Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Xbox's Future and Games We Are Playing - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 103

Episode Date: January 20, 2017

We discuss the games we are playing, super awesome arcade game Killer Queen, and what Scalebound being cancelled means for the future of Xbox. (Released to Patreon Supporters 01.13.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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As always, I'm Tim Geddy's joined by the coolest dudes in video games, Colin Moriarty and Greg Miller. Flag on the play. Wow. It's for you. It's blue. He didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. If we threw that at Boise State, you wouldn't even be able to sit on the film.

It's a little football joke. The reps are all down doing this, pawn at the field. Because the field is blue. Yeah, you'd love Boise State's field. Really? Yeah. They have blue grass? Yeah.

Why do you make blue grass? Just turf. Surf and turf. Surf and turf. What? Yeah. No, it's just turf. It's just blue turf.

It's just blue turf. Okay. It's very eye-catching. It's ridiculous. I agree. I'm a lot. I like it a lot. I'm a big fan.

Kev, can you pull up a picture of this? Boise State. Jersey State's not a thing. Jesus Christ. Boise State. Jersey State. Football field.

That's all you got to put in there. You'll find it. You'll find it right away. I'm excited about this. When are they bringing back NCAA football? I feel like the NCAA has gotten better about this player from a phone. That's because we miss it. We all miss it.

After the after in a few years when the athletes start getting paid, I think they own their likenesses and stuff. I think that EA will get back into the game. Do you think that's really hope they do. An inevitable. There it is. There it is. Oh, I like that a lot. I don't like blue and orange though.

That combo has never been nice. Can you just take, I mean, they gave you something. Isn't that better than nothing? Aren't you sick of seeing green fields everywhere? Yeah. I mean,

I really do appreciate the blue. And then when they put on their blue jerseys and playing it there in camouflage. Oh my God. The one can see it. The TV camera that announcers like, we don't even, this other is away team.

The ball is moving down. No, there's a person. The person has the ball. Sorry, I thought a ball is feeling, Going on its own. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast.

Every week we get together to talk about video games on the things that we love about them. You can get the show early over on patreon.com slash kind of funny games. And this month only, you can also get Kind of Funny Live too, the full video. If you don't want to, you know, help us out, give a dollar, because it's only a dollar to get kind of funny live too. I think it's worth it. Do you think it's worth it? It's worth it. It's worth the dollars.

It's worth the dollar. It's worth the Dragon. Kevin gets engaged. Gia is in a Pokemon costume. She is. She is. Anyways, if you don't want it, you can wait. Kind of Funny Live 2 will come out on February 6th for everybody for free on YouTube.com

slash Kind of Funny. And this show will be released for free for everybody on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny games. Next week, podcast services, all that stuff. Also, another change we made recently, Kind of Funny Morning Show. You can catch that on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny. We talk about some video game stuff. It's a weird crossover. We're in a point where it's just like, I don't know, where the fuck do we put things.

There's no rhyme or reason. Yeah. That's just insanity. The show's the same thing. No, it's not new. I haven't updated again. I'm planning a big 2017 update. I remember seeing that.

He's been releasing some hotness. Yeah. Orioto. Who is this again? Orioto. You should go check him out on Deviant Art and all of his Facebook page and all that stuff. O-R-I-I-O-T-O. It's in the description.

Yeah, it's in the description always. Now if he's over at Deviant Art, how many times has he drawn? Sonic the Headshot? And Tales making out. As you've seen in this art, there's a lot. lot of Sonic and tails, but I don't know. There's no making out that I've seen. Sonic and tails and cornholing.

That's what they should make. Cornholing. Yeah. That sounds nasty. What's you've been playing, Greg? A lot of stuff. Well, it's funny. In the past week, I've played a lot of stuff and then started playing an old game

and focusing on that. I gave a brief rundown on PSI Love You or whatever. The Yakuza preview has lifted. So I'll start there and give you new information. I played Yakuza Zero the first night I got it. What had happened is got Gravity Rush 2, played that for a night. The next day you,

Yakuza Zero came in, played that for the night. The next day I got distracted by something else, and then the weekend came. We'll get to that a second, though. Yakuza, though, more Yakuza. The prequel to the Yakuza story we know and stuff. This is something I mentioned last week when we were talking about open world fatigue. In the fact that some open worlds, we talk about, like, why is it even like this? Why is it even like this?

What is it really drawing? That's always been my thing with the Ycusa games. Again, I reviewed them all the time for IGN. I enjoy a good Yakuza game, of course. You know, are you familiar with this series? Yes. All right, cool. So it's like the very loose.

the Japanese GTA. Not nearly that big of an open world, but that's the idea of, let's play through this gangster yakuza mafia story or whatever, run around their red light district. This one's set in 1989, so it's a bit of a callback.

There's different things going on in there. But it is the same idea of, cool, I can go into this shop and buy this, you know, soup or whatever to keep on me to use as a healing item. But I can also just go into the arcades and play games.

I can go in and play the, you know, the UFO, catcher game. You love that game. I do love the UFO. Yeah. And that's the thing. I'm continuing to play. played in Yakuza because I'm like, I should have gotten that item. I'm, I don't like how

this is and then you tip it over. It's just like a real, just like a real you have, oh, catcher game. You tip something over. You're playing it to get it into the right spot. Yeah. And then any time when you've collected all the prizes, you can go over and tell people it's time to change out the prizes and they change all the prizes. You go really, play some more. That sounds very detailed. Yeah. And they got a couple of classic Sega stuff, arcade games in there to play and stuff. Uh, but it's the same thing of just like, if you want to play a yikuzzi game just mainline that story, you can and go through it. And again, what I think usually yakuz is, you know,

games excels that it's still an interesting story it is this you know we're playing there as kasmu again you know this time before he actually goes anywhere in this whole family that he's in and with his clan and how he's going to move up to eventually become a big deal and then go off to an orphanage spoiler alert for what happens the rest of the ukuse games but uh interesting i like the characters i like where it's going there's this air of mystery it's like you know why what's happening the story is happening to him and what's going on and you know i beat up a guy and he cut off his own finger and a sense of honor i'm like yeah that's fucking cool that's what yakuza is great at right because yakuza is usually this and it always is i guess an interesting

story that feels not grounded obviously but all the cut scenes of you interacting with the other you know yakuza bosses and the family members and explaining all the interests of how it all ties together that always seems grounded in the way you talk and then you just walk through streets and beat the fuck out of everyone and you like that's the whole thing of just like yeah it's got a really in depth uh skill tree and unlockable system you're going through to get new moves if you want or more health or more power this way to, you know, warm up your heat gauge faster, which allows you do special moves and things. But they also have, you know, the last YQZ game I remember playing was the zombie one I

always talk about. And before that, there was the other one, which must have been what, six is the next one that's coming out here. So it would have been five. I'm rusty on all my numbers. But it's the one where we jumped around the different characters. There was, of course, like the lone shark with the secretary that he hated and then she got hot and he liked her a lot.

And I was like, ooh, that's not a, that's not a storyline you're allowed to do. But you jumped around between characters. This one set from Kaz's perspective, who I knew from my earlier Yakuza gameplay experiences. And rather than, you know, to spice it up, it seems you can switch your fighting stance from brawler, which is, you know, very anchored and you're giving out heavy slow blows to, you learn a new stance, you're able to jump around and be super fast and dodge around and kick the shit out of everybody and use them differently to fight different bosses and do different things like that. And that's where Yakuza is always very interesting, is that it is, it's like a dynasty warriors in a lot of ways mixed in with his, then, really good story of the fact that it is like, okay, cool. Like you need to get from this one side of the red light district, this other side to catch a cab to continue the story.

But on the way, if you just want to keep going down different alleyways, you're going to continue to find people like street punks or dudes dressed in black who just want to beat the fuck out of you and you do that. And you earn money and you earn, you know, your XP that you can then go and spend stuff. It's a fun game. It is the same thing I've talked about a lot in the past with Yakuza, though, where I like Yakuza. I enjoy a good Yakuza game.

And this is where I think it's similar to a Dynasty Warriors. You know what you're getting. Like, you're playing through it. I'm like, oh, cool. the fighting styles are different. I don't remember this from previous. I'm pretty sure this is a new addition to this one. It gets rusty though because again, I've played so many of them. So, I mean, not holding you to this because I'm sure you might not know all the information.

But at PSX, last year, they announced Yakuza Zero and Yakuza 6. Right. Is Zero a new game or is this a port of a new game? No, Yakuza Zero to what I understand is a new game. The thing about it, of course, is that it's been out in Japan forever. Not forever. Got it. Okay. A year and a half or whatever. Exactly. Here it is in America. And I'm pretty sure that's now what's happening with six as well, where six is out in Japan. Because when I tweeted, hey, I got Yakuza Zero. I can't tell you about it when I'm excited to play it.

Some kids like, I already got Yakuza 6 because he got the imported version is playing that. And so that's usually what happens here, which makes it all the more cumbersome. Because I remember going to TGS and getting my photo taken on the Yakuza throne with like the hostess girls there and stuff. But that was promoting the yakuz that was coming out there in a second, which we were like one or two behind at the time. So it's all fucking tiboling winks on the floor. But for me, you know, it's whatever. But when I was driving at before, it's more Yakuza. I feel like they are doing this different thing where usually it's always cutscenes and, you know, telling you the story and you're going through it.

And okay, cool. They're doing this thing that's new to me. I think it's new to this must be the introduction series of putting faces on the screen or having like still things like people moving behind you or whatever. But then just having text on the screen or it. And it's like, okay, I'm fine with that. Whereas I don't need an animated cutscene. But at first was a jarring thing to me. And I don't know if it's just a call back.

Fire emblem style stuff. I'm not familiar with fire. It's just like an anime-esque picture. It's not a text. Yeah, yeah, similar to that. It's almost like it's in engine. Persona. Persona does it too.

Pesona four. Sure, not to that degree. No, no, no, no, but like having, you know,

from the game, like him just standing there, but in his mouth not moving and you're just gotten over it's fine. But it was when I was, when I jumped into it, not knowing too much about Yakuza's here. I know it's a prequel.

I know this. I was like, oh, is this their version of, not a budget Yakuzaa, but like, all that said, it's more Yakuza. If you're in the mood for Yakuza, you know what you're getting into.

