Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - What Games Come Back This Generation? - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 61

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

Andy joins us on his birthday to give his thoughts on Super Mario 3D World and Bowser's fury and we talk about the potential return of Splinter Cell, Syphon Filter, Bioshock, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome to the Kind of Funny podcast. That's not right. The Kind of Funny Games cast is always. I'm Tim Getty's joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. Hello, Tim. How are you? I'm pretty damn good, Greg. You're on the eve of a Nintendo Direct.

How does it feel? It feels real good. It's been a very, very long time since I've had this feeling in me, this feeling of hype, this feeling of terror. You never really know what Nintendo's going to do. So I'm hoping for the best, expecting the worst. What about you? Cancel Nintendo.

The new face of it. video games blessing out of Yoia Jr. I'm so excited. I feel like there's nothing I can have but too high of expectations. You know, like I don't think there's anything that can really reveal at this direct that really has me like, oh, they did it because after over a year of not having directs, I'm like, I just want everything.

I want Breath of the Wild. I want Metroid Prime. I want Bayonetta 3. Give me Mario Golf. Give me new Smash Brothers character. Yes, Mario Golf. Yeah. Greg Miller, you have a, you're happy.

Yeah, I just want to, I want to point it out for, the judge jury and the executioner, Andy Cortez, as we call him over here. That blessing made the joke. One of us is going to have to change. And like we all do when we wear matching kind of funny shirts. And then he buttoned up his jacket. Like, he's like, he wasn't joking. He was dead serious.

I'm not going to wear this fucking t-shirt if Greg's wearing this t-shirt. I'll change it with that important to you. You know what I mean? He looks identical. That's the thing. Yeah, exactly. I would never know who's who. Who's impossible.

What are you on your camera so I know who's the one talking. Like just so I can tell I really didn't think I didn't think Barrett our blessing was going to commit to that That's really impressive You want to change shirts plus? No no no no it's all good I'll do it

No but I like it I'll do it Because here's the thing People don't usually see the logo on this shirt And so they never know that it's rare But if I zip up Then it's like whoa he has a rare shirt He's a real rare fan

Yeah Because I love rare He loves rare I heard you have all the achievements In the retro replay collection thing They put out right I mean if retro replay or if a rare replay was on PlayStation,

I would at least have the platinum for Jeff or Cheminine. And joining us for this kind of funny games cast on his birthday, the Nitro Rifle, Andy Cortez. Good to see you, everybody. Good to see you. 28 years old. 28 years old. His first Kind of Funny Games cast of 2021.

Very exciting stuff. This is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week right here on YouTube.com slash kind and funny games. We all get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. You could get the show for free on YouTube.com slash kind of funny or roosterteeth.com as a video. If you want it as a podcast, search your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Games cast. But you're going to be getting those with ads.

You're going to be getting those with no exclusive post show. If you want those things, you can go to Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games, just like our Patreon producers. It's a long list here. Thank all of you. Graham of legend, David Mindell, Trevor Stark. Elliot, Patrick Higgins, James Hastings, Katie Gallagher, Sancho West Gaming, Chai Jackson Burgess, Alex J. Sandoval, Julian, the gluten-free gamer, man-bear paradox, Tali of Floyd, civilian soldier,

Mizuki, Trent Barry, Kevin Boges, Joseph O. Yousif, Tyler Ross, Jesse the decrepit, James Davis, and the nanobiologist. Thank you all you. On Tim, there's definitely more. Keep going. Andy, when you hear Kevin Bokes, who you think of? Kevin Bones? Boggs. Mugsy, baby. Mugsy Bugs, baby. Slamma jama. See, it's different.

Like, initially, I heard Kevin Nash or Kevin Bones, and I thought Kevin Nash. If I said Kevin Bones, you would think of Kevin Nash? No, they've never said, called him that in my life. I would think of, like, a macho man. Remember how he was Bonesaw? I would think of Motcham, man, if you said Kevin Bones. No, but I was thinking in how on Magic Mike, Kevin Nash is in it. A lot of boners in there.

A lot of boners in magic. See, Andy, I know you're a. Kevin Nash is in my is in. Yeah, Greg. Would you fucking believe it? He's one of the main strippers. Bullshit. You're bullshit. Yes.

Swear to God. NW.O. Kevin Nash, Diesel. Yes. You're fucking with me. You're fucking with me. No. No. No. I'm Googling.

Listen, I'm not falling for this again. Look at Kevin. I thought you meant Steve Nash. I thought you missed Steve Nash. I saw Steve Nash was in Magic. Whoa. I don't know which one. It's weirder.

You know. But it worked. It freaking worked. Greg, you're literally about to have your mind blown. We ain't lying with you. We ain't fibbing. Just like he's in John Wick, two or one, or which one? One.

Well, first off, every knows him from being Super Shredder and Ninja Turtles, too. That's what he is. All right. What the fuck? I didn't know that. How did I know? Which Ninja Turtles do? The Super Shredder.

The big one. The mutant shredder. When Shredder, yeah, it takes the U.S. That's the same one with Go Ninja. Go ninja. Yeah. Wow. Holy shit now.

Does he talk in this movie or does he just dance and throw it? He talks debatably too much. Yeah. Shout out here. I'm on, you know, Googled it, of course. I ended up on Banner Bruce's YouTube page, which has 3.15,000 subs.

Magic Mike, double X-L, Tarzan's performance, Kevin Nash. And the number one upvoted thing is from Brandon Elliott TV who says, Ter Quad on stage. He heard his quads a lot, right? Wait, in the ring. In the ring,

Tad squad. This is kind of funny games cast. Let's talk about some video games. There's now a video game out that most of us have played, at least a bit of, some of us have played a whole bunch of, and I am fully unleashed to say whatever I want about Super Mario 3D World plus Bouncers Fury.

The embargoes are up. Everything's over. We can do whatever we want, but bless, I want to start with you because you've never played Mario 3D World at all. You fell in love with Sack Boys' big adventure. a couple months ago at the launch of the PlayStation 5. And I was telling you, I was like,

I can't wait for you to play Mario 3D World. How much have you played and what do you think in so far? I've only played the first level. I've been holding off because tonight I actually have a friend who also has the game that we're going to play co-op together. And so I started playing the first level last night. And then I was like, all right, I don't want to play too much into this because I'm going to have to replay it.

And so so far, like, you know, I'm enjoying it. It's definitely a Mario game. I almost tweeted this, but I tweet too much. And so I held it back. But I almost tweeted out like, man, why do Mario games have intros? You know, like, we know, we know, we know what's going on here. We know what we know.

We know Bowser's going to kidnap somebody. I was surprised actually that he didn't kidnap Peach, but he's still up to nefarious shit. And so it's Bowser doing what Bowser does. And yeah, upon playing the first level, I think I thought it was going to be more like, not Astros Playroom, Stackboy, a big adventure, you know, than it seems to actually be. Because it feels way more, I guess it just feels way more like a Mario game than a Stackboy game. thankfully because Mario games feel awesome. And so with that, like, I'm looking forward to playing more of it.

I don't really know. I still don't really know what to expect and I still don't know if I'm going to end up falling in love with it. Because traditionally I love Mario, but I'm still in that place of like, okay, is this going to be more new Super Mario brothers for me? Or is it going to be 3D Mario? Or is it going to be in between, you know? It's really, it's really surprising because I'm like, bless, have you seen anything? Like, I mean, it's impossible that Sackboy could have taken any of the things. that you know 3D world did but that came it came out in 2013 like what the fuck that is while eight

years ago that was eight years ago what were you doing in 2013 Greg I was working at IG covering this game oh fuck okay I was I was in high school graduate was in high school Andy you uh you've been playing it too before you talk about Boussurey just the the 3D world part how much have you played of that I'm pretty much what we played yesterday on youtube.com slash kind of funny plays. It was a lot of fun had a lot more fun with it than I thought we than I thought we would. And I think once we kind of... Wait, wait, why do you think you wouldn't have that much

fun with it? Well, because it's Nick. Like Nick's there, too. Oh, sure. I just because I know what Nick that likes to do. He likes it just like he likes to fuck with you, right? He wants to mess with you and he wants to throw you off the stage and he did a couple times. But

I loved once we all got on the same page, Tim, and we all kind of agree like, this is the goal, right? This is what we're trying to do. with four people it's even more chaotic there was a moment where Mike thought he had died and all of us are on the far right end of the screen like why can't we see what's happening over here

and then we all die and the camera moves to Mike because he was really on the far left side of the screen kind of hit him so it's those little elements that kind of bother me camera wise but you just got to you got to learn that it's a shared screen experience you're going to all kind of have the same experience it was a blast dude I had a lot of fun with it

I had only really ever played it on Wii U when I rented it from a red box, I think, like one weekend. So this is one that I've been looking forward to a lot. And yeah, it was, it doesn't seem like a 2013 game. I think that's what's most impressive about it. It feels like it's very, very ahead of its time, except for the internet. Oh, my God. The online is just, what are we doing everybody? How are we still doing this?

And especially, Greg, because we're trying to get these precise. things like there's a green star that Tim really really wants to get and it's part of his collection similar to the sprites with Tim and smash bros so he's using us but really we didn't help much thank you no you would have had a lot more help if you handed the controller to moose right to play okay well for him moose would moose would throw me off a lot less than nicked it I can guarantee that there's a couple moments of precision that we're trying to get this green star and it's really tough because these platforms are spinning in a certain way and you have to kind of wait till they spin and you have to get on their skinny side anyway it's a pain

in the ass but while you're doing that it's also five frames a second because the internet starts kind of hitching when there's a lot of shit on screen now granted no i was the only one hardwired i think everybody was all wifi so that may you know add to some problems but still drawback at a ua junior from kind of funny so should i not play this game online co-op then because that's kind of what i was looking forward to is my core experience and that's the Now that I know that I have friends who have the game and want to play it. But, like, I don't have the switch extension thing for Ethernet. And so I'm going to be playing on Wi-Fi.

And I'm not the best Wi-Fi. Here's the thing, man. The Switch Ethernet adapter, I mean, it's just an Ethernet adapter. So you can buy the Amazon-Basings one for, like, $8. And then you'll just have it for when you need it. It's really super cheap and it's, like, easy as hell to use. And then, damn, it's a much better Internet experience. For our next stream, I'm going to wire in.

We're going to be good to go. I did a couple tests, and it didn't fix too much. Like, it's still Nintendo online. But, bless, to answer your question, I've been playing a lot of this game. I have 100%ed the core game so far. So up until beating Bowser, I have all the green stars, all the stamps. Thank you. It's not that much of an accomplishment.

I was saying last week, it's the core game's pretty simple, pretty easy, even getting all the collectibles, which really is kind of the point. Every level has a stamp and three gold stars, or three green stars that you need to get. in addition to getting grabbing the top of the flagpole. So those are the four kind of like extra winning situations you need to do in order to fully complete the level. So I did all of that for the main game. Then when I was playing with these guys, it was my first time playing in the post game levels since 2013. And I don't they are significantly more difficult than the rest of the game.

So I knew we were being thrown to the deep end here. I've definitely thrown Nick in the deep end. I'm just like, there's a lot of mechanics you got a lot of, learn here. This is not 3D Mario. It kind of looks like it, but it's not. It plays more like 2D Mario in 3D. You have to kind of like wrap your head around that. But on top of that online introduces a lot of different elements that don't nest and multiplayer in general. Sometimes that enhance the experience in one way, but make it a completely different game. So us playing yesterday was some of the most fun I've had playing a game in a very long time, Andy.

Like, and I think a lot of that had to do with the crew we had and we were focused. And when we, when it clicked. All of us were working as a unit, even with the lag and all that stuff. I feel like for as bad as all the lag is and as bad as the internet setup is, we never got disconnected and it was always slowdown. It was never like us disappearing and moving somewhere else. You know what I mean? It was always playable, even if it was kind of like, oh, this is annoying as shit. If it was an optimized experience, yeah. Would you prefer to play that way or play alone? And that's the thing. It's, they're totally different games that have pros and cons.

