oh, yeah. I tried yamper. Is the Corgi. I did buy it.

It's a hardens butt. Oh, it's got a little like fur. A little fur butt. A little corgi fur butt. In any event, the stadium stuff was cool, and I think that's the new thing. But it just was all very basic. And so it just wasn't an exciting demo. And when we get to Luigi, I think you'll hear why I'm just next to me.

Let's get right into it, dude. Puichi, baby. Then let's jump into it. So I played even Zelda. And by the way, a huge Zela fan. I played Zelda. And I just. was like, okay.

Forget Luigi. Let's talk about Zelda. No, no, no. Yeah, but... Zelda got one of my game of the show. Yeah, let's do this. Let's lead on to, save the best for last. Oh.

And here's why. I'm not going to... I'm not saying that Zelda may not be even the best for the three at the end of the day. Like, right, Link's Awakening seems really cool. I love the style. Again, very, very basic demo. Cool style. It was just a taste of the style.

Pokemon was the same thing. But from a gameplay perspective, you know me, I'm all about the gameplay mechanics. I was just like, okay, you know, going to the... You know, the Lost Woods and go over and push this thing and get in. And actually, I like it. I know that I'm going to like it because it's Zelda, but the demo itself just wasn't that exciting. There was nothing new to it. So maybe just stopping on it.

Did you like how the style delivered? I really like the style. I think the style delivered everything I needed. I already know the gameplay is there for Link's Awakening. I thought that they did a very good job of making me want to go back now to revisit that world and see everything that's offering. It's been long enough since I played Link's Awakening that I don't remember every single thing to do.

Yeah, I don't think I ever played Link's Awakening, so this will be new to be such good. Yeah. Yeah, because that was just on Game Boy. It's great, man. I just don't think I got through it. Then I got re-released on Game Boy Color. What I will say is, yeah, yeah, true. I had many missed opportunities, apparently.

So really like style. I will be knocking Switch however for its performance. It's a finished game, so we'll of course see if it improves. Just the blurriness and the frame rate occasionally hitched. It's not blurriness, it's tilt shift. It's tilt shift, sure. But I'm not saying I like the style, Tim. I'm just saying all things combined, it feels a little like it's supposed to be dreaming, but it's hitching a little bit.

I almost felt like it'd be better. I was going to say, Kevin. If it was 60 frames a second, I think I would just be glorious. It was not 60. That is true. It's 25 to 30. And I feel like it is a performance issue. I agree.

I hope they clear up by the time it actually releases. Thank you. Because it wasn't as smooth and flawless as it should feel for a game that's a rematch. of a game board game, even if the style is beautiful. But the blur and stuff, like that's built in the art stuff. No, I love the tilt shift stuff.

No, but I'm saying all things combined, my point I'm trying to make is it's supposed to retain the sort of dreamy state. I think if, if and when they get it locked to 30, it'll be fine because it won't pull you out of it because of what it was. It just felt a little sluggish times. But I love the style.

It really is beautiful. I just love seeing something new in terms of the Zelda style. But gameplay-wise, I mean, I don't know. You didn't do that much in the demo, right, that you haven't done. Did everything you need to do, though. Walked in a couple houses, you know, a couple rocks and went and grabbed something.

What I was saying last time that I was really impressed by is I feel like it showed off enough different areas, whether you're in the house or in the woods or down by the beach or whatever, and seeing the creative ways Nintendo uses the art style that it has to like kind of all add up to this hole. I thought was really impressive. Yeah. And it does look at, I am excited for it. I think it's the jaded Zelda gamer coming out in me.

Like I've played so much Zelda. So I'm very looking forward to, I mean, when Breath of the Wild came out, it blew my mind. And that's why I'm excited for the sequel. It's, I also like the 2D style stuff. It's just, it's easy to not be excited by him anymore because you kind of know what to expect. So we'll see if there's any surprises. That's why I'm excited for it. Because I know.

I didn't play, I didn't play links awakening either. So I'm going in. But I just love a good Zelda. And like, I'm totally down to push blocks and get my, get my bottle. And it's weird too. Like, it's not linked to the past. It's like because the Game Boy had such weird limitations, I feel like it had a different gameplay style. You were limited by the shape of the screen.

the like how big the screen was of what you could show. So it's like they had to get really weird with some of the things that you had to do. And I think that translating that into modern times is going to be fun. I think they're going to do it well. Don't want me being jaded and liking new PC 60 frames of second games. Like I just wanted to make that note. If you could plug an AMD radion card for this thing, you'd be stoked. And vitiate, G-Force, what you talk about?