It's just like every other Yakuza. I feel like I enjoy it. I'm going to play it more. But it's one of those, I've done this weird thing this past week of games just jumping around. Where night before I started Gravity Rush 2, reviews it up now doing really well critically, which is great for them.

For me with Gravity Rush 2, it was a very similar thing of jumped in, started using the powers. I was happy to be back with Kat. I was happy to, I forget her, the reporter from the first game who now, like her sidekick or whatever. I was like, oh, that guy again.

Oh, yeah. It was like fun to catch up with these characters that I hadn't thought much about since I played it and reviewed it on Vita. Jump back into that world. I thought it was a clever thing of like, I was like, what are we doing? Why is this happening?

They had a cool reveal in the beginning and then she doesn't have her powers and how we're going to get it back and da-da-da-da. And going through that and playing that, I'm like, oh, fuck, gravity rush. This is fun. I enjoy gravity rush, but it is the same thing of like,

turn your world upside down. This is gravity. Ah, more thing of, this is gravity rush. this is exactly what I expected. As I was talking about a PSI Love UX OXO XO, so, haven't gotten to the new powers which make you lighter or make you heavier,

stuff like that, had played that at PSX. But in terms of the storyline, I think I'm in chapter two, but I was running around doing a bunch of the side quests. But it is the same thing. I'm just like, cool. I don't feel like this is a quantum leap and on that level,

then it's not scratching me, like pulling me back into it, making me want to play it over and over again. And so then got to the weekend. And like I said, neither of those games were tugging me, but I had 2064 read-only memories on my XMB or whatever you want to call it now for my live area for PS4.

I was like, oh, fuck, right. This game jumped into that and played that for all of Saturday. Halfway through the game, it's six chapters. I think I'm three chapters through, a little bit more maybe. And really dig it. Really, really dig it. I was talking to Colin about it on a PSI Love You of like, is it a visual novel? Is it an adventure or is it a point-and-click adventure game?

It's somewhere in between all of that, you know what I mean? But really interesting story so far. I think it works really well for us. because it's set in Neo San Francisco. It's, you know, 2006, we're in San Francisco. So it's,

I'm a journalist in the outer outer sunset. And I go to the Richmond and do stuff. Yeah. And there's news report. Because like, Gordo's there? No, I haven't seen it yet.

It's not like free roam. So it's not that. The developer, I believe, is he's from, or he lives in San Francisco now. So I assume it's just like us where there'd be all these references.

But references to what the 49ers and their quest for 10 and like how they're, you know, playing against the Japanese guys and how it's expanded that way. Yeah. And it is this thing of, what we always end up talking about, you know, the story at its core is, uh, you're in your apartment. And then in the middle of the night, this robot comes in, this AI that was made by

your friend that you've fallen out of contact with and someone just broke into his house and the robot ran all these things and these, you know, like this robot is the first robot that is like self-aware and is learning on its own. And this is, you know, we've hit that point. It's, you know, it's called turning like the turning test or whatever. And so it's like, okay, cool. Let's go out and figure it out what's wrong with your creator. And then it becomes like this investigative game of going. through and talking to different people and trying to figure out how to get into this area to do this thing to do that or whatever. What type of game is it like adventure game? Yeah, see that we're

back to that where like the best way I think to describe the gameplay is describe what you're looking at the entire time. And so when you're the screen, imagine it's a black screen and then like up in the the top half of the screen you have this little postage stamp that is like it's either the character that's talking to you like a close up of them or it'll be like, you know, your items, your menu, whatever you want to click through and do this. And then the other part is this long rectangle that takes up the rest of the screen on that top half of the screen. And that's showing you the scene of where you're at. So like when you're in your apartment, it's how you don't ever see yourself.

You never see your character. It's all from not even first person. You're looking at your apartment. Your bed's there. Your door's there. Your computer's there. The AI bots there talking just there. But then close up in the thing.

And then you have their, the dialogue of them pop up. It's all voiced their dialogue. So like Melissa Hutchinson is, uh, the Clem from Walking Dead. She's the robot touring and like a whole much of our other friends like Austin creeds in there and stuff up, up, up, down. Oh, cool. There text pops up below that, but you hear it, and then when it's time, you have your response to pick what you want to say.

So it is this visual novel adventure game of whatever, but it's not adventure game like walking dead is where I feel like I'm making choices that are drastically influenced the game, nor is it an adventure game where I feel like it's, you know, something Tim Schaefer would do of like, how does this water bottle turn off the light? Like, it's not that kind of thing. I haven't, there's no puzzle I've hit where it's like, there's no puzzles, I don't think. It's just an adventure that's unfolding with you in it and you're in the seat, driving, making your choices.

A walking simulator adventure game. Sure, but no walking involved. Simulator adventure game. Whatever you want to call it, the story's cool and intriguing. This is definitely a game I'm going to get back to you to beat and actually see all the way through. But what happened is Sunday I woke up and I was under the weather and I was like, I don't feel that great.

I just want to stay into the covers. As much as I like read only memories, it is a game that I feel like I'm all in. It's an experience of like I want to just give, you know, give this my attention and not get distracted. I needed something more throwaway, more disposable. And I was like, oh, you know what? I want to do? I want to play a Lego game. And I thought about Lego dimensions. And I was like, no, I'd rather earn a platinum. I'd rather get more trophies out of this. And all the dimensions packs just have bronzes. So it's like, whatever. Um, so what I remember is that I never ever back, when the PlayStation 4 came out, I never platinum Lego Marvel superheroes, the original. Now, you know,

platinum Avengers, I'm in Lego Marvel Avengers. And so I went back, grabbed that, or downloaded it again, jumped in and picked up my save. And I just beat that. And so the last couple of that's what I've been doing sitting there very very DC universe online very sky room where I'm just sitting there with podcasts on the iPad I listened to a whole bunch of always open last night Barbara yeah yeah listen to always open and just going through and just fucking picking up studs and unlocking characters and doing all that stuff and it's thrilling life Greg I know right and that's the thing right of just like I was going back and forth of like well what do I want to do and I'm like gravity rush is fun yakuza is fun I'm not right I don't feel like that right now the same thing

with like real memories right I don't feel like that much of a commitment to it. I do feel like just fucking being brain dead. We've had we put in all this work these last couple days as we always do. And you work yourself to your bone. You get home and it's like, I cook and then it's like, well, cool. I don't want to, I, well, real quick, shout out as Colin would say, Nashville this season, holy shit, are they killing it on CMT? I'll tell you what. Three episodes are out. I'm through the first two. The camera moves. Yeah. You can tell they got new showrunners in there. They're doing different things with the cameras, the storylines. The songs, of course, off the chart, amazing. But I watch that while I eat and then it's like, oh, I want to play something.

I want to do something. And it's like, all right, fine. I don't feel like, yeah, I'll get in there and I'll make some more progress on this Lego dimension games. Chip away at that. And then today, of course, they put up this video about DC Universe Online that they now are doing it for their sixth anniversary that you can jump in and similar to how Destiny and like it would let you jump to whatever level or 25 whenever it was so you could play that content. They're now doing a thing where you can get in there and get your combat rating immediately up to 100. And I have no idea what I left my combat rating at when I was playing as Taylor Swift, but I don't think I was at 100 yet. So I'm going to jump in there tonight and fuck around with that.

Okay. What have you been playing, Carl? Just more Tomb Raider. I'm almost to the end, I think. The game won't end. But I'm also playing it very meticulously, but it just refuses to end. Shantay, half genie Hero. I played extensively on Vita.

I'm almost done with it. I actually had to, so I played it, you know, it was wildcard weekend in the NFL last weekend. So Vita is obviously a nice companion to that, especially considering all four games were fucking atrocious Final Fantasy 6 shout out in the background. But to me, this was the game I needed at the time. And for people that don't know, it's a way forward game, way forward. Obviously very established at this point, old school studio,

Yacht Club, which did Shubble Night spun off from them. You guys might know them. But they've done a bunch of games, a bunch of old school games. And Shanta actually has pretty deep heritage in Game Boy handheld or Nintendo handhelds. And so I played it. It's kind of a pseudo-metroidsvania. It's basically like, what's a good example? It's kind of like Mega Man X, actually,

where you go to a stage. There's things you can't access in that stage, yet you leave the stage, you go to the next stage or do something else, and you go back to the stage later and get it. So it's not like an open world like Symphony of the Night. It's a scattered world. But really, really good.

I said on PS I love you, and I must say, again, as a Miaculpa that I said it's a 2.5D game, which aesthetically to me is not very pleasing, usually. and in the very brief time I had played it before I had spoken about it a a couple episodes of PSI Love You ago I said that you know I didn't really like it And I think I was in terms of its aesthetic and I was completely wrong about that Especially with the the characters like Shantay herself was an amazing character

But all of the ancillary characters the beautiful animations in the game The gameplay is not very difficult it reminds me a shovel night in that regard where my one complaint about Shovel night was that you know when Yacht Club put that game out was Just wasn't hard enough and I feel that way with way forward and shantay I think they could have made the game way harder So is Chanty comparably hard to? Yeah, I would say so. And that, like, you almost never. I mean, at least for me, I'm never, you know, I don't really die.

I think Chonte's easier than Chauvelin. So I wish I could have used a little bit more of a challenge. There are other modes that you get, you unlock and I assume that that will be something that comes to fruition. So I'm almost at the very end of the game. And in fact, they really wanted to jump into it on Monday. And, you know, at night, I was there. And I'm like, I only have an hour or so of the game left. If that, I'm collecting everything as well, all the items.

So I'm almost, I have, I have like, I don't know, like 95 or something. of the items and there's only one stage left. And then I'm like, you know what, I'm going to save this for this weekend when I become one with the living room and one with the couch for divisional playoff games in the NFL. And having the Vita as a companion will be very good. And so I'm going to save it for that. And then there's a couple of speed running options that I'd like to investigate in the game this weekend.

Maybe one of them, you have to beat the game in about four hours with everything and you have to beat the game in two hours with nothing to get the last trophies. And otherwise, I think, you know, so it's a possible platinum. But we'll see how that all works out. And then I got tails of, oh, where you know? I want to real quick to just jump in to give a shout out to read-only memories. Remote play works really well with it since there's no, it's not like, there's no timing bar like a walking dead thing.