I found myself looking back in this game and while I agree with Andy that it's like crazy how ahead of its time it is, it does feel now that we've had so many more years of platformers, 3D, 2D, Mario or otherwise, playing through it, I'm kind of like, this is, it's super polished and it's really fun. But I don't know that it's the 10 out of 10 that I used to think it was. Really? But play multiplayer with them. I'm like, damn, there's a whole side of this game that I just never really got to appreciate, which is the chaos of forcing everyone to work together.

And some of the like things of it getting in your way, like the camera and all that stuff, like that's, it's part of the design. It's not bad design. It's designed that way to make sure that no one's running too far ahead. And it's like you need to communicate with your partners about, hey, you go here. We need to stick here. you know, okay, this challenging thing, we're going to let our best person go forward and do that.

In addition to that, each of the playable characters plays completely different. Mario is classic Mario. Toad has a worse jump, but is faster. Peach can kind of hover for a bit, but is pretty slow. And Luigi's also slow, but has his like flutter jump. But all of those add levels of difficulty to the whole game.

And I will say that that I'd put more in the con section than the pro section. I do wish that we could just play as any character we want with a different color skin and call it a day, because it did kind of suck that people were stuck playing characters that they didn't necessarily want to play. Like, Andy was Toad. How was that experience?

I just didn't jump as high as everybody else. I was fast as hell, which worked out in a couple scenarios. But I don't really want that to be the Mario experience when you're trying to, all right, well, so-and-so's Toad, they're the fastest. Make them run ahead and try to catch up to the moving goalpost or whatever. that was kind of we were chasing down a track. There was a moment where Nick was, I think, Rosalina, and was the only one that could make this long jump,

either him or Mike. We just didn't trust either of them. And there's a moment where you have to jump kind of far to get to this area. So a lot of it was like, let's get back to the thing, and hopefully we can get Nick to jump on the goalpost. And it just never worked out to the point where we tried something else completely different because you kind of get stuck with a, If you're stuck being the person, you better hope that you're good.

And that was kind of a bummer. Yeah. So, bless, to go back to it and answer your question, show you play this game, single player, and multiplayer, I do think a little bit of both is the right answer because you'll kind of understand the design of the game a lot more. And you'll really find the fun elements of both styles of gameplay. And I think that especially in the core game, like playing multiplayer, if you're only playing with one other person, you're going to have a good time.

Okay. It's just a bigger matter of them finding a character that they actually want to pick or you finding a character that's not Mario, which honestly is kind of a bummer. And I got to assume a one and one situation blessed is going to be a lot easier than four different computers or four different consoles trying to play online with different internet speeds and different. I mean, Greg, we're talking about packet loss. You know what I mean? Think about that for a second. The problem. Pondor your latency and packet losses, pings.

all those things are just issues that are going to the more people you have in a game it's going to compound and I think make it worse so I think if it's you and somebody else that you know has a decent internet connection I think you'll be fine just make sure that you're the host though when you eventually get this Ethernet thing again they're not expensive they're like I don't know $10, $8

yeah like I've not gotten them just out of lay a laziness for the most part you know like when I was playing smash I was kind of like I should get this thing but I'm just gonna hold off No. I mean, this all sounds like good news, though. I made it a point to get it. I think when Smash was coming out because I wanted to be the host on a lot of the games. And so Tim was the host yesterday because it was his world and he's the one who's completed most of the game. So he has everything unlocked.

And we, but he was on Wi-Fi. So I think that may have added to some of the issues. Now, if he was, Tim, we should try it out later. Just you and I both hardwired and see how that works. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's the thing is like when a thing for you,

everyone to keep in mind at home is whoever's playing whoever's the host online the game progress in co-op benefits them it doesn't benefit the other people right oh so if you're trying 100% if you're trying to like actually play through the game like i know you're going to be blessed because you're blessed uh you should probably just keep that in mind of maybe to start your own game yourself and not worry about it or just make sure you're the one whoever you're playing with it's hosting it yeah yeah exactly and also if you're going to play it i'd say just 100% all of it through co-op less because I don't know maybe you're not a whiny bitch like me but

recently getting recently getting back into 2K and playing offline and then playing online it's like wow this is night and day I am going to whine any second I can when I'm playing online because the lag here is really really bad and so I'm wondering if you might have

that sort of like damn I should just play this offline right? So you never know any better yeah does sack boy have or does Mario have the thing where you have to collect the like the green green stars or whatever, like the extra stars and the levels in order to progress overall. Because that's the thing Sackboy does. And that made me be like, okay, well, I have to collect everything that I can because I want to make

sure that I'm good to go. Yeah. You need a certain amount of green stars to unlock the next levels. But like, so many of the green stars, especially in the core game, are so in your face that like the levels are never that big or that crazy. So it's like you, you're going to want to 100% it as you're going through. Like the game is very, very, very exquisitely designed. designed in that sense.

And I do think that it's a testament to the quality of the game that yesterday when we were playing with Mike and Andy who do not play these games, or sorry, Mike and Nick who do not play these games at all, that when we first played, I threw them into like late game levels and it was pretty much a disaster. But after about 20 minutes and like after we like beat a couple levels and we moved into the harder stuff, like they all got it. And by the end of the stream, we played for a couple hours and we've almost 100% completed an entire challenge world getting all the coins or all the stars and all the stamps so it's

like i was very impressed with how much they caught onto it and learned and all that shit and how we were able to work together even with the lag even with all the stuff so yeah when you definitely when you when you compare how we were at the early stages of that stream compared to at the very end where we're fighting nintendo's camera and there's a moment where the camera is more fixated on me and tim needs to go down low to go get something and he's like and he helped me out i'm like i got you ducks. I just kind of moved down a bit as far as I can go before screwing myself over, and the camera shifted down for Tim and he was able to do whatever task he needed to down there. Stomping on a thwamp. Who knows?

Who knows? Stomp on a thwomps. Who knows what these damn games got? So moving on then from 3D worlds to Bowser's Fury. Andy, how much of that have you played? I played around three hours last night. A lot of fun. God damn. It's a lot of fun. I'm pretty impressed by it. I didn't think it was going to be this big. I thought I'd be done with it maybe after three hours. I don't know how much of there is left. How far are you?

How many cash hines you got? Oh. I haven't to unlock to the 41. Oh, okay. You got a lot more to go. Really? Yeah. I'm right there with you.

It is a lot more expansive than I thought it was going to be. I guess I just underestimated what it was going to be. At first, when they started hinting Bowser's Fury, I thought it was going to be an add-on to Mario 3D world. And then finding out it's sort of this just side story bonus game, that sort of put my expectations low thinking that it's going to be, you know, a two or three-hour experience that might be testing some stuff for the future of Mario.

And it just kind of keeps going. It keeps going in a really interesting way where you are not going back to a hub world and going and picking levels. You are not going back to your central area and then jumping into paintings or whatever the hell you want to call. you're not going back to your ship like an Odyssey, you're just out in the open. And the more you complete, the more gets opened up in this giant map. I think it's really smart with how, so it's sort of like their interpretation of what an open world should be.

And with how fast travel works, you're just getting on that little Plessy dinosaur. Well, that's not fast travel. Get out Plessy dinosaur. Oh, no, that's not fast travel, but it's like, it makes it. Because there is fast travel eventually. It makes it easier to get around the world without feeling like I got to walk all the damn way over here. because a lot of it you are kind of based in the water. So you get on the dinosaur and you sort of swim to another little island.

But I guess the whole idea of they're not being this hub world kind of threw me off. And I wasn't expecting that. And I wasn't expecting to like it. I think it's really neat the way, essentially the way the game works, Bowser's pissed off, right? He's all mad. We don't really know why. Bowser Jr. is kind of telling his thing. He's like, yeah, my dad's mad.

I don't really know why. And then Big old Bowser. nail at this dude. And then every like 15 minutes bless, big old pissed off Bowser pops up and you see him off in the distance, which is really, really neat. You see a giant shell kind of off in the distance while you're doing your, it's almost like Majoras Mask in a way. You're waiting for the day to kind of end or whatever. And here you're waiting for Bowser to eventually pop up and wreak havoc. And he and it starts raining and that's when you know he's sort of coming and it becomes a real time event in the game where once the droplet starts

happening you know that Bowser's about to start so you kind of got it's like in outer wilds you know when the supermassive black hole is going to hit so you kind of got to do your shit before that thing happens and that's how it is here Bowser comes and wreaks havoc and

in that there's also some really cool game design elements there's a lot of spots in the world where only blocks with Bowser's face on them can be destroyed by Bowser and a lot of it'll be like a giant-ass grid of Bowser blocks and you're like, oh, I know there's a Bowser block here.

When he reappears in the next five minutes, I want to go over there and hopes that he destroys him. Yeah. And so you run over there and you hope that when he pops up, he blows fire and essentially blows up these blocks and there's going to be either a cat shine in there or I guess it's only cat shines, Tim? It's only cat shines.

Yeah. It's only cat shines. There's some of them that are like, there's like mini cat shines where you have to get five of them to get one. Yeah. Like shards, essentially. Yeah. I don't know, it's just really cool.

And aside from that, you know, when you're not waiting for Bowser or when you are waiting for Bowser and you're off time, there's just a lot of really cool typical Nintendo game design shit where, you know, one of the moments I really enjoyed, Tim, is when you're running on the platforms that are invisible, unless you're standing on it, and it kind of shows like a surrounding area of where you're running, and it's like, am I about to fall off? I got to get all the coins. It's just typical Nintendo shit that's really good. good and really well done and I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.

How did you feel about it, Tim? You beat it, right? I did. I have now 100% in that mode. That was the first thing I did before I even played. And you have 100 cats. You got all of them. And yeah, there are there are 100 cats chants. Tim's a pussy magnet. Nice. We'll start there. But yeah, so you beat the game a lot. You beat Bowser's Fury. It functions similar to like Mario 64 Odyssey or anything where it's like you don't need to get all the stars to beat Bowser. you know uh i don't remember exactly the amount you beat him at but there is a lot of stars once you

like beat the game and then you continue and then there's a more like real ending at the end of it um and i really really enjoyed my time with it i think bowser's fury alone to do everything took probably like six hours or so um and i had a great time the entire time the bowser randomly popping up to fight you gets extremely tiring the hundredth time it happened and I think that that is definitely, I do feel like the entire experience was a test bed for what a Mario game could be and I don't think we're ever going to see this Mario game

actually be made into a full featured thing because at the end of the day, the Mario 3D world gameplay, I don't think lends itself to this open world idea. Like I think it would have benefited more from a Mario Odyssey, Mario 64 style gameplay and just control of Mario himself. But they use the rule,

and design ideas and gimmicks of 3D world very well. It definitely does feel like a 3D world expansion of going back to the cat suit and the ice skate and Plessy and all these things. It's like, okay, I experienced the hell out of this in 2013, but I'm getting a lot more out of it in 2021 now. And like Nintendo did go back to the drawing board and come up with some really cool stuff. It feels a lot like Galaxy 2 to Galaxy 1 in terms of ideas from the original 3D world to what Bowsy

Fury is now. But really good time, really interesting experiment. I think there's a couple of bizarre choices here and there, but overall, like this being packaged with 3D world, it's like, damn, that's a... I love the switching of abilities. I think it's really cool. And on the fly, essentially, you have

your catbells, and it's almost like having an ammunition inventory or something like that. You'll, you can collect up to five catbells, up to five boomerang abilities, up to five fireflowers, up to five mushrooms, and the other ones, I forget which ones they are, Tanuki suit.

And on the fly, depending on where you need to go, or maybe you need to climb this wall, maybe you need to, you know, light something on fire, or you just want to be Fire Mario or whatever. You can on the fly, just swap between those abilities, and it makes it really convenient,

and it's fun as hell. So many of the puzzles last night, you're just delighted, because Nintendo's just being Nintendo, and it's always fun when they are that, and they are just so, unapologetically cute as hell. It's so charming.

We're going to stream a lot more of it next Tuesday, Twitch.tv. slash Kind of Funny Games, where the same squad will continue trying to 100% the rest of the game. It's going to get real difficult towards the end, so we'll see how that goes. How long before Nick quits in anger?

