The Ringer-Verse - ‘Astro Bot’ Is Brilliant, ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ Is Killer, and ‘Concord’ Is Conquered | Button Mash

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

Button Mash becomes Bot-ton Mash as Ben, Jess, and Steve celebrate the release of near-perfect PlayStation platformer ‘Astro Bot’ and explain why the game is both a bold leap forward and a relic of an earlier era. Then they break down what the record sales success of ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ and the flop of ‘Concord’ (49:00) say about the industry, assess their appetites for the PS5 Pro and mid-generation console upgrades (1:09:55), and share takeaways from several trailers for upcoming video game movies and TV shows (1:15:25), before finishing with a fond farewell to the late, great James Earl Jones (1:32:00). Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Jess Clemons and Steve Ahlman Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Hello and welcome into the ringer purse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor for The Ringer and your host here at Button Mesh. Or today, should I say, botan mash? I shouldn't, but I did.

Thanks for the courtesy chuckle. With me this time, our two friends who hopefully like me enough to tolerate my puns, first, an old co-host and new rock star who's always missed around the ring of us, except when she returns to Brightonard Day in the LA office where she can record

without interference from her cute but inquisitive cat, Jessica Clemens. Thank you for bringing up my cat. Yes. Two out of three of us on this call have cats. Yes, that's true. Beautiful cats. Ben, you're up.

All pets are represented here. I'm a dog guy. But yeah, I had to mention your cat because when you're recording at home, your cat makes herself known one way or another. In the trailer for a Minecraft movie, Jack Black says, I am Steve. Our second guess is also Steve,

and that was his name long before Minecraft came out. He may be a big softie, but he's Allman, senior producer, Junior Mint, and Midnight Boy. Steve Allman. It's time to play the game. It's time to play the game. Thanks for having me, Ben. How many times have you heard the Allman?

Oh, oh, it's the better one of the three. Are you excited for this on-screen Steve representation? This honestly is probably going to be some of the bottom five Steve representations that I've seen in most media. I don't, I don't have good, I'm not holding out good hope for this. Steve from Stranger Things is kind of bad. Top steves? You have a short list of steves? A short list of top steves or bottom steves?

Yeah. Bottom steves, give me the best. Steve's. Oh, man. It's been a minute. I think the Minecraft one is definitely going to be one up there. I would say Stephen Tyler, but he's probably represented in media a couple more times. Like, anytime that I hear Armageddon that is constantly thrown back at me. Also, he goes by Stephen, right? So are we going to push the Stevens also in the lot?

Oh, different categories. If we're flashing at the end of Stevens, then I'd have to recalibrate the list. This is an entirely new era with the V, with the pH. Steve is a category into itself. Well, look, we could talk about best and worse Steve's all day, but this has been our Steve discussion. We'll save it for the Steve draft coming soon to a podcast near you. The Minecraft movie can wait as well. We're here, first and foremost, to declare our undying love for a game that came out late last week, PlayStation 5 platformer Astrobot.

I could tell you that Astrobat has a 94 metacritic rating, second only to Eldon Ring Shadow of the Nerdtree among 2024 games. Can we really reduce excellence to a single number or even two numbers, if we mention it's 96 user score? I don't know. Can we quantify joy? Because that's what we're talking about when we're talking about Astrobot. Now, normally, when we have gaming news to discuss, we'll do that at the top of the pod and work our way up to our main topic. But today, we don't want to bury the lead. Our hearts are too full with feelings about Astrobot to keep them contained.

So we'll get our raves out now, and then we'll end with some indistible. discussion and trailer reactions. We're going to go over what we learned from the, let's say, contrasting receptions to two other high-profile recent releases, Blacksmith, Wukong, and Concord, the opposite ends of the video game launch spectrum. We'll share some thoughts about the PS5 Pro, and we'll give you our takeaways from five new trailers for upcoming game adaptations, including a Minecraft movie. But Jess, Steve, it's impossible to spoil the story of Astrobot because it hardly has one. Yeah.

It's also impossible to spoil anything else about Astrobot because the game is pure goodness and sweetness and light. How does that meme go friendship and good with Mario? Now Astro is my best friend. Maybe I'm laying it on a little thick, but we've got a goate contender here. So let's start with a quick take from each of us about what we thought of the game. And Astro thought about Astrobot. Jess, give me your Astro thought.

I am an astro thought I am very into astrobot it's so delightful it's so great I texted Ben and I was like I'm not even finished with the game and it's very fun

I love the idea to be fair I've only played like more Mario that has done this when you're using your mascot as like the main content like just playing around this world I think it brings so much wonder to it

it's so whimsical it wasn't as difficult it wasn't difficult which is fine but it was more so much much stuff to play around within this game. The abilities that change, the temporary abilities throughout the game are so much fun.

It's literally for everybody. And what might take like 10 hours, maybe 11, I'm stretching it to finish it, you still get like another day to actually get 100% in it. So you're getting your, I think you're getting a lot of your money's worth for it. Steve, Astro thought? My Astro thought is, I am also one as well. But I think the better, the biggest resounding thought that I've had during play and like as I'm going to be finishing it throughout this week is,

it's beautiful, majestic and borderline perfect. I only have like a few minor nitpicks about what the game actually can do. But as far as the overall sentiment of what this game is, it makes me retroactively mad that Sony hasn't embraced this level of, like, accessibility. And for lack of a better comparison, Mario level appeal sooner.

because we had only had this pack-in Astros Playroom as literally like a palette cleanser for what a PS5 can do, what the dual sense controller can do, and the type of celebration that is the Sony brand and its underlying IPs. And as much as we can be excited about those things, we actually haven't seen that level of embracing like a Nintendo or somebody else that's more contemporary

like this. And it's beautiful to see. And I wish that we could have gotten more of it and sooner because it's beautiful and perfect. Yeah, it's funny. Sometimes we talk about games and we're looking for something nice to say, just so we're not hating the entire time. This time I'm planning to ask you guys, so do you have anything negative to say about Astrobot? Can we dig deep and find a flaw with this game? There are a few, maybe minor nitpicks. But if you had a camera on my face while I was playing and measured the percentage of time I was smiling, it probably would be higher for Astrobot than for any other game this year. It's just a cute, clever, sugar rush of a game.

Bright, clean, colorful, upbeat, charming, family-friendly, as you said, and just so smart and charming and well-executed and polished. And I do think it is kind of the heir apparent to that legacy of PS2-era platformers. As you're saying, Steve, the Astrobot celebrates that we don't see so much from Sony anymore. And then you play a game like this and you're like, well, why don't we? Because I would like to play one of these every month or so. Just keep them coming. And it's so smart because the palette or the character design that is the Astrobot or the Astrobot that you are subsequently rescuing

is such an easy sort of canvas to make all of these little avatars that are Sony. characters. You can have a Nathan Drake. You could have a Kratos. You could have an aloy or an ape escape or all of these things that are so artistically different and vast, but made into like, basically the Sony equivalent of a Funko Pop that's adorable and like palatable and so

incredibly fun to find and embrace and collect. Everybody's going to have their own sort of connection point to this. When I found the Crash Bandicoot bot, I like openly gasped with like, oh my God, he's here, here he is, he's there. Like I haven't seen, like, I haven't seen you in forever. And like, yeah, that level of just like either, like you can call it nostalgia, you can call it brand recognition or loyalty.

But that's the kind of thing that very few games that Sony has can embrace. We only see it from the likes of Nintendo because it's so, it's so, it's been its own universe for so many decades now that that ubiquity is just everywhere in all of its games. But with here, this is like one of the first times where I'm like, oh, I have this like great little like Pokemon trading card booklet of all of the great little Sony things that I have. And that's kind of perfectly put into this amazing platformer. It's perfect. I was thinking about that when I was playing it.

But then I was also like, I don't think a lot of other places could do this. I think PlayStation can do it because they have so many of those characters. I feel like collecting the collectibles throughout the game was a big initiative to be playing the game. You're like, oh, I need to make sure I get all of these people. And then when you see Cratos, you're like, oh, my God. Even though I think Cretos is the only one that actually gets to play as like an actual figurine, right?

Well, you get like this, I'm pretty sure you got like the ape escape level as well. Yeah. Uncharted. Uncharted as well. Like you have like a small like little tribute level of skins. But I think that's what like is a big initiative, I think, and playing is, like, finding those little unlockables that you're like, oh, I know exactly what

these are. And then I was like, this works for this and this works for Mario. But I don't want to see my, like, I don't know if I'd enjoy Microsoft trying to do something like this, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's funny. We only get the new older Cretos, the more enlightened Cretos. We don't get the old school. Well, everybody likes that one. Misogynistic Cretos, we sort of sweep under the rug. Right. I would have for that one to show up an astrobot. Yeah, I guess, Thematically, perhaps not as a great a fit. But it's funny, we always talk about how gameplay reigns supreme, and that's the deal with Nintendo and so many Nintendo platformers and family-friendly mascot games, which Nintendo

continues to demonstrate by still putting out great games for the Switch, even though it is running on fumes at this point. But this game shows what you can accomplish when you combine that great gameplay with next-gen hardware and the most souped up powerful concept. and it's the best of both worlds. So it's not just, yeah, it's cutesy and it's cartoony and the gameplay is great. It is all of those things.