So that's what I was doing when I was watching football with you on Saturday. Tales of Brazzaria I got. It's the new tales game. Obviously, we get a tales game every 12 to 18 months in the United States and have for some time. I'm a huge tails fan for people that don't know. And I was surprised when I tweeted out that I got it. I was excited.

People were like, I'm surprised that you're a tails fan. I've been a tails fan for a very, very long time. I'm a very vocal tales fan. So I'm surprised some people don't know that. But you're a bro shooter fan. There's usually not much cross ever. You know, I was thinking, you know, it was October, 1998 when I got, it was my 14th birthday,

when I got Tales of Destiny for my birthday, October 14th, 1998, and fell in love with the franchise. And it's been almost 20 years that I've been playing Tales games. And I'm surprised by that. Destiny is still my favorite. I'm very partial to others like Legendia. Obviously, everyone loves Siphania. I thought Exilia and Xilia.

who were excellent. Zisteria, which was the one that came out last, was the one that really threw me and a lot of Tales fans off because it just didn't feel right. And it was the only Tales game that I played for a very brief time. I was like, this isn't right to me.

There's something off about it. I played it for a few hours, and I'm like, I just, there's, this isn't, this doesn't feel like a tales game. And that's strange because when I was in Japan playing it before it came out, I was excited about it because I was like it's more open.

But what we found with Zisteria was that it's just empty. It's just, they use the same design philosophy, the same timeline in which to build one of these games. They build these games very quickly. and so it felt very empty and very heartless and very soulless. I also thought the combat system was kind of bad. So getting into Bersaria was a little bit of a trepidious kind of thing for me,

but I immediately, after only playing the game for about 90 minutes or so this week, because I've been editing, Colin was right at night, that it feels like better. It looks like a Tales game. The story is obviously very quirky and strange in Japanese, but interesting, and it's like comfort food for me. I really do feel like Tales and Dragon Quest are the only true triple A or a role-playing series that really stay true to themselves pretty consistently,

and so I want to support that as well. And I'll be able to talk about more of that. PSI Love You in Gamescast next week when I have a little bit more experience in it. That game comes out, I think, late January for everyone else. So those are the three games I'm playing, and tonight I'm really looking forward to sit up until 5 a.m. last night, editing column was right. And I'm excited to have tonight open to be able to jump back into Brasaria because I really feel like, you know, Final Fantasy 15 didn't really speak to me at all, but it gave me

this hankering similar to I am Setsuna where I'm like, I want to play a big role playing game and spend 40 or 50 hours with it because it just feels like the thing I want to do. And I'd also like to get it out of the way because we're going to get Resident Evil 7 soon. So that's what I've been playing. And so shout out to Tomb Raider, still great game. Rides of the Tomb Raider really, really fantastic. Shout out to Shantae, half genie hero,

which is available on a bunch of platforms. I'm playing it on VD you guys should check that out and support way forward. And then a preliminary shout out to the Tails team and to Namco Bandai for Tales Arbor's area. Tim. Speaking of Resident Evil. For the first time since E3,

I got to do the, I played the new Resident Evil 7 demo. Oh. And, uh, because I'm not, wow, since E3, okay.

Well, so I got E3. They announced it. And then I played it there with VR or whatever. And then since then, I'm a little confused at how they released the demos. Because it sounds like it's the same demo. They just keep updating it.

Yeah. Um, so I'm not, I think when they update it though, they unlock new paths or at endings or whatever. I played, I only played it at PSX. And I remember them being like, well, you can go home and play it.

There's different ways and different things. Yeah, eventually. So beginning hour is the one I played now. And originally back in the day, we played the kitchen demo. And the kitchen, there's like, it's a cutscene now in beginning hour in the demo. Anyway, it's old news. But I played through this for the first time at home, not PlayStation VR, just using the PS4. And God damn, that game is so scary.

I was playing it before Gia got home. So it was just me alone. I'm like, why am I doing this? And I turned the lights off. I was like, I'm going to do this, right? Hell yeah. And it was horrifying. But like I cannot wait for this game to get here for us because it it seems like the type of game that I want Resident Evil to be.

I know a lot of people are upset that this doesn't seem like the pure experience that they expect. And I know a lot of other people are burned about it being too actiony. But I think that like there is a middle ground of what the OG Resident Evil fans want. But for me, I don't even think that we need more of that, especially getting the remake constantly, you know, remastered, re-upgraded, whatever, re-everything. I think that we will always have those games. So I like that this is trying something different. And especially now that PT is no longer a thing,

I thought PT was very special. And already playing this demo, it lacked, I think, some of the polish that PT had, but I think it makes up for it in there's more game there. Sure. And because especially, and there's also more just variety of environment. because in PT you're literally just going around the hallway over and over and over with this just even having stairs and like having that like going up and down the stairs is like super

Liberating and it allows for a lot of fear because it's always going into the doorway and like seeing what's on your left or right. This is the scariest part But being upstairs and looking down seeing a stairwell and knowing that there could be something from that door that door or from just down the hall It's like a whole other level to it that I'm like, man, this is super scary. Can't wait to keep playing it. I'm going to force you to sit next to me as I play because I'm a baby and I cannot play that game fully. But I do enjoy the game's use of the first person perspective to kind of create the scare moments because they know what you're looking at all times. So when you're going down a ladder, they know that if they put something behind you, it's going to be scary. Sure.

But they also, like a horror movie, like any good horror movie would, they play with those expectations. So it's not always something there. And it's, I thought at least in the demo, it did a really good job of having me not know when the scares were going to be there. And when they were, it was really damn scary. I don't really like the Pt-esque. You have to do all this really weird obscure shit to get the good ending and progress the right way. I got the bad ending and then went on YouTube to the rest of the endings. And I'm like, man, you had to do a lot of complicated shit to get this done.

It's kind of adventure-gaboard at the time of the water bottle and the light. And that's the thing is like when I got the bad any of my initial play through, but when I finished up, you know, PR representative was talking to me. And it's like, well, you know, when you replay it, I forget, I'm rusty now, but it's what you don't need to watch the tape to do that. You just know to go to that area and open that door then. And so like if you do that, you're cutting it out, which then tells the game that you've played before, which does this.

And yeah. And I'm interested to see how the game differs from the demo. I know a lot of press got to do the first four to five hours of it a couple weeks ago. We were invited by the way. We ended up not wanting to go because I wanted to experience the game. I'm interested because Capcom saying that this game is going to be a 14 to 16 hour experience. I'm like, I don't know that I need that much of that. So I'm interested because I can't imagine them doing that with this game being that for that long.

I imagine it being a bit more linear over that time, which I'm actually okay with. I just don't think that I need all this super obscure shit for 16 hours. Sure, sure. But very excited for it. The demo was super scary. And it's a beautiful game minus the characters. Oh, yeah, yeah. In the demo, you see very few people, but like, man, they're ugly as hell.

It totally doesn't fit. It takes you out of it. Maybe those people are as ugly in that universe. No, but like they're real, they're real ugly and shiny. And like, I don't think they look, no, no, it's all bad. But the most important game I played was. is the Near Automata demo that's available now on PlayStation 4. If you haven't played it, get that shit right now.

It's only 30 minutes maybe now. I lost Dragon Time. I don't know, but it wasn't too long. But I've been really excited about that game for a long time. A lot of people have been asking if I played the old ones. Absolutely not. They didn't look interesting to me. They always confused me.

I remember reading about them and it's like, correct me if I'm wrong, if you know anything. But near was two different games on Xbox 360 and PS3. Like, same name. totally different games, totally different characters. Something like that. There's some weird thing that I remember being like, what the fuck? And I also just didn't sound interested in me.

This sounds a lot more easy to wrap my head around. Platinum, it sounds like the good platinum is working on it. And I like the character designs. It reminds me a lot of PS2 era, Onimusha, Devil May Cry type games. And it has the fluidity of a bayonetta, but without the, at least for me, the added complexities and stuff.

Or at least you don't need to go that deep with it. So I'm super enjoying it. The super over the top boss fights like God of War-esque, but just with a different aesthetic. So I'm super into that. I love the mobility of the game. And the fact that every like five minutes, the perspective shifts and they spent a lot of time with the camera to make sure that you were playing the game and guided in a way that

is the most fun at any given moment. So the character to be has a bunch of. And it's kind of like Final Fantasy 15 where the swords are like flying around her and she doesn't need to actually hold them. And then there's just like little sentry robot thing that flies around her and shoots. So it's kind of like Devil May Cry in the sense that at any point you can slice with your sword or shoot with the guns. And if you hold the R1, it's just shooting. It kind of becomes a dual stick shooter. So you can control where the the guns are shooting while slicing people up. So there one second it feels like devil may cry. One minute feels like a bullet. bullet hell top down shooter and the camera adjusts accordingly so there'll be enemies all around and they're all robots so they just like keep responding like contextually makes sense and they'll still they shoot you with all these like orbs and stuff and it really becomes a it feels like uh... uh... reso gun in that type of game where it's like this is fucking awesome and then there's the

the added layer of but it's an action game and you're running around and doing something because the mobility feels so good and the controls feel so tight it it's really satisfying to play through. And as you're going through, then the camera will shift from the top down view over and all of a sudden becomes like a side scrolling platformer. And it never feels wrong. Like their controls keep feeling like they're because the controls are the same. It's just the camera. But the camera never gets in the way.

And it kind of reminds me of, um, Super Mario Galaxy two, the levels where they were the two D versions of it, you know, where you're going left to right. And there was a little bit of the, the, the, the, the depth to it. But at the end of the day, you're just going up and down or whatever. And then the demo ends with this boss fight that is one of the most fun boss fights I've played in years. And it reminds me of the old school PS2 era titles. Action games. I'm saying I'm comparing it to a lot of games, but everything I'm mentioning is awesome things. So I think that this really is a little bit of this, a little bit of that type of game.

But all those things are why I like playing video games. Sounds awesome. Super stoked about it. It comes out on March 7th. So hopefully. Hopefully, Resident Evil, Horizon. And then that are going to be my trajectory for games. To lead you into the Switch.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Are you going to touch a M-A-Fect or no? No, no, no. I don't really care about Mass-Fect. Never have. Crazy. Will.