Nick's being a good sport so far. No, Nick's going to make one of us quit, is the thing. Because in 3D Mario 3D World, or Mario 3D World, you can pick up somebody and run with them. And it's usually done on accident because the run button is the X button on the left side, right?

And that's also pick up of somebody. So there's so many moments where we have like a long runway, we need to run down. It's like, all right, everybody, we gotta wait for the timing to go. All right, ready, go. And then everybody starts running. You hit that button and immediately there's two people carrying somebody.

And then like, at the end of it, Nick will just throw me off the cliff and I die. And it's like, I fucking hate this guy. I hate working with this, dude. Yeah. Greg, you have not been playing Mario 3D World, but you have been playing 13 Sentinels.

And Haven, yeah. So what happened is yesterday I took the day off, which is, you know, something new for me. And I tweeted, Jen and I took the day off. Right now we're listening to Taylor Swift on the couch with Portie while I play the Division 2 and drink coffee, and Jen surfs the net, planning gardens and whatnot. It's raining outside, or outside, perfect day, heart.

A very sweet, use the gif of us kissing. Then this asshole half measure response, it sure going to be nice when you get to talk about playing new games. All right, well, go fuck yourself. Before this show today, I had an hour and a half, two hours. So I was like, I'll finally give 13 Sentinels a run. And let me tell you, that is not a Greg game. I'm glad people enjoy that.

Yeah, no, no, that is not my jam. It's a beautiful game if you haven't looked into it and seen like the vanilla wear art that they're using for it and stuff for the settings of it. But, you know, it's giant mecks invading your town or whatever. There's some time travel going on. There's some memory going on. The gameplay isn't you actually doing anything cool with the mex?

No, no, it's not Gundams. It's mex, not gondoms. No, Andy's going to hate it then. You're going to hate it. You ever see me at the local skating rink in elementary school, taking shots of pickle juice, playing virtual on? Virtual on. You were doing shots of people?

Is that what they do at Texas? So, blessing, when you're like 10, 11 years old, you couldn't drink alcohol, but it felt really cool and, like, rebellious to take shots of pickle juice. You just go to the bar. Hey, I'll take two shots of pickle juice. You can take two shots of them. That's cool. And play some virtual on, yeah. I was supposed to get the fuck out of my bar.

Get out and get out of the arcade. I am not giving you any more pickle juice. Piggles are great. You know that I love pickles. Closs and pickles. We've talked about it before. They're always cold, never heated. no but that's just weird that like I don't know I love pickle juice but yeah how many other kids were doing this

the shots yeah oh everybody it was all the rave really rage I can't just I just can't imagine like a bunch of kids walking around with pickle juice breath I mean you just take a couple of shots I mean well it was a pickle juice breath because then you would immediately follow that up with a bag of hot cheetahs so it was always like you're you're skating in the rink for several hours you're requesting some some maybe some usher to be played maybe some limp bism skit how many times are you vomiting? I was going to say how many times are getting to the ground with the worst Charlie horses of all time. Talk about dehydrated they're drinking pickle juice to eat and hot

Cheetos and then going. Piggle juice helps with the cramps. I thought it with the other questions. No, no, you drink pickle juice to stop cramps. That was good to him. Thank you. Thank you. That was good. That was good to me. Anyways, yeah, 13 sentinels. And then so it's got this story on it that I'm, again, I'm not super deep into it by any stress the imagination. I'm telling you,

I had an hour and a half today to get into stuff. But yeah, I can see why people love it, but it's just that kind of Japanese game that's just not my style in terms of storytelling, in terms of presentation, in terms of just like, I know when, I think Imron was on and talked about it,

he talked about, oh man, yeah, you know, the nurse, they gave her these gigantic breasts that are completely distracting to it. And it's like, yeah, sure, of course. Like, he skipped over that, literally you start the fucking game, and it all starts happening,

and this girl starts lifting her skirt, then is naked inside the meck where she's bent over in the front of the meck and like her arm is you know strategically placed not to show her nip and then the screen cuts you're right where her ass crack would start she's like am i naked where it happened to my club this is like oh my god and then he went later on and when you're playing as her her prologue you walk into a guy fall down and of course there's an upskirt you're like oh my god it's just like this is that kind of game that's the storytelling you're doing go for it everybody uh it's got it's quarantine you know i got to we got to i hear you and it's your birthday let your hair down with some 13th And then, yeah, the actual gameplay of it, because that's just, you know, you walking around doing the story stuff, engaging in the dialogue, you know, you learn facts that you then use to people. Then you use the gameplay, which is, yeah, you know, like things are, it's, you know, kaiju are attacking the city or whatever, and you have your mech. Again, I'm still, I think I just got out of the tutorial for it.

But you're all just from a, like, overhead map with these, like, icons on it that you click on your thing and then you're like, shoot your rockets to do this. I'm glad people dig it. It ain't a Greg Miller game. I stopped. at which point I had, you know, like 30 minutes before this show. And I was like, oh, well, what else do I have in my hard drive here? And of course, Pathless is there because Blessings says I need to play and I need to play it.

I know I need to play it. I never beat it. Yeah, right? I need to get back to it, but I knew I didn't have enough time for that. So I was like, oh, Haven. I've had Haven on my mind, obviously, since it was in the kind of funny game showcase, I think at Pax West. And come out, it didn't get rave reviews.

And it came out against something else. So it just sat on my dashboard or whatever. cross media bar for the longest time. It started it up today, again, with 30 minutes, and I totally fucked this up. I should have done this first, and I would have played it the entire time. Barry, do you want to play this? This is from my Twitter right now. This is just me saying that it slaps.

Like, this is the opening intro to it right now. If you're an audio listener, just hear it. If you're a visual listener, it starts with this. Of course, if you don't remember, Haven is this game that can be played single player, it can be played co-op. It's about these two lovers on their own planet or whatever. They're on the run from what you would assume to be bad guys. The story is still developing as I go.

It's the one where you glide around the field. And I would say like, you know, it's way more about the conversation. This is again, off 30 minutes of gameplay, you're getting my quick previews as if I came off the pack show floor. This is more about conversation talking to each other. Like we got in a fight and it was how do I want to respond. And I started the fight by saying something. So it's like if I wonder if I could go backwards if I could make a different choice and not have it go that way. But the choices you make, you get like, oh, you know, you were, which is one of the characters,

feeling more confident. you're seeing that change and stuff. So I need to get deeper into it to see how the systems play out. But the gliding of it is something that I would also... You won't see it here, but you kind of do as this guy flies right here. If you remember it, it's third person, you're behind. You have both players that can play at all times. Even if you're playing a single player, you can move with the D-pad.

And you glide around Tim. I think Tim, you should try this because you glide around very much like flower through these fields of grass. Like, and you're picking up energy that... The mission I did was picking up energy to take it back to the ship to do it. it to get the ship power. Sure, Bear, can you give a quick Google for it or whatever? And on top of that, you can stop and pick up stuff.

But the gliding of it felt like flower, right? But then it had a, you know, down on the left stick is a U-turn. Then it has drifting. And all this suddenly started feeling like a skate game, where it felt like, you know, more of a, like you see as you go through here. Oh, this flower as fuck, okay. And I haven't gotten into combat or whatever as this thing's chasing them. But it's, you know, gliding around, doing this thing,

around picking up these things. Like I just got out of the movement tutorial, but it hit the spot. You know what I mean? For an afternoon where I was like, I wanted to play something different and have something grabbed me. 13 Sentinels didn't. This did, and I'm excited to get back to it. Um, yeah, not what I expected at all in this game.

Yeah, from my description or from what you saw me intro? From traversal, from to a controversial standpoint. I think I'd only seen scenes of combat where it is turn base and that's immediately what made me say, I'm not a huge fan of turn base. Sure, sure. The traversal look reminds you a lot of pathless, honestly.

Yeah, yeah, a little bit. This is one that I also tried, like, the first 45 minutes of during break. And I was like, okay, no, this is super cool. And I wasn't in the mood for it then. I actually redownloaded it to my PS5, actually, like, last week. Because during stream, somebody had mentioned that Haven was developed by the same developer as Fury. And Fury is a game that I absolutely loved. Like, that soundtrack, slap, that gameplay was all about.

And when I realized that, I was like, oh, shoot. Okay, sweet, I got to immediately re-down on Haven because I did not know. And yeah, like, my one takeaway from playing this game during the break was like, man, this game is making me feel hell lonely because this couple, oh my God, they're in love.

Like, they're all about each other. I was like, man, during the quarantine, I'm like, dude, I want that. I want that. That's what I'm saying, Blas. At the beginning of Bowser's Fury, a tutorial pops up and it's like, hey, here's how to play with a friend.

I'm like, damn, friends. I think there's anybody sitting next to me? I wish. This chair is reserved for somebody. Just haven't met her. yet. Have them ready yet, bless. This looks awesome, man. Yeah, I'm excited to play more of it. Yeah.

What's it on? PlayStation 5 is what I'm playing on. But I think it's not everything. And yeah, one of the things they say at the very front is, you know, like, Haven's not a challenging game. Like, they make it very clear about that, right? Like, it's supposed to be a relaxed, chill kind of thing, I think, as you go through and get the story of it.

They are both voice acted. I think the performer so far are doing a great job. Like, I was immediately like, oh, you know, sitting up listening, being involved in the story. You're cleaning up all the little red gunk. on the ground. You know, somebody has to fix it,

flower style. It reminded me of, you know, obviously, I think there should be different game genres, right? I'm a proponent

of there being different types of games, everybody. But, Bless, what if you just add a little dash mechanical perry in here,

right? Oh, this is a real-time combat, because, like, the visuals of this game are very me. I want to play that game

based on aesthetics alone, but I don't want to slow down into a fight and attack. You gotta be clicking heads. You gotta stay loose out there. I mean, I like the dash in. Hey, don't have you played Fury.

Oh, I played Fury. Oh, I played Fury. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah, I played Fury. Yeah, that was, man, I played that on Steam maybe around 2017 or something. That's an old game, right?

I think it came out in, like, 2016. Yeah, it's like an older game. It's really, really cool mechanics. I'm talking about Fury, everybody. Yeah. Oh, my God. I mean, Fury is that exactly the thing you're talking about where it's like, you know,

like it's the dash mechanic. It's a boss rush game, right? But you are, going back and forth from like long distance fighting and shooting but then like once you get up close you then do like the whole hack and slash thing and dashes to dodge encounters and all that stuff and it is it is fun it is such a lovely game and so I'm I'm I definitely want to get back in a haven because I like this developer they know what they're doing I and hey yeah Tim I didn't put it on the list but I also want to say I've been playing everybody's golf and I beat Andy's ass in it

there you go Tim I don't know if you know but I put out the challenge I'm putting the kind of funny world championship belt on the line line because I want my revenge against Greg in everybody's golf. Oh shit. I love this. I want a 1V1, 18 holes. We're going to be out there for at least seven hours hammered by the end. Can we have a few beers?

Yeah. I'll let you have a few beers. You could fuck up your choke all you want. Thank you. All right. I'm choking it real nice and good. I love this. Let's get it on the books.

Sam, we're going to accept my Mario challenge. Oh, shit. It's accepted. All these motherfuck is coming out. He's got to fucking fight me in Cuphead first. This Friday. He's got a loose.

Samy and Cuphead. Race through the first island. The rules are simple. Neither of us can practice. Damn, you beat it twice. Bear beat it three times. That's crazy. Five times.

Five times. Couple Cuphead. Couple Cuphead experts over here. Barrett. Do you play away? Do you just play the same games over and over again? Because yesterday I purposely raided Barrett on Twitch last night, and I told everybody in my chat to tell, to give Barrett tutorials on Persona 5.

Yeah, people came in there. They're like, hey, we heard you needed help with this game that you've never played. He's never played before. He's never played before. He's played for the ninth time. For me streaming, I don't like streaming, like, story-heavy games that I haven't played before. So, like, it's hard to, like, fucking focus on. So, Perchrome 5 Royals, it's, like, good comfort food to, like, stream to. I know what, like, the fucking ups and down to it are and stuff like that, and I just really love the gameplay there. And just, like, satisfying game, uh, games with satisfying gameplay I really love going back to,

like, Cuphead, I really love Shovel Night. I'll go back to all the time and shit. that. And it's also just because like, especially in the recent years, like, there's not like a whole lot of games coming out every year that I feel like I need to pay attention to. So I have like a lot of downtime where I can just re-ever heard of you all heard a hyperlight drifter. No. Oh my God. Tim go to add before we move on. Let me tell you about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by purple. Here's the deal man. I love my purple pillow. My purple mattress. It's fantastic stuff. It is so soft. And I love it specifically because of the purple grid.