But also when you pair that with great graphics and no loading times and the things that you can do, the ways that you can transform these levels with the power of a PS5 versus a switch, for instance, then I think it takes it to the next level. There don't have to be any compromises there. And Nintendo's expert at squeaking and eking out every last bit of horsepower from its aging systems.

But if you don't have to do that, then it's just a total flex. And there's just no weakness. And it kind of impresses you constantly at every turn. And I guess relevant to that, a bit of background on the series and the studio for those who haven't been following and for whom Astrobat kind of came out of nowhere, this is a platformer from Tim Asobi, which is sort of a spin-off from and successor to the now defunct Japan studio. And Timosobia has been building up to a blockbuster Astrobot game for a while.

First, the studio made the Playroom, a collection of AR minigames that came with the PS4 and showed off the PlayStation camera and Dual Shock 4 controller. There was also a VR version of the Playroom a few years later that contained a short platformer called Robots Rescue. And that demo was developed into a full-fledged game, 2018's Astrobot Rescue Mission, which is my favorite PSVR game and one of the best VR games ever, but limited audience, because not that many people had PSVR, more than have PSVR too, but still. Then came Astro's Playroom, which you mentioned, Steve, PS5 pack in free for everyone that showed off the dual sense controller and gave us a taste of

non-VR Astro gameplay. And now that demo has been developed into an 80-level robot rescuing adventure that takes about a dozen hours to complete more if you've got to catch them all, as you said, Jess. And there's a reason why this game was number one for me when we did our summer gaming showcase hype rankings. It's sort of like when a new band puts out a promising EP and looks good live and releases a self-produced album. And then they make their major label debut and it's just nothing but bangers and they blow up. And it's like, where did these guys come from? Well, you could see the success coming. They've kind of honed it with every iteration and interpretation.

installment of this series. And I'm happy it's here because this is no longer limited to a VR-only audience. And it's not just a tech demo. This is just a full-fledged. What could we do if we had a few years to work on this thing and a bigger budget? And we could just let our ambitions run wild. And it just works so well. And it's the cutest thing on the planet. It's the cutest, most beautiful little 3D world in the world, worlds on the planets. I'm curious. Would you say that like the easiest comp that like it's giving comp equivalent is Mario Galaxy or audience for better? Yeah.

I'd say yes, there's a lot of galaxy in here and also paired with some of the great platformers that we mentioned and sort of those action adventure. I was constantly thinking of Sly Cooper and Jack and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank and not just because you're collecting. figurines of those characters, but it is kind of a collect-a-thon to some extent in a throwback retro way. Not like Donkey Kong 64 levels, like billions of banana peels or whatever, but there's a lot of stuff that you rack up here. And there's a gotcha game where you collect those figurines and you're just raking in coins and you're looking for hidden puzzle pieces and robots, et cetera. So it's got that hook to kind of keep you exploring. I mainly ask that because I try to, think about my best experiences with Mario Odyssey and how that game really kind of turned me into a like gaming terminology of a full sweat when it came to finding and collecting. I looked up how many there were like 850 moons to collect in that game and not so much by the fact that like that is it is a fraction of the level of things that you need to collect an astrobot. But I think that the sake for the sake of like getting

to a level of progression with not only the things that the game introduces for your like, sort of like companion power-ups or sort of like level-based interactions that can change for the different types of platforming things that you have, there's a level of like difference and familiarity at almost every turn that encourages its participation from you

that you almost are never going to deny, Whereas I think with Mario, you kept finding ways to explore and kept finding ways to better your platforming skills. I don't think that this game got exponentially harder as things went on. I think it was more of like a different level of consistent discoverability over a sustained level of gameplay that encouraged me to collect more

rather than get better at platforming. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Well, there are a number of ways you can play this game, which is one of the things I appreciated. It rewards exploration in the main levels because there's no time limit. There's not even a time bonus.

So there's no pressure to rush through the level unless you're a speed runner or something. There's no fall damage, which more and more I appreciate. I know that can be a component of the challenge, of course. But sometimes I'd just like to fall and not hurt myself. Wouldn't it be nice if that's the way it worked in real life? There are one hit kills or deaths, I guess. You know, you take any damage that's, it for you for the most part. But there's no real penalty to that. It's not punitive. There are no

deaths or lives, really. You just restart from the most recent checkpoint, which typically is pretty close to where you ran into a monster or something. So you don't feel a whole lot of like, oh, I got to replay. I got to repeat this whole section here. And so you can take your time and explore the space, but then there's a variety because there are some very galaxy-esque mini levels that are just pure platforming. And then there's some like retro rampage, you know, kind of pixelated look and these other levels where the level crumbles as you play on it and you have to do a certain amount of things before you just fall through the level.

So there are a number of different ways to experience Astrobot. And so I never got to feel like this is wearing thin on me, partly because it's not that long. As you said, Stephen, there aren't 800 robots here. There are 300. And I do appreciate a game that kind of tells you how long it is and what the scope and structure of it is. And maybe partly this is hashtag podcaster problems because we're trying to figure out how long do I have to play this game before we can write about it or talk about it or cover it. But also I like when it's just sort of manageable.

And you can see, okay, there are this number of worlds and galaxies and each has X number of things to do there. and there are this many robots. And, okay, I kind of have a sense of what I'm in for here. And it's not something that overstays it's welcome. That was the only part of the game that I had a negative thing. And that was personal reasons because you guys know that I don't like puzzle games. And I remember being like, I can't figure out what's wrong. I started, it depends on who you are and how you're playing.

This is probably the only game where I was like, oh, I need to get 100% my first try on every level. And when it would show me that like, oh, I got the third robot, but I didn't get the second. I would go back. Yes. I need to go find the second. No, no, it's if I find a bot mid-level and when it pings and there's a missing one in between the one I just got and the one before, I'm like, oh, no, I need to backtrack to start this over.

I love dying. Or not dying. I love dying. I know. I like finishing the map and then coming back to it and they allow you to get the little bird that, like, seeks for you. Yes. Then I was like always seeking like the unknown worlds, the unknown universes.

It'll be like, oh, here's another. And I was like, no, I need to find the robots. I don't care about these unknown worlds yet. I'll go to them later. But again, very accessible. Any age could play this game because even that part, I was like, oh, this is very helpful. I'm getting a bunch of coins. Might as well use them for something more than getting the little bobbleheads.

That was also my only negative critique. I was like, I'm getting all these coins for no reason. Yes. These coins have no use for me until I want to decorate something or I just want to go play crane machine. Yeah, it is fun to kind of collect all. your little Sony PlayStation Funko Pops, and they populate this hub world that you have where it's kind of almost Pikmin coded.

Yes. You collect all these different robots, and then you need to have a certain number to access different levels of this hub world. A lot of it is just for show. It's superficial, and that's fine. But that's the genius of the constant moment-to-moment gameplay of the game because it never runs out of new things to give you

within the span of like 30 seconds. because if you're not experiencing like, okay, well, now that I have 20 bots, I can have them make like a human ladder so that I could climb up to get this next puzzle piece that can then unlock something else. Then I can go use my coins at the Gatchapon machine.

And if I go to the snow level, and it has those little like sprinkles that I had with on it, like, it'll make the controller like vibrate in very, very tactile and fun ways. By the way, this game eats my PS5 controller battery. I don't know how quickly you guys have like

your controllers have died in the span of like maybe a four hour long wait session Yeah That's funny you say that Because I always have two controllers Next to me Yeah I'm playing with my pink one

And I got white one fully charged And then when it starts dying Yeah When it starts dying I just take the other one But no This is so funny you say this Because the motion control

When I was using the ship I was like I was turning my full body And it was not working And I was getting so mad I would be like Fuck this I was like I'm not

I'm done doing this It's the closest that I got to like VR without getting into VR. I was like, they're using every inch of this console. They want you to use every part of your PlayStation. They want to remind you that your ship that you got to fix is also a PlayStation. On the microphone to make the little thing go. Oh my God. They were, which I was like, good for them because I genuinely wasn't even thinking that.

I have not played a game on a PlayStation in such a long time that I had to like use the motion control. I was like, oh, I forgot that we could do this on a PlayStation controller. I could blow on it. And it's like, here's a bubble. Don't you like hammering in a CPU? with nails and acting like it's a hammer? With the controller? I actually like that.