Yeah. What's that, much running first? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's the thing. The most important game I want to tell you guys about that I played is actually an arcade game. Yeah.

What? What? What? What? Dumpeter was this in? I played this during the break. And I forgot to tell you guys. about it when I got back, but it is, it's called Killer Queen.

Now, it's a really random obscure game. It's one of, it's a hipster thing where it's just like, you hear about it and it's like word of mouth and it just kind of spreads. Okay. This is an old game. Came out in 2013 and Kotaku's covered a long time ago, by no means am I breaking news of this thing. But this shit's fun as hell and we need to play it.

Okay. So Killer Queen is a real time strategy platform video game developed by Josh Debonis and and Nikita McCros. The world's only 10-player arcade strategy game, two teams each led by a powerful queen, face off to be the first to bring the giant snail god home, fill their hive with nectar, or execute a triple assassination on the enemy queen.

So here's the thing. In 2013, first started it in NYU. These guys made this game. And people started like falling in love with it, just locally people there. And they're like, all right, let's get this into a couple more places. And now it's in 20,

23 different locations in America. And it's kind of a word of mouth thing where it's just like people are traveling to go play this game. Sure. Luckily, one of the locations is in San Francisco at this place called Bruchade. Yeah, I was going to say, I played this.

Oh, did you? Yeah, I played at a risk tournament at that bar and then went and we played that game, whatever. So I remember, but I remember really not understanding it. So that's the beauty of it. So this game is so unique

and the experience I had playing it was so unique in that it is such a, community driven title where I was out with my friends and we're just drinking and shit. Did you just run into this game or did you go looking for us? I was out. We had dinner. We were drinking. And then it was like, oh, what you guys wanted to do next? And my friend's like, oh, there's this like bar arcade. We should go check it out. And he's like, actually, they have this game that I keep hearing about CoKiller Queen. It's one of the only locations in America. And I was like, I've never even heard about this. And some guy telling me about a video game.

I was like, this is fucking really weird. Shut up, Colonel. Yeah. And so it was me, Danny Vincent and Curran. And we're just like, I mean, like, let's go, let's go check it out and see what's up. And he was talking about it. He's like, yeah, it's like this multiplayer game. We have teams and people get super serious about it. And I was like, we're going to go fuck these motherfuckers up, right? So we're feeling real confident.

We go down there and we start playing. And we're just like, we're about to wreck shopping these dudes. We saw a group of people playing on the other machine. We're like, oh, fuck these guys. Yeah. We got our asses kicked. Sure. So badly.

So here's what the game is. It's two arcade machines, right? Uh-huh. And five players each. So it's five on five. And the idea is it's a dollar for all 10 players to play. So that's the best part about it. It's just like it's super cheap to get in.

And you really do need five players in each team or else it's like super unbalanced and not not fun at all. But where that adds the fun is that you just start grabbing random motherfuckers around you like, yo, play with us. Right? Because you just need to play. one round you get super into this thing. Losers have to pay for the next round.

So winners stay on the, the console all night, right? Sure. So we put down a dollar, got our asses kicked. We play another dollar, get our asses kicked. Another dollar,

$20 later, we're still getting our asses kicked. And this other team has only paid $2 because we only won once and they played the first time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was just like, addicting is all fuck, right? We had no idea what we were doing.

By the time we were $20 in, we kind of had an idea of what we were doing. And that is the beauty of this game. Doesn't really explain the rules too well. But as you start playing it more and more, you're like, oh, I get the strategy here. I understand how this all works. There's it. You can see it down here.

Are you playing it, Kev? It's kind of like. Yeah, this is the one I play this. Yeah. It's kind of like a Super Smash Bros. esque map played like towerful would be played. Right? But strategy.

So the strategy comes in is there's three different ways to win at any given moment. Okay. So at the bottom, there's a giant snail. All right? And it moves really slowly across the bottom of the screen. If you get on the snail, you ride it. And if you get it across your goal, you automatically win. That's one way.

But that snail is slow as fuck. And if people come down and kill you, they can get on it and start riding it the other way. So it's classic tug of war. The other way, each team has one queen. You're flying around as a queen. The queen has the ability, she has a sword that can. kill and she can strike down kind of like links down a in smash throws you just go straight out right so death from above if you kill the queen three times you

went okay so the queen's kind of like it's a protect the queen type thing then the other way if you can go back to the game at the top of the level the the two the honeycomb looking things you see the red and the blue there's 12 little holes that you can go down and get these little purple berries If you get 12 berries to the top, you win. But then there's those, there's these like in the kind of middle. There's like there's doors, right? There's like a triangle of doors.

Yeah. If you get a berry and bring it into the door, you upgrade to a warrior. So there's three classes. Dron, warrior, queen. The drone can pick up berries and ride the snail. The warrior can kill people. And then the queen is, there's only one queen, right? Gotcha.

So there's the strategy there of if you're a warrior You can't pick up the berries and you can't ride the snail So the only way you can win is attack the queen But if you're a drone, you can't attack But you can only bring the berries up or ride the snail When there's only five players on each team And everyone's trying to do a different goal It gets fucking intense

And it gets super crazy Because people will start camping up at the honeycomb area So these drones coming up And there's just a warrior up there fucking massaccurring these motherfuckers You have unlimited lives, except for the queen. And it was the most fun I've had with a video game in so long. Wow. Where we played forever.

We were also drunk. And that's the beauty of this. You're just drunk at a bar, a bunch of people having fun. So pulling random people on and just be like, yo, play with us. We need a fifth. We need a fifth. It's just the most fun part. For me, how big is the machine?

Is it like X-Men Arcade or I'm all shoved in? Or is it like we're spread out and like? It's a bigger. X-Men Arcade is the like four by three. version. This is a 16 by 9. So we get in a bit more space. But not too much. You are still right up on everyone's shit. But you're right next to the other team. So there's a lot of shit talking going on, which is like even more fun. Sure. What's cool is as we were playing, because we only had four guys. So we continuously had to grab out this table next door. So we kept

grabbing people. And when we walked away from the system, the whole table just got up and started playing. So it really is kind of one of those things where you learn from the people around you and the team next to us that was destroying us started giving us like hints and tips on how to get better at it. And it was awesome. This is everything with like there I was looking into afterwards. There's a whole bunch of Facebook communities and there's tournaments and stuff where people set create teams and travel and do it kind of like. Nice. Adult kickball and dodgeball teams.

But this one, you know, it's not like, not lame as fuck. Yeah, you don't have to, you know, I'm absolutely in love with it. I think we need to go down to this place, do a let's play. It was thrilling. It was absolutely cool.

And whenever someone wins from the snail, it's like the most satisfying thing ever. Okay. Because it's just like, that's so insulting because that thing's so slow. But I love the, how the game kind of shifts because everyone's just trying to kill the queen.

There's always some sneaky bastard trying to get all the honeycomb things. the snail is just like the thing no one worries about until it gets about two thirds across the screen. Then it's like everyone stop what the fuck you're doing and get that goddamn snail. We got to kill the snail situation. So anyways,

Killer Queen. Check out Killer Queen game on Twitter. You can find out where you can locate an arcade near you that has one. Surprisingly well varied across America. It's like not too many in California, not too many in New York. And then each state kind of. has one.

So it's interesting. Pretty nice. Pretty nice. You should definitely check that shit out. Next topic. The future of Xbox. This comes hot off the trail of scale bound being canceled. Microsoft came out with a statement.

After careful deliberation, Microsoft Studios has come to the decision to end production for scale bound. We're working hard to deliver an amazing lineup of games to our fans this year, including Halo Wars 2, Crackdown 3, stated a K2. Sea of Thieves and other great experiences. What are your thoughts? Surprising. You know, I don't know.

It's one of those, this is what we're talking about earlier with Platinum, right? And the fact that Platinum, I remember when they were just the darlings, they could do no wrong. These are the people who gave you vanquish. Everything they're going to do is going to be fucking awesome. And then there started being the problems

and the risky flight pattern. And then it was the license games. It was Corey. It was Teenage Mutinyatier Tirtles. As you point out, Transformers was fun. But there were all. of a sudden like, whoa, and there was also that thing, I think Colin, you know, brought it up and everybody brought it up. It was just like, well, how many games are these people working on?

There's a small studio and they're working on how many games they're doing so much thing. Like, even near, they're, you know, working with this in collaboration with, but. Square annex, yeah, yeah, exactly. There's so many different things going on that I, I would, obviously seeing when they debuted scale, and I was like, that doesn't look like a game for me. And then when they showed gameplay of scale bound and we were all like, this isn't running that well. Why is it running like this and doesn't look that fun. It was never a game I was hanging my hat on or waiting for with bated breath or really thinking about all that much. But I understand when we, you know, it's the other side of the aisle, right? Whereas Colin and I know so much about the PlayStation

exclusives. I know there's, you know, your McCaffrey's and everybody else that Xbox fans, you know so much about it. It was one I wasn't thinking about. And if you were to come to me, be like, hey, this game's in a lot of trouble and they've delayed it. And I'm, you know, that makes sense. Yeah. But to have them come out and be like, we're canceling this game. Like, we don't know, it's not even worth anybody's time. It's like, whoa, that's not fucking. That's somewhat unusual. We don't see that often. Not only unusual. I feel like this is unheard of. Like, can you think of any example, calling of a game that... This is a third Xbox One exclusive that's been canceled this generation.

But, I mean, in terms of a game that's been shown at multiple E3 conferences and multiple, not just E3, like, there was the demo at Paris Games Week, right? Yeah. Last year. Like, I think this is the most we've seen of a game from... You're talking about a big, a big AAA game from a presentation standpoint of you get the demos during the E3 conference and then you get an actual gameplay demonstration of it at some other point. Yeah, I mean, it is unusual.

I mean, the big takeaway to me, for me is, this seems to be, this is a two-fold problem. It's not unusual. You know, we talked about exclusives every once in a while getting their plugs pulled and sometimes surviving to see another day

in another way. And we talked about with PlayStation specifically with Remember Me, which people might remember the don't-nod game, the French studio that made Life is Strange later on. They made this game called Remember Me.