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We got a fun one today. This one comes from our subreddit from a username Broken Clock twice a day. They left this a couple months ago and I made a note of it to come back to it because I was very interested in it. So it goes a little something like this. A friend of mine, it's a multi-parter.

I'm going to read all the parts we can start thinking about it and then we'll go in order. Okay. Okay. A friend of mine was excited to open a PlayStation 5 on Christmas Day. Her first console since the PlayStation 2 as a kid. She asked me for a list of all the franchises.

should get into and wondered if things like Tony Hawk yes on Emusha no but sort of and crazy taxi we're still around uh she sounds like somebody that is a woman after my own heart here with these games uh it was fun getting what is Andy eating is you have what is we show this I haven't seen this yeah oh it's it's cheesecake it looks so good is it your birthday cheesecake um so courtesy of kind of funny and my family apparently I was sent about five slices of cheesecake very very good good okay good very very good now I do want to bring this up though real quick because who organized this what happened give me the details I mean it was it was your family your your your dad and your brother were like hey make sure Andy's good I'm like bro we got it don't worry okay so that's how that happened because usually it's Joey who does the

organizing no no no it was it was your family and like like I'm not kind of funny gets no credit your family gets credit we just I didn't see the email from your brother still today yeah and then I talk to him okay because because I got the you know I see that I guess I get the cheesecake and I think Joey first because it says from Joey she's the one who ordered it she's usually the one who does these types of things and then I was like thank you Joey and before I could finish

Nick goes we all got a for you Andy like it was all of us Joey hit me up later it was just like fucking Nick Nick knew nothing about this I knew it I knew it knew nothing knew nothing but the way he said it it wasn't him joking it wasn't him joking it was very much

it was all kind of funny like we all did this for you I knew it. I love you, Andy. And happy birthday and all of that and kind of funny would have done something for you, you know, in theory. But we did it. It was your family.

And then we just did the things. You know what it means? I want them to get the credit because they deserve the credit. But it's a good, I mean, Nick makes a good point that if we hadn't hired you and brought you out here, your family would have had no reason to send you something here. So in a way, it is kind of funny. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Nick for all that you do for kind of funny.

Happy birthday to Nick. Happy birthday. sue him. I hate this. Okay, the experience got me thinking about how franchises really do evolve as generations go by. Many stand the test of time, but others do fade away in favor of new IP. I thought this would be a good games cast topic as we embark on a new generation. Specifically, I have five questions.

What franchises do we know are here to stay with little more than standard improvements over time? Think sports games, call of duty, etc. 2. What franchises from PS4 and Xbox 1 are not going to make the generational leap? Think the order. Crackdown, kill zone. Three, what franchises are coming back but in a reimagined format? Think God of War 2018, Breath of the Wild, or even full on revivals from the past, like how fable's coming back. Four, what franchises do we think are poised to keep slash gain slash lose relevance in the new generation? Example prediction.

Something will unseat call of duty as the best sell. the most ubiquitous shooter in gaming during this gen. So Call of Duty will take a step down. And then five, this is completely unknowable, but what developers and publishers will make the biggest new IP impact this generation? Things like Gorilla Games with Horizon Zero Dawn, Moon with Ori, bungee with destiny, etc. There's a lot here.

A lot here. All of it kind of is about a similar idea and concept. I thought that it was a pretty interesting thing. I know that Greg and Bless over on PS, I Love You a couple weeks ago you guys talked about. Kill Zone, so I don't want to go over that too much, but like, give us like the truncated top level tweet version of your thoughts on Kill Zone coming back. It's dead.

And it should stay dead. Great jumping up. All hail Paris. All hail Parasite. Parasite. He was ready to come back. Parasite. Yeah.

Parasite was going to be come back. Eternal darkness, everybody. All right. So let's start with number one then. What franchises do we know are here to stay with little more than standard improvements over time? Let's start with Call of Duty. Do we think that Call of Duty is going to continue doing its annual annual game releases every year?

Or with the introduction of Warzone, do we see them maybe turning to a more Assassin's Creed like release schedule? I think I think Call of Duty is due for some type of change. I'm not in the place to like figure out what that is because I'm not deep into that fan base. Like somebody like Andy is. But I think one, them kind of switching. up that development cycle a little bit and having, what was it, Call of Duty, Black Ops, Cold War,

you know, come out, come a couple years after Call of Duty Black Ops 4 instead of doing that regular rotation kind of speaks to the fact that it seems like that, there are some bumps in the road in terms of how smooth that development is. That also combined with the war zone and the success of war zone, I think, speaks to the fact that it's time for things to be shaken up a little bit because Call of Duty has been Call of Duty since modern warfare. And, you know, shooters change the field changes multiplayer games change like the way the ways in which people play games

change and so with things like you know Fortnite and PubG and battle passes and all this different stuff I think I think Call of Duty is due for some big kind of change in terms of it's development cycle not a chance not a chance yeah call of duty is fine

what Black Ops is I'm looking Black Ops Cold War is the NPD's 20th best selling game ever and then like you're right the mask, Matt Piscitello is in here. This is a games beat article, right, talking about how amazing it's doing. Call of the Black Ops, Cold War,

has been the best selling game in the U.S. each month since November. It's November launch and now ranks the 20th best selling video game. Like, you want to talk about, like, you're talking from a creative side, bless, and I think from a business side with Activision, they aren't changing shit.

They are so stoked that Warzone is an endless amount of money for people to go into, let alone, then to double dip now to $70 fall game every year. I count, I count war zone as part of that change. Like, I would say, like, you know, the standard call JD releases have been doing well still, right? Like, that is still money-making.

But with, I assume Warzone is probably doing better than those, with the fact that it's free to play and with the fact that it's, like, still in the conversation, it seems like it has a big community behind it, I would figure somewhere in that as Activation, you figure out how to make that your core thing. Or at least figure out how to make that, like, you know, the, I don't know, like, you feed that into, like,

the core of the core call of duty in a way that makes that makes sense. Because I think for what it is right now, you know, it's good and they're killing it. But war zone kind of dropped

randomly out of nowhere. And like with that, with it being as good as it is and successful as it is, I feel like you try to bake it in even more. Well, I mean, based on stories,

you know, I'm looking at, you know, a couple of articles online from a couple years ago, screen rant. And it seems like Blizzard is going to keep this war zone

model for all of their future games. So I don't see Call of Duty going anywhere or changing anything up. I think it's going to be the same. Blizzard's apparently going to, you know, adapt this Warzone model to all of their other franchises where they all feed into a core thing. Like all of the Call of Duty games will feed into Warzone and you will be able to get the guns from the other games in Warzone and you will be able to get skins of characters from the other games in Warzone.

And they want to adapt that to Overwatch and Diablo as well. I don't think it's going anywhere I think it is gonna stay the same and it will be a top seller like it is every year So okay Let me let's go around the table here

Who thinks that there will be a new call of duty Every year of the PlayStation 5 Oh man You're making such a long time For the PlayStation 5 right There's no way I mean right now If nothing was to change Of course that would happen

And I would think that logic I would think that Not logically but I would think probably that's what's going to happen in terms of probabilities and where it's going. I mean, you have to see such a drop off in the next two to three years of call of duty single player, or not single player, new game IP sales to have it go. So yeah, I guess, okay, fine, I'll say yeah. It's going to be.

I'll say yes, too. With the caveat of, I don't think that's going to look like the standard, like what we've gotten out of call of duty for the last generation. Like I think, you know, we got the Black Ops game that was, I forget if it was black or something else. But we got the game that was multiplayer only without a campaign, right? And I think I could see them going kind of back and forth of, all right, this year, we're just going to put out a campaign because we don't have a good multiplayer ready. And so we're going to have war sone carry the torch for what multiplayer will be over the course in the next year. And then next year,

we are going to just have multiplayer. Or next year, we are going to have multiplayer packaged in with zombies. I think they can go back and forth and piecemeal it like that and keep those big sales going. But yeah, I do think we're going to get Call of Duty for the next generation. It's just such a smart, freaking model, dude, because all of the hardcores, with how huge it is on Twitch and the biggest streamers playing it and all of these fans watching the bigger streamers play it, where when they release new weapons, you have to level those up in order to get them at their best, right? You have to keep on killing people with those weapons in order to keep leveling them up. And you do that really, really slow in war zone because who knows, if you'll be able to. find that weapon when you drop and it takes forever. But in player side of things,

in Black Ops Cold War or in Modern Warfare multiplayer, you have those weapons and you level them up there that way that they are leveled up in war zone. So the way that they feed into each other is just, it seems like it's just so evil and smart. Like it's genius. It's genius, you know. It's so sinister,

but it's like, damn, they got that shit down. So moving on from Call of Duty then. What about sports titles? We have EA doing its thing. We have 2K doing its thing. Do you guys see any major changeups on that side of things? I think 2K is, I think 2K might have some problems if they keep on putting out releases like they have been.

And I don't know what the solution is. Maybe I'm just, you know, maybe it's just wishful thinking. But you're talking about it. How have they been putting it out with like microtransactions out the wazoo and shit? Yeah, because it feels like every year the press gets worse and worse about 2K. Whenever 2K puts out a new release, it's always screenshots that look gorgeous and they're getting better looking and better looking. But they don't really deliver on much of the rest of the experience. And they try to put out these story modes.

Good for them. They're trying, you know, LeBron and Spike Lee directed and all this shit. It just never really works out. I don't know. Do they still... When are they going to be challenged is the question, you know? 2K. Yeah.

When is somebody going to challenge 2K in the way that, you know, 2K challenged Madden back in the day, you know? They tried, right? Like, Yeats put out NBA lives and they're just... That's just not it. Always fails. Why? Why is it? Why can't they figure this shit out?

Because it's not like they are going up against the best and the baddest. Like, they're not going up against the best and the baddest. Like, they're not going up against. You know, every year back in the day we'd always hear, is this the true, you know, Halo killer? Is this the true Halo killer? We would hear that all the time because Halo was so good at what it did. But it's not like 2K is killing it.

Performance-wise, I mean, sales-wise, obviously it is, but the game seems to be getting worse and worse. And I am just stunned beyond belief that when I, me and Snowbike Mike have made this custom league where us and our friends created our teams and customized everything. And it's so much fun and really cool to customize my stadium and have it be the Texas Nitro Rifles

and the court is all neon pink and purple and aqua, and it's gorgeous. And then you play online, it's like, oh my God, this is, this is night and day from playing offline. Why is this so bad?

And what you're talking about isn't limited to NBA, right? This is the argument that I see as a WWE games fan, you know, and somebody who is lapsed and is not playing 2K, you know, 21 every year or whatever. but like how badly broken the last one was with yukes abandoning the project right and leaving and being like we're going to make our own thing and now the AEW game happening like you hope that that's the challenge and correct me if I'm wrong you might know more than it like if I as an outsider to NBA games my argument in quotes for why NBA live can't make it up to catch on catch up or challenge 2K would just be the fact and I know I'm painting with a very broad brush here and I

I don't mean to offend hardcore gamers who are also hardcore into NBA. But I would think is it just that that game has gone so mainstream that it's so much just ubiquitous with, I'm getting the NBA game this year means I'm getting the 2K game this year. Like even for all the shitty online you'd have or the, you know, gouging of micro transactions that inevitably seems to happen with virtual currency, the core gameplay is still great is the majority of people, are they playing it offline? Are they doing their dynasties and there's, you know, whatever their seasons are called? and then they just see that as

that's what I'm going to get every year and not to mention that Kobe's on the cover this year and you know last year was etc and so on and just name all NBA players that have been on it it's possible but I think NBA Live still comes out and is still an inferior product and that's the other thing too yeah yeah like the fact that the fact that NBA Live when it came out

and you know it was still somehow worse than 2K can be and is that's what I'm talking about like why isn't there a studio that could just figure this out Why am I able to perfectly aim at people in video games online in a crazy multiplayer shooter but why whenever I want to shoot

a free throw I have to let go of the button at least half a second before so that it lands perfectly like in the spot Right they got the money too Like these games sell as well as great talk about with the mainstream stuff so it's like that money is obviously not going to the infrastructure of online and all that

What about things like Forza. Do we think that that's going to, I mean, obviously already similar to WWE 2K, it's like that it already broke the cycle. But do you think that this gen will get back into a annualized Forza situation? I mean, I could see it. You know, I only play the Forza Horizon games, which tend to come out like every other year in between Forza Motorsport.

