Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The Last Guardian Review and Sex While Gaming - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 98

Episode Date: December 16, 2016

We review The Last Guardian, discuss the games we played at PSX, talk about how we would change The Game Awards, and question our sexual gaming prowess. (Released to Patreon Supporters 12.09.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of Kind of Funny Gamescast is brought to you by what, Greg? Video blocks. Video blocks. My favorite stock footage website. I'm talking about it many times. Use it Kind of Funny Live 1 and Kind of Funny Live 2 while I use it for Kind of Fun 53. The answer is yes. You can go there 100% royalty free even after your subscription comes to an end.

So it's a subscription-based thing. You go in, you get unlimited, get whatever you want. There's also AudioBlocks.com. Do me a favor and shut up. Guess what, everybody. I used video blocks in the Vito Relocation program. You think I filmed a family at the beach? I didn't.

Funniest moment of the video. Thank you. It was great. Hold on. I was fantastic. Video Blocks is offering you all a year's subscription to both video blocks and audio blocks for only $149. For only $149. This is $100 discount off the usual price tag for our followers only.

An incredible discounted deal to get both stock video and audio. Get your subscription today for only 149 at videoblocks.com slash gamescast 2016. I can't see it all. That's video blocks slash gamescast 2016 for this discounted offer. You're not making it better. You're making it worse. See my head's block. Yeah.

Video blocks. Can we make them stock footage? We should make them some stock. Of what? What's up guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 98 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Getty's joined by the coolest dudes in video games,

Colin Moyarty and Greg Miller. 1998 was a good year. It was a good year. We don't talk enough about 90s. 98 degrees? Good boy band. Yeah, also true. Yeah.

98, quite possibly the best year in video games. games. I think it is the best year in really yeah metal game metal gear solid Zelda yeah yeah half life that was the best fall right I remember I remember somebody putting out an article about that or maybe in the best November that's November yeah best November yeah even better than the one the pilgrims originally had the first Thanksgiving yeah hard to believe overrated yeah all they had that maze and then bring all them turkeys and shit yeah nobody wants turkey love no lobsters what was it yeah there were no lobsters yeah the Indians were eating lobsters yeah the Indians were eating lobsters yeah the Indians were

Lobsters, yeah. We should have done that. Atlantic Ocean. I would have been way more down with Thanksgiving if they're like you get lobster. Agreed. Instead, I get fucking turkey and bullshit purple stuff in a can. First off, don't fucking insult the cranberries. You know that I'm not a big, I'm not going to go to defend the Thanksgiving holiday.

I will defend cranberries out of a can until the day I die. Thank you, Kevin. This is one of our bonding things for Thanksgiving this year. It's upsetting. That stuff's a no-go. That might be one of my favorite things you've done. Thank you. Ever.

Not even just this year. I'm trying to be happy. So here's the deal with the Kind of Funny Games cast. As you know, Rig Moroll, we talk about video games, all things we love about them, all things we don't like about them, all that stuff every week, right? Since this is episode 98, that means we got some big things coming. We're also going to be pre-recording a lot of episodes because we're doing the rest of the year. So we have things planned out.

Next week, 99, it's just going to be a normal episode. You can go to Kind of Funny.com slash Gamescast topic. Leave your questions. We'll do them in the fourth topic, just like we always do. But then the next week is episode 100. Woo! Which means we're going to be doing the kind of funny top 100 games of all time. Right.

Where are we just going to sit in all four topics? You're going to be just discussing. And from what I understand, we're going to turn the wall white, and I'm going to come up with the magic marker. Mm-hmm. And just write the games out of my fist this week. You're just going to write patta pawn. 100 times.

100 times. And then we'll be good. Mike! Mike! That's you. That's what you sound like. Mike ain't here. Do you think I was going to make a good point back here? I was just making a visual gag. I wanted you to yell at me.

about touching the wall. You didn't even do that. So you'd go with the mic. Your priorities are all fucked up, Kevin. Just because he got a really good sweatshirt, and you think you can talk shit to me. It's okay. It's an okay. I like that one.

That burgundy one is something good. You know not to touch the wall. I don't always tell you. You know. Yeah, but I thought you'd play it up. You know. Ham it up, as they say. Then episode 101 is going to be our game of the year episode. A lot of people been asking when we're going to do it.

That'll be the last episode that goes live for Patreon users over at patreon.com slash kind of funny games in 2016. Got you. The first one going live. I didn't know we were ending patreon.com slash kind of funny games. Yeah, no, no,

excuse me. First one on YouTube. com slash kind of funny games in 2017. You can go support us there just like our boy, Stephen Insler did for the 17th,000th month in row. 17,000. Wow. Yeah, he's doing real good things.

He is doing really good things. He's the home. He's the home. He's the homie, as they would say. They being I. Yeah, you say that. But I'm trying to take it. I appreciate it.

It's a good term. I like, I like calling people the homie. I like something you do. did recently. Thank you. What was that? The Vita relocation video. Oh, Vita Relocation program. Yeah, it's not getting enough love. I feel like this one should, uh, we should re-promote it. Blow up a bit. You know. It did really well that first time. I know. It can do better. You should go YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Check out the Vita Relocation program. I put it in the best of

kind of funny games thing. So you'll be able to see it if you go there. Funny video. Jokes on him. I put it in that playlist the first day. Jokes on him. He doesn't understand how that playlist works. So when you put it in there, he doesn't manually sort it. Fuck, it was a manually sorted for this. God damn. So I went in and I went to add it and said, oh, it's already added. I'm like, great. And it was in the back. Fuck.

Whatever. I put in the front. He got this run, Colin. I did get this right. We'll get the next one now. Yes. And your hand. So, PSX just happened.

Yeah. Game Awards just happened. Yeah. We're going to be talking a lot this episode about those things. Okay. We were at PSX before we get into topic one, which is the last guardian review. What did you guys see and play at PSX? Who, I played Resident Evil 7 on VR.

I liked it. It gave me the tummy rumble. as I keep saying. They have multiple, it's gonna be a game that you're gonna have to ease into with VR, I think, and figure out what the comfort zone

is and how long you can play. Because what I played makes me want to sit down and play more of it, obviously, and it feels like a, you know, good horror movie. It made me jump at one point when the mannequin fell down.

I got the bad ending, but I'm getting off track. You can go play this on PSN. But try even the different control schemes, right? Because there's the one where you have it and you can just free look and you use the stick to,

you know, actually move your orientation, but you can look around however you want to. And then they had, I've forgotten the name now. I think it's called smooth. Yeah, smooth playthrough where you have it, where you click over by degrees and you like rotate like a clock or you know what I mean,

like at your own will. But I mean like on that, you're just moving by certain degrees rather than the continual motion. I was saying that I was a little bit sick off of just the free motion, whatever. I talked about smooth controls during the PSX panel and kids have hit me up since then to say I should try, you know, dialing it from 30 degrees to 70 degrees to all these different ways and that might do it.

So it's going to be one to sit down and fuck around with. I take back my words as, I think it's going to get delayed. It seems like it's very far along. They seem confident in it. I do think it's going to be interesting to see how it does. How if people are going to be,

I think people are going to be super stoked about it, put it on and get sick, and then, oh, how long can I play it? What do I do? Start playing it in just regular first person as a regular video game of the controller. I don't know how scary it'll be that way, but I guess PT, we all love it that way,

so it won't be. I'm just worried that people are going to get it in their head that this is a full-fledged eight-hour horror VR game, and then they're going to get it and it's going to be harder to do that, and that's gonna blow up in their face. Also did the Battlefront, Star Wars Battlefront.

As to die. X-wing demo, awesome. We didn't get the whole thing, though. We got, it was half of it. Sure. It comes out today as the time we're recording this, so we haven't done the full one yet. The first half.

Radical, right? A-O-K. What was your favorite part? My favorite part was just the little Easter egg stuff, hitting the buttons and having the little target thing come out. Yeah. That was dope. I talked about a thing on the panel, right?

Where I got, getting into the X-wing and turning around and seeing the R2 unit back there. That's fucking dope, and it was talking to me and chipping around. But I mean, it's just, you know, obviously VR, we've talked about it sometimes being this amazing immersive thing. But it takes stuff like Star Wars to really up the ante. And like that's why I think the Batman experience is so good is because it's stuff that you're so familiar with that experiencing it. It just feels right.

And it's like, oh shit, I never thought I'd feel this in this thing that I know and love so much. Like there's like the shark tank or whatever the hell experience and things like that they're cool. But I think that the Star Wars stuff, having Star Wars music and tie fighters zipping around and the big destroyer coming over you, it's like. That was an awesome moment. The sense of scale and stuff, it really does feel like you're in the movies. Yeah. It's kind of a weird thing where it's a game,

but it's also an experience, so it's still in that halfway point of. And that's the thing about it, even from the little bit we played, right? It was the fact that it is not on rails, but it was, all right, cool, I'm flying, I'm flying, all right, now we're in combat

and I'm no longer moving this. I'm just aiming and I can move in 360 degrees, right? Or maybe just 180 over, you know, ass over nose kind of thing. But for sure, I see Tie Fighters coming and I'm fighting. But then the destroyer comes in. I look up at that.

And like, it wasn't even, it's, I don't mind that. Again, here we go, wave one of VR. How does this all apply? This seems like a great application. It was fun. Like you're saying, like even me not being a Star Wars nerd, reaching over and hitting the button and having the little targeting reticle pop out and have it right there.

I was like, that's awesome. That's really cool. My thing is I liked it a lot more than my time with Eve Valky because Eve Valkyre it just, it missed that, that level of, oh, it's Star Wars, right? It's just like, it was, oh, cool. The initial. experience of it's super awesome, but then you're out there flying in space and it's kind of like, all right, cool. This game is simple enough that I'm like shooting a couple of things is fun,

but it's missing that like up in the ante and the hook. But the Star Wars thing, it's more an experience than a game, which I think serves it well. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I do too. But it'll be interesting to see what happens next. Where do we go from here? And like similar to that, not that this would happen with the Eve creators, CCP, right? The fact that what happens when, all right, cool, you're a developer, you've made this cool VR experience similar to, like your insomniac and you made some, you made Sunset Overdrive and that was cool.

What happens when Asomni gets Spider-Man? What happens when a developer like CCP who makes a game that's flying like that gets, okay, cool, now just go make the only VR X-Wing fighter pilot game. The actual game. Exactly, exactly, not the experience. Yeah, yeah.

Play any deals? Those were my appointments, I think. Remember, we were really only there Saturday and it was to do the panel and do the other thing and run around and make appearances and stuff. So I think that's what I play. I played a lot in the plane. Played a lot of Lara Croft Go.

Disclaimer, GenWorks on the game or whatever. I like it. Load time suck on Vita. They're awesome on PS4. It'll be my next platinum. Jumped into neon chrome on Vita. Similar thing. Load times are garbage.

The worlds themselves are kind of bland. It almost looks like you're waiting for the textures to pop in and they don't. But the gameplay itself, twin stick shooter, rogue like twin stick shooter is actually fun. You're going, like, the, you're in these worlds and you're going up this, like, ladder of different levels to get to, like, the boss guy, and there's mini bosses and stuff like that.

But it was cool to go through, collect, get more powerful, keep coming back, have different bonuses based on who you are. You die, you come back, you have which character you want to come back as, you know, I want to come back as a hacker. So now I have access to different rooms. All the rooms are procedural generated. It seems like, even with the bad load times a game, I'll put more time into on Vita and have fun there.

Those were the, oh, played a shit ton of Dead Rising Four. Dead Rising 4 I played a whole bunch of. It was actually, we'd done the games cast on Final Fantasy. We'd gotten Last Guardian. That timeline screwed up, but came home, played more Final Fantasy,

and was like, okay, cool, I'm already feeling like, this isn't what I'm gonna want. You know what I mean? Like, I was like, I dress the characters in their normal outfits,

and then I, you know, I was like, man, now they just like 28-year-old men trying to act like they're 16, with the exception of Iggy, who looks like he is 36, and sounds like he's 42.

And that's the whole thing. I'm just like, you're breaking the game in the world for me. Still love the combat, but it's not enough I don't think to make me keep coming back. So I was like, I'm not going to force it.

I'll put down, maybe I'll want to come back to my own, put in Last Guardian when I got Last Guardian, which we're about to talk to, so I won't talk about that yet. And then when I discovered, no, I don't like Last Guardian.

I popped in Dead Rising 4. And Dead Rising 4 is, I keep calling it video game junk food. It is empty calories that are really fun to consume. I played it with that Friday off. I think I started a Thursday night or then played all. Friday or played all day Friday and played a little bit Saturday. I forget what the actual

rundown was. But just sat there, played, I think I'm level 30 something as Frank right now. And it's like, you know, I think it goes up to 65. It's fun. But it's one of those that I put it down and went and did PSX and I came back and I started playing Vita games and I'm like, I'm going to keep playing these. Like Dead Rising is great. I don't think I'll ever get back to it. It's bloody. It's not hard. Dead Rising was always hard before. That original Dead Rising you run into these maniacs, these, you know, people, you have to actually worry, you have to work up to being awesome. Whereas this when you start off and you already feel super powerful, let alone when you start really getting, you know, you're putting in your skill points to, all right, I'm getting

more critical hits, I'm doing this, my, you know, blunt weapons are going to last longer. I haven't died once in the game yet, and I've been playing for quite a while, which is weird for a dead rising game. But again, it's enjoyable. It's, I think if this is one of those shitty things about me, I guess, and who I am in the meta game that are video games now, if this on PlayStation, I would keep playing it to go for the platinum. Whereas since I don't care about achievements, I'm like, oh, this is similar to a Ubisoft game where there's so much to do, there's so many boxes to check, I can see where my progression should go, you know, I want to get all the different outfits and find all the

different collectibles. But since there's no reward, since I'm already so powerful and there's nothing driving me forward to that, and the story is just the B movie Dead Rising story, it always is, I feel like I can walk away from this and feel fine with it and then jump back into the rogue like the neon chrome or this side or the other go back like I want to and you know try to put more time into volume or ration clank or anything you know let alone start dishonored and so I think that's where I am with that one like Dead Rising for a lot could take it or leave it kind of though you know what I mean now that's out of the zeitguise for me calling I didn't see anything at PSX I was on a people

finding mission so I went and saw some friends some I went and saw housemark and I did play that game next mockina yeah I went and saw them behind closed doors and And then someone was capturing so I wasn't able to play it. I didn't want to kick anyone off the machine. And then I went and saw them again because I hadn't seen a couple of them that I wanted to see from the team at their booth. And there was a serpentine line kind of snaking out from it. And they were like, you want to play. And I thought it was rude for me to just be like, yeah, cut the line.