It was supposed to be a PlayStation 3 exclusive. Sony pulled the plug on and Capcom ended up picking it up, finishing it, it out. And we're glad that happened, even though it was very mediocre game. I got the Platinum Trophy in it. But even though a very mediocre game, some interesting ideas there. And then we got Life is Strange, which is a bonafide hit and we'll get a second season of that, I'm sure. Now, is that a platinum you're proud of or is that just one year? No, I'm proud of that. I mean, it was, I enjoyed it.

It was just one play there. I wanted to play the game anyway. And then the second example more recently is Rime, which was a Tequila Works games, a Spanish studio, Sony, invested a lot of money in, showed it at gamescom, promoted it in many sizzle reels and it shows and then pulled the plug on that, and we found out, and recently that it's going to come to Switch and Xbox 1 and PS4 this year, apparently. The thing that, the true-pronged issue with this particular cancellation is that Microsoft is clearly asleep at the wheel with their exclusives. This is the third one now that's been canceled on Xbox 1.

What was the other one? The Dusts and Fable. You know, like they were both just, you know, the plugs are pulled on both of them. And this is also clearly a problem, and I was sounding the claxon for this very very, very early and very often with platinum. That clearly something was going on with the studio. And we can focus on both of those things. Microsoft's, for people that don't understand the way it works, when an external studio,

and note that all the cancellations comes from outside of Microsoft Studios, they're all second party relationships that they have, a studio is given the opportunity or the, or the task of, you know, making a game. So in this example, in this example, Platinum games and Microsoft get together, and Microsoft's like, we're going to give you X amount of tens and tens of millions of dollars, and you're going to make this game for us. It's going to be proprietary to us. We will own the IP.

We will own the game itself. And you will make it and you will reach these milestones and these deliverables over the years. And in return, the studio makes that game for the publisher. And I've seen that relationship, as Greg has worked out many times, many different people. I'm very close with Insomniac. That was their entire relationship with Sony.

And later on with Microsoft with Sunset Overdrive. Because this is the third game that's had its plug-pulled, and what seems like a year and a half, maybe, with Fable Legends and with Phantom Dust being the other two, someone's asleep at the Switch at Microsoft. Like that, that can't be,

that can't be stressed enough that they're spending considerable amounts of money on these games. Now you can, you can say like they didn't spend too much on Phantom Dust, which was made by a somewhat obscure Florida-based studio,

and you can say that they pulled Lionhead and shut them down. And I guess actually that's not true. I want to back up, Lionhead was a first-party studio. So this fable was their first-party game. So I correct myself there. They pulled the plug on,

these well into development. Scalebound has been in development for three and a half or four years. So they spent, it's not inconceivable to assume that they spent $50 million more than that on the game, probably, including exhibiting it,

bringing people to these shows, showing it off. I mean, there's a lot of sunken costs when you make a game like this. That game was so fucked that far into development, four years into development that they were like, we can't make this game what it's supposed to be, which is a catastrophic problem

for Microsoft's ability to be able to govern what's going on with these games. Similar to what I think Sony's kind of lack of ability to govern with rhyme and what tequila works. But the real canary in the coal mines what's going on with Platinum Games, and we've known this for a long time. Platinum games have spread way too thin.

They are mercenaries, and they've turned themselves into this guns-for-hire situation where they just seem to be taking work from anyone. Meanwhile, the studio isn't that big at all. and more than half of them, apparently, according to what I was reading, were working on scale bound. It's a major problem when they got all their funding pulled

and now you're going to have a situation where they need to get worker. They're going to have layoffs there, which is pretty uncommon for Japanese companies in a society that's honor bound in which they have things like window, what they call window facing jobs, which is when they don't want to get rid of an old person

or a person that's not really doing their work. They just shove them away until they retire. This is an interesting conundrum that they find themselves in. But the trajectory of them from their work on Wii and then, you know, kind of moving over to even Anarchy Reigns and all these games that people were like, well, these are interesting

kind of, or Max Anarchy was called here. The kind of interesting games vanquish, obviously, and then into kind of the weird Nintendo relationship they had where they made like the wonderful 101, but no one played it and then they... But see, that's the problem, though, is that even then there's not any consistency. And I feel like with such a small team,

it doesn't make any logical sense from an outsider's point of view of why certain games are good and why some were bad when it was the same directors and top level teams working on them. Like, Wonderful 101, despite people not playing because it was so close to a launch game for Wii U, which we understand that story.

Great game. Bayoneta 2, great game. Star Fox Zero, fucking horrible game. So I'm like, what's going on there? And then with the license stuff, Cora, garbage. Transformers devastation, awesome. Netta turtles, fucking garbage. Yeah, and pulled recently from the store.

It's already gone. Like, that's the, that's the craziest thing. I'm sure there's licensing issues there as well. This is what happens when you, you know, in my mind, you talk about a studio like Insomniac, which has always been independent, but had cultivated this relationship with one publisher in order to make a series of games, whether it's resistance, whether it's ratchet, spiral back in the day. And they cultivate this thing, and they have some sort of manageable goal and manageable

size and manageable kind of expectations, and then they kind of start getting in the bed with other people, like they're in bed with Oculus a little bit. They were in bed with Microsoft, although that didn't seem to work out too well, with Sunset Overdrive from a commercial standpoint. These guys are in bed with everyone. And you have to remember that this takes internal kind of management skill to do something like this. So when you're a studio of like a couple hundred people and you like have a relationship with, I mean, this is literally the list, the gamut of what the studio has published in the last five years.

You have a publishing relationship with Nintendo. You have a publishing relationship with Sega. You have a publishing relationship with Activision. You have a publishing relationship with Microsoft. You have a publishing relationship with Square Enix. All of them. At the same time, it's just not manageable. Like, you can't keep making these games.

And that's why, like, you see these two games kind of coming to fruition at the same time internally in Square. And Square Enix is kind of cultivated near Automata and Microsoft's cultivated scale-bound. And they're two totally different experiences. And Microsoft's probably looking at Square and their relationship with them and near them and be like, what the fuck? You know, like, why is this game looks like it's going to be an 8 plus on Metacritic and is going to be a darling, and it's a PS4 exclusive.

You guys worked on this game for four years and fucked us. And it was a flagship title, too. I think that's the big difference. There's, this is, this is, uh, people really are, I think are not sweeping this under the rug, but not, you can't overplay, like, how big of a deal this is and how platinum is really taking a hit. Also, Camia himself was working on Scale, that was his baby. I mean, if you read about Scalebound, this was a game that they had embryonically before they

even went and released what Mad World and all, like, whatever the fuck early games they were releasing. This was an idea they had a long time ago that they like spilt blood, sweat, and tears into and couldn't make it work. And the interesting thing from the Microsoft's perspective to me is they're again trying to have relationships with Japanese developers and publishers,

and I respect that, but it's not working. It didn't work in the Xbox 360 era, even though they got some good games out of it. I know people like Blue Dragon, et cetera, and so on. But at the same time, like there's all these failures, like these abject, just ridiculous, like infinite undiscovery and all these games, they're just like, why are you doing this?

And they're doing it again with scalebound, and they just got fucked again. You know? And the crazy thing is that there's no endemic Japanese audience for Xbox One. So there's not going to be any clamoring in their home country for them to recover this game or whatever. The only interesting thing that can come out of this is some sort of post-mortem. We don't which we understand how both sides just objectively failed at the mission and how Microsoft let this go on for so long. Because, you know, when you sign a contract with a developer with a publisher and you're a developer, there's money given based on you reaching certain goals.

And they'll be like, we'll give you $20 million or $10 million. when you give us the alpha build, and when you do this, this and this, and how long did this relationship go on because the game was so important and platinum is so big, and Microsoft has so much money to sink. You have to wonder how long this game

just wasn't working before they were like, finally, we can't do this anymore because Phantom Dust, for instance, was a different situation. They invested very little money in that game and pull the plug after a little while. You have to assume this was going on and on and on and on before finally they rectified the situation,

at least from their perspective. And to Greg's point, the game, there's two things about, scale bound that I think are interesting and confusing at the same time. Scalebound never looked good to me and I was always confused why people were excited about it. The game didn't run well it looked super vanilla and I think

people were, it reminded me of the Order 1886 with PlayStation fans where I'm like, why is anyone excited about this? Because we got one cool little trailer with them hopping out of a fucking carriage and now everyone's excited about the order 1886 but look at what they're showing you. And then and based it on that and there was the same kind of thing with scale bound. The game was running terribly. I didn't hear that

much good buzz about it except for the fact that it was an exclusive. If some random ass publisher was publishing scale-bound across all platforms, no one would have cared about it. Exactly, and that's something that I even now I'm seeing. I don't think that there's anybody that was looking at the gameplay of it and being like, this looks great. I think a lot of people are saying that on the internet. Yeah, they're goofball.

Back then? Yeah, when they watched the E3 demo, yeah, totally. That was the thing when we're like, this game doesn't look good. And people like, why are you talking about? You're crazy. I don't know. I guess in my circles, it looked like people were super down on it, except for the fact that they're excited and they're hopeful that these things will change in blaming the internet stream. My

question you calling this, partly a counterpoint. Do you think, you keep saying that somebody at Microsoft's asleep at the wheel. My question is, is this proof of them

being awake at the wheel, that them waking up to what's happening? I feel like scale bound is a seed that was planted before Phil Harrison took over in 2014, right? I feel like this would be, this has been in development

for a while, this has been a relationship. I would think that the balls to come out and be like, all right, that game isn't developing, this game sucks, we're just going to cut them. I feel like it would be that the new blood comes in and takes over.

We're Xbox. We're going to make it about gamers. We know some people are excited about Scalebound. Let's see Scalebound. All right. This doesn't seem to be on target. Can you hit this, that, and the other? They hit maybe that milestone.

They missed that milestone. Okay, cool. It's fucked up, though. You got to get it in shape. They give to that point. All right, well, that's two strikes, three strikes, whatever the fuck it was. It's over.

We're not going to sit here. We're not going to put out a mediocre Xbox game. We are going to sit here and we want our exclusive catalog to sing. and to be awesome. And so Phantom dust, this fable, it's the same thing of like, all right, cool, we're taking over and this is the new vision and this is who we are. Let's see what you got. Okay, no, this isn't matching our vision. We got to fucking dump you.