No, I think it's very, that's why I was like, oh, this is for literally all ages, because it's just so fun. As an adult, I was just waving my hand around to do it. But as a child, I'm sure they're like, oh, a hammer. Those controller batteries died noble deaths, because you can see why it eats that charge. Those things are working overtime, right?

The constant rumble and haptic feedback, the noises coming out of the speaker, the motion, And frankly, it is extraordinary. It's almost miraculous to me. What they did with the dual sense, we got a taste of this in the playroom, but this is just taking that, developing that.

It is incredible how well they are able to convey a certain surface or touching. It's like the controllers, like, possessed by some dark magic or something. It's like how it's you make it feel like that? None of it, like, really necessary to the overall enjoyment of, of what we know a game to be.

But the fact when you collect a bot and it's doing that little thing where it's like sitting in like your controller that's like a hot tub that they're just like chilling in and waving at you. And if you shake it, you hear like a little rattle of like one or two bots that seem to be inside of your controller. Yeah. It's brilliant. I'm obsessed with sound engineering and any media and I would just run back and forth through

the fields of grass and flowers and into the water just to hear it. When he's on glass of this. Oh, ASMR that like, really maybe like scratches that part of my brain that I love was that glass noise. And when he skates is, oh yeah. Also, I'm so disgusting.

I'm not disgusting. I'm not a pervert for this, but I love it. Even the ice cream sprinkles, I was like, oh, this noise. I'll let me turn this up, put it in my ears.

There are so many times where you're just sort of Scrooge McDucking through a vest, a heap of something. And the game knows how satisfying that feels and sounds, I think, because it's constantly just littering the levels with stuff that you're waiting through for no real reason, other than that it feels fantastic to do that. Sometimes there are these diamond shapes on a level or a certain part of the stage,

and I'm just going around, just sweeping them and hitting them and walking through these lush surfaces, and it just feels so good. And you'd think it would be gimmicky, but it's not. Again, it's not essential, but it enhances it so much. What game was it that we were playing that? I literally, I think it was the new. was it the new Mario game? Where I had to turn off the sound of the flowers that were cheering me on and talking to me.

And I was like, I didn't turn, I did not, not one ounce of me wanted to turn off any sound. There was nothing here that, like, you irritated me that I had to go into the settings and, like, reduce or turn off. And I was like, they knew they just ate with it. And I was here for it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so Mario, just not in the gameplay only, but in the family friendliness, the lack of dialogue, the fact that there's barely a story that you're just kind of hanging this platforming on. we talked about galaxy and Odyssey, but it does remind me of wonder also just because they're just tearing through great ideas here.

They're just throwing stuff at the wall. It's just, let's do this mechanic for one level, and then we'll never see it again sometimes, but you're just constantly coming across new ideas that for a lot of games, this would be the core mechanic. It's like, this is a platformer where you do this. But in Astrobot, you're doing a new thing in every galaxy, really, and sometimes multiple times in a galaxy and just these tour-to-force demonstrations, again, where you're slowing down time, let's say, or you're shrinking down with no loading. Suddenly you're big and then you press a button

and you're small and the whole level looks different now. All of these different ways that you could kind of transform the gameplay and the aesthetics of the game. And that's happening from the first level to the last. Yeah. The temporary abilities are truly, if they didn't not have, which I don't know why they wouldn't put that feature in there after the first game. But if they took that away, I probably would be like, eh, it's all right, this game's fun. I can just double jump in laser things. That's okay.

But it's those abilities that really just took it for me. That, ooh, I was eating that up. The game's all around good, and I would recommend buying it. But I was going to say something about the abilities. I don't know. What was everybody's favorite ability? I like the SpongeBot where you can. Spongebot is probably the most fun because, again,

it's all a cacophony of little things. tiny things that add to something that like you actually have not experienced or seen before. When you can expand and like you're just kind of leaking at the seams with every step and if you get some oil on you and then you step in some water you have

that like rainbow effect, the water like explodes into these little beads that can like like splosh and then like accumulate and like suck in like it's like a little like so shaded. It's so good. We're naming every Mario but there's sort of a Super Mario Sunshine aspect. Exactly. And it's

It's that weird, like, tactile feeling that it's that emotion when you, like, you say, like, if you look at any surface, your brain can analyze how it would feel if you were to lick that surface. But when you see something in Astrobot and you're like, I know how that's going to sound when I step on. I know how that's going to feel when I land on it. I know how that's going to deform when I push across this snow. That is a hard thing to capture in games. That's a very skilled thing to do. And to have that happen almost every second of this game is really special. It is.

Aw. We are talking so highly about it. I'm surprised that you guys didn't say, I like turned into the tiny one. I love being the tiny one. And also, because I'm one of these people, anytime I caught a new little bot, I took photos. I took the screenshot. So now I have an album full of Astrobot. And like, when you get to the first time you're tiny, there's a bunch of cats around you.

And I literally screenshot it and there's a perfect still on my PlayStation now on my phone of me as a little astrobot with the little ears like a mouse and a bunch of cats around me. When you mentioned Wonder, A, do we know how long they worked on this game but also B, do we know if they worked

like how they did on Wonder where they were like we all had sticky notes of what we wanted a map to look like? Yes. The developer posted a picture of that workspace and they did the exact same thing. It works. It works. And it's so fun.

It gives you so much world to work with and just like, okay, If we did want to make a tiny world where we could get small, what would we look that looks different when we're big? Like, what should we do? What complications? What can we do? And I love that idea. Just, me too.

Yeah. And it's partly because this is a manageable team size. 60 people worked on this game, which is not a lot for AAA first party game development these days. And they spent three years on it, which again is pretty snappy. So that's a testament to the team. But also when you have that small a team, it becomes kind of a democratic process where you can all throw out. ideas and there's kind of a free exchange and if you're the audio person you could throw out an idea for a level and it all kind of works together and it's it's very utopian vision of game

development but when it works it works incredibly well it works good yeah and I think the the challenge level of it's very pick up and play very accessible as you said some of the most challenging pure platforming parts are optional so don't be worried about that if that would be an obstacle for you, but if that's what you want, it's there. Now, again, the bosses are very much from the Mario School of Popham on the head three times, and that's that. I love it. I love it. So I didn't really have trouble with any bosses, but some of the galaxy style optional platforming levels were challenging. There was this one called a splashing sprint that I think I failed more times than I failed every other level in the game combined. It was one of the ones where you have a rubber

duck power up and you're spraying the water in front of you to make the lava and then you have to run on the hardened lava and then there's fire that you're running around and jumping over. It was traumatic for me, but that was the only time that it went from, this is a satisfying challenge to, oh, this is actually fairly frustrating. But I also love how hyper-concentrated those harder levels are. Yes, right. Every one of those smaller ones, like, if you were to make the total time played for a single genuine level of this game is like

if you were to make the actual level be like maybe 10 minutes this is like a minute long challenge and if it's even like four times harder you're going to be spending maybe half the time that you would on a normal level and that's even like getting that time played for a harder thing

in this game is also very very well done I love not just the sound but the music incredibly catchy kind of yellow apples and stereo style Yeah, just a million remixes of the core theme, also sort of a Mario tradition. I love, as you said, the option to purchase a companion bird who flies around and helps you find the secrets if you're stuck and if you want that help. But if you don't, that's fine. It is purely optional. I love that it doesn't make me run around to get coins. Even in games like Ratch and Clank,

if it's bolts or whatever it is, you often have to go close to the coins or the bolts to pick them up or you have to get an upgrade to attract them from farther away. And in this game, nope, wherever you are. It just comes right to you. Again, it's just frictionless, but not in a way where it feels too easy. Like there's no challenge because there's a lot of clever secret stuff that's hidden. So even if it's not like a quick Twitch platforming challenge, it's almost a mental challenge sometimes too. I genuinely needed that bird bots help. I think it would be really challenging not to have the birdbots help. I would try really hard to find those things,

and sometimes I could not find them for the life of me. I think one was underneath the sprinkles on one planet, and I was like, I would never search under every sprinkle while the pig was running at me. There's a moment when I wanted to find a galaxy portal, and it was in this Aztec mission where I'm like, okay, like you're running around, and then like, I kind of just stop and look around because you find yourself wanting to like kind of like oversee all of your surroundings because it'll give you like this little tiny perch to just look over and you're like,

oh yeah, I'm like halfway through this level because I could see all the way down to where I started. And I just like kind of turn and I look at this wall and I'm like, that wall looks a little too important for me to not look at it a little bit longer. And then I'm like, okay, well, can I hit something? Is there like one, two, three? Oh, great. And the wall opens up. Here's the portal.