And for those games coming out every other year, I am shocked by the quality of those games. Like, they're still very good. And if they're able to keep that level of quality while maintaining that cadence, then I'm 100% for it. I've not seen anything but good things people have said about Forsa. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a pick back up again now that we're in the new generation. You imagine that the reason why they're taking time off is to get a hold of the new hardware and really make something that lives up to the Xbox Series X and what that thing can do.

And so, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see that continue. Are there other games that come to your guys' mind that we haven't brought up yet? I mean, I'm just kind of like, I knew that 2K was coming back to make NFL games, but I take it all back because they are making NFL games, but not Madden competitors, apparently, according to Simit Sarkar from Polygon. Polygon. I was expecting it to be 2K, I don't know why I heard way back in the day that they were coming back. I thought they were going to make a Madden sort of,

we want to go head to head against Madden and take them down because everybody knows us and our basketball games. You know, we could do that in football, but apparently it's going to be a non-Matine. Madden competitor, kind of like an NBA street, maybe, 2K NFL street sort of. It's arcade, right? Yeah, the option to make arcade stuff. So that stinks. Bless you.

Oh, I was going to change gears. Then while I'm here, then, yeah, if you don't mind. Like, I think it'll be interesting to see how EA handles Madden going forward in making that a grander package, right? Like, we all loved Long Shot, or at least me and 80 did, I guess. Joey loves it too, but she's not here. It's a long shot. I didn't play too.

Yeah, great song. I don't know. Scott Porter, never forget. We loved Longshot, and that was a cool thing to add to Madden at the time, right? Because, hey, let's put a story into Madden that is actually dope and had Maharshali in it and stuff like that. Like, all right, great. Here's a dope thing to go play and have. I would be interested to see as the, you know, with EA getting a lot of pets in the back and excitement out of saying EA college football is coming back,

that was then immediately pivoted with that's amazing. That's great. where is NFL Street? Where can we get back and have that kind of feeling, right? I would be interested to see if they would think about making a, especially with the 2K being able to challenge them on that front, be able to make smaller arcade something like NFL Street and put it inside of Madden.

Because if you'd been paying attention, I think it was last year, but it might have been two years ago. For NHL, whatever it would have been year-wise from EA, they also did the NHL-94 throwback. That was NHL-94 but with current players or whatever, and the only way to get that was to get the deluxe edition at the time. Now it's on Game Pass. I've downloaded it, but I haven't played it or whatever.

Like, I think that there was probably a test to see if that would actually move more units, get more juice behind NHL. And I would imagine it did because I know that, and I can't tell you any other fact that it's about any NHL games that have come out recently. So I would be interested to see if that's some way they'd want to go. And like, they already have, you know, Ultimate Team and Madden that does so well and makes so much money on microtransactions. And FIFA, Ultimate Team as well, obviously. Yeah. And FIFA, Volta, which is kind of what you're talking about to you. Exactly. Take that and put those into Madden so that, hey, you can buy Madden and you get that.

And maybe you don't want the full-blown Madden, but you have the full-blown street inside of it. But again, I don't think they're changing the core of what Madden is going to do. Yeah, for sure. I remember, you know, back in the day, to date myself once again for how long I've been working around here. Like, I remember at IGN, when we start talking about downloadable content and stuff? And this, well, when's Madden and all these sports game going to move to just being a platform? And every year you download the roster, right? well, EA is never in 2K are never going to do that as long as you continue to buy a $70 game.

When you stop doing that and they figure out that they need to sell you a $7 game once or $100 game once and then charge you $15 for every roster or whatever, every update, different thing. But the industry has moved so far beyond that idea. Yeah, that's interesting. So besides sports games and I'll go back to what plus, go for it. Well, I was going to bring up Assassin's Creed because that's one that is also pretty much like a yearly installment game. Like what's up with that? Do you guys expect that to continue to be like two years on when you're off?

Yeah. Isn't it? Aren't they every other year now? Yeah. Was it not two years on too? Because we had, because what, we had Valhalla and then last year before that was the year off.

And then before that was Odyssey. Then the year before that was Origin. I thought it was off a year and then Orison. Origins came out in 2017 and then Odyssey 2018. And I think that was mainly because of both of those studios probably working on. No. Working on those caves, like, semi-concurrently. Like, I doubt that they really, like, yeah.

Basically, they turned their two-year dev cycle into a three-year dev cycle for the studios so they could have more time because the games became bigger. Yeah. Yeah, they're like, we need more quest, dude. I think they stick with it, honestly, with every other year at this point. So I think it's working for them.

That's what they had said recently in that call, right? that they had seen crazy-ass engagement. I'm trying to find the actual article, but it was Daniel Ahmad, and then we had it on Games Daily, but you're wrong myself later, I guess, if I find it. But it was the idea that the RPG mechanic has seen such a hook into it, that, yeah, you see more people playing for a longer amount of time.

And so you think that, yeah, they're going to want to support Valhalla for another full year to get as much out of it while they work on the next Assassin's Creed. Yeah. Man, I mean, while we're on the topic, Ubisoft could just dominate this whole conversation. Sure. like Far Cry. But, you know, do we see Far Cry being as regular as, you know, because again, COVID kind

of ruined Far Cry 6's rollout with John Carlo Esposito coming in here and he's just going to be terrorizing. He's going to be terrifying. I can't wait. I don't know what I went out of Far Cry. Like, Far Cry 3 was a game that I absolutely adored. And then every Far Cry after that, I've just been like, I don't know. Like, they seem like good games, but they're.

they've not been able to grab me the way that Far Cry 3 grabbed me. But I think they're still, I think they still sell. And so as long as they continue to sell, I kind of continue to see them. I agree with Daniel Lamad stuff, sorry from the conference call a couple of weeks ago, right? Just to give facts to what all we're saying here, right? Like Ubisoft was the ranked second leading publisher with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Washdog's Legion's and Immortal all in the top seven bestsellers. Valhalla is the biggest AC game to launch in history, second bestselling game on new gen, or next gen consoles.

Daily average users is up two times compared to Odyssey in the same time frame. Ball Hall is the biggest Ubisoft launched in terms of digital slash add-on spend, which is very, very important for this conversation. Ubisoft says that the switch to RPG focus on Assassin's Creed led to a steep rise in player engagement for Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Assassin's Creed origins, breaking a record for engagement. There you go. How about that? Well, there you go.

So, yeah, I don't think those games, I think even though I've heard there have been rumors that have like, oh, well, this might be. the last, this is in the lead up to Valhalla, that this might be the last one you actually see that is the RPG kind of thing. I think they've obviously found a lot of success going for this and a brand new audience doing this, and so why? Again, if you're Ubisoft, why fix winning broke?

I feel like where I hear that from is usually the people who are Assassin's Creek purists who want the old format back and don't want it to be just like another RPG. But as you can see with those numbers, it's like,

no one like the future is now the future is now andy and no one has cared about assassin's creed as much as uh you know with valhollas numbers so i mean i mean the more the the more assassins queens into this new like r pgish setup do you think ubisoft creates either a new ip or a spinoff of assassin's creed that is more old school assassin's creed that the fans love i mean i think that it'll never be like going back to the more original games but i i do think they're going to maintain this kind of what they have going on now where it's like the more recent ones that don't play like

Ball Halla that I do think will continue to see them similar to Call of Duty where there is the different styles going back and forth. Let's move on the second one here. And that's for Far Cry, I don't know. That's for Far Cry, I have no idea whether they keep doing that.

Far Cry is like the foo fighter of video games. Like the foo fighters, they're always going to put out an album and it's always going to be pretty good and you're going to check it out, right? Like, it's never going to blow your mind and I'm going to have fun with every far cry that comes out.

I may not beat everyone. I probably won't beat everyone, but I'm going to play it and have fun with it and then be done with it after, you know, a week and a half, maybe two weeks. How do you beat a food fighter zone? You listen to it? Yeah, you read the lyrics and all of them, yeah.

Number two, what franchise from PS4 at Xbox One are not going to make the generational leap? So the examples here were the order crackdown kill zone. So they have to be exclusive to... Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, none of those will make it. Let's start with the order.

Is there any chance we ever see the order? No, that's equal. Well, I mean, never say never, but like, you're, no. That would be something I think you'd bring somebody in and they'd want to restart it and redo it and yet again. Yeah, I think the question is who would do it. And is it worth bringing in somebody new to do it? Because Radio Don is now owned by Facebook. Yeah, they're doing Oculus stuff.

Yeah, they're doing Oculus stuff. And so it's like, are you going to partner with a different developer to make the order? And there's just, I mean, you want to talk about PlayStation franchise that have juice behind them. And people who, where is siphon filter? Where is so calm? Nobody's saying where the fuck is the order? Nobody's saying that. You know what I mean?

Like, I think, you know, it was a long conversation around after it had launched. And it was like, all right, cool. Well, this is a real thing. So like, shit, are we going to get another one? Because they had interesting ideas and it just didn't pay off in the end. But no. Yeah, it's nothing. It's not that a lot of the franchises, it's not like they were, they didn't sell well,

but they have such huge critical appeal and maybe a hardcore kind of niche audience No, it's just sometimes they didn't sell well and they weren't very good either. So I think that's sort of like the double whammy right there. Yeah. I don't think we ever see another uncharted. Mark it down right now. Really?

You don't buy the San Diego rumor that they have a new studio out there that's working on uncharted? No, I'll put my life on it, Greg. Damn. You can't. You could take my life, all of you. I think we've got 110% see another uncharted this star.

Yeah, 1,000. And I'm going to be so happy to... I'll be sad about me happy. I'll be happy. I'll be sad down. It'll just be, it'll be on stream. You'll say your goodbyes and I'll pop up behind you with the trash bag over the back of your head. So what about crackdown?

I don't think we ever see the other crackdown. No. Yeah. Crackdown is like, I think, the perfect example of Xbox just trying to hold on to these franchises and like make them a thing because they're a thing. And they've been a thing. So they're a thing, right? They're still a thing. We have these exclusives.

We have exclusives. All the trials and tribulations to get there and finally get that game. out and have it just met with a oh okay great well that was worth the power of the cloud the one I think is more interesting would be infamous like do you think infamous comes out comes back this next generation

at all so is this just this generation are we talking forever or you're just talking about this generation well this question specifically is what games are not going to make the leap to the next gen from the last so PlayStation okay okay yeah

yeah infamous I think is I would say Dunzo, period, probably. Like, I just, I love infamous, don't get me wrong, but the world is shifted. I think Second Sun was a weak step. And I think Ghost of Sashima is so much better. And I think that you look at what sucker punch is, you look at what Naughty Dog is, you look at your PlayStation, you look at your studios, you look at Horizon, you look

at Last of Us, you look at Ghost, and you say, yeah, we should, and I'm not that I'm saying at any point did they put a gun to the head of sucker punch to keep making infamous games. but I definitely think they're like, make what inspires you. And so maybe one day an infamous game would, but the world's changed again, where remember PS3, Infamous was awesome because it was an exclusive game that had high production values. That was a comic book. And like, do we struggle that much anymore for that? Like, you know, you look at the Batman series.

You want to look at, I mean, there's a whole, I was going to say Avengers, but you know what I mean? That there's that Spider-Man. Yeah, exactly. There's so many things going on. Gotham Knights coming. Like, we have licensed superhero properties. And superheroes are huge, but it's the superheroes that are established. And so I would think if your PlayStation was hankering for another superhero game,

why not try to go get a license again? Why not try to get, you know, we want to make a Daredevil game, and we're going to have Soccer Punch do it. But again, I don't think they will because they have something of ghost and want to push forward with that. Do we ever see another Titan fall? No. It breaks my heart, but no, you won't see that Titanfall.