I'm excited for it. It's going to be a good game. I'm very confident. The style and everything is going to be awesome. People are going to be happy. So Luigi's Mansion, The reason I was saving it is just like I get from a gameplay perspective, and I've always been a Luigi's Mansion fan. Oh, yeah.

Obviously played the GameCube version a ton, played the 3DS version quite a bit. I can't remember if I beat it, but I always was playing it on planes. And so, yeah, they just did a great job with upgrading, but retaining what it is. And so there's just plenty of puzzles like in every room and adding. Now you have multiple Luigi's to manage. So you're managing physics-based puzzles, right? You're pushing fans to try to get cancer. to come down, they have keys, they've got hidden, you know, Easter egg type stuff that you can collect within the world.

So there's just like a lot to do. And then the best part of all is just with all the physics, you'll do stuff like there's a ghost, you know, the shield, you'll shoot your plunger at it. Then you got to suck the plunger back. You pop the shield off. Then you blink it. You blink the ghost. If you want, that's the best way to do it. And then you grab it. And the new mechanic of you actually like. Slam it. Beat the hell out of it. And use the analog stick to slam it all over the place. In the end, you can hit other ghosts. with that ghost while you're slamming it around. So it becomes just like a really good gameplay loop going room to room doing that. And like I know I'm going to have a blast

playing this game. As long as it's not repetitive and it's clever and it really seems to be, I'm pretty excited about this now. I loved how tactile it all felt. Like where you're talking about doing all that stuff, it very quickly became second nature. And I loved how in control,

it really felt almost like rhythm gamey of just like the pop, pop, boom to get it into it. I love the character of the world. I love the ghost solvers just so fun and weird and goofy and unique. And like you can just kind of, the way that they animate and the way that they move, it's like you understand who they are

and you understand how you're supposed to take them down or whatever. It's probably one of the best looking switch games when you think about it, right? It's very impressive looking. I will say that the controls felt kind of clawy to me at points. Where I felt like my hand was doing a little too many things at once where like I'm trying to,

I would like the option to be able to change my controls So the flashlight being on A while also aiming with the stick and all that stuff. I was like, oh, this is. I do recall at one point trying to like shoot the plunger, suck it in and get the flat. And yeah, like fidgeting. I mean, I guess I'm used to doing that for games like that. So I didn't think about it like playing secure or whatever. But I think you're right.

Didn't have enough time to make that. But that's things. I feel like thinking that's all easily. Oh, I loved it. Yeah. I'm like really excited about it. Honestly, it's, again, I'm excited as much as anyone else for Zelle and Pokemon. I'm just more excited.

in some ways for Luigi because it's the type of game I want to play in Switch and it feels weird to go. Because the Mario Bros are the best bros? I mean, I'm not going to argue with it, but when is that?

I always forget Louisian mentioned. No date yet. Fall or 29- October, we assume. We assume October, but anything can happen. Real quick thing about Link's Awakening, it's Grezo working on it. The same people that ported

Majoris Mask and Ocarine of Time to 3DS. And this is their first kind of console experience. And Link's Awakening is like, sure, it's a remake of a Game Boy game, but like they're training wheels are off. It's totally, yeah, it's not just like, oh, I'll press it.

You know, it's like there's a lot more. It's a full, I mean, it looks beautiful. Impressive stuff. It's being Nintendo. This wasn't E3, but I've been playing Margot Maker 2 big. No. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

I can talk about that now. I forgot that came out in the middle of like E3. Yeah, I can't give a full review. Well, it didn't come out yet, right? No, it's not out yet. Sorry, I'll end of June. Yeah. We're getting close.

Which is next week. Yeah, exactly. But I've been playing a lot of it. And mainly the story mode. Sure. I haven't done any of the building stuff or any of that. But man, I love it. The story mode,

it did something that I didn't think was possible with a Mario Maker game where it's like there's a gameplay loop of building the castle that I just get so sucked into where Mario Maker on 3DS when it came out, there was 100 Nintendo made courses in it. And I loved playing through them. But really all it is is course, course, course. You're just like going after him. And at some point, you don't feel like you're making any progress towards anything.