Great. I found it. It's just like the more you've kind of like either pay attention, look at things. there's a constant reward for something. Yes. I will second that because there was a map where I was like, what do I do? There's something here.

And I just started like throwing the monkey fist and then I was knocking out the flames. Yeah. And they're like way into these flames do something? I had to knock out every flame. That's six cents you have as a lifelong gamer where you stumble across an area that just looks like there must be more to it

because why would they have built this if that wasn't, right? It looks like a dead end or something. If you were playing a video game for the first time, you wouldn't think anything of it. But this long practice we have, it's hard to build games. You have to create these worlds from scratch. You don't waste work. And so if there's more room here, then it seems like there should be.

I've been told that that's the waterfall perspective and principle. We're like, if you can go underneath a waterfall and there's not something to reward you there, you're doing it wrong. Exactly. And I felt like I wanted to be a completist with this game, which is not my normal impulse. I think I collected 251 of the 300 robots on my first pass, not just trying to speed run it, but also not going way out of my way to find everything. And you're right, because they tell you this sequence of robots in the level,

then you know you missed one. And then it's extra frustrating because otherwise you might not know until it was over that I missed one. But yeah, you can tell. And so you have to double back if you can and find it. And this is a game where I don't feel that pressure or that checking boxes, like, you got to catch them all. I have to. I want to.

That's the fun of this game, but it's pretty fun to just dive back in and replay. So we have hardly had any nitpicks here. I'd say just a couple minor flaws. Jess, you mentioned one, the motion controls. It's not the fault of Astrobot. It's just a limitation, I think, of all motion controls. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, 100%. It just never quite works as well as you wanted to. It's not there. No. Let me tell you, I was getting so pissed at the beginning because you get like that three seconds to like once you go through them, you're like coming through to land and there's things that

you can hit. I was not hitting a single one of them. And it's that initial inertia where like you tilt your hand I'm tilting my fruit body. Like they do when you see like kids in video game commercials who are like putting their entire body. It's like that's like, that's like I hate that I became the thing that I despise in advertisements.

That was us. Exactly. And related to that, so you can disable the motion controls. Jess, I know you don't always look at the menus. Don't you bring this back to me not looking at the settings. But that is an option. I was having fun with the motion. I was like, ooh, this is fun.

Also, because I know that I'm reviewing the games, I try to do every part except for like turning off the settings now. I genuinely am like, the last thing I want to do is turn off the settings. I want to play this authentically as they want me to play it. But yes, I know in the past, I am one to not look at the settings. Jessica, default control scheme, Clements. That's what they call you. One of these days, your cheat codes are going to come back,

and you're just going to miss an entire section of those settings. Do you want God mode on? You want us to beat the game for you? The dumbest thing I did, I was like, I don't know why I just didn't think about it. And I've done this before in every other game. I've turned it to easy for myself. But for Spider-Man, too, I was like, I didn't. No shame in that.

No shame in that. I didn't. I was like, I went against Craven maybe like 40 times. And then Ben was like, you know you could have turned down the same. I say it just for your own good. And I should have. It's not all dark. works all the time. You know that, right?

No. Yeah, we don't have to get good necessarily. Just have fun. Story mode all the way. But the thing is, you're not missing much with the options and settings in this game because they're barely already. That's one of the very few. And going from Outlaws with its wealth of menus and settings and accessibility options to this, it was Whiplash because there's almost no customization you can do of this game. And it's very accessible as it is. But I did just want to make the camera rotate faster, which is like one of the most basic settings. It's usually right there with invert controls.

And that wasn't there, which I guess maybe they just really want to control how you experience this game and how you view the levels. But I wanted to just have a little more camera sensitivity. Again, this is the level of nitpick that I have for AstroBusch. Also, brightness settings, those could have been a bit better. Like, because it's either HDR normal or bright. That's it.

Yes, yeah. We're really reaching. We're stretching to find something non-positive to say. about this game. It's funny, a lot of the non-positive reaction I've seen to this game is not to Astrobot, but to what it says about gaming as a whole or Sony games these days, which we were touching on earlier, but it is very backwards looking, right? You're relishing the history of PlayStation and Sony published games, and deep cuts galore. There will be a lot of collectibles here that you have no idea what they're from. They did their research here, but it's very much from

previous console generations. And so I've seen some people saying, well, where are the iconic characters from the PS5 era or from this generation? And I would suggest that Astro is one of them, frankly. Astro has taken his, it's their place. I don't want to misgender Astrobot if Atrobat has a gender, but they've taken their place, I would say, among the great Sony mascots of all time, because these games are that good. And the character, despite being simple, is just so incredibly endearing, but it does make you think about, well, this used to be sort of the flagship game and style of game, and we don't have that so much anymore. And you can see it, you were talking about Crash Bandicoot, Steve, and there was a report a couple weeks ago

that there had been a Crash 5 in development by Activision and that it was going to be a crossover Spiro and Crash game. And there are rumors of a Spiro resurgence and reboot as it is. But this game reportedly got canceled in favor of another multiplayer live service money machine, right? Or at least that's the plan. And that's what Sony has gone toward. We're about to talk about one of those, right? But that's what we see more and more, whereas the games that are memorialized in Astrobot that when we saw those figurines, we had this little flash of nostalgia.

Oh, wasn't that so great? Mostly single player adventures. Those are often what stick with you. And so it's sort of sad to see a little less of that these days. I really wonder if the rapid failure and seemingly, at least critical darling of success that Astrobot had versus what Concord was, I wonder if Sony's going to learn anything in the coming weeks and months. 100%. I hope they will, because it really feels like they might not.

It's nice for them to have one thing go really, really horrible. And then one thing go really, really well. And then just be like, hmm, okay, let's weigh these apples and oranges and see what we might need. But again, I think it's that thing of like, okay, maybe we look back at this, not even maybe so much the PS5 era, but like just this console generation as a whole. If we don't think about like graphical fidelity or performance about how like Xbox was kind of like behind pace with a lot of current gen platforms and, you know, the switch while it is a beautiful. beautiful potato, it is still a potato, you know, very long in this tooth. It feels a little underwhelming

because you have this like sort of catalog and historical like feels a bit grandiose, but like the historical tome that is Astrobot and its PlayStation brand legacy really shows you the wasted potential on display because you look at like, oh wow,

we haven't gotten a bloodborne in a long time. We haven't gotten something like an ape escape. haven't gotten something like a good Nathan Drake or something like that in a good minute. And we've been seeing a lot of other things that either fall by the wayside or make it so that we have to like either milk it for all of its worth. And that staying power, the things that we remember and the things that we really covet are the things that we see an astrobot. And it's really not there that often. Yeah, and I don't want to be too back in our day and doom and gloom about this. There's no shortage of great games.

I think games on the whole are probably better than they've ever been. But you're getting those maybe from different sources. You're getting that kind of game from indie developers, let's say, and they're coming through. But I would still like to see this with the first party polish and the AAA trappings at times. And this is inherent in nostalgia. It's bittersweet. It's kind of melancholy. We're remembering things that went before, and of course, enough time passes,

and we start to remember those things through rose-colored glasses, right? But this is the last thing I think I'll say about Astrobat, which is maybe just this game is too good for this world. But yes, it really is. It is. We did not deserve this. The game is essentially Sony SpanCon and PlayStation SpanCon. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way, because, again, it's a celebration of the brand. Now, if you don't have the game and,

experience that we have, where you're remembering playing all of these games from decades ago, that might not land the same way for you. That might not be part of the appeal. And I don't think it's an impediment to enjoying this game either. But to me, that's like what the whole plot is based around the collectibles, all of the unlocks and everything. It's all based around this monument to PlayStation's past. And to me, that was sort of almost separate to the appeal of this game. It was a nice little touch, right? I got that little thrill when I saw some of these characters too. But if you strip that out entirely, I would probably enjoy this game just as much. Yeah. And in fact, there were sometimes where I thought the PlayStation Easter eggs maybe went a bit

too far, right? Like the entire game is constructed around reassembling a PlayStation 5 console. And there are certain levels, as you mentioned, Jess, that are not just nods to previous games, but are basically cover versions of them. Right? So you've got a god of war-inspired world, bot of war, and then you have your uncharted level, and you have your horizon level and on and on.

And those were fun, but there were times where I felt like Astrobot can stand on its own, right? This is a standalone IP and property. I don't even necessarily need to see it doing its homage to this other game I liked. Just continue to give me the, just unalloyed, like, Astrobot originality, right?

So I almost feel like for the sequel, which is inevitable, free Team Asobi. And I'm not saying they mind, you know, making this PlayStation-centric game. But I would be happy to see their next game, not be Sony spot con. It's not a pack-in game anymore. It's not a tech demo. Just let them spread their wings and develop their own universe and be free, unburdened by what has been. And in a weird way, I feel like that's going to be. be a bit of a reassessment of what Astrobot is now?