I think you'll see more games in that universe, though, which is what keeps my hope alive. I mean, like, Apex Legends is in that universe. But that's my exact point is I think there is space for them to keep on making games that kind of harking back to Titanfall. I wouldn't be surprised

to see a game with Titans in it from Respond, is what I'll say. I don't think it'll be called Titanfall. What was it? Was it over the weekend or last week that Titan Fall suddenly was like trending again because people in China were playing it for the first time or something like that? Anybody see

this? No. Yeah, they're all the people living in China playing it. We're like, fuck. Y'all should have given Infamous 2 more love. And the rest of the world was like, yeah, you're right, China. We fucked up. Do you mean Titanfall 2? Because the Infamous 2 deserved more love too, yeah, but. Oh, did I say infamous too? I meant tie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I was like what? Okay. I like the idea of being infamous too, though. Listen, this is the old fine, but it's awesome. No, it's not interesting. What are you doing? We should have given it.

Titanfall 2, great. More love, yeah. Pretty damn good game. You're not. It's such that, you know, the people who publish that game refuse to give it any love too. Yeah, yeah. Right. I have to die. I remember. Never forget. Man, it stinks. It stinks.

Yeah, but I want to say, yeah, a shout out to that. And also, like, Tomb Raider, man. I just don't know if we're, like, do they give it a shot again? I think, I don't know if it will get this iteration of Tomb Raider, like this version of Tomb Raider. I think we might get another reboot. You'll get another Timer.

Yeah. I think you'll see another game. Here's what I'll say. I don't know what it'll be if it's like a, you know, a Tomb Raider go or if it's a Tomb Raider. What was the one I'm thinking of? No. Can I make my fucking statement?

Shadow of the Light. Yeah, Guardians of the Light. Or, you know, Tomb Raider, the Big Budget series. You'll get Tomb Raider. You'll get a game with Tomb Raider in the title again. No, but I mean like, but we're talking big budget. Yeah, big bud. Oh, I don't think Square wants to put that much budget behind Tomb Raider anymore.

they tried three times to make Tomb Red Earthing and it didn't stick sadly. Yeah. I don't think we get one. I think the combination of, I do think we're getting more uncharted and we're getting Indiana Jones. I think that that style of game

is getting a little bit more crowded. I'll gladly take more of that type of game. But I think with the level of success in quotes that Square is found with that on top of Avengers, on top of just where all the devs are, I don't see next, this gen.

having a proper Tomb Raider game unless it is more of a tie-in to the movie coming out. Doesn't need to be a movie Tomb Raider 2 like the video game, but more similar to like what Prince of Persia did. Yeah. When Prince of Persia, there's always a Tomb Raider movie coming. When Prince of the, when Prince of Persia, the movie came out, they released a video game called Forgotten Sands. That was like a sequel to the original trilogy, but like it was a brand new game that did. didn't have to do with the movie, but it was definitely a less budget. And I think that we could see that from Tomb Raider, but that I think to the extent.

I think there's a lot you could do with it, though. Like, I think I could see us sitting here, right, five years from now. We haven't gotten Tomb Raider in a decade or something like that. That's not just going to knock me a decade. But stick with me still, right? Laura Croft, 30 years older. She's 50. She's doing Tomb Raider shit.

She has a new apprentice. Boom. Real Tomb Raider. Real Tomb Raider shit. and we're all excited we're all excited again because it's a new idea I think I think they are like a small new idea or new concept away from like being

able to reinvigorate life in a Tomb Raider this is a question for another time but is that getting overdone as well you're talking about like Indiana Jones and yeah like the original character coming back older version of them to bring in a next generation because we've gotten it with God of War

Gears of War kind of Uncharged Not even, not really though. You're naming all games that worked. Fantastic segue into question number three. What franchises are coming back, but in a reimagined format? Like God of War. Parasite, motherfucker.

Did Gears 5 really work, though? Plus? Or Gears 4 or whatever. I heard a lot of good things about gears. Gears 5 was awesome. But they were definitely not this. Gears 5 was more gears. I mean my cheesecake, man.

Which kind is it? Which one eating right now? Chocolate? Oreo. Don't get super stuffed up, any. Don't, don't, don't What franchisees are coming back, but in a reimagined

format, I'm going to say a game that I'm shocked, we didn't see any iteration of this generation, which is Bioshock. Yes, I was going to... Well, we know that's coming, right? Like, that's already been, that's announced that that's being worked on. But I feel like we knew it was coming like this gen. You know what I mean? I see

mean, okay, okay. So it's like, we'll see, but I do think that in some form we'll see a Bioshock, and I think it's going to be radically different than the previous centuries. Yeah. Well, no, can on it for a bunch of reasons yeah um but i can where you at can't put it off where you think it has big daddies oh yes please there may need a big daddy drill me big daddy and i i don't know that it even needs it i think they can just kind of like i think the bioshop brand can kind of be whatever it needs to be

and i actually think it kind of should be something that's a bit more of the times so i kind of trust whoever's working on it to like come up with something that I don't know that I want yet, you know? I think they'll present it to us and we don't see anything that, uh, like, represents any of the old Bioshop, but then like it'll be one of those situations like when, when it's out and we're playing it and we get like two thirds of the way through the game like Big Daddy's will fucking like pop up and it's going to be that like oh fucking like this is how can it connects to the other games and shit like that. Because that's my main, that's my main question is if you're introducing a new Biocshock,

what is the thing that clues us into, okay, this is Bioshop? Because I think you could do that where you introduce a game and it's just a first person horror game and everybody's like, okay, oh, it's Bowshock. This doesn't look like Bowshock, but then you start to play it and the gameplay feels Bowshock. I think you could get away with it, but I don't know, I don't know if that's what they're going to go for. I think it's narrative first person shooter because we don't get too many of those. Single player based narrative first person shooters where shooting is a mechanic, it's part of it. you know, I feel like it's a genre that Metroid Prime semi

like invented, you know, where it's like first person adventure almost. But Bioshock definitely has its own vibe and feel that it kind of made its own thing. So I can see that, a more modern version of that working really well, especially with, you know, the amount of love that really quality

single player games have been getting the last couple of years. Yeah, I just don't really know how that is radically different. Like we always make the God of War comparison. made it earlier where obviously it comes back in a much different form. I don't know what the evolved form of a Bioshock game looks like because it was already very narrative.

It was Elizabeth looking in your eyes and talking to you and and me falling in love with her and then she's daughter. Like what's going on here? It's crazy. Spoilers, bro. So I just don't know what the evolved form of that is because it seems pretty evolved already unless we add in, I don't know. more character choices.

I think design and like moment to moment gameplay because a lot of like the naysay or like a lot of people who didn't love Infinite were missing that more slower slower player choice from the original game. So I feel like I feel like the boiled down argument always was that Biosec was a first person shooter like you're talking about Tim right. but like it wasn't whereas like Infinite was

Infinite was just like spraying nonstop which I didn't hate but I didn't think was inventive as Biosec where I was like I don't want to fucking shoot this guy because I don't have that many bullets and I have to run around I'll wrench them or I'll sneak by people whereas Infinite was just running gun Oh I disagree it was a lot of cool magic

too you're throwing the murder murder pros murder the hook what a good ass game box I'm like it was dude oh my God Yeah I just don't really know what the, how that game looks, you know, in its involved form. Actually, I do know, looter shooter,

shared world shooter. We are all big daddy. We're all big daddies. We could customize our lootize our big daddies. The vitio and audience would have. The bitchs all the audience would have if you were in turn with a looter shooter for Bowshock. And I feel you in the sense of like

it wouldn't necessarily be like as dramatic of a reimagining as God of War 2018 compared to the previous God of games, but I also just don't think we get enough things like that. Like, it was already unique enough that even a new version of it would still kind of hit that level for me where I'd still put it in like the Breath of Wild God of War conversation. Because like, I'm trying to think of other examples. We always talk about God a war in Breath of Wild.

What else has done that? And I think that a good example is Metal Gear Solid 5, where it is Metal Gear gameplay, but it is a radically different game. And it is extremely polished. It has its false story. It didn't incorporate all the elements we love about Metal Gear enough. But it did God of War eyes the gameplay. You know?

Yeah. And I feel like if they did that for Bioshock, that'd be more than enough. Yeah, I mean. A peri mechanic, dash mechanics. Oh, that dash. I'd be all about it. Honestly, I think if I was in this, if I was in the seat to develop a new Bioshock game, I think the main things I would keep would be, all right, you got one hand that is the gun.

You have the other hand that is your figure or whatever your magic. abilities are and it is in a dark horror setting and that's it everything else is going to be new everything else is going to be forward looking you're going to have player choice it is going to be slow-paced um but you know aside from that we're crafting your own story and like tim said right it's going to be narrative i think if you if you flow with that people will get the fact that it's bouch and if you make it great then i think people will accept it i'm just imagining the the sizzle reel already i imagine like the lighting and the environment i can't wait i know i'm excited Do you guys think we get an...

When does it come out, Tim? When does it come on? I don't think it gets announced this year now. We've known about it forever, though. I mean, but we've known about it forever in the sense that, like, they've been open about... People are hiring. Yeah, they're hiring, and they started doing that at the beginning of last year, and now, like, every...

Like, the world's turned upside down. I don't think we'd get an announcement for that game for at least two years. Another game that fits all of what Barrett just said and fits to the answer to this question, potentially is Metroid Prime 4. I could totally see that game being... very different than what we expected, especially with them having to go back to the drawing board and stuff. And retro getting involved,

I can kind of see retro, having made three of these games already, being like, we're going to do something a little bit different with this. We know this franchise so well. Granted, the team's very different over time, but there are still a lot of people that are key,

you know, members of the team that worked on all of them. You guys have any other examples, though, of games you think are going to come back. I've been saying this on, PSL of you forever, but siphon filter. I think siphon filter is due for a comeback. I think it's the perfect time for it with Kajima and Konami splitting that there isn't

another tactical stealth espionage game out there. The fact that Splinter Cell, those demands continue to not be met or anything like that, I think it's the perfect time to get back to a, get back to Siphon Filter. I don't think have it looked the same. I would say you are not picking up the same story. You are rebooting it. you are Gabe Logan, you are doing a... I don't want to be Gabe Logan.

But what if it was brand new? What if it was brand new, though? It's not the same Gabe Logan. Can I just say, Gabe Logan? Can that be the headline for this week's episode? I don't want to be Gabey, Logan. What would you want to do, Syph and Filter again? What about Gabby Logan?

Cool. I just... I like the cultural war begins. Us being at an E3 press conference. Let's sitting in the crowd. them revealing Siphon filter. And then like you see Gabe Logan and you just hear 80 from the crowd be like, I don't want to be Gabe Logan.

Yeah, I think you're right, Greg. I think you're right. There's a hole in that sort of gaming library right now. I just don't know if it needs to be Siphon Filter. I don't, I think it, I think any brand new property can fill that void. It doesn't have to be. We're bringing back Siphon Filter. In a similar way that, yes, I was excited when they announced.

the return of perfect dark, but it's like, I don't need perfect dark back. Does anybody really want perfect dark back? We're getting in that's cool, but does anybody really care that that Joanna Dark is coming back? Does anybody really want Gabe Logan to return and

siphon all these filters? You know what I mean? I don't know, man. I think that's a little bit different in the sense that like I am way more interested in the perfect dark game because it's perfect dark than if it was just a new IP. Like, I think that there are

elements of the world of perfect dark that are very freaking cool and it looks like they're this from what we've seen of this are taking elements that I liked of the game and I mean we only saw a CG thing so who the hell knows yeah it's like gonna actually end up being but so far I'm like oh okay I'm kind of into this you know and like giving Joanna more of a character than we've seen from her before or at least a different character which this seems to be doing I'm like cool I'm there like it might as well be a new IP for all the purposes but you know Joanna dark's cool and it's a way cooler name the game and they had and they had cool weapons they had cool weapons in perfect dark yeah what about splinter cell that's a great answer nope

we're gonna get splinter cell at some point i think splinter cell's more likely than cypher filter i'm shocked we haven't gotten splinter cell this last generation i got to assume that like somebody's got dirt on tam fisher and he just like you know he can't reveal why he's not coming back you know what i mean he's allowed to show up in all these other games though yeah he shows up in everybody else's game but he just can't have his own He's been silently canceled. He did some nefarious shit, and it's just like You're never going to ever see him back.