You're just beating levels. Just playing. Right. And it's like, you know, in a typical Mario game, you kind of go in through the world map. And it's just like you're seeing things get ticked off. And it's just like in your head thing of just like feeling like you're accomplishing something. Oh, course. Whereas just like playing a bunch of levels.

It's fun, but it doesn't feel like you're doing anything. The story mode is so simple where Pige's Castle gets blown up and your towed friends are like, need you to do different tasks to be able to build it. You don't need to actually build. It's just all kind of like just text-based. They'll be like, oh, hey, I need more coins. I need this many coins to do this. And every level you get a certain amount of coins. Let's say you get, like there's difficulty level.

So there's five stars. One's the easiest. Five's the hardest. Sure. Five stars are worth, let's say, 500 coins. One stars are worth 100 coins. But also, however many coins you get in the level, it adds on. So if you do a one-star difficulty level, you get that 100.

But if you collect 23 coins in that, you get 123. You can then use those coins to talk to the toadette who is like the building planner or whatever and you get to choose like, oh, start building the West Hall. Start building the main building. We're building east. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually called that West Hall East Hall of the castle or like start. Yeah, start building the second floor or whatever. You just like keep going and adding a bunch of stuff.

Flower pots and like whatever. Once that job starts, every time you beat a level one notch. gets done. So like each once you pay to get something built, it requires you to beat five levels for it to be fully built. And it so quickly turns into this thing. It's just all in my head of just being like, oh, well,

I'm only two things away from this being built. And then I beat two more levels and I get the coins. I'm like, well, now I'm only like 100 coins away from getting this next thing built. And it reminds me that. That seems cool. Metal your solid five. Where it's just like mother base. Like I don't need mother base. I don't care about mother base. But for some reason,

they just trick you into getting in this loop where you're like, I'm doing something fun and I'm getting something for it. So this is why I play video games. That's awesome. The gameplay is airtight, obviously, when it comes to Mario and all the story stuff kind of just doesn't get in the way. And it kind of incentivizes me to want to keep playing.

Have you built anything? My castle's almost complete. I think I'm like 90. Oh, no, no, no. Courses. No, no, no. I've been strictly doing. I'm not really the builder type.

I saw some article yesterday, right, that saying that when it's in handheld mode, you have to use the touchscreen controls to make levels or whatever. So they were talking about like you should get a stylus for whatever for your switch if you need to or whatever. Yeah, I have no idea. Cool. Haven't haven't touched it at all. That's fine.

But the story mode, the Nintendo created levels, I mean, I feel like I don't even need to say it. They are just, they're perfect. And every single one of them has some cool, unique thing. They're all designed to teach you the different things you can do in the builder. So it's like one level will be focusing on a very specific. but doing things that you wouldn't expect that enemy to be doing right yeah and you're there you're like oh I guess like when I'm making levels I can add that mechanics of this right and a lot of the levels will have weird win conditions which is a new thing that you

can do in the game in Mario Maker 1 you had to always just get to the flagpole and that's the end and this time it can be like oh just collect the like X amount of coins or rescue these toads and get them to the end or figure out this puzzle and it's like all of a sudden it's Mario gameplay but there's a lot of just different styles that you can go into it with. One of the most interesting ones is you need to beat a level without jumping at all. Oh wow. Or sorry, without leaving

the floor at all. Okay. And so I was like, okay, cool. Obviously that means no jumping but you're kind of then running through and trying to use the physics of different things around you to move forward. So it's like you'll be on a falling platform but you need to make sure that you're on the right part of it so when it falls it lands on the next thing

to kind of move you forward. Like a mouse trap. Yeah, it's kind of like mousetrap, but it's like it gets so intense where you'll be in a part you're like I don't know how I'm gonna do this and it's like I've one shot and it just reminds me

of old Mario game play back when it was still fresh where I'm like I didn't know how to conquer every obstacle in my way and I'm just like wow they're really really they obviously know this better than anyone else but it's like making me look at the level design of just traditional Mario games

and just being really impressed with the intricacy of everything they do none of the levels overstay they're welcome there's a couple of them that I'm I've been stumped on right now. Like, I think there's been three that I'm like, I'm coming back to this one later. It's just, it's too much for me right now. When you talk about coming back to him being stumped on them, is it that are all 100 opened

you and you get to go pick what you, which ones are you? You open them up as you, you kind of going. Okay. So the more you play, the more you open. The more you play, the more you unlock. It's constant though. Like, you always have at least 15 stages you haven't played yet. So it's like, you're getting a bunch of new ones constantly.