Sorry. Yeah, it could be. I mean, maybe it was that someone is awake like you're saying and someone was asleep at the switch. But I just don't look at three invested, publicly revealed, celebrated games just being canceled and stricken from the first party catalog or really a second party. exclusive catalog. It's not a good sign. And especially because their output is just way lower. They own way fewer studios.

Their second party relationships are way less mature and way fewer in number as well. And so I don't worry too much when Sony, you know, when Sony goes and cancels rhyme or removes rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, still coming out. But we don't want it anymore. They don't really need it. They're winning. The thing is that Microsoft's is losing. They're losing badly.

You know, and the console is still selling a. appreciably, but it's just getting just squashed by the competition. And you need games. You need something to put on your console. And they have games that are coming up that I think are going to be bigger than people think. I think that Hale Wars 2, for instance, is going to be way bigger than people think it's going to be. And especially... State of the K's bigger

than we all think. Especially because creative assembly is so fucking good. And, you know, the relationship with Sega and kind of the unique things that Phil and the team over there are kind of pulling with the, like, the relationships kind of the triangular kind of relationship that we're building. I always thought it was very strange, and I think it's very strange still. That's one of Sega's

is making a Microsoft exclusive. It's just you don't see that very often. It's weird. So they are making and they are cultivating this very new and very unique way of looking at things or at least providing something for content for their PC gamers as well as our Xbox One gamers. But there is a failure at some level on Microsoft's part. I just wonder if it's the failures in the past. The failures we've seen before.

The reason Xbox fucking hard right and was like, all right, cool. This isn't working. We need to correct. I think the same thing with Fable, where it's like Fable, every time we saw that, or saw that game or saw a trailer, heard something we talk about.

I'm like, who that game doesn't sound good at all. That sounds like a decision you made when, oh man, multiplayer things are doing real well. We should do more of that. And then everybody, university was like,

that doesn't look like a game for me. And they're like, well, fuck, nobody wants this. Why even bother putting it out? My big takeaway now, and from the statement you read, I think the most important thing

that was said in there, apart from the PR speak that is just nonsense and useless is the mention of crackdown. Because what I immediately thought of when this happened, I was like, where's crackdown? Yeah, we haven't heard.

You know, like a crackdown, where the fuck is crackdown? Now, they reiterated it, and I believe it's going to come out. They used it as a power of the cloud and all this bullshit when Xbox One was newer. But they need more than what's coming out of 343. They need more than what's coming out of turn 10. They need more than what's coming out of the coalition. Undead Labs. They need, yeah, more than coming out of Undead Labs.

State of Decay and State of Decay 2 is probably going to be cool. Just like, say it's not enough. You know, when you have, when you have, you know, I'm very openly and very readily criticized Sony for their lack of output. But in terms of first party exclusives, and one of the pilots of Colin was right was about this, about how when you really think about everything they've released from their first parties and they're intimately held AAA second party relationships,

they've really not released almost anything. I mean, you have of any consequence. Killzone, Ratchet, uncharted, blood-borne. I mean, I mean, like that's, and then the consoles over three years old. The bad news for Microsoft is now everything's ramping up. Now, because now we look at the schedules we did on PS, I Love You,

grand trismone horizon are coming out. this year. I bet you get something like Gay's Gone or Detroit end of the year, early next year, and you can go listen to PSI love you. At the end of the next three years, Sony's going to have 10 pretty big marquee games from God of War to Days Gone to Horizon to eventually Death Stranding

and the Last Vos 2, which I think are both going to be, well, I think Las Vos 2 is going to be a very late PS4 game. I think that Stranings will be a PS5 game, but it's a bad time for them to not have their ducks in a row. And that was the disappointing thing when I saw this was like, I kind of thought you guys were smarter than this.

And to Greg's point, maybe they are really smart by doing this and making the play as opposed to releasing scale bound at some point. They sunk a bunch of money to do it.

It's a fucking five and it ruins their reputation and it ruins their relationship with platinum, which I'm sure is already fucked. But at the same time, how much longer is platinum going to be around?

Well, I don't know because that's the other thing that really asked. Their shit with Activision's got to be done. Activision seems to be so hit or miss and they're kind of very, Activision's very money driven, which any publisher is,

but they're very openly and overt about that, which is their relationship with platinum. Nintendo's relationship with platinum bore no fruit in terms of finances that sold no units. It doesn't matter if the games were good. It didn't matter because... We'll get more. Maybe. I mean, Star Fox was a critical commercial failure.

Bayonetta, too, and the wonderful 101 people liked those games. They didn't sell very well. Their relationship with Sega with something like Max Anarchy and stuff like that seemed to be a very envinquished. It's a very short-lived kind of thing. That's gone. They've never really had a first-party relationship with Sony, which is the only one they go. Square Enix seems like...

So I don't know what's going to end up happening with. them, but this is a very interesting, this is one of the more interesting stories that happened in a long time. And when Jason Schreier broke this story, and again, I'm going to reiterate, you guys, or not you guys, but a lot of people out there keep talking about how Kataku doesn't do real news on our real website. Once again, broke a new story through Jason. This time he canceled scale bound, which I like Patrick's, I think, because he also delayed no man's sky back in the day. These are interesting times. And Microsoft has a lot to worry about. And that's why I think that my theory about scale bound too is that maybe it was just canceled or canned because not only wasn't it shaping up or whatever, but I really do think that. And I really do believe in my heart of hearts that the Scorpio is the next Xbox. I still believe that. I still believe that they also agree with you. I think that has to be what it is. And I think that E3 will see if we're right about that or not. I think that they have to be announcing a new lineup of games that will support this new thing in a very NX type or switch type strategy of just like, yo, hey, we were realizing we're fucking.

up on this front. So we're going to do great over there. Because when you compare the two, not only on the more AAA first and second party space of the horizons and all that stuff, even exclusives like persona and exclusives like near, like PlayStation 4 and Yakuza in early 2017 is still so much better than what Xbox has. And it wasn't before. And it's like now looking forward, there is all these games going down the next couple years with PlayStation that on Xbox. There's not much. So I got a list together. From a thread over on a NeoGAF of what all the first and second party or first and partner studios are doing over at Microsoft 343. So we know that they're like helping out with creative assembly on Halo Wars 2 and Halo Wars definitive edition.

Eventually Halo 6 you have to assume like it feels about time. Scorpio game. Yeah. Yeah. Scorpio. Coalition working on gears for DLC and all that stuff. Gears 5 will come out eventually. Uh, rare sea of thieves, rumored to be working on a couple other new IPs.

We'll see what happens with that. Mojang, Minecraft, turn 10 more for its, it's a horizon three support for its motor support seven eventually once we get the release tape for that and all that. Um, then the last first part studios, Microsoft casual games.

And that's only Windows 10 stuff. It's not even Xbox one. What? Oh, you made a noise. I was giggling. Just remember that E3 when they came out and like Mo Yang. We're like, oh, that's how you say it?

What else? I'm saying Mojang. Partner studios, reaging games, crackdown three. Undead Labs, stated a K2. Iron Galaxy's continuing to support killer instinct. People love that. Flaming Fowl Studios working on Fable Fortune. And then Studio MDHR, Cuphead.

Where the fuck you are? Cuphead, Jesus. And then there's a note. That's the next one that's going to disappoint everyone. That they put on it. I hope not, man. But we'll see. Microsoft does not own the IP,

but they did fund Studio MDHR to add platforming levels. So that's why the game is taking longer to come out or whatever. So hopefully that's the level nobody likes. And that's why Cuphead is going to be interesting. I hope that. Everybody wants that. And then people played it. And they're like,

whoa, you guys are good at boss battles, maybe not this. It's bearing the thing with Microsoft, you know, we were talking about Japanese relationships and how they just don't have any. I don't think they have a lot of trusted or even acceptance in the Japanese development community.

I mean, I think that's obvious. And money spoke very loudly. I mean, that's how they got Tales of Graces as an exclusive back in the day and how they got, I can never remember the name of that fucking Mozart, Beethoven, whatever the hell, RPG. Sonata.

Sonata. Oh, internal sonata. These games were good, but at the same time, it's the Japanese relationships and Sony's Japanese-centric nature is bearing fruit for them now because the Japanese development scene isn't necessarily coming back, but it's changing in a way that is making it more palatable, I think, once again, for Western audiences. And so that's what you're getting near automata. You're getting Ni No Kuni, too, which is going to be a significant excuse.

Nino Kuni, people forget on PS3, if it was, if games were counted on a by-skew basis on MPD would have charted when it came out. That's an incredible thing for a game like that in which it's not even, the name's literally not even fucking translated. And people, and it would have charted on MPD, which is an amazing kind of thing. And, you know, Cooney 2 is going to do very well. We're forgetting that Dragon Quest is on PlayStation and Nintendo, but has no relationship with Microsoft. We're forgetting that it is strange that, you know, Final Fantasy at one point was never. on Xbox. And when Final Fantasy 7 Remate comes out, it'll be first on

Right, exactly. Because there's no they're, Phil Spencer's doing a great job. The, the nature of the console and the way we looked at it under previous tutelage is being changed and reworked. I just think that's a lost generation for them. It reminds me of,

it reminds me the original Xbox. People have to remember the original Xbox was really only alive for four years and then completely dead and was killed. And some say prematurely, but they did it to get a new console out early that I think actually set the stage and set the tenor for what would happen for the next 10 years. What I'm curious about with Scorpio is that I still think clearly it's going to be a new console and it will be fully backwards compatible, I'm sure, but they're going to be games that are made just for it unless they get the cost

way down and stuff like that. And I think that's the plan the entire time. And maybe they're going to do the same kind of thing. I never count Xbox out and never count Microsoft out because they have funds and knowledge and they do have good relationships with Western developers. But they have to start cultivating and figuring out what they're going on because it seems like they have a bit of an identity crisis. with their publishing arm too, because again, as I criticized in the past, their exclusives aren't even exclusive anymore. So now you have a problem of like, well, why would you even need an Xbox?

You can criticize Sony-L-A-Wa-Watt and say, well, you'd rather play on a PC, whatever, but you're not going to play Bloodborn on a PC, and you're not going to play Uncharted 4 on a PC or Horizon or Grand Turismo or Days Gone or Detroit or any of those games. You're only going to play them on PS4. It seems like Microsoft doesn't really quite know what to do. And this goes back into a deeper problem with the way the console came out and was launched. and I don't think they could have ever recovered, no matter how smart Phil Spencer is.