So I didn't want to be that guy. So I just said hello to them. And I went and saw our friend, Dan Adelman. He's working on Kazum. He's working on Majes in Australia, which both look amazing. And saw our buddy Sean Norton, talked to him for like an hour. he's working on Dreadnought So I went and soft people

I feel bad But I got a few invites for different things Especially VR games But I just am not putting those VR units on That other people are using I just can't get over that anymore Now that I've thought about it the last 18 months I was fine until I thought about it

Should have rot your own Yeah that was just walk around and on your head You're like just jack me in check me in the nature So no I didn't play I didn't go hands on with anything But I but there was a few games there that I think look really fantastic I think chasm looks stellar and next machina looks really great.

It's kind of like, so good. It's kind of like alienation meets like Fez or like something else where like the, it's like a cube and it keeps twisting. It's very, it's the voxels are very, it's very like an extension of Rezo gun in a way. It's important to know because some people are confused. This is not Matterfall. Some people thought that this was a Matterfall being renamed.

I talked to them off the record about Matterfall, so I have nothing I can share here. But there are two different games. and they're both in development. This particular game is the first self-published game from Housemark, and it is not a PlayStation exclusive. So those are other things that... It's starting on PlayStation, but they have the right to bring it anywhere they want,

and I assume it will be on everything eventually. So for Xbox fans, specifically, who have only gotten one Housemark game ever, and for PC gamers who have never gotten a House Mark game, I think that's a good sign for you guys. Tim, what did you play? Finally got my hands on ukulele. Oh, we didn't talk about this at all yet.

Okay. Yeah, and it's definitely exactly what it's supposed to be. I mean, it's a 3D rare game, which granted was never really my thing back in the day, because I was way more of a Mario dude and the collecting stuff wasn't ever my nom to plum. Yeah. But playing through this, I was like, it's been so long since we've gotten this type of game that there's something novel about it enough where I'm like, I like, I like these wacky ass characters of which there are a ton. Even in the demo I played, it's like you come across like six different, uh, characters, one like trouser snake. Who's his jacked motherfucker?

trousers. I'm just like, all right, cool. Like things like that. I'm like, all right, there's enough little crumbs

here that I'm definitely sold on this. When it comes out, I'm definitely going to play it. The one biggest criticism I have of it is, well, the controls are great. I really like how it feels. I like that it's modern in the sense

that it feels a lot faster. And it's not like games used to be where you have to like get all these different upgrades to be able to do your long jump and your flutter jump and like double and all that stuff. You get them. You can just go and start moving and roll in a roll

around like I feel very much in control and I know how to get my character exactly where I need him to go which is good but the criticism is the camera. Oh yeah? Really? It's attached to the other, the stick, which is good. But it does the thing that old 3D platformers used to do where when you move the left stick to control your character, it also moves the camera. And I'm like, no, no, fix that.

Let me set the camera right on. And I'm going to be really surprised if they don't change that or at least give an option to turn that off when it comes out because that. can't be something that people are cool with. It's super weird and off-putting. To play games like Ratchet and Clank, which granted are way more modern than those other ones, it's still,

people have done that. We know what that feels like, so it shouldn't feel super archaic, especially in a game that otherwise it doesn't. So overall, really excited for that. I think good things are going to come from it. The other thing, Crash Bandicoot, got to play, both levels beat it, 100%

at it. The demo, they had. And I have nothing of a good things to say about the game. I mean... How much does it feel like original crash? Perfect. Because remember the original crash sucked. Yeah.

So here's... Am I running at the camera? Am I having hard jumps to make? I mean, yes. That, well, not... And so far in this, we're not running out the camera. Okay. The demo didn't have that part.

But the controls, they solved the problem that the first game had, which was now there's analog controls, which makes it infinitely better. Yeah. And all this, we didn't see this in the demo, but we heard it from press releases and stuff that they changed the save system and the checkpoint system, which was a huge. huge problem in crash one. We've only seen stuff from crash one. I'm really excited to see Crash 2 and 3 because that's when things get really good.

And the fact that Crash 1 looks this awesome, not just visually, but as a package, and they're putting this much love and care into it. It's like, this is the game that I've been waiting for. This is actually what I was saying, Save the Bandicoot. This is what I wanted. I don't believe they can make a good crash 4, Rathor Cortex and all the other ones, notwithstanding. Like, I believe that they can make these games better and allow me to experience what

those games used to be, which again, a lot of people like, oh, those games always always as good as they were. I enjoy them a lot and a lot of other people do. And we're just giving you hard time. No, it's not just you. It's, it's everybody. Oh, the internet? Yeah, yeah. But the thing is, it is the second most viewed trailer and most talked about thing on all the forms and shit besides Death Stranding from PSX. So, and this running wasn't even at PSX. But that one, sorry, last of us. So besides those two, it's like, okay, cool. I'll take it. You know, Like people care.

I'm excited to play it. It looks good. I hope it. And that's the thing for the, for having never had a, I didn't have a PlayStation when crash was happening. I got my PlayStation late in the game right shortly before PS2. And so I never had that connection like you do. So to come back and have a modernized take on that and have experience that alongside

you, that'll be cool. Yeah. And it's, it's not modernized. Like it, the thing is, it feels right, which I think is a good thing because the, the, the last time Activision did a remaster of a franchise. It was Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD. And I remember doing my first demo for that when I was with IGN. And I was just like, oh, oh, this is not right.

I remember like, it was the first time I was with the PR person. I was just like, oh, what do you think? I'm like, I don't think it's right. Why is it, this doesn't feel right? Why isn't the revert there? Like, there's certain things like this doesn't make sense. Like, oh, we'll figure it out. They never fucking figured it out.

They lied to me. But with this, it's like, everything they're saying is like, but we did this, this, this and I play it. I'm like, you did. You fucking care. So the music's right, but it looks right. Everything about it, I'm just like, thank you. You're fucking nailing it so far.

The animations are perfect. And he doesn't have a fucking stupid-ass voice. He's not like, you know, because you can imagine that's what modernizing it would be. Well, that's still there. I know, I know. I'm not making fun of it. There is some stupid voices,

but they're the stupid voices that we love. They were supposed to be there. Yes. Gotcha. Anyway, very stoked about that. Played Star Wars. That was great. Yeah.

I've talked about everything else I've seen there. Okay. So now last Guardian. Yeah. Let's talk about that. I'm going to say this is the second topic, Kev. Okay? Last Guardian review.

Last Guardian review, got it. No, it's a fun show. Just leave it in. What do you care? No. Do you want to go more on about what we've been playing? Yeah, let's do that. Because you've been playing Batman, and I would love to talk more Batman with you without spoilers.

Call Moore, we already wouldn't think of Batman, the Tell Tell Series. It's great. We got them. I'm shocked about how good it is. I guess I'm not shocked. I thought the Walking Dead was really great too. Sure. I don't like this episodic approach per se, and so I get distracted when I'm like, well, I'll wait,

and then I forget that they even exist. I mean, The Walking Dead Season 3 was just announced, and I forgot about the Walking Dead Season 2 because I was waiting for these episodes to come out. Same thing with Game of Thrones, which I would have probably interested in playing. So there's the episodic approach clearly works from a financial standpoint and probably from a critical standpoint. It keeps it within people's minds for a long period of time, but for me, particularly it just, it loses me.

So I had actually mistakenly thought that the fifth episode was out. So I went and downloaded. I went and I talked to Greg and I'm like, oh, the fifth season, fifth episode came out last week or something. He's like, no, it comes out next week. And I'm like, oh, well, that fucking sucks, but I already downloaded it.

And I was playing The Last Guardian. So that I wasn't really interested in it anymore after an hour. So these shiny objects were kind of distracting me. And so I was like, you know, I'll just jump into this and get this over with because I know I have to play this and I'm sure I'll like it. I know I have to play this. And, you know, well, I mean, like, I was like, it's one of those games where I'm like, I really should play.

It's not going to be that much of a time investment. And not to mention you're a Batman guy. I like Batman a lot. I mean, I'm not, you know, I make fun of comic books a lot, you know, tongue and cheek, but I really do like Batman. I like that universe. I like that world. I like those characters.

And I was kind of astonished when I was showing it to, you know, Aaron was watching me play and she's asking a lot of questions, who's this? And I'm like, it's weird that to talk. And I don't want to say in an authoritative way, but in a, a confident, like, not a sarcastic way about who's Vicki Vale. Who's like, oh, blah, blah, blah. and knowing the answer. And then I asked you a question too specifically about,

well, I don't know if anyone even knows he's in the game. So I guess I shouldn't, actually he's in the first episode. Yeah, I was gonna say, Penguin's not a spoiler. Oh,

okay. So, well, I was like, I had questions too about like, well, it was cobblop. I don't remember a cobblot ever being a friend of Bruce Wayne.

Bruce Wayne as a child. That's their arc. And you were like, well, and then you realize this is actually a somewhat of a darker and a hundred percent stranger kind of take. So I, I'm in the fourth episode now.

It's falling asleep last night. So I turned it off. not because it's bad. As we said on Colin and Greg Live, the twist in that particular episode is fucking awesome. And I'm really intrigued to get back to it. I'm all disappointed that I have to wait a week for episode five, but I'll be anxious to get into that when the time comes.

But I think it's really, really good. And I get lulled. I was telling you, I was getting so lulled at times into feeling I was watching a television show or a movie that I actually forgot to press a button on the controller. A few times, like the choices, like the wheel, the radial comes up, and I'm just staring at the screen. And I'm like, oh, shit.

And then like it turns red. and, you know, the little ellipsis comes up as if Batman says nothing. I hate doing that. But I think it's a good sign for the game. It's a classic Batman though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There actually was one or two times where I was like,

well, I don't like any of these choices. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I also like how, and I think they probably do some other games. I don't know tell tell well enough where Square, Circle and X, like in Mass Effect, typically it's like, you know, the Paragon shit's over here and the Renegate shit's over here, and they kind of mix it up in Batman. You don't really know specifically what his response is.

Circle isn't always going to be negative. So I think it's pretty cool. I'm a little, there's a few mechanics where I'm like, I really wish that the game was just fluid. Like, whenever I have to move Batman around, I don't like that. And I didn't like that in The Walking Dead either. I think the game should somewhat play itself for you except for conversation choices and maybe quick time combat. So I don't like linking things together. So investigating crimes.

I mean, it's cool if they point all these things out and then like, how do they connect? And they, a little more traditional adventure game there. But it's, I mean, it's very easily going to be one of my favorite games of the year, I think. and it's nice to play a Batman story. And again, I really like that universe. And it's interesting. I thought the twist at the end of episode three was cool and surprising. And a little disappointing in a way because I was kind of hoping that I was going somewhere with this person.

No, that's what's interesting about it overall is the fact that I think every episode's ending has had a good twist to it. They're always, tell tell usually really good every time at giving you a cliffhanger, making you want episode, whatever to come out next. but even with Walking Dead, which I love, and I consume right away, Batman, I feel like is super appointment viewing where it's like things come out and I'll get to it later, I'll get to it later, I'll let it stack up. Tales from the Borderlands, I just let stack up. And even once I realized I like Tales from the Borderlands,

I would then play them when I got to them. I was in no hurry. Whereas Batman, for sure, day one, night one, I go home and I play that because I want to know what's happening with that story. And it's awesome to see DC who I feel like, even though they had the Rock Steady Games, The Rocksteady games always felt like an extension of the animated series. And spoilers for the Rocksteady games,

with the exception of the death of the Joker, right, at the end of City, it felt like, all right, this is a by the numbers Batman story. Nothing's getting out of hand here. And when Telltale ventured out into it, I think the way they end episode one, I was like, holy shit, that's awesome, but there's no way they'll stick to it. And then you start episode two, you're like, oh, fuck, this is canon. This isn't going to be the rug pulled out from under me.

It was a cheap knockoff. No, this is their own story. And that's what's so exciting for me right now with, comic book games, especially as you look to Marvel, who's like, all right, cool. Insomniac, here's your Spider-Man game in your Spider-Man universe and go do whatever you want. This isn't attached to the movies. It isn't attached to the comics. It's yours.

Make a story, make it cool. And that's what Telltale's so good at, so to see them get in there and really get their hands dirty with this. And again, full disclosure, I host that Telltale Batman show, but they don't pay me for it. So it's not like I bought off. Also, you're pretty clear for a long time. I'm sure that I've liked Tel-Togues. Do you really like Batman?

Are you telling me you like DC? Hard to believe about like Telltale Batman and DC. I just, yeah, I'm so excited to see what they're doing with it. And then to do that show actually and talk to them and about the ideas they have and to go off the record and talk about what, well, you know, maybe we do this. It's like, oh, fuck. That's awesome. Yeah, I like the introduction specifically of a character in the fourth episode that I think like will break the arc and eventually work into the second season. So I'm excited.

I'm excited about that. Well, what's interesting is that and this is a deep nerd cut for you that I don't think you would know about. I'd have to tell you about afterwards. is I think that there's a second character introduced in that episode that I think is going to be a huge player in season two, if they do a season two. Cool. Well, I'm sure they will. Probably. I'm sure this game's printing more.

Yeah, I wouldn't even be surprised we get it at the end of next year or something like that. So, yeah, that was cool. And then I've been spending a lot of time with Letter Quest remastered on Vita, which was free, I think, on PS Plus last month. And so hopefully you guys are smart enough to take our advice and always go in there and just download, you know, or mark them as downloaded so that you get them for free. It's a very simple as a phone game, actually, a couple of the game. years ago and it's just a it's a role playing game side-scrolling role-playing game where you make words with the letters that they're giving you i think they give you like 15 letters and you have to make words and the bigger the words are and if they use you know cue or something like that then you get

do more damage something about it there's 120 stars gold stars again and then like 50 crystal stars i think i'm not like 98 gold stars i dug about it when i was playing what i dug about it was the fact that it didn't make me feel dumb i can get through the levels right and i'm advancing and then there is the added challenge of all right cool you understand the mechanics. You've gotten through the level. Sure, come back and try to get the stars. Trom, I'm going to try to knock the challenges out. And there are a lot of upgrades and stuff, too, a lot of customization with your character, which I think is cool. You're basically making money. And the currency is pretty valuable.