And it's so well. balance between all the different art styles and all the different backgrounds and like themes going on and like there's so much weird Mario maker gimmicky stuff of like spotlight so like the lights will be off unless you you jump and then things turn on or like the weird music cues and stuff um a lot of weird items that have never been in Mario games before like there's a car you can get in okay so there's like a Mario car themed level that's cool um there's like weird augments that they can do on stages so like the Mario galaxy music will be playing and the gravity's all off.

And it's like, you're constantly just being surprised and seeing, there's a lot. Which is awesome. And the new 3D world style of gameplay, my least favorite part of the game. I feel like it kind of feels like an afterthought. The fact that that stuff doesn't mesh with the other art styles, because all the other ones, it's like you can build something and then switch between New Sub Mario Brothers and Mario 3. This one is a separate game mode, which allows, it looks way better.

And it allows you to do a lot of things like the car. Like there's a couple other exclusive items and gimmicks and stuff. But just the way that Mario runs and hits full speed and jumps and has the backflip and stuff, it's just like it's a little much. And I feel like it's not perfectly implemented. But so far, the rest of it, it's just like it makes Mario Brothers 3 feel fresh. And like, that's insane. That's cool.

Yeah. Can't wait to play more. I'm almost done with the story. And I keep being surprised. Like, I wouldn't say that any of the levels have been bad so far. Wow. Very cool stuff. Um, Greg.

Yeah. Doom. Doom. So we went to, uh, Judge Week. We played Doom Eternal. We did. Uh, I think we've talked about it before on the show, so I'll keep a brief. But during the presentation in the beginning, they were like, heads up, you're going to die.

Don't turn down the difficulty. Dying is part of Doom. This is basically like a puzzle game in that way. You die and you figure out how to do it better next time. And when they said that, that clicked in my head and made me think about how I didn't play the first Doom correct. the first and I've tweeted about this since but stick with me play do maternal got my butt kicked wasn't understanding the platform he forgot that I could dash for a second and really

fucked me up eventually got on track though I did it and I was like okay cool but having even that part where I was stalled out and doom maternal we're like how am I supposed to get to that platform before like five minutes later I remember the dash uh I was like uh okay that left me in a weird spot go to three go to play stadia stadia is doing the doom maternal uh demo that I already played but on stadia sit down with the controller. start playing it and now having remembered that other thing now having it all click on my head started playing it and was having a great time playing doom maternal not never mind the stadia part of it and so yeah we got to the airport or we're on the way out i guess after uh e3 and i was telling you like i think

i'm gonna start up doom like i'm gonna go back and reinstall doom right because what had happened with doom was it dropped everybody loved it we got codes i went and put it in and i did the first two levels and i was like i get it it's it's i'm not a shooter guy this is a bro shooter game the medal and like, you know, run around and killing things. And yeah, yeah. Like, I get it. I see why people like it. It's very slick.

It's very beautiful. It's very smooth playing. Not for me any left. Coming back and re- I played it on the plane on the switch. And I was like, this is kind of hard to see. There's a lot going on to switch.

Doom is not meant for Switch. I had, yeah, you do the right thing. Play it on your PS4. So I went home and reinstall on PlayStation 4 and then spent all Saturday, right? At times a flat circle now for us, I guess. Maybe started a Friday and then played all Saturday. And I had such a great time with it. And it was such a, even jumping into Doom Eternal and then being like, you know, of course, you know, your melee kills are killing them and giving you back your health.