Because with this in Playroom, that's more or less what this was and what this property was. Can you separate the Sony from the PlayStation? Yeah. But like at the end of the day, like, you're kind of like, it's like you're watching an ad for Amazon Prime while you're watching Amazon Prime. I'm like, I already bought it. Right. Like, I'm already here. Like it's not going to.

Yeah. But I think I like it because I'm like, it's so cute to see a little Kratos little robot man. Oh, yeah. I was like, this is so adorable. It just, it feels like a Lego game, right? Yeah, it does. And I like Lego games. So this, you know, not a big complaint, but it just feels.

Looking forward to that Horizon Lego game, by the way. Very much so. We got a sneak peak of it here. It didn't really bother me too much as someone that didn't play a lot of those past games or just watch people play it. That I was like, this was kind of fun. It's cute. I understand that you want to put another level of like, if you're getting coins and doing all these things, you got to collect something. It's still also the mascot.

So it's like, I know that Mario doesn't invite every other character, but it's also like most of the Mario games I frequent. involve the other characters, or at least one or the other one. So, and I was like, I get it being like, if this is a mascot for PlayStation, we're going to make a game, we should probably do some little nods to the other PlayStation games. Because if you just have Astrobot there, it's like, yeah, I'm going to introduce my friends that are also PlayStation games. Right.

I thought the game was really cute. The one thing we didn't talk about, which is like immediately as soon as it happened, I was like, oh, I'm already in, is to get your little friends that are other little bots, you got to kick them in the butt. That's true. The only way they present the little fun. Yeah. And you kick up.

And then you go, ye. Why did Jack from Jack and Dexter need to do that? I loved it. I was like, oh, this is my game. I was like, you got to kick your friend in the butt. And then when you go back to your plan, you're like, I need 60 of you to help me get over this bridge. Well, give me more Astro as far as I'm concerned. So there's no sign of new Sly Cooper on the horizon, no Jack and Dexter.

According to the insomniac leaks, maybe no ratchet and clank till 2020. They have their hands full with Marvel. I'm going to be dead, but then. I hope not. I am. I'm going to be 80. Let's hope we get multiple Astro games during that span while we're waiting for some of these other platformers to return.

Are we going to be anticipating it now? Oh, yeah. I feel like not a lot of, my roommate was like, I did not know this game until you started playing it and then the reviews came in. Yeah. Well, I think it was a surprise for a lot of people. As I was saying, like, if you were watching closely, we were building to this, but it did kind of come out of nowhere because there hasn't been

a fully fledged non-V-R Astrobot game before. And it was announced just a few months ago. And so it was almost a surprise drop. And so, yes, now the expectations are high. And so we have to play the whole, will it live up to the original Astrobot? When the video came out, the little teaser trailer for it, came out with all the other games. So no one was really like, oh, this one little game. I think we came and talked about it.

And I was like, I'm very excited. for this Astrobot game. I don't think if anybody's talking about it. It's so cute. No, I was ready. We were on there. We were hyping it, but I don't know if everyone was. People who played previous Astrobots, they knew. If you know, you know about Astrobot, but now everyone knows. And hopefully you have bought Astrobot. It is the kind of game you can only say so much about, and it's only so entertaining to hear people say, it's great over and over and over again. I guess it's better than hearing people see. It sucks over and over again, but it still can get monotonous. you just have to see and hear and feel it.

Because once you play, this is a game that is kind of made for a demo or a free trial period because you get your hands on one level of this thing. And you're not going to want to put it down. So if we were handing out 12s on a button mash equivalent of the midnight meter, the mash meter, this would deserve one. Speaking of the Midnight Boys, Pew, Pew, a couple quick programming teases before we switch gears here on Wednesday, the boys will be conducting a draft of the whitest movies. Stop. Steve, why do you let them do this?

It's my first home game. Yeah, this is Steve's moment. He certainly has some insight into this topic. Steve, he won an only home game on the screen. You're still going to lose because I feel like you're different. They're going to choose like authentically very like white movies.

And you're going to be like, this one's white, but it's not like the one that POCC has the whitest one. Oh my God. Why are you letting them do it? authentic. Don't show me to change me. I'm going to be tuned in. And I'm going to be mad at which ones you guys choose.

By it in your time. All those black heroes of fandom drafts just awkwardly playing along, drafting Georgia Will Forge. I was waiting in the wings. Yeah. This is your time to shine. That'll be all for this week on the Ringiverse feed. But over on House of Art, it's a double dose of Tolkien Talk on Tuesday.

Mal and Joe will be breaking down Lord of the Rings a musical tale. And on Friday, they'll be diving deep. Helmsdeep into Rings of Power episode five. As for Buttonmash, we'll be back later this month to discuss another big game, The Legend of Zelda, Echoes of Wisdom. And as always, you can contact us at Ringiversegaming at gmail.com. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows Winter is the MVP and make it a mess.

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That's Clinic with a K. LinneKKKKK is registered 5.1-1c3 nonprofit. This episode is brought to by Paramount Plus. Beth and Rip are back in a new series, Dutton Ranch. Kelly Riley and Cole has a return, and this time they're taking on Texas. As Beth and Rip build a future together, peace will have to wait

as they face corruption, danger, and a ruthless rival ranch, willing to protect its secrets at all costs. Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives. Dutton Ranch starring Colehouser, Kelly Riley, Annette Benning, and Ed Harris now streaming on Paramount Plus. Now, let's speed run through some news, and let's do a little tale of two games

because it was the best of launches, it was the worst of launches. Blackmeth Wukong, developed and published by Game Science, came out for PS5 and PC on August 20th. Concord, developed by Firewalk Studios and published by Sony, came out on PS5 and PC on August 23rd. There, the similarities end. And partly, I mean that these aren't similar games. Wu Kang is a single-player third-person action RPG with some souls-like elements.

What doesn't have souls-like elements these days or something that passes for souls-like elements, inspired by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. Whereas Concord is, or should I say was, we were already speaking in past. tense about Concord, a multiplayer first-person hero shooter with an original sci-fi setting. Mostly, though, when I say that the similarities end there, I mean that their debuts could not have gone any differently. Wukong immediately broke records on Steam with almost two and a half million concurrent players right after it launched, passing Pal World, how short its reign was to post the second

highest player peak of all time behind only PubG back in 2018. It more than doubled Cyberpunk 277's record for the most concurrent players of a single player game on Steam. It went on to sell 10 million copies in its first three days and 18 million copies

in its first two weeks. And as we speak, almost three weeks after its release, there's still almost a million people playing it at times on Steam. And then there's Concord, which sold something like 25,000 copies in its first week.

at 697 concurrent players on steam. Not that's bad. Not 697,000. 697. As we speak, there are still four people playing it.

This is a live, real-time look, which is impressive persistence on those four people's part because the server shut down on September 6th. That's so funny. I hope those four people are having fun. Dude, are they just leaving their computer? They're just leaving it running?

There might be, yeah, there's a couple of, like, insane stories from people that were, like, in the throes of, like, those last few days online. Like, people were trying to, like, platinum the game. Yes, and three days, so they were, like, jumping off of cliffs to get experience points. Exactly. But anytime server shut down on a game, there are people who, like, hardwire their 3DS to a, like, in-interruptible power source so that they will never log off. We should all log off sometimes, but some people, it's a point of pride. There's a guy that is doing that with Fortnite. He's been playing on the same Fortnite by himself since, like, 2014.

Yeah, a lot of endurance efforts in gaming. The game was delisted for sale. All sales were refunded. So there's that at least. Just disaster. Now, Steve, you played Black Myth Wukon. So let's start there. Can you give us just a brief overview of the game?

Yes. To me, this was everything that I kind of wanted a soul's like to be because it isn't one. And it made me also want to be like, I'll get off of Soulslikes in a minute, but like it makes me really want Soulslikes to kind of like go away from the public consciousness for a couple of years because as influential and as like iconic and seminal as those games are and will continue to be, it kind of like makes a framework for certain games that are kind of ill-defined. And that becomes the base level genre that we,

ascribe to games that sort of look like this but aren't. I would quickly not call Blackmun Thu Kong a Soulslike and wouldn't attribute it to that. But then every time I find somebody asking me, it was like, well, how hard is it? Like, well, what do you do if you die? Like, what is it doing? And I'm like, okay, well, the bosses are pretty hard.

Like, you can find ways. And, like, it started to sound like one. But, like, I had a good time with it. And I wasn't gritting my teeth after every sort of, like, there's not a character sheet. There's not anything that I have to like, you know, look up a guide for or grind out to unreasonable degrees. I think the best sort of thing that I can say about Black with Bukon is that it's taken everything that the action genre and the action RPG genre has and has kind of stripped it down to something that is both very visually distinct and impressive, while also being something that's incredibly challenging. and unique.