So you're not getting tens of thousands of whatever the unit is. You're getting like 50 or 100 at a time, but you needed 1,500 to upgrade your health or something. So there's a real grind there, which I appreciate as well. There's a lot of bang for the buck there, especially if you didn't pay for it. Um, which, and hopefully many of you didn't since it was free on plus. And then, uh, I watched, um, uh, I had downloaded it by not got into it. Aaron played Dear Esther and so I watched her play it and it was a, it's a, I never had seen the game before. This is the Chinese rooms game. These are the guys that did, everybody's gone to the rapture. And not being a PC guy, I was reading, I was very intrigued

in reading about the history of this game and how it was actually a source demo that they then remade into a real game. And this was, this was the game before they even did amnesia. So it was cool to see like a very, the walking simulator, as it were, for the pejorative sense, the interactive story, 3D story like Vanishing Ethan Carter or something like that. None of those would exist. Gone home wouldn't exist without this game. And so it was cool to see it. And the story is very convoluted.

And I like how it reminded me inside a little bit in the sense that you don't really know what it's about. I don't think they've ever really said what it's about. And so you can go on to Wikia or somewhere and there's a bunch of fan theories about what people's interpretations of it were. and I enjoy that as well because the same with Inside where I'm like I don't, the thing about Inside

it's my favorite game of the year is that I'm not even sure what I think it's about. That's what I love so much about, especially the ending. I think it's very strange, but I have some ideas and I'm more in tune

with what was going on there than what was going on with the protagonist himself. And so in DRSter, there's a more literal story told through letters and I thought it was a pretty cool, cool experience.

I think that's everything. I'm going to move on to Hitman next. Final Finance 15 and the last Garander just aren't doing it for me. So there's just too many games to play. So I think Hitman's going to be next. Specifically because I really do feel like I don't have the data specifically, but I think more people have recommended me Hitman than anything else this year. And it's supposed to be like superb.

So I'll see for myself what I always been doing. But I've actually kind of had it on the radar since we were at GameStop Expo and talk to the guy from the studio. Sure. It sounds very interesting. It sounds very open-ended. Again, another episodic kind of approach, but they were very transparent about that from the beginning. And they improved the other episodes as it went on to based on feedback, which is cool.

So I'm excited to, it's good that we, I waited. How pissed off are you though? Because you waited, you missed the Gary Busey high value target. You can't kill Gary Bucie. I never wanted to kill Gary Bucie. I always wanted to ask him some questions. So this is unrelated to the topic, but I haven't talked to you about this yet. What do you think about all that PlayStation mobile stuff with wild arms and the lad?

Parapa, hot shots, golf. Hot shots and Parapa are fine. Arc the Lad is a fine series. I put it in the same vein as like as important as like a lundra or something like that where it's like it's a B-tier kind of PS1 series. And elsewhere, but the real disappointment is that

Wild Arms is going to mobile and that the original MediaVision guys that made the original Wild Arms are working on this one. And I'm like, that's such a fucking disastrous, stupid move. A, because I don't think they're going to make any money on mobile with Wild Arms and B, like, I just, that's one of the franchises, Sony One franchises that I'm just a little confused. It hasn't really been dormant that long.

I mean, there was a PSP remake, Alteraf, whatever it was called for original Wild Arms, and they made five Wild Arms games. So it's not like it's been dormant, but to hear the pedigree of people that are making this specific one and then where they're sending it is very disappointing to me because wildarms is a very special game to the PS1 catalog. and I think that they owed it to, and hopefully maybe we'll make some corrections or maybe the intention is all along. Not necessarily feed it because that's a pipe dream, but it should come to PS4.

And I'm a little sad that they're not doing that. I think they're sending it out to die as they do many things. So, yeah, not thrilled. Arc the Lad, I don't have, I mean, I played it, but I don't have a, like some sort of heartfelt connection to it. So I don't care of the fuck they put it.

I think put it on 3DS for all I care. But, yeah, wildarm specifically, I didn't even talk about it on Conno, Greg Live, because I'm like, it's, I don't, people don't care. about wild arms. And so I do, but I don't think it's really noteworthy to anyone else.

As long as we still get that hot shots golf on PS4, I'm fine. Which was there. So I'm fine. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was it? Yeah. Next to Parapa.

It still's a temporary working title. Lococo, roco. Yeah. Yeah. Which is all connected to Patapon. There you go. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The last thing that I've been playing is Fallen Fantasy 15. Still haven't beat it for everybody. How many hours in are you asking me? Ballpark. Probably just about 10.

So not too much since the last time. You played 10 hours and almost beat it? No, no, no, no, no. I think he said 10. Oh, I thought you said 10. Oh, I put about, I didn't beat it. He still hasn't beat it is what he said. Oh, okay.

I thought you're saying you're getting close to you. Yeah, no, no, no. I'm far from beating it. I'm like chapter seven, I think. Yeah, so I still got, I still got a ways to go. But the problem with it is I like it so much. And I'm now at a point that I don't feel any rush to, to beat it. Like I wanted to play enough of it to be able to talk about on the show.

But now knowing where you guys are at that you guys aren't any rush to beat it. So we're not going to have any more substantial conversation anytime soon. I'm like, okay, cool. I'm going to enjoy this game. I've been moving. So there's been a lot of moving parts. But I was like, I'm going to instead switch over to Lasgardian, because Lasgardian is another

game that I've been waiting a very long time for. And I was like, all right, that's the game that I know I'm going to get over with and never have to touch again. Sure. But man, Final Fantasy 15 is so good. I love it so much. Everything about it is just what I needed and what I want. And I'm very much looking forward to the break to being able to get back to it and beating

it. I am very interested in how it all ties up. I want to know what the end is. I don't want anyone spoiling me at the end. Not this Knox boots. The ending is an anime. You have to watch separately. But it's funny that you're that far. I've played, because I played the game for about six, a little more than six hours. I'm only on chapter three. The chapter's, but that's, that's the thing about the game is like the people, you can beat it in 13 hours, but it's like, you're not playing it. And it's like there's other people that have put 30 hours into it. they're only on, they're behind me. All I want to know, Colin is, have you fed that cat yet?

I fed the cat. I fed the cat. But then the cat didn't want the food. And then I had to go talk to a chef to make food for the cat. I don't understand why I did any of that, but it was the thing that I was supposed to do. And when there's a side quest, I have to do it. Sure.

So that's why I think I hadn't gotten any further any excuse. You're never going to beat this game if that's the case. I don't really have a problem with the game itself. I still don't really know what's going on. But the, just to be clear, I feel like you're putting a lot of emphasis on this. Oh, you have to watch a movie in the anime. They don't clear too much else. Like, you're not, you're not really missing out on too much.

But I'm also seeing a lot of complaints that people, like, I'm not the, because I was like, you know, you brought up Susan before. But other people, I'm like, am I the only person that does I really, I'm not, I'm not even trying to be facetious. Like, I really don't know what's going on. Like I, like, I, like, I don't, I'm like, I'm trying to pay attention to their cross talk when they're in the car or the campsite or whatever. and then try to talk to the MPCs and everything. I'm like, I don't really understand what's going on still. You know, like, it's a little disconcerting to me. I don't know if the animator, the movie picks it, it clears it up,

but it seems like it's a common, I mean, they're patching story stuff in there because I think they realize that. But I, the game is good. I think actually, I think it's very good in a lot of ways, as we talked about, especially like the deep RPG systems, like the experience system. I think it's really cool. It's compelling.

I look forward to going to the inn or whatever to rack my experience up. And I think that that's neat, but these kinds of games for me require some sort of story, you know, that I can comprehend. And maybe a lot of people are saying I'm stupid or whatever, but I don't really, I don't really understand it. You're just doing all the side quests. I mean, there's definitely a story in there. I'm sure there is. One of experience so far, it's not like it's a mind-blowingly great story. But again, that goes back to what I was saying earlier about like these stories are, they're just trying to get you from one town to another.

And it's like, I feel like this game does that. I'll agree that the game without the anime and movie doesn't do the best job of explaining how the characters are related to each other. But I don't think that that's important or necessary. And the parts of it that are important are explained to you even through the game just where I'm at, which is not that far. So I think you've got to keep going a little bit. And then eventually it does start to make as much sense as it has to. I'm still there on my console. I don't think I've played the last of it.

I'd like to get through it. You know, I just because I don't remember the last Final Fantasy. I mean, well, that's not true. I didn't be Final Fantasy 13, but I did play it for like 40 hours. I don't remember, but before that, I didn't, I actually got to the open part. Then I was like, I don't want to play this anymore. So that was kind of a waste of my time. Speaking of good Final Fantasy games.

But yeah, so other than that, like I beat one through nine, I think. So I don't think there's any exceptions in there. So it would be nice to be able to go back and beat it, you know, get through it and see, you know, be able to talk about it a little more authoritatively. but I find their patching shit a little unsavory and I find the approach to that a little shitty too so we talked about that on a Conner Greg Live today as well

but I don't know that's the developer's fault I think that's the publisher's fault it seems to me the more that I read about and the more I'm like this game could have used probably four more months I don't know man I think it was good I'm happy that I'm sure I'm sure the core gameplay has probably been fine for a long time

but that's not just not matter man it doesn't matter at all like all the shit that they added from the crown update or whatever when it's like they took the random-ass clips from the movies and put it in. It's like, that makes shit more confusing. It doesn't help at all. So it's like, whatever.

I'm just happy I have it. I'm enjoying it a lot, and I cannot wait to get back to it. It's very good. And I'm happy that I got the last guardian out of the way as well. So transitioning over there. Oh! Second topic of the day. Last Guardian review.

I beat the last Guardian. Never thought I could actually say that. How long to take you? I don't have the actual thing, but I would say 11. Between 11 and 13 hours. Okay. Somewhere in there. Let's go 12.

I'm throw down a solid 12. I'm not the best when it comes to these puzzle games. Yeah. So there was a lot of what the hell am I doing, running around, trying to figure it out. Before we get into the whole discussion, how much of you guys played at this game? Played about an hour. Yeah, I did a night of it. So I want to say three hours, maybe a little bit more.

Cool. So obviously, I'm assuming you guys don't love it. Right. I don't dislike it. I just, uh, it just, didn't grab me. I found it to be I think the best word to describe it in my opinion is cumbersome and I just wasn't having fun.

Yeah. I don't think it's bad. The way I describe it right is frustrating antiquated and pretty. Like it's it for me and this is like the whole thing with what the last guardian is right is that it feels like a PlayStation 2 game and I'm so over that kind of gameplay

of ramming my head into a wall not even because I can't figure out the solution but because I can't make the fucking creature do what I wanted to. And as I'm doing this, I'm having like Vietnam flashbacks to Lair where I can see myself making the argument because like it's a, all right, cool. Like I, you know, early in that night, you unlock the power to get on Tricco and basically drive him, right, or direct him on where you want him to go and make him jump over things.

And I'm like, okay, cool. Now the game's going to pick up a little bit. It'll be easier for me to reach things. And it happens right, right as you get to that broken bridge. That's the first point. And I walk him up to it. And we walk to the edge and I'm like, jump. And he just stares at it.

And I'm like, jump. And he just stares. at it and I'm like okay and I back him up I'm like jump and he just jumps straight up and straight down and I'm like oh fucking Jesus what the I'm like maybe this isn't right so I fuck around for 10 minutes trying to make him go no that's not it come back again jump no go come back and he jumps and it's like all right put yourself back into the PS2 days of there is going to be a fucking spot that I an invisible spot I need to hit to make these things happen and it was as soon as you get to the other side okay I need to get up there jump

He's like, uh, jump, and like move him around, like this huge fucking tank guy. Finally, jump. Okay, there he is. That gets me up there to move over there to do this. And it's just like that frustration building on top of, okay, cool. Like, I'll take him into these areas, right? Where take him in these tight corridors and going through and the camera's fucking winging out and breaking and flying all around him.

I'm like, okay, cool. Oh, hey, there's a barrel. I'm supposed to give him this barrel. That's what I do. Turn around, throw it at him from, bite it out of the air, hits him in the face, falls in the ground. He doesn't bite him. Oh, yeah, grab it, place it in front of him. He does the thing where he walks over, but then he gets all awkward about it.

And then he, like, goes down and he comes back up, and I'm like, what is the fucking problem? And I'm like, is he full? Is this a mechanic? I don't understand. Is there a health bar on him? His eyes are a different color? Is that part?

I don't know what's going on. And I'm like, wait a second. Walk it to a giant open area, put it down. He comes over and gets it. I'm like, oh, in the corridor, there's not enough space for your animation to play. You have no animation from the developer. It's a video game that reminds me over and over and over again that it is a video game. and it's a video game from a different time period

where I'm just like, ooh, no, I cannot do this. It's pretty. I totally understand people are like, oh man, and you get there and there's a story at the end and it's this journey, and I'm like, I totally get it and I'm, I, but even talking about it now,

I am getting frustrated at it, and I hate, I don't play games for that experience. I don't play games to run my head into a wall over and over again, and it'd be different if it was the witness. And another game that I was like, I play, and I was like, it's very pretty, it's very cool,

and not a game I want to play. But I wasn't, I'm not getting stumped by the puzzles. I'm getting fucking pissed off at the mechanics. You know what I mean? And that's enough for me to be like, you know what? This isn't fun and I'm out. I don't want to play this. Yeah.

I mean, I can agree with you to an extent that it is a frustrating experience overall. And there was a lot of stuff definitely did not have the same experience you had. Sure. It's like there was points of like, why isn't this happening? But it's just like many of the times I was like, all right, cool. I'm going to give it to them because this thing is supposed to be like an animal. and it did feel like an animal not listening to you.

But it's, I know that it's not. I can see the strings. I don't know. Like there was, I started to learn the rules that it didn't ever, to me, feel like,

oh, this is a PS2 game and the animation can't play here. It's like, no, he's not comfortable eating in a small quarter. You need to bring it out in the wide thing. And it felt the game pushed me in a direction where

that felt believable to me. Okay. I started understanding the rules how to go about all that stuff. For me, Last Guardian, at worst, is a good game.

at best is a great game, but I don't think that there's ever enough points for it to hit either of those to be consistently one or the other. There's things about it that are bad, but I think that they're so few and far between that they're all just kind of like, they're just cons to the experience,

not so much like things that ruin the experience. I put up the tweet, the three adjectives, right, a frustrating, pretty, whatever the other one, I forgot what I said originally. But, damn, now that's going to piss me off. I said it was frustrating, antiquated and pretty.