They were left at a significant disadvantage, which is a shame because the machine's good and there are great games on it. But with this whole thing with platinum, I think Platinum games is in trouble. And I think that I'll be interested to see what kind of deals are able to ink in the next 18 months, considering their very rocky relationship with Activision

in terms of quality, and clearly they're completely inept relationship with Microsoft in which they spent four years and untold tens of millions of dollars on a game that will never see the light of day. Ladies and gentlemen, the final topic of the day, brought to you by you over on Patreon. Shout out to you, Stephen Insler. Once again, Patreon producer, the Kind of Funny Games cast. And also, thank you all for supporting us.

These are the thank yous for December. Patreon. Kevin didn't like that. Kevin didn't like the announcement of that. Dot com slash Kind of Funny Games. They pay your bills, Kevin. You hate Patreon kids? It was on, but we forgot to go to God yesterday.

Should we wait until next week? Yeah. Next week, thank you to pay. Patreon users over on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Just put question marks. Anyways, you can leave your questions on kind of funny.com slash gamescast topic

just like my dude, Andrew Taylor did. You want to know what Andrew Taylor had to say, Greg? Yeah, I do. What are some of the smaller indie games that we know of that you're excited for? Any Vita exclusives? Greg, how does Patupon make you feel? Patapon makes me feel amazing

I can't wait to get Patapon Can't wait for there to be a release date Can't wait to play it nonstop for the rest of my life Smaller games you're looking forward to I mean the big one the smaller one that I think you'll agree with Is Emily is away with that's my list Damn it you stole it. Emily is away too right?

Emily is away too yeah early 2017 Who come on you fucking kidding me Another I am adventure You know instant messenger see what's up I'm stoked about that For those you that don't know what Emily away is the way as. I mean, it's a game we did a let's play for.

It's a simulation. It's a step back in time where you're using AOL instant messenger to talk to this girl, Emily. And so she says stuff and then you have to pick your response. It's one, two or three, but you have to still type it out what it would be or whatever. Like you start typing and then it just makes it feel like you're really doing it. And me and Tim started the let's play totally joking. It was like a 45 minute game too. You want to replay it for different endings, different, you know, how does she respond

to this or that or the other thing? And, but it's just sitting there talking, you pick your buddy icon, but to hear the buddy list and have the door open, the door close and the I AM noise and the away messages and the little quotes and you were, it was like, it started as a joke and then it got super serious of like we felt like we were back. I mean, by the end of it, we were so, so invested. Go watch that. Let's play. My favorite thing about it is that in addition to having the buddy icons and having your profile and being able to look at your buddy list and read other people's profiles and get kind of the story of the world, it takes place over a couple years and those years being from like 2000. to 2006. Yeah. When you, and your character goes from like high school and then into college. Yeah. It's like your first,

you're finally, your senior year or whatever. And then it's your freshman year of college and no, so on a four. It's awesome. And then you're, so your buddy icons, they change every year based on like what.

What bands are happening. So it's like, uh, in like, mm and M&M's encore. Yeah. I'm like, this is fucking awesome.

It was fucking rad. It was amazing. So I can't wait to see what the second one is about. Similar to it. They say, you know, not a different Emily. Supposed.

Yeah, That's going to be different Emily, which I hope there's better endings or different endings. Yeah, I was the problem. Because even remember like our whole thing was like we did, ah, fuck, what if we did this? And we went and like find out like, oh, same thing. It all ends in the same place. Whatever.

Anyway, great experience. And also check out the let's play we did because it is one of my favorite videos. I think we've ever made just because we went from being so like, oh, this is cool to just being enthralled by it. What will you call? The two games that come to mind from an independent lens is the first one's cosmic star heroine, which I've been talking about for a long time. I was supposed to come out last summer.

and then push to the fall, I think, and I don't know what the nature of it is now. It's by a small studio called Zyboid. It is a Western role-playing game, but in the Japanese style, it seems to take a lot from Chrono Trigger. It also seems to take a lot from Fantasy Star, the old Genesis, Master System, Fantasy Star games. I feel like that game looks phenomenal. I can't wait to play. Everything stops when that game comes into my hands.

I really, I played it for the first time at PSX in 2014 before we left IGN, and I was completely enamored with it. I just thought it was brilliant. and I really, really am looking forward to it and I wish they would just finish it. But take your time if that's what you need and obviously it is. The other game that comes to mind

is our friend Dan Adelman's represented game, Kazm. Kazam is a procedurally generated Metroidvania and it just looks fantastic and I'm really, really, really super stoked about it. And I've actually just talked to Dan today about that and other games. So really, really excited about that.

There are a lot of independent games that are coming out, but those are the two that I think are most exciting on my list right now. And again, I use that term lately because, you know, they have publisher relationships and stuff. Of course. Night in the Woods is coming up soon. That's February 21st, I think is the release.

What's that? Side scrolling, move and run. It's an exploration game. It's described to me when they've tried to get us to go play it a bunch of times when they come through for GC or RPSX or whatever. But you're playing as like a cat, but he's like a human. You know what I mean? And like going through, like, it's like, you know, cartoony characters or whatever. Like it's just characters look like that.

And, but it's like described as like gone home as you're trying to piece together the story as you go. I don't know if it's 2017. I haven't heard an update, but apartment. That game we did another last play for about all the different stories happened in that apartment building. I would hope that's this year. I talked to Robin, I believe, right, the developer at Pax. The last Pax Prime up there or whatever.

It's one of those things where they all have real jobs. They're doing it their off time. I'm looking forward to that game a lot. And there was another one that's now going to slip away that I had for a second. It's gone. I'll come back to you with one if I remember it. Yeah, the two other ones for me that are kind of not, they're in that weird indie or they're not indie section.

Go for it. Y2K, a post modern RPG. I've been waiting for that one for fucking ever, and it should be this year. Our Cuphead and the new Shovel Night DLC, this one. So there was Spectre Night. No,

Spector Night's the one coming up. I'm stoked about that. Spectre Night, my favorite. Plague Night was the first one. Yeah. I might be going to see them soon, so we'll have more information on that. Yeah, it looks awesome.

I didn't like the Plague Night DLC at all, which felt off to me. I remember when we played it up, we tried to do a let's play of a bat, way long time. time ago. And this doesn't feel right, which is a shame because Shull the night's so fucking good. I wish that they would kind

of just move on. But my assumption is that they have, and we'll find out more about that soon. Well, it sounds like they're doing a lot more for this too. Yeah, they are. Kings Night, DLC and... But they've scaled, and I don't think that they're going to marinate forever on the original shovel night. I think their original

goal was to do a 16-bit and then a 64-bit one. And so we'll see, and we'll see what happens. That's awesome. Is Tacoma this year? It should be, right? It feels like... It's not really an appropriate time. Sure. That's where it always gets weird, right?

All right. Next question. From Ken Landelfeld. How will the illustrious Konami celebrate Metal Gear's 30th anniversary? Do anniversaries matter anymore? They do sometimes. They don't other times.

I mean, you know, a lot of people have a lot of problems with the way Capcom's been treating Mega Man, which I think is... Oh, are you one of those people? I am, but it's its 30th anniversary and it starts a celebration

of the 30th anniversary. It was similar to the 25th anniversary Mega Man when they released like Street Fighter Cross Mega Man or whatever it was which was basically just saw a game someone made and then someone in the Capcom was like oh shit Mega Man's birthday is coming up and then they just basically were like we won't we won't ask you to shut this game down just let's put it out together

and then with this the 30th anniversary because obviously Rockman was released in 87 was these iOS and Android ports of the six the two trilogy is basically from NES and they're apparently fucking awful so they matter it's just it's just not It's just not

It matters to fans And fans expect more And then it seems like a lot of people Once again are asleep at the switch And cannot Fuck Kanami Who cares what they do? They're not the company

That everyone thinks that they're going To turn back into And I don't know that they're ever gonna be that company again They don't care. They don't care about Castlevania They don't care about Contra They don't care about Metal Gear They care about that four player co-op thing

When you're running on shoot shit. It's ridiculous So that's probably what that does just Mental Gear survive There's all these rumors of the Snake Eater remake I'm like, you guys fucking stupid? That's all being pulled from that Pachico machine

where they have like the super HD you know, the boss, oh, it was up earlier, boss, you know, confronting. Yeah, but real talk, what the fuck's the story of that? Why does it look so good? Why do they put that much work into these renders? Bichico machine makes so much money for them. That's just so weird.

I don't understand why those visuals at a Pichingo machine are going hand in hand. Yeah, like, because that game, that looks fucking awesome. Sure. I mean, people who want to play those in Japan know the source material. They love the source material. They want to see it look awesome.

Yeah, man. I don't know. Flows my damn mind. I'll blow your head. Blow it good. Blow that shit good. Outlaw Reaver says, Hey guys,

want to know your thoughts on GameStop's publishing label game trust signed developers. Here's the breakdown. Insomnia Games, who did Song in the Deep, Frozen Bite, who did the Trine series. Ready at Dawn, who did the Order 1886 and Tequila Works,

who did Deadlight and Outry. Now, quick side note, I don't appreciate this question. This is an old GameScoop podcast Beyond thing where this is a double dipper. This was on the list for possible PSI Love You questions this week. Didn't make the cut. So it doesn't matter. But I had it on. It was on the docket though.

In a different universe where Colin didn't poop forever. We read that question. Got it. Yeah. What's your answer? I mean, I love Song in the Deep. I think they're doing, it's an interesting thing. It's a cool idea.

GameStop as we talk about the digital. future needs to figure out what the fuck the next 10 years looks like for them. And so the idea of like, all right, cool, we have all this money. We have a distribution arm. This is an all right solution. Why not go through? And let's do some, let's do games if you want physically, you get them exclusively here. And that's the whole thing with Song of the Deep, right? Where again, cart in front of the horse, like we always talk about where, hey, there's this new IP out. So now here's a toy and a t-shirt and this and da-da-da-da. Sometimes, most of the time probably blows up in people's face. But for Song of the Deep, a game that I really appreciated. When I

finished that, I was like, fuck yeah, I do want a mary and, you know, Funko Pop for my desk. And like, they had shirts and they had all this different stuff. That only happens because GameStop's so in bed with them and has that money and has that, that arm to be like, cool, there's a whole bunch of cool shit for these cool games we're putting out over here. And that's what's crazy about GameStop is I walked into one for the first time in a, in a while over the break. And it's a, it's a hot topic now. Yeah. It's like they have more t-shirts and toys and fungopopops and backpacks and cups and mugs and all this shit than they have games. It's crazy.