And I think the better thing that comes out of this is that the Chinese gaming industry is just got like the biggest wind in its sales ever. It's like kind of a coronation for an entire continent's level of production

from what a game can be because we haven't seen this level of success from another game's company almost ever. And to come like from a fairly unknown studio in China, is incredible. And by the way, that impressive Steam count, not even counting Chinese users

because that's a different platform altogether. So those numbers are probably insane. This is an unprecedented level of success that I'm really, really excited about. Yeah, I think, well, there are ways you can play it that are not on Steam, but I think it would count some of those players at least, right? And I do think that accounts for a lot of that, because if we're talking about the industry impact or ramifications here. So, okay, it's a good game. It's fun. It puts some fresh twists on familiar formula, but why is it a powerhouse and a sensation? I think it probably has reminded us that there are a lot of people in China. So maybe that's pretty obvious, but if you can capture that market, then your game is going to be big. And actually, if you look at

the player counts, I think that conveys that because Monday morning Eastern time, I looked at the Steam charts, and Wu Kong was the second most popular game behind only Counterstrike 2 at that time, with more than 900,000 people playing. As we speak on Monday afternoon Eastern time, there are about 120,000 people playing. Still a lot, but huge percentage falloff. The difference is afternoon where we are is the middle of the night in China. So still, there were figures I saw in the early days after this game came out that 90-something percent or high 80s percent of people who had purchased it were in China. That has fallen, though, as time has gone on and word has built, and the word of mouth is happening. And everyone's like, well, this game is a sensation. Why are millions of people

playing this? Maybe I should check it out. So now it's becoming more popular in the West, which suggests that I think it will have a long tail, too, because that initial flurry of millions of people playing it as some of those people fall off, others have joined them. But also it's the fact that this isn't a live service game. This isn't something that is meant to be sustained. This is a thing that you're like, okay, we purchase it, we play it. There isn't going to be a season pass or drawn out DLC or a roadmap or anything like that.

It's kind of won and done. And that level of success for essentially something that we can equate to a god of war is really impressive because we got that many people playing it for a very long time and it'll continue to be that way and it isn't the size of an Eldon ring. It isn't that big.

You still can, like, you still get like 30 hours worth of playtime. It's a very substantial level of time that you're putting into this, but it's going to be, you're going to finish it at some point and then you're probably going to hang it up on the shelf for a little bit.

Like you'll want to replay it. But I think that level of success also states for the fact, that like people also still kind of want isolated single player experiences, maybe not as short as Astrobot, but still. Yeah, right. And I think it also goes to show, as you said, Steve, it's not the kind of hit that we've seen for the most part come out of China, which has been a hotbed of mobile gaming, of course, and Genshin Impact and on and on, right? Lots of viral, extremely popular gotcha type games or microtransaction-type-powered mobile games. This is AAA.

polished super expensive, big budget in development for several years. And of course, it's not just that, but it is a distinctly Chinese game and that it's drawing on Chinese culture and tradition and folklore. And of course, the people there have responded to it very strongly. And so if this is then a bellwether, this is a sign of things to come. I mean, people have been saying China's a sleeping giant for centuries in various historical contexts. You can say the same, maybe about AAA game development. If this leads to copycats and imitators and spin-offs, there's already an expansion seemingly in the works for Wukong. And we've seen that with South Korea pumping out a lot of great AAA kind of single-player games in the last year or two. So we've seen kind of a global

expansion of where good games are coming from and this kind of game with this kind of production value. So it's hard to take any one game and draw really vast conclusions about an entire industry or the future of gaming from it. But this would be one of them. And this seems like the sort of game that you would probably be into, Jess. I hadn't had a chance to check it out myself because I've had my hints full with outlaws and Asterobot, but I'm going to get to it. So when we're down to 500,000 people playing, you know, maybe then I will be 500,000 and 1. I want to be one of the four that's on Concord still. Can I propose a quick thought experiment for us?

Yeah. If the West, if America was to make its cultural myth, Black, Miss Wu Kong equivalent, what would be our, like, story of Palis? Just like the Oregon Trail? No, no, no, no. I mean, like, do we make Paul Bunyan a soul-like character like black myth? It would be the most boring shit. It would be so boring.

What would be, though? I guess it would have to be those myths, the fairy tales, like, of, like, of, like, Like a distinctly American story. Because like that is inherently like or. Are we talking about? Yeah. Are we talking about. Yeah.

Are we, that's the thing is that's why I'm like, I think if we did like the actual linear like what we did, it'd be boring and also horrible to play. Right. Right. But if we did like the, if we made it mythical.

Yeah. Should we make it whimsical? Well, this backfire. Let me write it up. What epic journey can we make? I don't know. It's just us building railroads.

forcing POCs to do it. Oh, no. That would be a horrible game, but I promise I'll bring the Willie Walker Wimsy to it. I would imagine. Yeah. Well, we'll brainstorm. We'll think that one over.

But Steve, you've played Wukong as either of you, or did either of you, because I guess the option is no longer available to you, played Concord. I did. I played the beta. Oh. Okay.

Yeah, I played the open beta, and it looked very pretty. Oh, my God. That's not a good sign. It played fine. Is it just like another, it just felt like another shooter game just in space? It more or less did.

And I think like the types of abilities that you had could have been fun. But I think that I think the bigger problem with Concord because of the game that it seemingly was emulated, I'm like, okay, so is this like a abilities based call of duty like? Is this an Overwatch thing? Do we have like sort of hard counters or certain characters that would counteract the ability? of another character or something like that. And it just kind of seemed bland and out there. But I don't think that nothing is inherently bad about it.

It didn't feel bad to play. But if it's not different than the others and why we'd try to do it. And it costs money to play it. Exactly. And it certainly is in an ecosystem that it's a game that clearly nobody wanted. Because anybody that can see this is just like, well, what makes this different from literally any other thing that I'm playing? Again, are free.

That's the only, that's also why I'm not playing it. A $40 price tag for that. I'm not paying $40 to play another shooter game when I have three on my PC right now for free. Yeah, I can't. I can't abide by that. And that's how everyone feels clearly. And it's sort of sad. I feel bad for Firewalk who spent like eight years making this game.

And then it just lands with a thud and it is gone. But I think that timeline is instructive eight years. I think this was something that was spawned in the wake of the success of Overwatch. That's so sad. Everyone was saying, let's make our own Overwatch. And everyone did. And if you are, you all know how that went. Yeah, well, if you're the 20th Overwatch like to come along,

there's just not going to be room in the market for you unless you're adding some unique hook. Exactly. And you could see, right? Like people kind of got the ick from this game when it was first shown. Not that it looked bad, just that it looked generic, just that it looked like the other options out there. And it's hard to fault the firewalk people for, I guess, being slower to the gate. but that's ultimately what it comes down to. If this game games out several years ago, maybe it's a hit.

But as it is, people are pot committed to whatever game they are playing, right? And whether it's Overwatch or Overwatch 2 or they're just continuing to play Fortnite or they're playing Valerent, whatever it is. They're Counterstrike 2, Apex Legends, maybe they're call of duty people and they're just in the call of duty ecosystem where they're picking up the new call of duty every year. And that's that. There's this brand loyalty. and we know that it takes a lot to get someone to switch from a multiplayer game that they've poured hundreds of hours into and maybe they have a clan and community and friend group that they play with.

How are you going to get everyone to switch over unless maybe it's free to play? And then you can say, okay, we'll give this a shot. But if it's 40 bucks, no, not happening. I can't convince my friends on Discord that I play Valerie and Fortnite with every day to go over to a game that's $40 that they've never played before. Yeah. And I can't. And stick with it.

And stick with it. I can't underline the most of what you say, like, it needs, there's a million versions of Overwatch, there's a million versions of these shooter games, 100%. It's the unique hook that you got to get. And if you did not grab that unique hook, it's like, what are you doing? And what I'm curious about is when they announced that this game is going to be going offline, everybody's going to be getting their refunds, and we're going to be looking at options of how to better deliver this experience to other players. Do we read that as this game is dead forever? or do we think that there's an actual way to come back from this?

Because the amount of level of investment that this has put into it, the amount of work that people have put into this, and the amount of backing from Sony that they've needed to return on investment for, is it kind of too late to pull the plug? Or do they kind of just have to barrel through and see what else they can do with it? Yeah, I think they probably try to pivot to free to play. Just take it off the market for a while. Hope people forget, hope the bad taste phase.

and then try to transform it to something else. And we've seen this with some other games like Foam Stars, right? That kind of locked and now it's going free to play. Will it work? I don't know, but will they try to make it work? I would think so just because there's so much time and effort and money invested in these things. And again, I feel bad. There's a lot of lore in this game that looks cool and the UI is pretty snappy,

but that's about it. And we've just seen so many games come and try to conquer the market and then find that it's too crowded. It's just saturated. You see that with Ubisoft and X-Defiant. It's just really hard to break into this market where you have these Titans that all establish themselves at the dawn of the Battle Royale, Moba, hero shooter era.