And people, it's funny because, you know, it's been so long since we get to cover everything we love. When we play something, we don't necessarily like, we don't really do anything with it, or we know we're not going to cover it, because why would I go play that, right? And like Final Fantasy, I'm like, enjoy the combat, don't like this, and I'm out, and I don't have to have anything.

But for this to come out at the review embargo, post basically a review in 140 characters, right? The people who are like, fuck you. I was like, oh yeah, I forgot that this kind of shit exists. But then also the people who were like kind of had the point but kind of like fuck you. You didn't like shadow or eco.

And I'm like, oh yeah, I like them fine. I respect them fine, didn't love them. Like so your second half is actually makes a lot of sense. And this is again why it always blows my mind when people get mad at anybody having a different opinion on a video game where, because then it was all people throwing the scores at me from like, oh, well, the GameSpot gave it a nine and there was a bunch of other nine.

It's like, well, IG gave it a seven. But that's beside the point. and the fact that you know me well enough. You know that I wasn't, yeah, I'm not somebody who, like, loves Shadow. I respect what it is. I think it's overhyped as an amazing game. But it's one of those you know where I stand on it, right? So I think Marty loves those games, right?

So Marty Seven should mean more to you or whoever viewed a game spot, you know how they are. And like, that's the whole thing of like, this is a great time for you to find someone who's voice you know and appreciate and understand and go that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For me, Eco was always a great game. But I was, I think, too young to love it at the time it came out. And also, I think that it was too young in the PS2's life cycle to really be able to be the game that it wanted to be.

But overall, I thought it's a great game. Shadow fucking love that game. This kind of feels like a weird in between where it goes back to the good and great things, where it's somewhere in between those two things where I'd say, Shadow is great and Eco is good. The gameplay feels way more like Eco, but the epic moments feel way more like the epic moments from Shadow. Yeah. And they make it worth it. They make the kind of the more simple puzzles and all that stuff feel like it's worth of frustrations.

Because there are many frustrations, like going through it all. And it's like there's more often than not, I would know how to solve the puzzle. But then it would become trying to make him listen or try to make the controls work in my favor. Yeah. But I was telling Colin this, like to me, this game is inside in 3D. And with that comes all the good and all the bad because it's very. rare the games translate from 2D to 3D that well because things like camera get introduced. Guess what? The camera fucking sucks in this game.

That's going to be a thing no matter what. When you take a giant creature and put him in tiny corridors and you need to focus on him and this other little dude, that thing's going to go fucking haywire. But when you go out in the wider expansive areas and like the big towery things, like then the scope starts to fit and all of a sudden it's like, okay, cool, this is why being in 3D makes this game worth dealing with all. the bullshit. And again,

like it's a lot easier to control even like jumps in platforming in 2D than it is in 3D. Sure. And the camera all plays into that. But him grabbing ledges, why can you grab this ledge and not that ledge? The game has rules and sometimes I feel like it's not fully consistent with them. And that isn't good. You know,

that's a problem with game design, especially when that's all this game really has is pretty, story, thematic, symbolism. Like all these are. words, but then really it's just puzzles, right? Like, this game is just a puzzle game. So for the, the puzzles, the puzzles are great. I think that they're just as good as anything and inside from understanding how to get through this room, understanding how I get through that room. They're varied

enough where you very rarely are doing the exact same thing over and over and over. Yeah, mechanics from other puzzles are brought back, but using a different way. But in different ways, I like that, and I'm definitely going to not spoil anything, but pretty early on, you get different types of things to do, whether it's like telling him what to do or losing your little shield. Me or shield. Whatever the fuck it is, which I thought was good because it's like, I feel like very easily the game could have just relied on that for the entire game. Yeah, I thought it was going to be a mechanic who's longer than it was for sure.

And it's like pretty early on. It goes away. And it's like, cool, great. So then it introduces the soldier guys and everything I'm talking about is in the first hour and half of the game and stuff that we've seen E3s and stuff. But I liked that it just continually kept adding new elements that made it feel rewarding to want to keep going. Again, though, I think that this game could have learned from things like Insideware. Inside was a tight experience.

Gave me everything I needed. I did not need that game to be a second longer than it was. Yeah. This game, I wanted it and expected it to be a five to six hour game. And I understand that there's a long development cycle and stuff. But, like, that doesn't, I'm not one of those people that believes that for every year that this game's developed, I deserve three hours of gameplay time. It's like, no, give me the right experience.

And I feel like this, it was stretched out a little bit much. Like there was a couple moments that do repeat from a story perspective where I'm like, all right, there's only, I had uncharted syndrome with a couple of things where some of the set pieces

started to feel repetitive. Where I'm like, this was super cool the first time, but in Uncharted when it's like, it's always the last second when he jumps and grabs the thing right before both. And it's like, that happened in this game.

over and over and over and over. Like how many times the bridge is going to fall and he jumps and then he makes it. Yeah, yeah. But you make it, but he almost doesn't make it. It's just like,

okay, I get it. And it's cool and it's beautiful, but it starts to feel less cool as that goes on. But then towards the end, it gets amazing from a story perspective, not from a gameplay.

The gameplay is consistent through the whole thing. Was the ending awesome? I know what the ending is. I've talked to people about the ending. I mean, I mean, again, it's one of those things where I really believe that if this game was half as long as it was, it would be a lot more powerful. Yeah. Because every moment would feel like it was building towards something.

With this, I feel like the pacing's just, just off enough to go to good instead of great. Because the end, the end is fantastic. And like just take it. You can't just look at the end. But playing through at least enough of the game to understand it and then seeing the end, it's fucking powerful. And it's cool. And it's very much like inside where it's like, What the fuck happened in this game?

Like, I know I could tell you exactly this happened than this, then this, which resulted in that. But like, what does it mean? Yeah. You know, what's the symbolism for? How does this relate to the other games, if at all? Like, it really makes you think, and it's cool. And I'm a little surprised that you don't like it as much as you do simply because of Portillo. Like, I don't have pets.

Yeah. And immediately, my first thought was like, oh, my God, I can't imagine having a pet that I cared about playing this game. Yeah. Because that thing, it's like, Trico or Toreko or whatever the fuck the guy says, he's the homie. And like it's different than just being a character in a game. Like it feels like an animal that is your animal, an animal that is bonded with you. And you're, you communicate with it, but it does feel like you're communicating with an animal, which can be frustrating and not fun. And I'm not saying that like, that's why I like this game.

It's not. But I think they did a great job of just the way that he animates and the way that he moves, is believable enough that it feels like a character that I've never seen before in a game or a movie or anything. It's like there's a bond with that that's different than a bond you have with amazingly well-written characters. Like, yeah, Nate and Elena, they're awesome in uncharted. And I think that like the Uncharted games and the Noddy Dog games are in a league of their own when it comes to characters and their relationships with each other and how non-playable characters are so important to you. But with this, it's like beyond a non-playable character. it's a animal.

Yeah. And you care about that animal, the way you care about a pet. I think that's the thing is this game makes you care. And I was motivated to keep playing through it, despite its frustrations. And I do think that at the end of the day, totally worth it.

It was worth all of it. It was worth the millions of delays and the years and the trailers and all that. This game is what they promised. This game is what they showed us years ago. And that's something that I want to give them credit for. in comparison to Fall Fantasy 15 because what we got from Final Fantasy 15 was not what I saw 10 years ago. What we got for Last Guardian was what I saw however many years ago.

Real short, I mean, in the first, what, 15 minutes, they show what is the first screenshot ever released from what would become the last Guardian. I remember when Roper and I at IGN, when that screenshot came out and making the bloggeral image and gumball image at the time. And like, like, when it pops in the game, I was like, oh, fuck. I remember that, you know, the chain going on the well and like the cover off the side. I was like, yeah, I fucking remember this. That is neat that they kept that in there. Yeah, and it's definitely, it's a nice journey overall. Like being able to play it and see all the thought put into to every piece of the game.

Because again, it's an art game. You know, we did our review about inside. And it's like, not only is this a video game to be a video game. This is a video game to be art. See, and that's when I get the most frustrated with Last Guardian is that, yeah, it's an art piece. And you're trying to tell me this awesome story. So, I mean, like, I feel like it's sloppy then in gameplay. And it's sloppy and mechanics.

and why wouldn't anybody put a premium on that to tell the story you want to sell, right? Because you keep bringing up inside. I mean, like, inside is, my problem with inside is the ending, right? Where I was just like, what the fuck was this all for? But the reason I think that is one of the game of the year candidates is that it is so much fun to play. It is so well done.

It is the right balance for me. And obviously, I'm being as subjective as possible. It's the right balance for me of, man, this puzzle, there's the answer. Now I know what I'm doing. Okay, cool. Maybe I was stopped. I think I got stopped once. and it was for like, what, five minutes, I think I said in our review or whatever.

Like, that has such a great flow and it isn't a minute longer. And it's this, ooh, man, what a masterclass in gameplay of point A to point B. Of that first time the dogs are introduced and they're chasing you and you get away just in time. So you understand this is what's going to happen. Don't do this again. Yeah. Whereas this one is, I understand he's an like, I guess that's probably. I mean, like, I don't know.

I'm not trying to bash to bash. I mean, I understand that he's an animal. But the inability for, I mean, for him to be such a cock sucker and jump straight up when he knows I want him to jump across. this bridge. You know what I mean? Like, that's the thing where I'm like, I don't give a fuck about this guy. I keep stabbing him in the fucking face. He sucks. You know what I mean? Like, do what I'm telling you to do. I tell Portillo to jump on the couch. He jumps on the couch. He doesn't jump on the

love seat. Took years to do. No, I tell him to pee. He'll pee anywhere he wants. But I mean, again, it's this weird thing with it where I understand why people like the game. I understand what it is. I don't hate the Last Guardian. I'm sure that's how I'll be painted the rest of my life now that I hate the Last Guardian or some of that. It's just so frustrating. I mean, like,

you know, for full transparency with the audience, like, I sat down on Friday before the embargo. You guys were both out, and it was Nick and I here. We sat down and did a let's play. And it was that thing of, I'm trying to play a new part. It was a new area we got to or whatever.

Nick's asking me questions about the game, and then it was that I was getting frustrated because I was trying to do something and I'm jumping off, and then it wasn't being clear how it was getting caught. If the cone of vision for these, and I'm like, I just stopped the lets play. I was like, you know what, stop.

We're not putting this up. Like, I'm ratcheting up my anger and frustration with this game when it's not probably that high, but putting it in this context of making content about it and talking to the audience, talking to Nick, do this, it's making it look even worse. I'm not trying to take away from anybody who likes these games or, you know, it likes this one or thinks they might like it. It's the exact same thing I was talking about where if you were like me and don't like what

I'm talking about and usually fall with me, maybe you're with me, maybe you're not. It doesn't matter. It's not us against them. It's me trying to give you an opinion for you to make your purchasing decisions on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, the last thing that I want to compliment the game on is, you know, is the emotions that I felt while playing it,

because it isn't just the sadness or whatever, but there's fear. There's a lot of moments of not understanding what's going on, even when Trico does things to the character, and you're like, are you eating me? Yeah. And there's moments it's like,

what the fuck's happening? Yeah. And that affects the way that you play the game too because it's like you're kind of scared to do certain things or when you do face off against the guys in their cone of vision. It should try to rationalize and figure out, who the fuck are they? Why are they doing the things that they're doing?

And I think that, again, it's one of those games like inside where you're constantly questioning why things are happening and what's going on. And I feel like at the end it pays off. And I think it pays off from a gameplay experience and story level. It's just that the moment to moment gameplay can be a little bit too frustrating to be worth as long of a drawn-out experience as it is. And I do think this game could have been way tighter, been way better because of it. But I recommend trying it. I don't think it's for everybody. I actually know that it's not for everybody

in the same way that even Shadow and Eco aren't for everybody, especially Eco. But I also think Inside's not for everybody. Limbo's not for everybody. So it's like you need to, if you want to like this game, you're going to like this game. And if you don't, you're not going to.

It's definitely super abstract from a story standpoint and super archaic from a gameplay standpoint. And that was the thing is like, I don't want to take away from, you know, when I was complaining about the controls and complaining about them being antiquated, right? And I do think it's a weird thing of like jumps on triangle. Right.

And like stuff like that. I think that is weird. I would have changed that stuff. But I do think that there's a place for cumbersome controls that then make you feel like you're in that experience. Shadow, I thought, did such a great job with that. Where Shadow, when you're trying to crawl up shit is so weird. You're like making claws on the controller. But it made sense because you're this little guy crawling on this giant thing.

Now, granted, you're a little man climbing on a trico or whatever. But that's not even one of my. like cumbersome control complaints, right? Because it is just hold triangle and press up. I think it might even be tap triangle, like a toggle and go up. Just weird. Weird. Yeah.

It definitely is weird. And another thing, a compliment and a complaint about it. Compliment is, I say the animations are, one of my biggest compliments to inside was the animations and how there was an animation for almost everything. Yeah. Same thing with Last Guardian. But again, in 3D, where it's like, I'm surprised at how many animations both the boy and Trico have for so many different scenarios.

The complaint, though, is it's so suspension of disbelief inducing where the boy fucking will fall for like a thousand feet and just kind of like fuck it. Like I've seen like fall down the rocks and I'm just like getting knocked by Trico

and fucking land on his head. I'm like, god damn, that kid is fucked. But I did like that mechanic of there's no health bar if you take one of those falls, you get up and you're like hobbling and like you'll hit the call but it's like, oh that's cool. Yeah, but it's It is kind of weird. It's just weird to see because it's very disparate from the rest of the game.

Because there's some real violent shit that goes down. It's like, God damn, this is horrifying. And then you just see the kid fucking get mauled down a fucking rocky mountain and just kind of limp for a bit and then be okay. Yeah. Where about you, you call? I don't know that I have much input on it that you guys haven't touched on already. I mean, just in the hour I played, I walked away from it a little bit. I was impressed in some ways and I think confused in some ways.

I actually laughed out loud when it told you to jump with triangle. I actually did. I started laughing. And I went into, because I knew in my heart, I'm like, you're not going to be able to change this. And I went into the options and Sloom, I'm like, who the fuck jumps with triangle? There are just certain things that we just don't do. This is what I was saying before about how all shooters can control the same. And I think that there should be some sort of like, some sort of basic standard in the way we use face buttons in games like this.