Yeah. But I get it though. Like good for them trying to adapt. You got it, right? And that's the whole thing. You can't knock them. They're trying, they're out there hustling.

They're doing something different. They're doing something cool. You know, no one can say that song of the deep, all the other games and all this wouldn't exist without this. But it is, all right, cool.

Here's money. Go make this game that it maybe isn't for PlayStation or wouldn't be on Microsoft's radar. It's a cool idea and it's something different and more power to them. Anything that call? No, I think GameStop's just trying to experiment with known developers by making small, cheap games and seeing what happens. I don't know that they're going to get the outcome that they want to get from a commercial

standpoint until they choose to invest a lot of money into a game. And I can't imagine that song for the Deep was made for any more than a few million dollars. Sure. You figure, though, this has got to be the business play though, right? Let's start small. Let's do small games. Let's prove this team, I assume, of GameTrust, people at GameStop who are like, all right, let's do this.

We make things. We can show the revenue model. We can show how we made this game, this IP a thing, and then we made this money on merchant. let's, you know, now let's go and try to make a AAA. Yeah, I suppose. I mean, that's clearly the idea, I think, but I don't know that they would have been misguided in just saying, like, let's make one big game with a big developer. And I understand that they're, it seems almost like, in a way, with the studios that they have

relationships with, that it's like a tryout. Ready at Dawn is busy with a lot of things, apparently with VR games. I wouldn't be surprised they're working with Sony again. Obviously, Insomnix busy with a ton of shit. Tequila works. Who knows what the fuck they're doing. But the, it seems like it's like a little trial kind of situation. but I don't know that they're going to get the outcome until they choose to invest the money.

You spend money to make money. And so if you're investing, like, deformers, for instance, which is an interesting game, it's not going to sell anything. And like, so like, what is your ex-bate? Like, deformance isn't just not going to sell. It's not going to sell. No one's going to care. And I can just tell you that when we play at the GameStop Expo.

I can tell you that fucking six months before that. And so it's like, well, why then? I think I don't really. I think it's experience. I think they're doing something they've never done before. This reminds me of when I started the YouTube channel that would become this, right? like Colin or ask what do we call conversation with Colin shows and or aeration were not the shows I wanted to do.

I had an idea for the show I fucking wanted to do, but I didn't know how to edit. I didn't know how to publish. I didn't know. So it was like, well, fuck, I'll do these shows that I don't care as much about or there's not as much put into in terms of something going wrong or right. I think that's it. Right now you do this. I don't know if it's so much about how much money you make as much as like, well,

let's learn the ins and outs of it and let's figure out what does work and doesn't work so that when we do take $10 million. and drop it on something. It can, we know a little bit of what we're getting into. Tastings says, hey guys. I was on the kind of funny Facebook group last month, whining about never having a question read on any of the shows. Then, like a one-winged angel from heaven,

Tim replied and told me to ask a question in 2017. He'd read it on the games cast. I'm here, motherfucker. You should have just told them ask a good question. That's not a good thing. Separate's cool. I'll take it. He's going to kill you.

Bad ass. That's what I do. I kill people. Right, Kevin? Mm-hmm. Why don't the big three console companies steal from each other more often? I started thinking about this when I was playing Ni No Kuni, Rath of the White Witch. It was basically the Pokemon game I always wanted.

It was on a PlayStation home console. Why don't they steal Zelda, Mario Kart, or 3D Mario games for Nintendo? Steel Gears of War and Halo from Xbox. Still The Last of Us Infamous and Resergun from Sony. Thanks for reading my question. You guys are kind of awesome. They still bring each other all the time. I mean, I think it's, well, some of those examples, like Mario Kart.

Like everyone's done a cart racer. Yeah, Bonnation and Little Big Planet Carting. were both attempts to do that. PlayStation All-Star was stealing Smash Brothers. You know, KillZone was its own response to Halo directly. They wanted,

Sony wanted their own big shooter. I think they were way behind on that particular genre. I don't think they understood how that genre was migrating the console. So these things happen constantly. The open world games, I think infamous is a response to crack down.

I think that, like, there are things that are happening in that respect. I already see that happening. And then third part, Do that two 3D dot heroes is a complete repose I was gonna say you have third parties getting in there and filling a lot of gaps to you where it's like well I would does Sony need to go worry about I guess they're making open world But you know what I mean like all right there's a million of them out there actually I do think it's interesting though because there's certain games that I'm a little shocked we're not seeing more direct

competition to like uncharted Tomb Raider and Microsoft's partnership for Rise of the Tomb Raiders I guess kind of a step in that direction but it is a little shocking that there's not a game of that kind of movie experience quality that Microsoft tries to do with any of their main flagship titles, instead doing things like scalebound or whatever. Sure. Cost money. I mean, that's the thing is that it can't be understated how much unsharted for and the last of us too are going to. And are costing Sony.

I mean, these are expensive games. And you have to have no disrespect to any of the other studios that are working on a lot of these games. Microsoft has no studio that's anywhere near No Addog's talent. You also need a, you also need a studio that can able to do that. if Sony asks any of their other studios to make a game like the last one would be able to do it you know he's just not it's not possible and i think that's further going down the train of thought i was having where like why don't more people copy mario is a question i often ask myself it's like why doesn't playstation have a game that it's like mario ratch and clank i'd say is the closest thing in terms of being a quality um platformer but it's not really a platformer it's you know it's also kind of a third person shooter in a lot of ways and it's it's not mario you know uh but i think the reason is like Mario's Mario and Mario's at such a high level that you can't compete with that and even if you could compete from it from a quality perspective You still don't have that recognition and nobody's buying those type of games on that level so it's not even worth really investing there

Yeah, I agree. I think that like there's certain ecosystems that cultivate certain amounts of talent or certain expectations And there's just no expectation for that on Sony I think that that's why the original kill zone was not a good game Because they were like we need a shooter and it's like well, but it's not it's not it's you don't need a shooter you need a good shooter, you know and and I think that's what they ended up getting with resistance which I think was their at to do that again, which I think was way closer to Halo in a lot of ways genetically. But yeah, I agree with you. Like we had, you know, Little Big Planet, for instance, was in a way, in its own way. I don't like Little Big Planet at all. But Little Big Planet in its own way was a harbinger of things to come with things like Mario Maker.

It's just that like we didn't have, because it was like, you know, a side scroll, we make your own stage. It's a little weird, a little share and have a good time wherever. But like, it's just, that's not what people play PlayStation for. If that was on Nintendo a long time ago and they had their own IP and so like that, it would have been bigger sooner. It's just, I think that there are expectations. that are different, but I, you know, great artists steal and these people are stealing from each other all the time.

And there's no shame in that. I've said, I've said over and over again that moat for the most part, a shooter should feel like call of duty. You should just take that. It's okay. Make your own story, in your own world and your own art. But it should feel like call of duty. And every platform should feel like Mario. Real Radic 13 says, is it possible that Crystal Dynamics is now moving on from Tomb Raider and working on a new legacy of Kane? Oh, back in November 2015, Crystal Dynamics senior designer Michael Brinker said that there's a 50-50, chance of a new game in the series developed by them. He goes on to say that there are in-house developers in the studio who really want it to

happen. And also with the leaked shadow of the Tomb Raider rumored to be developed by Squarionix Montreal, and the main writer of the Tomb Raider reboot series leaving the franchise does this all point to Crystal Dynamics developing a new legacy of Kane. Points of them making something else. I don't know that it necessarily points to them making a legacy cane. I don't think that would be a good idea. It seems like the time is passed for that.

I was going to say, I feel like that's a step backward. It's similar when we talk about Jack and Daxter when we're talking about naughty dog. Like, no, go make something else, do something else. Especially take all the lessons you've learned from Tomb Raider. Take some Eastern IP. Like, that's the thing that Square Nix is just refusing to do, which is just to, like, they have a global network of studios that can borrow from each other pretty openly. And I'd like to see someone like Crystal make a fucking Final Fantasy spin off.

Or make, but do so, like, see what you can do with some of these IP that they own. If I were, if I were associated in any way with Square Nix, I'd go over there and I'd be like, what kind of obscure-ass IP can we fucking dig up? you know, and try to do something with. Because they have a ton of them, you know? And so that's what I would hope some of these studios are working on. So I don't think it, I think it indicates, I think that the Square-Nex Montreal rumor of the Tomb Raider thing,

which I think is obviously real, indicates that Crystal Dynamics is just going to make something else. But I don't know that as a legacy of K. And I don't think that would be a good idea for them to do. Not a shitting-all legacy of Kain. It's just that they want to sell games. And not for nothing, the Tum-Rater games did not take off. Idos, Montreal.

I'm sorry, Idaho's Montreal. Just keeping you honest. You know Rise of the Tomb Raider I think was a disappointment for them And not from a quality samu because it's fucking great But I don't think it's sold very well on Xbox 1 I don't think it's sold very well on PS4

And I think that they have to make something big You know I mean well what sucks the most about Tomb Raider And Rise of the Tomb Raider is that those games Would have been big if they were all at once Let's release it on all the platforms at once But this exclusivity deal that I understand taking Because it's money in your pocket

And especially for the first one You would have think that it was going to go the other way man did that fuck this franchise. It's so great. It's such a fucking great. God, those games, one and two, are so fucking good. And they are criminally underplayed. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ben, the kind of funny games cast.

Thank you all for joining us. We'll see you next week. And I'm sure we'll be time on Nintendo Switch. Because at the time this was recorded, we haven't seen the presentation yet. It happens tomorrow. I'm very excited. But by the time people will see this.

I'll talk to you in a pre-Switch. Switch world. And by the time people see this, you will have played the switch and Kevin will be dead of pizza overdose. So much pizza. Until next time, I love you. I didn't like that. That was...