And now how do you displace them? And so I guess you could take away from this where we're not going to see any more games like this at all, or if we are going to see them, then they're going to be free to play and they're going to be micro-transaction powered. And their downsides to that, of course. You could also look at Sony's contrasting results with Concord and Astrobot and say,

just make more Astrobots as if it's that easy. Then again, I guess the counter to that would be Hell Divers too, which has been an enormous success for Sony and is also always online games as a service never-ending kind of game, except that I guess it does have the unique or at least unusual hook. It's PVE. it's not PVP. We've seen so much player versus player, but Hell Divers has the hook of the collaborative community aspect

and the always updating and the adding new stuff. And so maybe that differentiated enough that people were willing to pay to play that. It really does feel unprecedented, this level of immediate cutting of the cord for something that, by all accounts, from my opinion, like, oh, they're going to be sticking with this for a minute. And like, just to rip the. rug out from under us is

it really is sad and it really is a testament to how much they expected for this and how poorly it delivered on that. I really hope that they take from this again, I want to say it again, the whiplash that Sony is probably feeling in their pocketbooks from

Concord to Astrobot after this. I don't know the sales numbers for Astrobot, but I'm assuming it's at least better than Concord. And to think that like... Cost effective too because of lengths of development and the size of the team. And I think that that's kind of the bad harbinger that the industry is kind of eating itself with these live service games because they will eventually become less profitable and more

trouble than they're worth financially on these devs and on these things because it's going to hinder the development of things like an astrobot. And the overall investment of bringing us something that is new and what people might want because you don't get a blackmuth Wukong in a market that is, or in like a studio or a marketplace that isn't willing to at least divert into something that they think can be successful, rather than sticking with a thing that is like, well, let's see how much money we can milk out of this.

And how much money, if we can throw more money in, then we'll clearly get more money back. That's not going to be the case anymore. Yeah. And there's another challenger always entering the arena. Deadlock is coming. Marvel rivals is coming. So it's a survival of the fittest situation.

And it is sort of sad and not everyone can succeed. So you just have to hope that you won't flop this hard. But really, no one flops this hard. If they just make it free, I'm sure it would be better. Like, I would play it if it's free. I will, easier to get people more invested or at least try it. And that's just what they need to do if they're going to do it. I hope they're not doing, they're not the equivalent of like what freaking, is it

Warner Brothers with David Zasloff? They're just like going to delete it. They're just going to be like, whatever. That would be insane. I hope they come out with it later just for free and like we start over again because that is a lot of money spent a lot of people's time just lost to just lost just take it away. That's insane. There are a lot of surprise sensations these days and sometimes you can see them coming because everyone's wish listing them or whatever it is. But sometimes they take you by surprise.

People were hyped for Blackmun, Wukon, but I don't know that anyone thought it was going to be this sort of juggernaut. But sometimes, you know, a power world kind of comes out of nowhere for most people. Other times, though, you can see a flop coming from a ways away. And I think of Suicide Squad, for instance, which is not a good game, but had good elements and obviously a story developer. But you could just see there was a backlash to every reveal, everyone saying, why would I play this? What's the hook here?

And then it comes out and it is a failure. And people anticipated that. And you could see the same sort of slow motion car crash happening. here with Concord. But what are you going to do eight years in? I guess what they're going to do is take it off the market and hope they can reimagine it somehow. All right, we want to give you some very quick takes on movie and TV trailers. Since we've been talking about PlayStation, let's just spend a moment on another coming attraction. We've discussed one big win and one big loss for Sony, and the company seems to be making one more big bed. On Tuesday morning, Sony will be giving a technical

presentation, which is widely assumed to be about its long-rumored mid-generation PlayStation hardware update, the PS5 Pro. Again, we're recording before that, so we're still in the realm of speculation here, but perhaps we will finally find out how many terraflops we're talking about. I guess that's what Concord did. It terra-flopped. I wasn't thrilled that these mid-gen refreshes became a thing last generation, because it was nice to be primarily a console gamer and just worry about one new piece of plastic every seven years, one new expensive. piece of plastic. I wasn't thrilled that these mid-gen refreshes became a thing last generation because it was nice to be primarily a console gamer and just worry about one new

expensive piece of plastic every seven years. So I didn't get a PS4 pro. I didn't get an Xbox 1X. Jess, you're more of a PC player than I am these days. So you're used to upgrading hardware. Is there anything Sony could announce about a PS5 pro that would make you want one? No. But the reason I'm also saying, know is because my PlayStation is fine. My PlayStation is fine. Like I usually go to my PC. Like until it gets to that part

where my PlayStation is like screaming at me, that's when I'm going to change it. But my roommate is that person that does always update the consoles. And I don't know how. I think he always gets like the first. He has which, okay, we're not going to get too into it. He does have the PlayStation the handheld. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, the

streaming deck. And let me tell you, he abuses it. He loves it. He is the one. He is the person that bought it in is actually doing really well with it. Yeah, it's glorified remote plays what it is. And he just wants to lay on his back, to be honest. I mean, I feel like me too. Sure.

But yeah, I'm not going to get it. I'm trying to think, I have more reason to get the newest switch than I do to get the newest PlayStation. You know what I'm saying? It's going to be a no for me. It's going to be a no for me. It's going to be a no for me, dog. And I'm very curious to know what they're going to be,

how they're going to be like selling this and spinning this. That it's smaller. Well, not even, not even so much form factor, but like. Yeah, a slim is one thing, but a souped up version. Yeah, this is. truly going to like upgrade a visual fidelity experience. I feel like we've all kind of collectively

been like graphics are fine. Yeah, they're fine. They're fine. They're fine. That's why I'm like if you give me 60 frames a second, like probably 4K upscale depending on the game. Like if it runs well, I don't care how it looks, frankly. Because I know that PlayStation is

capable of making gorgeous games. Yeah. And gorgeous exclusive games that they'll eventually throw on PC anyway. But it It doesn't matter to me when you have exclusives that are kind of few and far between, but I would like it to throw it up on my TV rather than play it on my desktop on PC. That's nice. But ultimately, if I want something to be played on my TV, on my PS5, it's going to be for ease of use and for looking at the best that it possibly can be on my big TV. I guess you could maybe sell that to me.

but anything that's more of a drastic upgrade that you're talking to me about is going to make me feel like an idiot for buying your console in the first race. So you can't do that to your base set customers. So it can't be that good of an upgrade to begin with. It shouldn't be. It really shouldn't.

That's why I'm like, I genuinely think it's only going to be in like size and shape. Because I'm like, yeah, my PlayStation right now is on its side because I'm tired of it standing up and it's very cumbersome to take anywhere. Right, exactly. So the only thing that you could actually sell me that would make me buy something like that

is a PlayStation 6. And that's not going to be happening for probably another five to 10 years. 100%. Yeah, the problem, of course, is that you can't make games that will run on only the most powerful version of the system.

So, yes, you can have faster frame rates and loading and fancier resolutions and lighting and upscaling, but it's going to be a pretty incremental improvement in this day and age. And if you've been waiting all this time to get a current-gen system, and they announce PS5 Pro,

and it's a better, faster, fine. You finally decided to take the plunge now. I'd spring for the fancier one, but we're, what, three-ish years away from a new cycle and a PlayStation 6, potentially, three, four years. It's a tough sell to spend several hundred dollars on a new one if you have some version already. Plus, it feels like this generation got such a slow start because of the pandemic and the chip shortages and the lack of next gen exclusives until pretty recently. So it's like, already, Really? You want me to get a new one? Mostly, it's just FOMO for me because I'll know other people are playing a slightly snazier version of the same game, and that'll bug me a bit, but not enough to drop hundreds of dollars making that problem go away. The good news for the one console suffices per generation or one version of each console, people like us, is that it seems like Microsoft isn't making a series X, X, or whatever they would call it, X, X, L or whatever. Yeah. And despite all those Switch,

Pro rumors, Nintendo is just skipping straight to Switch 2. Yeah. So Sony is sort of alone here in doing the refresh, if that's, in fact, what this is, and we'll see if they can sell us on it. But it's going to be tough, I think, to make us take the plunge for this thing. And, you know, if Microsoft keeps not getting games like Black Myth Wukong at launch and not having as many exclusives as promised, then I guess having a newer, even more powerful version of the PlayStation only extends Sony's lead in the,

head-to-head Sony versus Microsoft race, which, by the way, Black Wukong is selling consoles, selling PlayStation's in China, too. It's a system seller. So maybe it lengthens its already significant lead when it comes to the base, the install base for the current generation of consoles. But if you're already in, it would take a lot to convert me. But we'll see, wow me, Sony, show us what you got. All right. In the last couple of weeks, we've been bombarded by teasers and trailers for upcoming video game movies and TV adaptation. We got a lengthy look at Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which comes out in December, as well as the first teaser for a Minecraft movie, which comes out next April. We also got teasers or trailers for Netflix's Tomb Raider and The Legend of Lara Croft and the second and sadly last season of Arcane, as well as Prime Video's video game adaptation anthology series Secret Level, which come out in October, November, and December, respectively.

we will probably be covering all of these in some form, either on ButtMash or elsewhere on the Ringiverse, so we can keep this quick. Jess, you did a video breakdown of the Sonic trailer, right? So what stood out to you? Dude, I'm excited for that. That Sonic was great. That Sonic trailer was amazing.