And I was a little confused by that. I actually agree with Greg in the sense that I think Eco and Shadow of the Colossus were, interesting games, and I think this game is actually a direct lineage to Eco specifically, but a shadow of the class is annoyed the fuck out of me because of its control scheme. And when you go back and look at it, I guess it makes sense from a gameplay perspective. I think that it felt even old in 2005. And so I'm confused how the design philosophies of the game that was probably embryonically created in 2006 or 2007, no one was like, guys, we have to make this game feel a bit more modern.

And you immediately get the vibe that it was just made in a vacuum the exact way they meant to make it. And that's fine. And I respect that. But it was a huge turnoff to me from a control perspective. I was impressed specifically about how Trico looks. I think the game's beautiful. I also think the game looks super old from texture standpoint. And this game looks like you can run on PS3.

with the exception of Trika, who I, I like actually like Mar- the first time you go outside and he stretches or something you look at him like, holy shit, like his face too.

Yeah, he looks really impressive. The feathers and the lighting on him. His butthole. His, he does, I climb right up in that butthole. Yeah,

it's a damn, damn detail. Yeah, you saw that. That video clip exists somewhere in a hard driver. So I'm looking, like,

I have a lot, the, I was, once I got over the, uh, the fascination to be like, I'm playing it. I'm playing it.

It's, it exists. this and here it is. I just was like, I'm kind of bored. And I, I don't, I don't want to, I don't need to play this. That's kind of the way, the way I felt. And I felt that way about Shadow, too, where I played Shadow to the Colossus. I actually couldn't afford it in college. And I didn't play it until I moved here. I played it in 2007, Mark Ryan, our old colleague at IGN lent it to me. And I played it. I'm like, Jesus Christ. Like, why, why is it control like this? And I just had, so I just have a very, admittedly narrow vision of the way games should control.

specific, you know, these third-person games. And so I found myself somewhat frustrated with that with this game, too. And again, it develops more questions than answers for me where I'm like, well, what about this couldn't run on PS3? Why couldn't you make this work? That was like the big thing I was asking myself. I was kind of just panning the camera and looking around and looking at the scope and the fact that Triko's AI clearly isn't very good. And that the controls are a little weird and the and the game clearly was just lifted out of PS3 and put on PS4 you know um and and I left without admitted without some technical knowledge obviously about I'm like what about this is a PS what made why was PS4 necessary for this that's that's that's the big thing that

because they made it seem like when they moved it like we couldn't get it to work I mean that was kind of what I what I what I walked away from on PS3 and I'm like but why you know why and so that's my big question now and I really more than the game itself which I don't I think the game is not going to move the needle at all I don't think anyone's really going to play it and I think that that's really sad because of the the provenance of the game and the gestation

period of the game and how important it is to our history but at the same time I I'm hopeful that Sony learned something from this internally and also I hope someone can tell the story about what happened why did this game this

game takes so long. You know, and that was the, you know, I've read a little bit about people's experiences and towards the end, and I'm so glad that people are liking it and enjoying it, and it seems like it's going to be in the 80s on Metacritic, which is great. Surprising. It is surprising. You know, I was told months ago off the record that the game's 12 hours long, and I, 12 to 14 hours, I think it was what I was told.

And, and I was shocked by that, and I never shared that piece of information because I was like, I bet you the game's five hours long. And I agree with you, the daunting thing for me. is like knowing that the payoff's probably pretty good, but knowing that I have to play it for 12 hours and for completely puzzle stupid people like me, that's more like 15 probably. I'm like,

there's just no way. I just can't. I mean, that's what comes down to do for me is again, I like, I mean, we all like arguments. It's a stupid thing to say.

I'd love to experience the story on my own, right? But yeah, I mean, being three hours in, maybe a little bit more, no less, but maybe more. And thinking of like,

it's like literally like, sitting at the bottom of the giant steps. They're just like, I could do anything else for another nine hours. I don't, I don't want to climb this. I don't want to do this for nine hours. Og Caveman says, with The last Guardian finally out on the out, the big consensus seems to

be that the story's amazing, but the game play is terrible. Would this game have benefited more if it were a movie, show, comic, etc., instead of a game? And what other games do you think? Whatever. Okay, yeah, it's a mother shit. I thought that was interesting as a topic for this because I think that this needed it to be a game to have the type of resonance that it does or else it is just a fairly generic story.

I think that the fact that you are playing and that there are all those frustrations that you have with with Triko, it makes it all worth it or else you're just getting an attempt at a Miyazaki movie. And I don't, I think that that's not a bad thing. Sure. But I do think that the you earn your relationship. You earn it. You earn the relationship. This is what somebody, I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, but having said that again, not to beat a dead horse, I don't think it needed to be be 12 hours of that. And I think that for you guys having experience as much as you did, maybe you should experience a little bit more.

There's a couple just key story moments that you need to see just to understand things that happen. But I still, I feel like the end would be just as special having only had the experiences that you guys had with it. Like it, the end is special just because of, it does a good job of every single thing happening at once. Yeah. Is that moment.

And it's, it's not really. the cap at the end of this entire amazing story. Gotcha. That's, okay, I see. So it's not the product of the journey. Yeah. And I mean, it is by default just because the only way to get there is that. But I mean, with things like YouTube and stuff, like, I don't necessarily think it's

that horrible of an idea to play enough of this game to get it and to have some type of feeling and then to experience the end just by watching it because a lot of it is not so much a gameplay experience. At PSX, what I was, I was talking to a guy from PlayStation who was, it was, it was, it We were shooting the shit while we were waiting for the panel or whatever. He was like, oh, yeah, but money's like, so what about Last Guardian? And I was like, oh, I played it. I don't like.

He's like, really? I'm like, yeah, and I explained everything I've explained in the shorter fashion. He's like, I would encourage you to keep going because I understand what you're saying with the frustrations. But I don't know if this is game design or just the different side of the line we're all on, right? But he was like, as you learn how to control him and make him work the way you want him to work and stuff, it's you building your relationship. And he's like, it's never going to be one for one. But by the end of it, you understand and that he does control better than he did before. And that's the thing is like, I wasn't sure if that was in my head or not.

Yeah. And to be honest, I'm not sure if it's in everyone else's head or not. Right, right. But yeah, I mean, it does. The more you played, the more I felt like I was in control of what was happening, whereas before it was just fucking a shit show. Sure. But I don't know if that was just me learning how to play within the bullshit ass rules. Sure.

Or if it was him adapt. and learning or somewhere in between. I think, again, you and I are similar on the same page, but just on different sides of it, right? In the way of, like, I still think it's all just the strings. You know what I mean? So I don't know if I'm ever going to look at this game and be able to get lost.

You know, Triko, as my pet, when in reality, I'm like, why did they design him this way? Why can't he jump this way? Why is it so hard to get him to stand on his fucking hind legs and get me up there? All right, he's doing it, but now he's moving his head away when I want it just to be right there for me to, you know what I mean? Like, that would be, that frustration, I think,

is going to be this huge boulder in the way of me ever getting to the end and what happens at the end matters to me. I, uh, the one, this is an ancillary sort of thing, but like a tangent, but the one interesting thing I must admit, Mega Man 8, that, uh,

that I feel like needs, needs to be, uh, said, well, not as it need to be said, but it's something I want to say is that this was the first time, this particular game in Final Fantasy 15, where the first time, uh, and a long time where I was skeptical of what everyone was saying about it from a critical perspective at websites because of the feeling that there must be some sort of mental,

whether cognizant or not cognizant, compensation for what people think you are biases are gonna be against these games. In other words, these games have been so ingestation for so long that I think people's, I think the reader is going to look in it in everything that it's loaded. in some way because

you don't want to hold its gestation period or its trials and tribulations against it. And I wonder if there was some sort of over or under compensation on either end based on those kinds of things because I know that if I was reviewing it, I would have to really shut that part of me off because

you're expecting something great based on the way it's been the way that the development of these two particular games released a week apart have gone and I never really experienced that before. Where I went in And I'm like, I just, I can't believe it. You know, like, I don't, I don't know who's similar we talking about with fake news. This will go up the same time, I think actually is the game where we talk about fake news.

And the stuff about that where I'm like, wow, I'm becoming really skeptical about everything because there's so much loaded into these games, you know, that we can't just, they're not normal games. And they're not going to be treated normally, whether unfairly, unfairly, whether good or bad. And so it was the first time ever. I'm not saying anyone's lying. And what I'm saying is that I went into it, and it's incredibly skeptical about everything that everyone was saying about it. I think that just is more of a testament to you need to find people that you trust and just, you know,

like going into this, I could have told you plus or minus a couple standard deviations, what we all would think of Final Fantasy 15 and Last Guardian. That's because I know us, you know. And I think that when we look at Marty or whoever the hell is a game spot still or, you know, like all those people, it's like, you know that or Jeff Gersman or whoever, it's like, okay, cool. just knowing them in their history and what they like and what they don't like.

But more than that, it's not even about like and dislike. It's about where are they in the industry? Where were they in the industry when Fallant Fantasy versus 13 was announced and all this stuff? It's like you need to take all that in consideration because that's how games are reviewed. Games are not reviewed completely unbiased because that's not what a review is.

A review is an opinion. Right. The opinion is formed from where you stand. But I do wonder, I don't think, my whole mind was like, is someone somewhere going to feel like They didn't like the last guardian, right? Like, or they don't like the fine.

It gets like a five and a half or a six, but they're like, people are going to think I don't like it because of the fact that it's had this torture development. And I'm afraid of that. So I need to buttress it. Or is it the other way where it's like I really, really liked Final Fantasy 15, but I'm afraid people are going to be hard on me because I'm not taking into account the story, you know, like of the development. And it was the first time I ever went into it where I'm like, I can't think of any specific examples of either of these things happening. But when I woke up and went to Metacritic, I'm like, you know, I think there should be asterisks next to these scores because I think that they're just so, it's like Barry Bons's fucking home run record where I'm like there's so many, there's so many variables in the way we all feel about these products that I feel like there's going to be great champions for the games and great dissenters for these games in bigger numbers than I think would otherwise be usual because of their provenance as these long and development, much anticipated games. But I'm glad that they're both out so we can stop talking about them. No, we're never going to stop talking about them.

Trust me on that. Next topic, the Game Awards. Game Awards 2016 happened last week. We did a predictions topic on Gamescast. We did? The week before. You won? Congratulations.

I won. I won. Tim was right. Thank you, Kevin. But during the game awards, there was a lot of conversation that we were having, and then later on NeoGAF of what the fuck is this shit, is this what the game award should be? Sure.

So the topic here is, what should the game awards be? Going forward, specifically talking about Jeff Keely's game awards. What did they do right? What did they do wrong? Where can they learn? And more importantly, just like what is it that we expect them to be

and can that thing even exist? Big question. I love the game awards. Jeff Keely, obviously a friend of ours where we voted on the game awards judging board this year. And I've been,

I've been a fan or at least I've been interested in them. since they were the Spike TV Awards, of course, right? And I think for me, what the game awards are head and shoulders above what the Spike TV awards were, right? I always talk about when I went to the one down in LA where Eliza Dush Cube came out and announced on charted two or whatever, right?

And it was like, wow, what's going on? And like, what, how is this, this is weird and all these celebrities are up there that have, you know, Samuel Jackson. It's just like, well, don't hit an SLJ. I love SLJ, but I'm just saying there was a lot of pandering there, right? Of like, this is what you want, right? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when Jeff got away from Spike, that was, like, I think for a lot of people in the industry.

And not, I had talked to Jeff, I think, tangentially before, but never really, you know what I mean, so he struck out in his own. And did that first game awards with the first PSX or around the first PSX in Vegas. And I remember being at that first one where it was, you know, imagine dragons performed with the Nintendo guy. Coach Condo. Thank you so much. And like to be in the room, I was like, holy shit, this is awesome. Like, that is such a great moment. And it was such a big deal that it was being funded through these different ways and it wasn't the traditional ad model and it was more for the gamers by the gamers, right?

And I felt like the Game Awards there were such a great step. That was such a great step, such a great show. It was the first time I remember watching the Game Awards, and that's including VGA's and me like, wow, they're on to something here. It's if Jeff's on his own and can do it this way, it's going to be something special, right? during the stream for the latest game awards I was talking about last year's game awards and I'm like I'm incredibly biased here I was there and it was a fucking fantastic night

for me because I won but I remember having that same feeling where I'm in the audience and Stephanie Justin comes out and does Quiet's theme live and Jeff has the great Kajima speech about like he's not allowed to be here so fuck these guys I had a good speech

there were good trailers for me being there felt like it was about the developers and it was about the games and it was about the actors and actresses, right? Troy was in front of me. The lady from her story was over there.

She went up and won. The Witcher kept winning awards left and right. Like, it in the room felt like it was about games and it was. Now, getting to year three, you know, we talked about it on the show, and we're going to talk about it here, obviously. I felt like it was a minor step backwards. I don't think it's off track. I don't think it's spinning off into VGA land.

But the shick hydro razor guy, the kick, the backstage kicks to Kyle Bossman, reminded me a lot of, I forget what VGA's it was, but the one where they kept kicking back, I want to say to Allison Heslip, but I'm not sure if that's correct, where they were doing like weird mini games and there was like pies coming out at one point and they were trying to make,

and it was like, what the fuck is this? Why are you doing this? Like, this is time that could be spent on a video game, on an award, on a developer speech. And I, again, I'm not saying this year's VGA or the game awards were a VGA's performance. They weren't. I just feel like for the first time it was

bit of a step backwards where it was very blatant that here's schick and the hydro razor and this thing and here's kind of back who he's making some reference to whatever the hell it was another ad kind of thing i forget my exact example i'm thinking of but the vr one that he put on and like you and i had a conversation on the game award stream i was like uh and you're like hey they got to pay the bills which i we of course appreciate we have to do that too obviously but it was that thing of like i understand that but when we do an ad read you and i try to have fun with it or we do something and granted i guess they're trying to have fun here and i can kind of see and you I think they're in on the joke and I was like, are they?