Right. And then the chainsaw is giving you, giving you the armor. And the fire you're using is giving you. That's giving you armor or the armor from the fire chainsaws for the ammo. And so then going back and starting up Doom with that information and not having that until multiple levels in and seeing like, I didn't even get to this like unlocking that next part. I never got to actually see the long division, right? Like, you know, show your work for this game where it's like, oh, like, I understood the health, obviously, of killing people, get your health,

or meleeing them with, you know, when you're in the gory kill. But doing that and then stringing it together and then needing ammo and then need, and like, okay, getting into that rhythm and that pacing of it in Doom. And then again, not being afraid to die this time, right? Of like, okay, cool, be on the movie. It's like my same problem. And I knew that I've played Wolfenstein wrong, right? Where I want to instinctively play like division and go into cover.

and like wait and it's like no you have to move in those fucking games. Doom for me having to move doing all these the kills and getting the ammo and like looking for collectibles. It was just a magical play session on Saturday to see it all finally click into place because I finally got the right people saying the right things to me on how to play it. Not just to play it. But actually no, no, this is what you are and getting a glimpse in that demo of Eternal because obviously you're starting in a different place with that one. I was like holy shit that I undersell. I thought people were into this because of the smoothness of it. I thought people were into this because of the precision of the shooting mechanics.

I didn't realize it was the rhythm of the game and it was the beat of the game. The rhythm in the night. Exactly. And like it's so rare for me, I feel as like blood and truth, right? Love it on PlayStation VR. Had a great time. I finish a level and I move on to the next level. And like I want a platinum man.

I want to go back. Whatever. Blum is finish a level and then fuck, I didn't get all those collectibles. Right. Or I finished the main part of the level and it's like clearly walk through that door to advance the level. Instead, let's run around and try to get everything. like all the little things on my map because I want to upgrade my, you know, my Slayer a very specific way and I want to be as powerful as I can't go into the next thing.

And because it's just so much fun to not only be a badass and run around and kill things, but to then go through in like, you know, my Assassin's Creed, UBisoft mindset of check off the boxes on the map of all the things, find all the collectibles. So I've just been having a great time with it. And so it's now got me super stoked for Doom Eternal, let alone finishing Doom proper. Andrew, any anything else you want to talk about? Yeah, one last thing I wanted to mention, because I know we're getting towards the end of the episode here, but something that I got to play on the floor at E3 that I had an absolute blast with,

which I was not surprised about, was Monster Hunter World Iceborn. So they had this beautiful giant snow dragon on the show floor in the South Hall, which is awesome. But Capcom obviously noticeably absent from all of the press conferences because they weren't really announcing like a big new game. And so when they had, when they reached up, and said, we have hands on for ice bar. And I was like, absolutely. I would love to make time for this. So I got to play with Britt, which was fun.

We were paired up with two other members of the media who I actually didn't get to meet because we were already like customizing our stuff when they sat down. So we didn't actually get to say hi. But it was so fun because it's that Monster Hunter World gameplay you know and love, but better. Yeah. So they've made a bunch of tweaks and changes since the game launched last year. and what's really cool about what they're doing now

is it's the snow and ice theme, obviously ice-borne, but they're taking that and really making it feel meaningful from a gameplay perspective. So, for example, they've introduced a new consumable called a hot drink that you want to take on a hunt because it helps you keep your stamina up in the cold. And the more snow accumulation you get on your character

as you're traversing through these giant snow banks, it'll drain your stamina slowly. And so if you don't manage that, particularly if you're somebody who uses either the bigger weapons, or if you're like me, if you're tumbling a lot, because I'm a light bowgun player, you don't notice just how much the snow and the ice and the cold affects your stamina. And so they've built in these other gameplay mechanics to kind of combat that.

And then, of course, they've got the new monsters that are in the world as well. And the best part that I loved about my demo was the trail rider buddies. So in the original game, obviously, the palico system included this tail riders where you could kind of pick up a palico buddy in the world and they would help you out in your hunt. Well, now they're taking it one step further. So if we went inside the tent on the hunt location, you would talk to the palico in the tent,

and he would be like, oh, we've upgraded our tail riders to add trail riders, which is essentially a mount system. And so when you're out of the camp area and you're in the world going on the hunt to find the monster with the clues, you can summon this trail rider, and they will hunt the monster for you. And so you just jump on their back and they'll like run you through the world as they're tracking the monsters. That's cool.