Do we think that like... Is this because, like, is Ubisoft just not passionate about making Splinter Cell anymore? Is this just like not in the real house? You think Ubisoft has passion? On a ground level, yes. On a like a manager, like a higher up level, absolutely not. My question would be what does Splinter Cell sell?

You know, like, is it? did a Metroid kind of thing where Nintendo's like, well, people like this, but they're not showing it in the numbers, and so we're not going to make another splinter cell? Or is it just like they can't figure it out? I think it is conjured enough sort of value in its name alone, where every year an E3 goes by and there is no splinter cell and you keep on hearing that there is no splinter cell. I think that enough in the same way that I didn't grow up a PC gamer, but I knew about Half Life 3. I knew about the Half Life 3 meme. And I think Splinter Cell is kind of getting on that level where where the hell is another Splinter Cell?

Yeah, like it's, it's sort of gotten that notoriety and I... Has it? I don't know if it's gotten that much. I think so, man. From Splinter Self fans for sure. Yeah, from the Splinter Self fans for sure, yeah. I think it's reached meme. I don't think it's reached a Half-Life 3 level.

No, but it's reached a Skate 4 level. Yeah. I think it's like right under a skate 4 level. Yeah, like right, right under. And I think that debatably... I think depending on who puts the tweet poll out, it would get very close different results. Mm-hmm.

Between those two games. Like, that's why I'm saying, like, if Splinter Cell comes back, to go back to my earlier point, perfect dark was never on that level, but they're still making another perfect dark. And I think if Ubisoft were to announce another Splinter Cell, it would have a gigantic fucking pop,

because every year, everybody's Twitter timelines, at least mine, are filled with where the fuck is Sam Fisher, dude? Why is he popping up in every other property? Please just give me Sam Fisher again. And like we were mentioning earlier, the fact that there's no, you know, Greg talking about bringing back Seifilter, because there's no sort of espionage stealth shooter thing.

Like, come on. I mean, my point's been made a million fucking times over in a million other podcasts. I think the difference with Splinter Cell is that they went so hard for a short period of time. but like it was essentially a generation and a half of consoles, specifically Xbox. And Splitter Cell was a much bigger deal than Perfect Dark ever was. Like Perfect Dark never hit golden eye levels even on N64, you know, and definitely not on Xbox 360. And we haven't had a Perfect Dark since 2005, with the exception of the remaster of the first game on Xbox 360. Whereas Splitter Cell, it's been a while, but it hasn't been that long.

but we got way more games of, I don't think Splinter Selyder hit the low of Perfect Dark Zero, but I also don't think that in the more recent iterations that ever hit the high Pandora Tomorrow or Chaos Theory, and what made those games so special was their fantastic single player, their exclusivity to Xbox, so it gave, you know, the Xbox fans, like something to really, like, fight for it or fight with.

And it also had insane multiplayer that, like, really kind of, the asymmetrical multiplayer and all that stuff. Like it really invented was the only place you can get a lot of that type of stuff. As versus Merks. Exactly. And I think that. Yeah. And I think the games kind of like especially Ubisoft games and online games and all that

stuff have moved so far from that now that I can imagine Ubisoft just is struggling to find the right home for Splinter Cell, whether it's single player, multiplayer, both. I don't know because they have so many different. Linear. so many different games. Like majorly open world, which is like all the known

for and shit. Open worlds, right? They've got to be, especially for them to look at, I mean, we talked about it earlier in this conversation, but to look at Metal Gear Solid 5 and be like,

oh man, that's like so almost one of our games. Like, how do we do that? Dude, if they could, if they could nail that loop, because you tell me an open world Splinter Sun, I'm thinking, fuck no, I don't want another open world Ubisoft game.

Give me a straightforward experience, 10 hours, narrative, and it just give me that but then you mentioned the Melger Salt 5 gameplay loop and it's just so it's so solid it's so flawless you know it's Melgaard solid yeah

the same thing there though is I do think being realistic about Splinter Cell I imagine that we will see it again but I don't think it's going to be a God of War type thing or Bethel Wild type thing I think it's going to be unfortunately more similar to the Prince Persia the first time we've seen

Prince of Persia in years and it's the Santa Time remake that, you know, doesn't look great. Yeah, I think it'll be more than that. Yeah, I got indefinitely. I don't think they'll flub that. Well, I mean, who knows? Who knows?

I'm never surprised whenever a studio flubbed something. What do we think about these Cotor rumors? Oh, God, I hope so. Again, it's the High Republic. It's happening. I buy it. Aspire. Yeah.

But I don't think it's going to be a God, a war type thing. I think it's going to be a Star Wars. Oh, sure. Now I'm just thinking of franchises that might come back here. Well, I mean, Star Wars is a good one to bring up because I think

the ceiling is high for what Star Wars games you can bring back now that Lucasfilm Games is doing their thing. And so give me Star Wars Racer. Yep. I do one. I think I'm just Man, I am so on the fence with Star Wars games now because I

I guess I want to be a Jedi and I also realize that I don't love shooting laser guns anymore. Like Battlefront has just never, I've come to the, I've come to the sort of, the realization that

shooting laser guns in battlefront is never satisfying to me. And I don't know if I'll ever love shooting Star Wars guns in video games again. Because I, like, what I want is obviously a game where you're in Star Wars and you are kind of a, you're either in the Republic or you're in the rebellion and you're kind of fighting the Federation. But, man, I just don't know

if I care about that gameplay. Hear me out, though. Star Wars, the bounty hunter, the Mandalorian. Suck again, second can, I can see the trailer

on my head, blood. Yeah, da, da, da, da, da, da. Pedro Pascal, looking good is all hell. Looking good as all hell. I hope they change Kotor and make it,

you know, whatever this new thing is, Knight to the High Republic. I hope it's, I mean, that's Tim's guest, though. I hope it's something more than just,

turn base, right? Because it wasn't Cotor 2 was not it was not turn base, right? Yeah, I mean, it was like a form of turn based. It was all iterations on similar things. Whatever Cotor situation we're getting is going to be radically different than what we got in the past. And I think that the only real ties are going to be, hopefully, an excellent story with excellent original characters. And, you know, very, very choice driven from the users. But it's going to be modernized to all hell compared to what the original looks.

Those games are tough to go back to. Yeah, you know, I was mentioning my sort of issues with hopefully we don't get a split yourselves out to open world or whatever. But man, I just, I want an open world Star Wars game so bad. I want a sprawling universe and talking to NPCs all over the place. I want Mass Effect Star Wars pretty much. I want that experience. Let me talk to just crazy aliens, you know.

Hell yeah, man. The final two here, I don't think we have too much to go off. So I'm just going to read them together and see if any of us have any answers. What franchise do we think are poised to keep, gain, or lose relevance to the new generation? Something like Call of Duty being unseated is the bestselling, ubiquitous shooter in the gen. I feel like we've kind of touched on most of the ones of like what we think is going to just keep happening. I do think that it's not so much a franchise, but I think it's a mentality and something we've definitely seen is I think Sony's first party are going to continue to be a genre to themselves that are going to. You know, I think PS5 will have a lineup that at least rivals the PS4s at the end of the day in terms of first-party titles.

For this question, I mean, I would put out in one and everybody's bet on Fortnite. Yeah. Like, is Fortnite maintain? It's King of the Mountain here. I mean, it's one of those things they're so high. You feel like there's no place for them to go but down. But they've maintained to be this high for a long time. I come from it from the perspective of being on Twitch and following the trends and knowing what big.

streamers are playing that game. And any time, you know, a lot of, a lot of it is, you know, anytime I think that it's down, it never is down. It's just maybe that one streamer that I've, am used to playing Fortnite is not playing Fortnite. It hasn't for a while. But then we look at this Gref G or whatever his name was, the Mexican streamer, or a Spanish streamer rather, that broke the all-time concurrent stream record on Twitch of 2.4. million viewers playing Fortnite.

It's things like that that really kind of make me have a new perspective and realize, God damn, I really don't know what to do with this Fortnite thing, because I think it is going to continue to be dominant. And of course it has nowhere to go but down, but I don't think it's going to fall into

irrelevancy at all in the next five years. I think as long as they keep on pulling in new IP and partnering with anything and every fucking thing possible, like, it's it's also the idea that, you know, you know, and I like Fortnite a lot, obviously. Kind of funny plays a lot of Fortnite.

I'm on and off, but Joey is insane, and Kevin's about to hit Battle Pass 100 to, Joey already did. But it's also the fact that it is a game that skews younger, which means every day there's some other kid who's trying it for the first time or getting told about it for the first time and getting into it.

And maybe that's more of a cyclical, you know, when the school year starts, there's a new grade of kids that hear about it and start playing it or something like that. But even for the people who are, quote, unquote, graduating from it or moving on, there's still another audience coming in that is going to school in a Fortnite backpack with a Fortnite lunchbox and going as a Lutlam on Halloween and stuff like that.

It almost feels like... I think that Fortnite is definitely more of a Minecraft-style game than it is something that I compare to Call a Duty. Like, I know it's easy. Oh, it's a battle royale. So let's compare it to Warzone and, you know, Apex and all that stuff. But I really think that Fortnite can be compared to those things in certain elements in terms of events and in terms of, you know, gameplay and maintenance of whatever they're doing and customer support and all that community. But I think that Fortnite is not going to go anywhere.

And I don't think that we're at the end of next gen, we're not going to be able to look back and be like, oh, man, Fortnite's had a decline. I think we're just going to look at it as like, it's had a lot of crazy spikes. And it's sure, always relevant. It reminds me of like Pokemon growing up where it's like a certain, a lot of kids will grow out of Pokemon, but you're getting just as many, if not more growing into to, to, to that age of, like, getting into Pokemon. That's what like reminds me of what we like kind of grew up with. I'm, I'm surprised there's not. And maybe there is and I'm wrong.

I'm surprised there's not a Fortnite cartoon or a TV show or like other spit off. There has to be something because I think that is the only direction now when we talk about, you know, can Fortnite get bigger? Like I think the answer, in terms of like user base and all that stuff, you know, the ceiling is the ceiling, whatever that is for Fortnite. But, you know, they can still expand and they can still do stuff to keep that brand alive for basically. Yeah, more relevant for the foreseeable. future and I think it's going to continue to do that whether or not the game continues to be the most popular thing on planet Earth. My question is like does Epic ever put out another fortnight? Not necessarily like literally like a Fortnite too, but do they have another,

do they develop another game that hits on a similar level of everybody's getting into this because it's everywhere. It's on your phones. It's on Epic Game Store. It's on all that stuff. It's funny because I want to say no. Like that's just not how this typically works where you know, like they have the type of game that has this level of success, you can't just do it again. But when you look at Call of Duty, it's like they have an annual game, annualized game series, then the Warzone comes out. And it's similar, but it is a different product. And I can kind of see something like that happening where it's tangentially related or incorporated completely with Fortnite, but is a different game.

I see that as a lot more likely than Epic just working on something new. Because I think a lot of the hardest of hardcore Fortnite players are obviously a lot. They skew a lot younger, but they are also really into the characters that the world is creating. So I could see Fortnite releasing a little two to three hour campaign where you do play kind of a story mode and you're kind of running through missions as Jonesy. And you have to save the Banana Man or whatever the fuck they call him. And then Iron Man comes down. and then Riggs and Mertoff from Leto Weaponer is there, too. Your parents are going to get into Fortnite too,

and Ricky Lake is also here, Greg. They're bringing back Ricky Lake into Fortnite. Gabe Logan's here. Gabe Logan. Finally, I don't want to be, Game Logan. Two things I want to throw out here because the chat, who is watching live because there's supporters on patreon.com. So that's kind of funny games or Patreon.com.