It wasn't transparent enough that, hey everybody, we're doing this because we have to do this. Ha ha ha ha ha. So that was for me the one problem because it then became that. I felt like there were not as many awards being put on stage and it wasn't as much about it. But it's so hard for me to say because the past two years that were the game words, I was in the audience and clearly they weren't showing me all the ads and doing it all. So I'm skewed and I don't know if it's reality if it's just my own.

from being at two shows where I got to see what I got to see. Yeah. I mean, for the sake of this whole argument, I'm definitely on an aside that I think is unpopular when it comes to people's thoughts on this whole thing from a viewer perspective, because I'm looking at it as a production, and I think about the award show as this huge thing

that so many people are working on to create an event that is both for the people in the room and for viewers at home. Now, from that, yeah, the bill's got to get paid. There's not commercials in here. You can bring up all the other award shows the VMAs, the AMAs, the Grammys, Oscars, whatever. Those are all either on cable channels getting paid for that way,

in addition to commercial time every fucking five seconds, or on ABC or whatever, and they have the commercials in addition to things like Ellen, pulling up a Samsung phone to do the selfies and stuff. It's like those integrations are happening everywhere, right? So with this, it's like, all right, was the shick Razor Man, like, over the top? Yeah, and the reason I think that they were in on the gym, And I think it might have missed the mark just because they're in a joke doesn't excuse them.

Yeah is the fact that it's Kyle and all that Kyle and with the easy allies the the Advertising is kind of a joke. So it'd be the equivalent of what if we were part of the the game awards and if someone pitched me hey Tim, you want to like interview the razor guy like we would think it's funny and our audience would think it's funny that I'm doing that because they know me they know that stick and I feel like with Kyle is the same way. Kyle's that guy for that group where he makes fun of the the sponsorship. So him doing it it's kind of the joke. Again, misses the mark when most people don't get that reference, but at the same time, it had to happen for this thing to happen on the scale that it did. And unfortunately, a lot of it comes down to, all right, well, they needed money to get celebrities to do this thing, but we don't want celebrities. We want to see awards. We want this. The problem is they don't care what you want. They care what the majority of people want. They care about growing this thing. They have their obvious business ramifications that they need to consider. But they also,

have goals that they're trying to push that aren't thinking about what Neogath has to say about them. Sure. I think that when it comes to like so many people are bitching about why aren't all the awards being shown? Because people don't care. That's called the Dice Awards and nobody watches them. That's the GDC Awards. There's all these different prestigious awards shows that nobody watches at all. So it's like, all right, there's no money there.

There's no viewers there. Those are happening. So it's like, cool. If you just want people to get their time and their awards, that's happening. any award show. They're not showing every award. If there's 20 awards, you'll be like, you get seven of them, right? Like, and I'm talking about things like the VMAs. Even on the Oscars and Grammys, there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of awards being given away. And most of them aren't televised because then you're going to be going down the list of

best VFX in a TV show. And it's like, it's so specific that there's not time to show this stuff. So I think that they did a really good job of pinpointing the awards to televised, televised in quotes, to kind of tell a story. I think that focusing on the trending gamer is really important despite the internet being like, who gives a fuck about this, award the people.

Because the trending gamer, it's trying to show people what gaming is as a culture and what gaming can be. And in addition to that, things like the, the Kojima stuff where people are like, oh, did he really need to,

you know, give his freaking love speech to Kojima for 10 minutes and like make it so much about Kojima to the point that it's awkward. It's like, well, I would argue, yeah, that's trying to treat Kojima like a celebrity, trying to treat him like he matters, which

will then get us to a point that the game awards can be stuff where we are awarding game developers for being celebrities, for being things that, for being people that people should know. Because until then, we're just going to get real celebrities, like, because that's what people know. People latch on to that. That's what trends on Twitter. And the argument about the music performance is it's like, I get it from both sides, but they're also producing a show for the people in that room.

and the people in that room are into it. Sure. Or the journalists that aren't into it and they're not going to be into anything. So they're just there for the announcements and stuff. And I also think it's unfair to look at the musical acts and just be like, oh man, this has nothing to do with gaming. It has everything to do with gaming.

That's what games are. Games are licensed music. Whether you like it or not, 90% of video games now are licensed music. And the rappers that run the Jules and Ray Stremend, what the hell he is. Run the Jules had a gears tie-in. Run the Jules. They've been in like every video game this year.

So it's like, that's where that comes down. They also did the Doom soundtrack, which is their equivalent to the Koji Kondo thing a couple years ago into Stephanie Juston last year. And then the Ray Straman guy, number one song in the world right now. So it's like, okay, cool, they're doing this stuff for reasons.

Last year they had churches. What did church stuff do with video games? Oh, they were in a couple of them. You know, so it's like those are the things where it's like, I get that you don't like that, but those things need to happen for this. And at the end of the day, the game awards, the awards part of it is just part of it.

is just part of it. Video games are in a unique place where unlike any other industry, there's things like E3 where hey, watch us do a press conference where we announce a bunch of shit and show you trailers.

Do movies have that? The closest thing is the Super Bowl. Right? It's not like there's some music day where people come out and like a whole bunch of artists come out and be like, here's the albums coming out this year, right?

Or in movies, it's like Marvel, did that thing one time where they had their press conference to kind of talk about what the MCU was going to be. But besides that, you don't see, you know, even if it happens, it's definitely not a big mainstream movie event in the way that in video games, it is mainstream for these game announcements. And I think that the game awards has filled a void of the late year E3.

It's that second thing. We got PSX, but where else are we going to see all the other guys have stuff? You know, Nintendo for years has been debuting things there, whether it's bullshit like cranky Kong's playable and Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze or things of substance. Like, Zelda, Breath of the Wild, before we knew it was Breath of Wild being shown for the first time. And even with, like, a lot of people like, oh, man, what they show this year sucked. It's like, okay, watching it, expecting to be blown the fuck away. Yeah. But compared to the last couple years, we actually got a shit ton this year.

Like, every year, they're getting more and more exclusives that matter, more and more. Even if they're not exclusives, just like new looks at things of substance. I mean, looking at this year, we got Mass Effect, Andromeda, Walking Dead, Proximates. premiere, Zelda, Breath of Wild, trailer and Let's Play things showing more than we've ever seen that game when we didn't expect to see anything from it until the Nintendo presentation. Shovel Night, Specter, Torment, Halo Wars 2, Death Stranding, Dantless, Bullet Storymaster, telltale's Guardians of the Galaxy, Law Breakers, Warfare, This Hasn's Creed, Experience, whatever.

That's enough games where it's like, that's a wide net where, yeah, you may not like everything. And there's pray as well. But there's something for everybody there. And I think that that's important because to give people these seeds means next year, they'll have more. And see, that's, I think, part of it that I was driving at before he just gave a very good rundown of it, you know what I mean?

Because, again, didn't hate him, just thought, I think it might even be my own personal bias, right? In the fact that it's a kind of like PSX 24 to 15, right? It's 2016 now. So last year's PSX, 2015. In the way of, PSX remember, had a bad ending. And then also when you talk to Adam Boys afterwards or, yeah, I don't mean, if that's even correct, when we talk to anybody afterwards, they'd be like, we want to have a few different

things in there, right? We want to have something where somebody comes and they leave and they have two to three things inside of this conference. They were super impassionate about, right? And so for me, it was like Mass Effect was great, Breath of the Wild Life played, this, that, and the other. Then even awards, right? Like, again, I'm not one of the guys saying 2016 was bad for games. I am saying that I think 2015 was way better for me. There were a lot of great games this year, but Overwatch is in my jam, right?

So I'm I super stoked that they're out there winning awards and people are going up there and I don't know anybody in that team. Again, personal bias of it's exciting to see. I mean, like, I thought the Witcher was great. They're honoring the Witcher. Oh, man, Metal Gear was great. Hadeo Kijim's got this thing. It's not happening, but oh, my God. Her story was great.

Emily was away. It was great. All these different things, you know, where that was like such a big deal to see those people honored. Where this year's like, yeah, these games are great. Oh, good, I'm going on. They're winning, but I'm not as invested in it maybe is the problem. And that's maybe a problem for other people, too.

Hmm. I think, I thought you gave a very eloquent rundown of why I think a lot of the things worked. And I'll also say that I feel that, I feel that, having firsthand knowledge and experience and being able to have witnessed smaller productions being done in the lift that those require from people that know way more about it than me. You know, I give them a lot of credit for pulling the show off. The thing that I'll say is that I think the balance between awards and chicanery and reveals was totally off. And I did look into it. I actually remember talking to Nick.

He drove me home that night. And I was like, the Oscars show way more awards than this, right? And he was like, yes. And so I was like. But for the record, there's more Oscars. I think that's part of the problem. Well, sure. But I was also like so.

There's what Oscars? More Oscars. The game awards in general has what? Oh, yeah. Like you're saying, there's also like three out of three and a half hours long. Sure. Sure. And so I was like, okay, so that's an interesting thing that I wanted to walk away from.

But specifically, um, you had brought up, which I think is a salient point that, you know, are E3s and gamescoms and TGSs and Paris Games, we're very unique and very endemic to the industry. No one else has those. and it's true. We are a unique and forward-thinking industry and we have been for 40 years long before any of us were born.

And E3 was born out of CES because of the idea that we can do it differently and do it better, right? We could have just stayed with technology and stayed with computers and we didn't. We chose not to do that. To me, the game awards are very 20th century. And it reminds me a lot of

this drive to try to get gaming movies. Right? Like, we have to have an uncharted movie. We have to, it's like, no, you don't. Like, what, like, what are you trying to prove to everyone? Like, we, we should be the ones in which are, that are emulated in terms of the gaming industry because we are, we have a very forward-thinking, interactive pioneering industry that requires pioneering solutions to old problems about, like, how would you, how do you honor game creators?

How do you reveal a product? How do you celebrate game culture? And I just feel like it's a nice attempt, and I think it's the best attempt, possible right now, considering what people want to put into it. But I don't think it's, I don't think it's a hit. I don't think it's, I don't think it works. And I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I think, he's a great guy. And, uh, I think that the production based on what it was was fine. I think it was interesting. I watched it. It was, I think, the right amount of time. I just want us to come up,

people smarter than me and more intelligent than me and more, and have, with more intuitive ideas, come up with something that makes sense for us, because this doesn't make sense for us. And that was my one big takeaway. I don't need another show with reveals. In fact, I would rather have them have clever ways to just celebrate. You know, we talk about Dyson and the GDC Awards and all that kind of stuff. And that's fine. I don't care about those either.

I'm interested in the winners. I don't watch them. But if we want to celebrate game creators and the people that work so hard on these games, then let's do that. And not worry about getting eyeballs based on reveals. They're two different things. You know, they're separate. You know, at the Oscars, they don't reveal.

typically, you know, a slew of movies, you know, and they just celebrate the people that have already made the movies. And so to Tim's point, and I think it's important, that might not get eyeballs or garnered eyeballs, but it's probably the right thing to do. And we already have an E3. We already have a gamescom. We already have a PSX. We already have all these things. We don't need another one. You know, and that's, and that's, we don't, we already, yeah, we already have a George. It's like what I'm saying about Absu. We already have a journey. See, my argument to that, though, is we already have award shows. We already have. IGN's game of the year. We already have all of that. And I think that what we don't have

is something like this. We don't have something that is, this is the VMAs of games. And I think that having that where it is a self-produced events that celebrates games the way that they are celebrating them, I think that it is unique compared to everything else in the gaming sphere. Is it just copying what, you know, movies and them do? Yeah. But like the thing there is, again, trying to step away from the Academy Awards and think more of it as an MTV movie awards or VMAs where it's like what happens at those shows? Trailers for new movies, performances by artists,

and they give away a couple awards. And I think that that's what this is and I think that it stands alone then because it's not quite any three where it's just messages being delivered by the people that are making the games and that's all that it is and numbers and graphs and all that stuff.

But it's also not a award. and just reviews and celebrations of games for what they've done. It is kind of a mixing of the two to then have games be celebrated in a way outside of gamers. And I think that that is what its goal is. Whereas the gamers wanting to celebrate games, they're going IGN to see what IGN game game of the year, you know, and bitch about in the comments.

And then on the other side, they're going to wherever it is they go to get their trailers and stuff to give their opinion on the new movies they've seen. This is ironically unique in the gaming world. And I think necessary because it's enjoyable. It's entertainment content. I mean, what's unique about it and what I've always liked about it. And when I say that, I mean game awards and then to an extent, I guess more like

judges week, right, when they do an E3 game of the show, is the fact that when I was working at IGN and even, I guess I don't know if I really knew about it when it was on the outside of it existed. But the idea of it being the Justice League, where it is, all right, kind of funny votes and IGN votes and all these other different sites and people vote. So you get this consensus, right? And yeah, you know, we call the DICE Awards. You could put the BAFTAs in there.

You could put the GDC Awards in there and how, okay, well, nobody watches those. Those are ones where I don't feel those are meant to be watched necessarily. You know, GDC is always the GDC Awards and the independent game awards. IDGAs are all at the same time. IDGFAs, whatever. There's two awards shows back to back, but therefore the developers that are all there who want to come out and honor each other. And Dice is the same way, right? All right, all these developers in their tuxes who want to honor each other.

Dice is, I mean, like, I've been. never been to a dice. It is, it seems always very like, I went to one dice and it is, it is that. It's a lot of congratulations. Let's get dressed up and celebrate each other. Celebrate each other. Yeah. And like, that's not necessarily meant for our prying eyes. That isn't supposed to be the live stream. And so what I love about the game awards is the fact that I think Jeff is on to something. And I think every year it is he's making this stew or soup, right? And he's adding a little bit and taste it. Turn in butter. He's doing, doesn't this how you make soup and too. He puts a little bit in and then taste it and then comes away from it. And I love the fact

that the day after he tweeted like, what did everybody think? I really want to know, right? And I'm sure he's watching this video. And I feel like he's going to get it. And I think there, you brought it up in the beginning of your part that there's a balance to it. And maybe this year was the chicanery, as you said, out balancing the words. And I think that's something to take to heart and bring it back the other way because it is that. And I don't know if it's just me and like these, even the seeds of the speech from last year for me, right? Of the fact that I feel like developers don't get enough time and enough game players don't understand the people who are behind it. And like the fucking speech for that dragon cancer, right?

Man, I want fucking people to see that. And I want that to have a platform and I want that to get to people. So they understand. And as we build Troy Baker's and Nolan North and, you know, Mark Cerneys and personalities, you start to get to the point where we always talk about it, right? Oscars work because movies are sold by who's in them. And maybe as we continue down this line of games and you have Kajima's coming up, right? and you have David Cage is coming up.