And if it doesn't sound like a big deal, you have to keep in mind, right, the fact of monster hunter, right? And what we did at launch when we're, you know, 130 hours in, it is farming the same monsters over and over again, right? So it can get pretty redundant of, I'm in the same area. Now I need to find the right number of tracks to pick up the trail. Now my scout flies are going the way they need to. Now I'm going towards a monster. Now it can be that. cool I'm farming near agante right so I get the ride get on it and then I look at my phone

I do my thing I answer an email oh we're there great now I can fight the thing ago or if you're like me you're watching the screen collecting everything because you can harvest items as you're on your trail rider which is like game changing you can harvest you can take your own you can take your hot drinks you can work on your menu your inventory stuff like it's a great time saver in terms of yeah exactly exactly yeah and they're they're really cute it was just like such a nice quality of life touch but it also fits within the world because if you'll see the

little monster that's your trail rider buddy you can see that species in the world and don't be confused they're not all of your friends just that one is your friend the other ones will still try to kill you. They added in the hook shot too yeah the grappling hook so this is a really big traversal improvement and allows you to

essentially like shoot a grappling hook into a monster and like kind of fast-hap to it pull yourself to it and if you have you know one of the bigger weapons that you need to get up close with, you can actually like swing and hit the monster while you're hooked into them, which is kind of neat. Another great one of like, cool, I need to farm tails, right? Like you can run around its butt trying to hack it all the time. And it works, obviously.

But this is a way better thing of like, I need that. I need a horn. I need a shoot and target right to it and then be attached to the side and hack it. Can you push yourself away too? No, it's just attaching to monsters. It's not attaching to trees or environments. Oh, no. I meant like it's funny because Dauntless has something like this, I believe.

But you can do both. You pull yourself in, but you can push yourself in. but you can push yourself away with it. Oh, no, I didn't see that functionality. The same type of thing. Did you play Jedi Fallen Order at all? Oh, I didn't get to play it. It was just, did you get to play it?

Before you going to move on to that, I just want to end with reminding people that the beta for IceBorn starts on Friday for PS Plus members. So if you guys want to try it out and you never play the original Monster Hunter world, it's free for PlayStation Plus subscribers this first weekend,

and then next weekend is open to all PS4 players. So wait, when people get this on Monday, though, what does that mean? PlayStation 4. I believe it's still going on Monday. Let me double check the dates. But otherwise, you can look forward to the, what, bleeding edge technical alpha is coming up from the NGTheria.

Yeah, so it goes from Friday, June 21st, through Monday, June 24th for PlayStation Plus subscribers, and then Friday, June 28th to Monday, June 1st. I think they mean July 1st, for all PlayStation 4 owners. There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the kind of funny games, guys. Thank you very much for joining us.

Let me give a shout out to Riverbond. Okay, go forward. Riverbond is one that was in the original kind of funny game showcase. It's that voxel, pixel, like cubic. It looks like 3D.com. It's doing extent, right? Dungeon crawler, run around the world. Four player drop in, drop-out, co-op.

Hack and slash, but it's also got a gun. So it can be shoot and slash or hack and shoot, whatever you want to call it or whatever. Like I said, original kind of funny game showcase guy. Played it with Jen, I guess, all of Sunday, right? and it's very simple, and I like it a lot, but it's very simple. It wasn't like we were super challenged. I'd be interested to play it solo because I only played it in co-op, but it was an interesting thing of just running through these environments,

you know, having different monsters come at you, hacking them with the different weapons as you go. You open treasure chest, you get new weapons for that run. You have the gun, so it is a bit of twin stick shooter at one point, if you want to play it that way. There's the different weapons have different abilities, obviously, different charge-up attacks. Like I said, not that challenging, but enjoyable.

You're playing through all these, different levels and then getting to a giant boss that then takes a bit of coordination. Like Jen and I had pretty much mindlessly been running around, having, you know, talking to each other, beating stuff up, having a good time. And then when the boss got there, it was that he had a force feel. How do we wear it down? Oh, charge up these things. All right, we'll start it together.

And then there's like a countdown of how long that is, then go. But there's ads, you know, oh, res me do these different things. There's secrets hidden around the world. Biggest problem I have with it is is 2499, which I think is way too much for it. I would tell you to wait until it goes on sale. But I really enjoy the gameplay for what it is. It is super simple. It's not mindless, but it's just a fun palate cleanser.

Whereas like when I was coming down off of some of the other stuff that you're ending the show without letting me talk about because you're rude. What we're going to do next week? I'll be back then. I want to talk about Stady with you guys, which. Oh, yeah. We got to get real into that next week. Sure.

I want to. Yeah. So much more. But that's the Riverbond update. Enjoy everybody. There you go. River Bond, baby. That's Gairmscast.

Love you very much. We meant to get into the post show. Until then, I love you.