So that's kind of funny. Battlefield was being thrown out there of like, where does Battlefield stay in this generation of relevancy and then someone else throughout Halo in the conversation around Halo and being relevant But before we get there, I'm still on Fortnite because I kind of want to answer my own question a little bit because I was thinking about some things that Epic as a company, like Fortnite has funded so much of stuff that they've then went on to do like in terms of when you talk

about what they're doing with developers and lowering the split for getting games on the Epic Game Store, stuff like that. stuff like, I feel like there are things they've done recently that I can't think of, but they have publishing labels, they have Rocket League on their store and they've implemented a battle pass in that, and they've made it free to play. I, Epic

as a company has, I think, the, one, the engine, the, the data, you know, from running Fortnite over the years now, the store, and pretty much all the resources they need, I think if they wanted to, if they wanted to go in this direction, like

to make another hit, right, to like put out something new that is, that does kind of elevate to the level of Fortnite, whether it is a spin-off or something completely new. So I just want to throw that out there. But to the Halo question, who knows? That's my answer.

Halo being relevant again, I think it will be relevant for approximately a week to two on Twitch, because the biggest streamers will be playing it. And I think it'll go away again, man. I mean, it's, it's,

anytime HAL put out one of these recent, unless it hits, right? Unless it really, really hits, which I just don't know if a Halo battle royale will hit, even though we want it to, and I want it to, and I want one so bad. I don't know if it'll sort of eclipse that level of relevancy like it did back in the day. I just think there's, I think it's not like we're missing out on really good battle royals right now, or good multiplayer shooters. We're not missing out on that right now. I think if you wanted the Halo experience a modern one,

Halo 5's there. And, you know, how's that going? Well, to be fair, Halo 5 is 2015. I mean, but it's not like it's a 2007 game that, you know, Halo 2 is or whatever, or, you know what I mean? Like, it's not like it's this, to Halo 2 didn't come out to 107. But I just don't think it'll hit that way that we think it will.

I think it'll come and go, like, whenever these games, are now available on PC and Master Chief Collection, Halo 3 is available now. They're on PC and it's now full crossplay and it explodes on, again, this is my coming from my Twitch perspective, it explodes on Twitch for about a week and a half and then it kind of just goes away and everybody goes back to playing war zone or Fortnite or whatever. Just remind, there's just too many multiplayer games out there right now. There's not a shortage of content that I think people are like yearning for and I don't don't see any big switches being made in terms of what the what the market's going to do.

I think there's no other multiplayer shooting franchise that has the juice, you know, as much as Halo does to make a comeback or to make a splash and become a relevant first person shooter, you know, and live alongside Call of Duty and Fortnite's and all the other stuff. And so the question for me still is like, will they be able to do it? and you know it's hard for me to really make that judgment because I'm just not a halo person but for what infinite is and what it seems like they want that game to be right like it looks like they want that game to kind of revitalize the franchise and be this thing that returns to the original and gets fans involved and all this stuff and seeing them delay it gives me hope that they only want to put it out if it's right but it also gives gives me the little bit of scare of okay but what's going wrong and so I I think there's space there for a new or a shooter, you know, but I think the question is, like, how good can they make the new game? And we'll see it. I don't think Halo can do it, like what we're talking about, because I think it's just,

it's a mixed message no matter how you slice it of it's got to be traditional enough to remind you why you love Halo and give you that Halo experience if you're a Halo nut, but then it's got to be new enough to get me and blessing excited for it to want to go play Halo, and I think that's just a lose-lose. You let down the side of the audience no matter what you do. Yeah, I agree. with that. I mean, I I think whatever side

you cater towards you're going to piss off one of the other sides or just you know, make them not care about it enough. And again, no matter what the biggest personalities out there are saying about the current games market or

I guess just atmosphere of like you know, oh war zone's getting old or PubG is getting old. I mean those games are still doing numbers. When it comes to player base. CounterStrike is still huge up there and I got on here and fucking nobody cares about Counterstrike that I know

of and it's still one of the biggest games out there. And I'm looking right now categories wise and the Master Chief Collection is 1.5K viewers on Twitch which is just you need to have a big explosion right and I think it did really really well that first couple of days that it did go crossplay but

I don't know. I just don't think it's, I don't think it has it. I completely agree with Greg. I, I know that I'll enjoy the hell out of it when it does come back, but I don't think it'll come back and be this massive game again like it was back in the day. What if it's free to play? Well, I guess it is free to play, isn't it? The multiplayer version.

Yeah. Like, does that do it? Does that do anything for you? Because, like, I don't know. I'm kind of with you guys that that game has an uphill battle. But with it being available to anyone to kind of go in and check it out, I think that goes a long way into getting people in. But I'm there with how you guys are about this game.

Yeah, I just think, like, I, to just add on to what you guys are saying, I feel like there are three or four separate products that Halo needs to be extremely, at least nine out of ten at for it to be like seen as, oh, Halo's back. And that is a super quality single player campaign. that is a modern arena shooter in the vibe and style of Halo. That is a classic arena shooter in the vibe and style of Halo. And it is a battle royale to be able to compete with modern shooters. And for them to, I don't have faith they're going to hit any of those.

So for them to hit all of them is like even a taller order for what infinite seems to be so far. But I truly hope that I'm wrong because if anything can get me into a battle royale shooter, it's Halo with the vehicles, with the ghosts and with the war dogs and all of that. But sticky grenades on vehicles. Hell yeah. I thought they weren't doing a battle royal. Are you saying one day they're doing the battle royale or this generation they're doing better around?

I mean, so far they're saying they're not. I'm saying they need to. Okay, cool. I'm sorry. I just missed something in there. I want to make sure I wasn't missing the information. I think they definitely will. I just think they're of course.

They have to. And I think, as Tim said multiple times, that would be cool. Yeah. So we'll see. I think that would be exciting too if you were like you had 99 Spartans going out there and buying for a thing. There was the other. you mentioned from the audience?

Oh, yeah. The chat was also talking about Battlefield and where Battlefield's relevancy lies by the end of this generation. It just seems like either big publisher has the rights to the big game in that genre. It's like, we have this thing in this genre,

but you have the that game in that genre. And I just don't know if any of those can really coexist. I don't know if we'll ever see Battlefield competing against. modern warfare at all i mean i think ea just kind of really played themselves in a couple years when it comes to medal of honor battlefield titan fall and like their release schedules and battlefronts on top of all of it it's just like there was just way too much that none of them really had the chance to

to super grow and i think battlefront had the biggest success story but that is after a disaster of a launch and, you know, them kind of having to put so much more love into it because of the Star Wars franchise. So I expect we'll see more battlefront before we see more battlefield. But I don't know. It's also just a weird thing where when you look at Call of Duty and you look at Battlefield, I am shocked either of them still have anything left to do because it's like, like, look at Call of Duty. It's like, oh, okay, like what decades left? You know what I mean?

Like when it comes to the Battlefield, like I loved the campaign of Battlefield one. Like the war story stuff was such a cool way to tell these stories, but that's gone. I enjoyed World War II as well. I just don't know if they keep bringing back those campaigns. Maybe, you know, obviously new engine. It's, it's, we're telling another World War II story, but this time it's, you know, obviously updated and things are prettier now and there's ray tracing and all that stuff. I don't really, I don't know if that brings back multiplayer in a big impactful way, though. good for Rocket League man

45,000 viewers right now on Twitch Hell yeah Rocket League is popping Like that's what I'm saying When it comes to like the Epic stuff Is that I think Epic has the juice And they know what they're doing so much That I wouldn't be surprised to see them

Continue to build that catalog Of cool, Fortnite Now we're building up Rocket League All right let's build up a third game To live alongside those And try to make all these games As big as a Fortnite Like they also have the publishing label

That they're doing now Where they're publishing a game from Remedy And another one from Gen Design Which is the team eco lead and yeah they're going they're going in that direction which I'm very curious about but as far as Battlefield I kind of expect that to be business as usual

like I think we'll continue to see battlefield games but I don't know if they'll ever be competition for Call of Duty I think they're just going to exist for Battlefield fans and live on like that when was our last battlefield game was it Battlefield 1? It was Battlefield 5 that was a couple years ago only reason I remember this is because a couple days ago

I asked someone like I think on a stream or something like hey did what happened to battlefield's battle rea and somebody was like oh it came out and i was like came out that was the uh fire mode right yeah fire wall or something like that fire wall no fire circle it was like a ring of fire it was a ring of fire the circle closed in on you knew fire storm fire storm crushed it fireball island final question and this is a gut thing if any of you have an answer because i don't what developers or publishers will make the biggest new IP impact this generation. Think Gorilla Games with Horizon, Moon

with Ori, Bungy with Destiny. Ninja Theory. That's my answer. Excellent. That's a really good answer. That's a really good answer. And here's a follow-up question, though. Is it with Hellblade? I don't know if it's with Hellblade. I think what help. That's a new IP.

Yeah, that's not a new IP. Yeah, I don't count that. But like, also, I don't know if, I don't know if it would be Hellblade because I think Hellblade is such a specific thing and specific type of game that for, I guess, what we're talking about, what the question is asking for, right? the next big AAA franchise. I don't see that as Hellblade.

I see Hellblade is this, you know, technically innovative, really cool, like niche title that people are going to flock to you and critically love, but I don't think it's going to sell like crazy. But I think Ninja Theory has the ability to make something that is new and big and fresh and exciting. See,

I wouldn't be surprised if Hellblade 2 is big enough and, like, substantially different enough to be seen as almost a new IP. more similar to the Breath of the Wild style conversation we were talking about earlier where I can see if it's like 20 hours long instead because Hill Blade 1 was probably like

five hours, six hours somewhere in that realm and yeah I guess if it turns into a full price game that is and I know it's on Game Pass or it will be on Game Pass probably but you know if it is like a 15 and 20 hour thing that strings along an actual like you know bigger story and all this stuff I could see it coming out and being like this premier

franchise for Xbox for me it's a and it's a cheat answer but I'm going to do anyway Super Giant. Super Giant where I think all they do is make new IPs but I think now that the world kind of woke up to how fucking awesome they are after Hades you know what I mean after somehow sleeping on Bastion and transistor I think their next one will have even more eyes on it and it'll be even bigger

yeah my was going to be a cheat answer Turtle Rock with back for blood yeah back for blood let's go God I can't fucking wait for that game June Andy been thinking about it every goddamn day. I mean, it's Lefer Dead, right? There's nothing new there, but I think it's going to... I think Lefford Dead wasn't as big as it was for me

because I was primarily a console player and it was just kind of one of those weird console games that wasn't ubiquitous like a Halo was or like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 was or whatever. You know what I mean? It was always this... I'll call Duty 4 Modern Warfare, rather. It was never a huge game for me, but I know how big it was, you know, amongst the, you know, the PC community or whatever. So I think it's going to be really, really huge.

And either that, and I'm just personally, my personal vote, I really, really hope that Outwriters is huge because I just want to play it. And Greg, I want to make you play with me. People who, people who can fly? What is it? People who fly. People who fly. You want me to play with you? Yeah.

I'll play the heel. Excuse me, Blessing. This is me and Andy. It's the division. Oh, Bless. I mean, I made Bless play with me at that event. So Bless is automatic. Will I like Outriders, you think?

It's the division. It's Destiny. It's a third person shooter. You're gearing up. You're getting new abilities and skills. Okay. You're going to dig it. But here's the thing.

Acting, not great. But who cares, right? I don't give a shit what the acting is. I thought the gameplay was just so much fun and combining abilities. I mean, I'm friends with Nolan North, so I'm worth it. We used to tear. acting. Don't worry about it. Oh, is he in it?

No, I'm just saying he's a bad actor. Oh, got it, got it, got it. And with that, everyone, this is the kind of funny games cast. Thank you very much for joining us. And if you are Patreon.com slash kind of funny supporter, stay tuned for the exclusive post show. We're about to play a little bit of what? Messier mashup. Oh, messier. Messier. Messier. It's a twist. Oh, my God. Damn.

I'm looking at it. I'm looking at the Outriders' gameplay here. Okay. Okay. Okay.