Maybe we get to the point where, oh man, Cliff Blasinski made this game. Everybody's going to care on a different level. And we get to that point where that can be, this is all part of the same groundswell. Where I always talk about how I think up at noon was ahead of its time in a way, right? In terms of like we started,

like Dave Finoi is more popular because of up at noon. But it's also, he's more popular because Telltale did amazing work with him and really fucking broke down a lot of walls with the Walking Dead season one. So all these things are happening at once and we're all trying to get it and figure out how to make it something.

Yeah. I mean, dude, I think you really hit the nail on the head there. It's like it takes the up at noons to get stuff. And it takes the Jeff show now on YouTube where it's like it really, you look at it and you're kind of like, ooh, why are you doing that? Like, why do we need all this high production value? As I sit here in a freaking room with a video wall, it's like this stuff's necessary for this shit to be taken seriously, for more money to be put here organically to be able

to do to be able to do. To push the envelope. Not the things that we feel like we have to do and all that. And you're right. Like you, what Up and noon did, up and noon for better or worse, changed the industry of video game videos, right? And how people thought of that type of content and interview content. You interviewed people about their roles on games, whether a voice actor or a director or a level design editor, whatever it is. Like you gave them, you made them celebrities for that 15 minutes, right?

And I think that we need more of that. And that's why I think going back to what I was saying that him giving Kojima that moment was important. You know, and I feel like Kojima is probably the top of the food chain when it comes to that. But it'll trickle down. It does require time to get all of this stuff going. But it's important for up at noon to copy talk shows to be able to do its own thing. Because you can't just do your own thing or else it's going to fail when it comes to this type of stuff. And it's just a tried and true sad fact, but you can't do the thing for the love of it until you do the thing to make money to do that thing for the love of it.

Yeah, I think, I mean, you're right. Right. I mean, I'm always concerned, even in our own corporation when we talk about it, but generally about the incessant drive for the monetary realities, yet it is important to have the monetary realities at the forefront or you can't. You know, it's a chicken or the eye kind of situation. I stand by, the Kojima thing I thought was funny. I thought that he was talking about Kojima like his plane crash in Vietnam and he was a POW for seven years. So I thought that that was pretty funny. And I got a lot play on Twitter. I thank you for that. But the specific thing that I think I'll stand by is that I think it is a 20th century television era solution for an internet-driven 21st century industry. And the only reason that so much money, the schick man and the video game, you know, all that kind of stuff has to be shown is because, and the ads, there was a lot of endemic gaming ads showed, is because of the scale of the production.

And I don't agree that it has to be that way. In an era where Twitch, people are twitching to hundreds of thousands of people from their bedroom. I actually think that stripping it down and making it more personable, Jeff Keely in a room like this and a couch, having developers come in and get their awards, I think is, would require almost no money. They'd probably have a bigger margin, and they would be able to do what is necessary to attract a younger 21st century gaming audience. And that's, that's all I'm trying to say. I think one of the telling things that I saw, I was surprised about how empty that place was. And that it doesn't need to be in that venue.

Like, it's not impressive. It's actually depressing to see it in that venue when it's not full. And so it, they, I think it has to scale back. I think the balance, you know, the, the canary v. reveal v. award thing. I mean, that's something I have to figure out. But I think that it doesn't have to be, I really feel like we're, I, again, I think the corollary to the movies is really important to gaming movies where it's like we don't, we find our own solutions to all these problems. And I think, again, you bring up E3 is a great idea, like a great, like a great.

point where it's like we have unique solutions to unique problems or unique set of circumstances in gaming that movies and and TV and all these things don't and music they're from another error in another time and we can show them how it's done you know and I think that that's that's that's what's so fun about and so that's my my big takeaway and my big recommendation that Jeff is to just and they won't they it's going to be the same place the bigger and better the bruce and the pudding and I think that that that's my that's my that's my the problem but but also I think the good thing. It was at a different place this year. So I mean, it could be a different place next year. Right. But what I mean is like it's going to be a large theater with,

you know, high production values. And I'm sure hundreds of thousands of dollars were the staff and equipment and all that kind of stuff. And I just, I just don't, I just don't feel like it's necessary. And that's, and so that's just my takeaway. That said, I think the show was just fine. I don't think it was bad at all. I just, uh, I just want us to remember how unique we are as a group, you know, and, and that we, we love interactivity and we love storytelling, all these things. And yeah, the Dice Awards might not attract eyeballs, but it's because they're not doing it right.

And I want someone to take a very buttoned up approach to this at some point and just try it. I just want to point out, like people have tried it and the proofs in the pudding and it didn't work out. When we were at IGN, we did that judgment day. That's what that is, right? It was inviting devs to come and talk of, like, give awards and do that whole, the whole, like, exactly what you just said. And it wasn't worth the trouble.

You know, it didn't get the views. It just caused a lot of shitstorm in the comments of negativity and stuff because that's what award shows do. You're saying we should do. But I mean, move the desk out of the side,

put up whatever background we do an award show here. We totally good. But we do it. I mean, we do on Gapescast. Like just giving out like our game of the year award.

But this is when we invite Tim Schaefer over and he just accepts every award on behalf of whoever. Of whoever. Yeah. And I mean, that's actually a really good video. I'm definitely, Definitely down for that.

The game of the year, Overwatch, here to accept Tim Schaefer. Yeah, I'm down for that. But I think that is the problem is that there is realities to this. And even as simple as having developers come out, that costs money. You got to fly them out. You got to put them up. And it's like you have all these different teams with their PR people that have representation. Like, even us getting let's plays.

We did a less play yesterday. There's freaking 10 people in the room. You know, imagine people want to be here for an award show. That's a whole other frustration with just the publishers and marketers just blowing fucking money. Although it's not as bad as it used to be. I was talking to someone about that. But that's a whole other problem about like how like, why do these companies spend so much money on all this bullshit? Because spending the money makes money.

And I think that's that is really what this all boils down to. And I know that I'm beating a dead horse again. But it's just like there's so much behind the scenes bullshit that make these things the way that they are. It's not like Jeff Keely's making this and it's just like, I'm blind and deaf and don't hear and don't understand what you guys are saying. It's that I hear what you're saying, but there's a butt. you know and I think that we are really making good steps towards the game war's getting better and better every year we're getting more reveals which is why I watched them who wins the award great I don't need to watch that I can watch the I can look at the recap later and see who won and see who had good speeches and that is a thing that I want to give a shout out to and I said this during the show itself but I think that your speech

motivated people to step their speech game up because it's oh it's the game awards you win stuff cool you get to go I thank my mom thank my dad thank my team cool bye But it's like, no, because of your speech, you took that shit seriously and you had a platform. You put your money where your mouth is when it comes to this conversation. And you tried making the game more it's better. You tried making the game more it's what it should be. And I think that you changed them. I think that every speech that we saw this year, I think to some extent was influenced by your speech. And whether or not it's directly to you, like, I think that you making, setting that standard and sending that level allowed other people to have powerful speeches that weren't all just.

the same thing. And I think that Nolan coming out and taking the opportunity to say the things he said was powerful and awesome. And I guess that's part of it. Maybe that's part of this, why this one is, I feel, a step back or weird, is the fact that you're right. The speeches all were good. And so it was

that juxtaposition of going from Nolan's speech of like, holy shit everyone. A lot of people didn't even like really catch. I'm like, holy shit, he's talking about he's the first ever giant video game actor to come out and be like, this strikes bullshit. And he's saying that right now. And it's like, holy fuck, we've been waiting for someone to say something.

And here it is. And it's happening live as he wins this award for his voice acting. It was like, holy shit, was that powerful. So then to jump to, here's something goofy. And they even had the problem with that dragon cancer speech where they came back. And it was like, you could see them, not stall. But I felt like they were trying to, this middling area of like, let's talk long enough about this to get you away from that. Because there's no way to pull out of that without a commercial breaking.

And that's the problem. It's like these guys give these rousing, amazing. speeches and then dubstep music plays. That's a really interesting point. And then it's back to Justine and Matt Pat, who delivered the award and how are they supposed to handle that? And then the internet rips everyone apart because it's just like, it's so insensitive for them to play this music.

Like they don't even care. It's like, that's the problem of the live production aspect. Yeah. Where it's like, this is an award show and this is a thing where it's like, yeah, the music is like transition music. It's not an emotional like score to what just happened. And it's like not reacting to what. people just did, it's moving the show along. And that gets super complicated. And it also goes back to,

you know, me and you got to do something super unique this year and host the Final Fantasy uncovered event. And I never thought I'd be in a position where I get to be the guy on stage that I'm making snarky comments about online. And it's just like, you know, we did a bunch of shit and set a bunch of shit in a way. But you've nailed it. You only took us like 40 minutes. I don't know when this topic started, but you nailed it of what was wrong. And I couldn't put my finger on it was tone. Final Fantasy, sure. We acted like goons

and we interviewed Lena Hetty and there was great parts and weird parts, right? But, and I'm sure there were. But for the main comments I saw were like, oh, but you guys did a great job. That was a lot of fun. They wasn't like, you know,

fuck you guys, all this other crap. And I'm sure they're out there again. Well, that's my idea. Anything you do on the internet. But what I'm saying is our tone was consistent from point A to point B on that thing. Whereas the tone for the game wars this year felt like it was all over the map.

Where it was all of a sudden, we're doing the award show, we're honoring the developer, we're honoring Kajima. here's the razor. Here's this great speech. All right, we're back down here

with some rap group you've never heard of. All right, we're back. I mean, see, I think that it's a little unfair to say that because even the Final Fantasy thing,

all of a sudden we're promoting a car because it's in the Kingsglave movie. Sure. You know? And it's like, yeah, we handled it goofy, but that was their way of handling goofy.

And I'm sure that we thought it was funny, but I know for a fact, Neograph didn't think it was funny. Nah. You know? But that's the thing is it's like, there's no pleasing these people. And no matter who is on the stage,

never know what they do. There's no pleasing people. You can take out these people. Everybody has a different opinion. That's what I'm saying. It's just like there is no perfect award show. So I again, just to your point. I'm sorry to interrupt.

Just look at the Vita relocation program, which you brought up before. I read the NeoGaf thread on that. Oh my God. It's like, are you fucking kidding me? They're joking guys. There's nothing that like, that will satiate, you know,

the specific crowd that will look for anything to bitch about. I get that. So I understand. Yeah. And it's, it's just hard because these guys that stand on stage,

all right, I think one of the most astute comments that I've read in the last year and it was geared towards us but it fits this totally is,

all right, we're gaming personalities so we can critique games for them being games. People are allowed to critique us for our personalities.

And I was like, huh, you're fucking right. Yeah. You know? So the moment someone goes on stage and is presenting,

they can be critiqued as presenters. Currie. Yeah. And that's what they're doing. And cool. Fair enough. I get it.

I know that we didn't nail the Falun Fancy thing. We nailed it as much as we had to, right? I had a great time. You had a good time. We both stood by what we believed and we knew what we were doing. We were doing a job. And I feel like we did it well while holding on who we are, you know, almost entire.

It was almost a joke how much they let us do whatever the fuck we wanted to do. But that's the thing was with these game awards. It is Jeff. Jeff was the one consistent tone throughout the whole thing. But yeah, when other people come up and they're reading off a prompter and then some guy gives a rousing speech that's super emotional, how you get a plan for that? No, and I'm not saying, exactly, I'm not saying like, I'm not saying, hmm, what am I saying, I guess? I've been wondering why this game awards felt weird or different or a step backwards, just a minor one again. And I think it's the tone.

And how do you plan for that? I think everybody has to take it seriously. Not to the point of, there's no fun here. Whenever we come out of a speech, I'm gonna act like they just told me President Kennedy was shot. No, I mean, there's a balance to it though. That was interesting in how to strike that is weird. Because even with the musical performances, I feel,

where like Imagine Drag is in Koji Kondo. Thank you, Kondo, sorry, I'm so sorry. Serious and gaming, but fun. You know what I mean? In Stephanie Houston, series, gaming, fun. Churches, I feel not serious, but game-e, of course, like you're talking about, in fun.

Like there's a tone to... The problem here, though, is then we're just getting a musical taste. What's the difference between churches and rap groups? You don't like rap. You're not going to fucking like this. But that's the problem. I think the Doom section is the more apt thing to talk about it.

And it's like, okay, cool. Doom is comparable to Kojikondo and Quiet's theme. But the other stuff, that's churches. And if you either like churches that you don't, you either like rap music or you don't. There are P breaks that they need to be pre breaks. If it would have been the Ritz, I would have been fine. A.k.a. White Jesus. Strange music. Strange music. Any closing words, call?

No, I just, I hope Jeff made a lot of money. And I mean that in all sincerity, you know, because I think it's a, it's a, it's a big lift. And you're right. You know, like, the, the, everything is open for criticism, including us. You know, I'm criticized every day. We all are. But there are ways to go about that. I never try to be super mean-spirited or, or, or, uh, attack individuals. And I think that's the big difference. So if you have something to deliver to Jeff, you should just deliver it about the show and not about him personally. That's, that's my line and where I like lose my fucking mind on people. But I agree with you. I think, I think it is important to be open to the criticism and to the concerns of those out there.

And, you know, I think that they can better tailor the show to to be what it needs to be. But I, you know, other than that, I, you know, again, knowing what you guys went through with Kind of Funny Live and Kind of Funny Live 2, what we've gone through with E3s and I mean, and GDC. I mean, these are like fucking minuscule. Yeah, the Herculane for us, let alone this. And so it is a lift. And you do have to appreciate that. You do not respect what folks behind a camera or air in production go through until you're in it.

You just don't. And whether or not you like it or not, like I certainly have learned a great deal in the last 10 years about what goes into all this shit. And especially in the last two years. And you just do, you do become a little kinder about misses because of the work that goes into them. And so that's important. And to Colin's point, I hope Jeff made money, but I more importantly hope Jeff keeps at it. I do think he is pushing the sled. He is moving the needle.

He is doing something that if he didn't do, it would be. All right, there's the hygiene game award and this, though. And they would all matter less because there were so many of them. I just want to put that on Colin's ring finger already. Come here. Let me marry you. Let me marry you. Yeah, I think that's the things.

You know, he'll forever get shit for being the Mountain Dew Dorito guy. But like, because he did that. I'm the layer guy from the rest of my life. But because he was that guy, he gets to do the game awards, the way he wants to do and the way he believes in it. And I think that that's what's important. And he obviously has a ton of people that support him. The same we have a ton of people supporting us.

And people can complain about how we do ads. People can complain about the content we do or this or that. But it's the people that believe in us that allow us to do the things that we want. And with everything, it's a multi-step process where it's like, all right, we're doing this to be able to get the means to do that. And it's not just money. It's money. It's, um, you know, fan base. It's community.

It's trust. It's all these things. And like I can tell you for damn sure that you winning trending gamer meant so much to kind of funny. That changed so much. from a business standpoint of being able to talk to advertisers and be like, we have trending gamer of the year last year. I will always be trending gamer of the year 2015. You just always phrase it that way.

Or we could buy boogie. Yeah. But that helped us, you know? So it's like these game awards, they mean stuff to people. You know, you walk into the, to these any game developer that is one stuff and it's prominently displayed, you know, it's like these, you watching it, a lot of people could think that it's a joke, but it's not a joke to the people that it matters to. So I really think he's doing a great job,

and I think that he needs to keep at it. Final topic of the day. Brought to you by you. We are still going. Oh, man. Thank you for supporting us on Patreon at the $20 above level. Your name will be there. Oh, they're not here.

They're not. Next week. Next week, they'll be there. Come next week and see your beautiful fucking names. There's another reason to come back. You can go to kind of funny.com slash gamescast topic and leave a topic for us to talk about just like Lord Hurray did. He got a good one here.

Lord Hurray. Gonna cut to the chase. Any of y'all had any sex acts performed on you while playing a game or any permutation of that shit? I like you, Lord Hurry. Let me tell you a story. I once received oral sex. Oh shit.

I did. It's true. Just stop the story there. I can't get any better. While playing Halo. Combat evolved. Now, I wasn't playing the single player. I was playing the multiplayer.

If you don't remember, Halo Kombat evolved. Didn't have online. I'm gonna see the whole crazy ass land, like X-C'd bullshit. I wasn't doing that. I was playing multiplayer by myself, trying to figure out a way to get the ghost to go up the mountain so I can break out of the level.

I was playing my strats, my schemy-ass strats for some capture the flag. While I'm doing that shit, this girl didn't know her that well. When she was sitting on the bed, we were talking, I was at my friend's house. Okay, I was like, wait, how does this girl? You don't know that well? Yeah, yeah, I don't know. We're at, like, we're at this party.

She delivered a pizza. Meanwhile, I'm upstairs trying to fucking scheme my, my CTF stretch. Sure. And she came up and, yeah, Alfredo was downstairs. I don't know what the fuck he was doing. Two chicks. I have some thoughts. But anyway, this girl, we started talking.

It's, it's a story that I probably shouldn't give all the details of. So I'm not going to on this show. maybe on a future episode of Love and Sex Stuff you'll get the full story so stay tuned but yeah it did end in

in me doing this and her lovingly going down on me while you kept playing yeah I kept going it reached a point that I was like

I gotta stop I got to stop she kept telling me you know just keep going I was like this feels weird yeah I don't know I want to give you attention

so I did it was fun it was a lot of fun most importantly figured out the right pattern to get out of the fucking damn right you did

I did. I did. Alfredo called you the gray ghost. The great ghost. Tim Geddes. Hashtag, I love blow jobs.

Damn. It's true. That should be your new one. No more hashtag let Tim host. Nope. Hashtag, I love blow jobs. Who doesn't, though,

you know? Do you love blow jobs? Do you love blow jobs? Yeah, I'm a fan of them. You love blow jobs, Kev? I didn't, I mean, I think I, no, I got nothing.

I mean, the answer is yes, but I'm not going to go any. Yeah, that's the thing. I don't want to go to details. Your answer is no, but you're not going to give details? It's a complicated story. Okay, okay, okay. Well, anyway, I enjoy sex in video games.

I don't know about if I'd want to be doing actual sex in video games. No, that's not possible. It was a similar story to yours. Yeah, but, you know. A few times. If you're out there, leave your comments below. I want to hear your stories in detail. Graphic, graphic detail.

What game were you playing? Were you trying to escape from mountains? Let us know in the comments below. Layman L says, considering the PlayStation 4 or 20-year-s, celebration version of the new Tomb Raider had all the add-ons and extras already on it at no additional cost. Do you not think it's actually better to wait and get the full game instead of getting the game a few months earlier and having to keep paying for the DLC? Okay, a few months earlier.

It was a year. So let's let's, we're not like you're shaving off three months here. All right. And it depends on who you are. I mean, what do you want to do? You know what I mean?

That's the whole thing. When do you want to play this game? Ideally, you would wait. But it's not always ideal. I wouldn't even think for the DLC, but it's just the wait because you're, you know, the fucking beta tester for a month and a half when a game comes out.

So after that, you're going to, if, I was thinking specifically about Titanfall 2 recently, if you waited literally two and a half weeks, you could have gotten Titanfall 2 for probably 60% of whatever everyone else paid for before you. And at that point, it's like, I don't know, I would, I, I just, there's so many great sales, you know? Sure. But it's hard to not be part of the conversation or not want to get in on it immediately. So I don't know that there's a writer at all.

That's the thing about it, yeah. I think there's something for both sides of the argument. You know, granted, we get a lot of games for free, but when I, do buy. I'm buying on day one, but I'm also buying because I want to make sure I have it for when I have that moment. I think as day and day digital becomes the standard, right, that should fade away and internet speeds catch up to where I won't catch you off guard. There won't be a Saturday where you're like, what should I fucking play? Oh, great, this game. Oh, it's going to take 20 years of download. I should have bought that ahead of time. I should have preloaded it. I should

have had it day one ready to go. Because yeah, there's plenty of games that I don't touch in time. And then, yeah, the DLC or it's on sale or this or something like that pops. What I think about a lot is I'd love to be able to time travel to the future. but be able to buy used games there or time travel to the future and just get all, you know what I mean? Like, I can't wait for this game anymore. You know what I mean?

I'm going to go there. I'm going to buy all the Lego dimensions. Yeah. Bring them back. Now, granted I have to bring my PS4 there, get the patches there. Yeah. Because if I came back here,

the patch wouldn't work. That game would work. You ever think about that? Do you ever think about the fucking less plays we could be doing if we could time travel? Oh, that's funny. They announced last of us part two. Let's do a let's play of it right now.

Yeah. You know, Druckman's here. We haven't even low cap that yet. I'm like, shut up, Chuck Bink. Yeah, I mean, you know, this has been an issue for a very long time for me where it comes to, I think since the PS3 era probably when the HD remasters became such a thing, where I was still behind on games that I'm like, all right, I'll just wait for the remaster. It happened with Uncharted.

Happy I waited. Yeah. Being able to play the collection, like, one to one to one to one was fucking awesome. But I also think that, you know, for Uncharted 4, I wouldn't have waited for that. You know, like that's where I'm at now. I wanted to play that right then. Um, especially now with PS4 pro and like with all the patches and stuff and like where we're going to get to a point probably early to mid next year where day one the patches are ready or it's on the disc and you're getting your. Your 4Ks 4Ks for pro stuff.

But we're out right now. It's like, oh man, like Final Fantasy 15. The pro stuff's not fully ready or, um, other games that are going to be coming out like Las Guardian stuff. It's like just knowing that they're still working out the kinks with all this stuff. It's like, ah, I do want to wait. I do want the better experience. And I think that, you know, there's pros and cons on both ways. And like, I'm not even taking the sales into consideration.

Like, if I want a game, I'm going to pay what I need to pay to play the game, whether it's $45, $60 or, you know, $120. It's like, if I want it, I'm not ever going to buy a game that I'm not informed enough to know that I want to experience it. That's not saying it's going to be good or bad. Just that experience is going to be worth. $60 to me with like for example last guardian like that's a game that to me would be worth $60 just for the experience of playing it But but yeah it's also the idea of waiting bothers me and like I think it really kind of depends on what it is your waiting for

When it comes to most of the type of DLC that we get I'm like I don't really care if I get a bunch of alternate skins Yeah and stuff like that's like when it comes to the game's gonna play better sure But like this Final Fantasy 15 patch that they're talking about today all that shit I'm like whatever they're gonna fix chapter 13 cool that sounds great besides that I'm like I don't really care there's gonna be a bunch of added little bullshit things that don't affect the game

yeah you know or things that once I beat the game I can always just YouTube later I think that's the other big part is just like if there's added content do I really need to play it or can I just look at the sure the shit later think about this too we go to the future we can watch justice league right now we watch we watch spider man homecoming right now yeah I would do that justice league with me

if I had a fucking bootleg future copy I mean, yeah, I probably would. Asshole. So when I get to the future and find out this movie was a failure, just like all the other DC movies, and I'm like, damn it! John Lines says, is D.L.C. is we know it going to follow the Ubisoft path

of removing the barriers to fully enjoy a game? I don't think so. I mean, how often does the D.L.C. really ruin enjoying the game, though. I think Prince of Persia is the one everybody I go back to all the time when we talk about this conversation, where they put the real ending into D.L. You're like, go fuck yourself. Yeah.

You're kidding to me. the game wasn't that great to begin with. You're going to do this to us. It was good. It was good. It wasn't nearly good enough for me to buy the deal. See it ending. I mean,

I can halfway agree with you on that. Okay. I wish it was a complete game. Sure. But the game that was there, utterly fantastic. I wish we'd get a sequel. I wish we'd get a new version of that

because that fucking game was great. But I don't feel like this is something that's happening left and right. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think like the destiny expansions, I mean, they're putting so much content into that division.

Now we're talking about, you know, Uncharted 4's DLC, that's not DLC, the story stuff. Last of Us Left Behind. You know, it's like, that's not, you're not owed that. That's not stuff that's blocking you from enjoying The Last of Us

to understand what Ellie's backstory was in this prequel thing. You get that because you loved the Last of Us and that's how it all works. So I don't, I don't think you're gonna see a lot of people doing it because I don't think a lot of people do it the wrong way in terms of,

all right, cool, here's all this shit that now you got to get you if you really want to know. Even like Arkham, Arkham Knight or going to Vanley, Arkham, like the maps and shit, like, oh man, I didn't enjoy that much because I didn't have these Batmobile track races. Yeah. I mean, I think DLC is still such a new

thing even though it's been around for almost a decade it feels like, but like they're still learning and I think it's another thing we're trying to get right as an industry. Yeah, and it's, I feel like more often than not recently things have been more right than wrong and I think we're going to keep going that way because yeah, people can speak with their

wallets and that at the end of the day is all the matters. If people are buying the bullshit, guess what? They're going to keep doing it. Yeah. So, it's just goes that way. This isn't so much question. Finally. But, uh,

tell me a story, T-bone. My dude here says, you don't talk about PC much, but could you give a shout-out to Planet Coaster, bringing the roller coaster tycoon glory days back? Sure. Shout-out's a planet coaster.

I hope you're enjoying it on your PC. I just got a PS4 game bridge constructor. I'm looking forward to construct on some bridges. You know how many bridges there are in America? Millions. And I want, what was it if you haven't seen, if you didn't like Batman v.

Superman to jump off them? Good Lord. I make a good point. You and drunk. T.J. Malt 421 says, Hey, guys. At this year's Game Awards, we saw gameplay of Legend of Zelda

and it was played on Wii U. What do you make of this? Is this because it's so far from being ready on Switch? Or maybe that the Switch won't look as technically impressive as we hope. No, what I make of this is the fact that if you would have done that,

it would have been first Switch gameplay, Switch Switch Switch Switch, Switch. Did you see how he was holding it? Was there a button back there? It would have all been about the Switch. It wouldn't have been about the game at all. Yeah, same reason that E3. than it was playable in the Wii.

It's just I think that Nintendo knows their switch presentation. January 13th, 12th, 12th. 13th is when I get to play that shit. Yeah. What if we did that and we turned into a switch? Colin freak out. Kevin would have to come over. What the fuck is wrong with him?

I just don't get it. I don't understand like how the synapses connect together that you're like, all right, this is the sentence that I'm going to say right now. Wonder twin powers activate. We're talking about the switch. We tap. We just turn into a switch and fall right there. Colin freaks out.

You're a psychotic. Pondly gun. Now that we're knees deep into the holiday season, I was wondering what games, if any, give you that cozy, nostalgic holiday feeling. Is there anything that you find yourself drawn back to around this time of year?

Holiday comfort food for gamers, as it were. No, old game is old. I don't like going backwards. It's rare that I pop in an old game. I think Christmas, I have games tied to Christmas memories. I was talking about Mario 64, right? My parents gave me the N64 and Mario 64 in the traditional Christmas story,

Red Rider BB gun thing where I opened all my other presents. And then they sent me downstairs for something stupid. And then coming back upstairs, it was there against the hall tree. That's a good little memory. And it's sitting there playing the cold level next to the window that had the snow outside. I was like, I remember that. Gizmo throwing up on Royal Rumble on Sega Genesis.

Stupid-ass Gizmo. It was, but the boxes, they had the little laminate on it. It was fun. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I have a ton of story, like Christmas-y story. of playing games. I think more recently, Journey was the big one where I played that during Christmas break. And like I will now forever associate that with Christmas break as an adult. But in terms

of like games, I replay games a lot like old games. Like I often go back to the Mario trilogy, Mario World, Yoshi's Island and Star Fox 64. Those are games that every once in a while, probably once a year, I'll just be like, I just need to play through this. Sure. I just owe it to myself to remind myself why I love games so much. And I guess that it does tend to be around Christmas time because that's when I feel like I have the most time. Sure. Because we force ourselves to take it off or no matter when I've been in my life, I've had that time off to some extent, whether it's schoolwork or whatever the fuck it is we do here. We just live here. Colin? No, I don't, I mean, I have a lot of games tied to old Christmases, but this time here

doesn't remind me of any specific game that I want to go back to. But lots of great memories. when I was a kid of playing games over Christmas break. A lot of RPGs. But this year, I mean, I don't even know what I played last year because most this year, I'll play whatever is whatever is there. So, no, this is the only good thing is that it gives you time. You have time, time, enough will last. Maybe you'll make some memories with Hitman.

Maybe Hitman will become your winter game. That might be. I'm looking forward to it. Gary Bucy coming in the back door, you know what I'm saying? Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ben, episode 98 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. Thank you very much for joining us. He's just playing Hitman and here's a knock on the back door, sliding door.

It's like Garibucese's there. Sorry, you missed my high value target, Colin. Until next time I love you. And he's got two cats. He's got two cats. Gizmo? No, Gizmo's long dead. When she got spayed, got a big old belly.