Were you guys not stunned by it? What I need, and this is, I think this proves this more in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and I think it should lean in farther in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. It's a game. Sonic is amazing, Because not only the games, but mostly as a cultural internet currency of memes and lore. Oh, I'm going to kill you.

No, no. It's so, it's so aware of itself because the games haven't exactly been like stellar, but it's beloved and lauded. And the lore is something that's actually loved. And I think the fact that we have, in Sonic 2, we had a Sonic eating a chili dog and skateboarding. and flying a plane with tails. Not only are they indicative of the games, but they're also indicative of the audience that they're going to be

like catering to, not only for kids, but for us as well. Main question being, if they give Shadow a gun, I think they know exactly what they're doing. It's going to be the world's best meme. The thing is, they did not put that in the trailer at all.

No. No in that third act. He's going to pull out a gun. Does Shadow get a gun? Ben Lindberg, yes or no. I wonder. I'd say no. I'd say...

It'd be funny if he gets one and just, like, throws it me. It would be funny if he gets one and just, like, I don't need this. If he holds a single pistol and just like, nah. I don't see shadow packing in this movie. That'd be so funny, though. I would say, I mean, it does seem like they're drawing pretty heavily on the lore from, say, Sonic Adventure 2. And so the shadow heads are happy because we haven't seen Shadow in quite a while or not the in-depth,

nuanced, complex portrayal of Shadow. And I'm laughing, but there is a lot to that character. If you're not super into the Sonic verse, that character has a gun. Yeah, there's that. Also,

the girl that he fell in love with was shot in the lab that he was created in. Tragic origin story for Shadow. Yeah. The family. More or less. I was like, I think it's family. But no, no, 100%.

I think, and I'm so excited. Keanu Roos did such a great job. And by saying, Keanu Reeves did such a great job. I mean, I just like that they only delivered that like two lines he got in the trailer. I'm like, don't give me more. Save it for the goddamn show. I think one of the most

amazing facts that we can say about both Keanu Reeves and Jim Carrey is that Keanu Reeves was like begged to be in the Marvel universe. He was begged to do superhero films and he agreed to this. Well, it's like it's so much fun and it's so easy.

And him and Idris is so fun. That idea that you got Idris and John and one thing. Magnificent. Also, the fact that Jim Carrey has more or less sworn off acting except for these movies. Must be fun. They must be having the time of their lives. That's those Jim Carrey move I've ever heard in my life and I respect him for it. Yeah.

But yeah, very excited for Sonic. So excited following Knuckles 2 the TV show because that was kind of okay. Also, we're about to see, as far as box office numbers, we're about to see Snow White get absolutely trounced by Sonic 3. That's not fair because Snow White has been like Concord, just always going down. Oh my God. They're going to put that on streaming in two weeks. As soon as she was like, yeah, it's kind of crazy, stupid movie.

I don't know why I was a part of it. Like, we all were like, okay, our anticipation for this movie is content. We're just reuniting the dynamic duo of Keanu and Idris from Cyberpunk. Give it to me. Give it to me. This is great. Yeah. Look, you would think that it would be the big conclusion, the final movie of the trilogy,

but obviously they have ambitions here. Oh, no, no, no, no. The Sonic Multiverse, right? So this won't be the end of anything. Yeah. But it should be exciting. Now, the Minecraft movie. coming out next year.

And there was a backlash to this trailer that almost resembled the realistic Sonic backlash to the first version of the... I got bad news for those people. Yeah, I think just the realistic live action animation melding sometimes throws people for a loop. I think that's what they're going for here. And I think that it's going to make a billion dollars

because every kid plays Minecraft. If they're not playing Fortnite, they're playing Minecraft. And I don't know that the quality, control needs to be quite as high for your average nine-year-old to go see this movie in the way that Super Mario Brothers movie made a billion plus dollars. I can see this being kind of a paint-by-numbers Minecraft movie and also making a gazillion dollars. Now, if they lean into sort of a Jumanji tone to it, which it seems like that's what I'm

picking up from what the trailers land down here. The game is real, quote unquote. Right. Then it could be kind of cool and not just a let's cash in on this ultra, ultra famous property. So I have moderately high hopes that this won't be terrible, but I understand that people are disturbed by the sheep looking like the sheep looks. I think so there's been, obviously this has been like universally hated by most adults.

By people who are probably older than the target audience for this movie. Yeah. But also for the ones that are like, like also clamoring for the sake of like, you need to ugly sonic this and like go back to the drawing board and read it. I'm like, that's probably fundamentally changing the entire movie rather than just spending a couple million to redesign one character. And that's not going to happen. So what I would hope that this movie can be is fun. Yeah.

But it's not that inspiring. Okay. Is the Jack Black charm offensive starting to wear beat you down? Because I really start, I'm starting to think I'm like, I saw Kung Fu Panda 4 and I'm like, I was immune to that movie. And it used to be just the fact that Jake. And I'm like, so I think the fact that Jack Black is in something is actually now no longer. Oh my God. But also I'm like, maybe he is for children, like little children now.

He is. And that's why he left Tenacious D. That is why he knows like, oh, this is my audience. I can't be doing all this like crazy stuff anymore. please don't remind me of what I am. It is his audience. Like, there are families that literally will see Jack Black's name and buy the ticket for their kids. And that's a kid's movie.

And that's what I'm like, I mean, good for him to get that. That's going to be the rest of his career. And it's always going to get him a role in the movie. But I am as, I think maybe because we're in our 30s, I am tired of it. I am tired of this stick. I think you having to get Jason Mamoa was like the off for that. Like that whole could have gone to Dwayne the Rock Johnson. And I would have been like, I'm not watching this movie.

Right. Yeah, we've seen that movie before. Exactly. But because you got Jason Momoa this time, I'm like, oh, it's a different big-bodied stupid hymbo. And I'm like, oh, am I going to watch this? If it does give me that joy that, like, Jumanji kind of does, then I will probably go see it. But I will say, it's going to take someone else going to see it to tell me whether or not. And that's the thing.

I have zero affiliation or loyalty to Minecraft itself. So I'm like, all right, well, when the pig village gets attacked by the zombies, I'm not going to be like, oh, there. I think this might be, I think the best case scenario, because I was over at my friend's house who also has a bunch of kids, so we watched a bunch of kids movies. I think the best case scenario for this could be Angry Birds. I was going to say, you're talking Angry Birds. I feel like it's Angry Birds because it's a mobile game that I never really played at all, but apparently took the World by Storm and still was like a decent kids movie. But you could make something from that because the lore in Angry Birds was non-existent. It's a mobile game.

But there is too much lore in Minecraft to be playing. with. And it sucks because most of the people that are playing Minecraft on Twitch are like 38. And so it's like, oh, yeah, of course they're going to denounce this film. It's made for the, it's literally made for under 10 years old. It's interesting because Minecraft has been such a phenomenon and it's been around and popular for so long that you have multiple Minecraft generations. So you have the people who played in 2010, 2011, and they're grown up now. And maybe they don't respond well to this trailer, but this trailer is for the current kids who play Minecraft now.

Like that's where I'm like, all right, kids, you guys got this. Yeah, this is for you. The same for me. I'm out of all the trailers that I've dropped, I was like, this is one I'm genuinely. It's not for me. But if I'm, if I'm Mr. businessman, this absolutely makes sense. Mr. Business.

Of course, it's Minecraft. It's money. I would be like, I'd hope it makes money. It will make money. I'm hoping it makes money. I'm hoping it makes money. If I was Mr. Business, because I'm like, they're making costumes out of these characters. They're making memorabilia out of these characters.

Like, I got everything right now. All we're missing is the movie. Well, let's hope it won't be one of the top. five worst steves or the bottom five steves we'll see as for the tv we're all obviously psyched for arcane second season it's been a long wait this thing it's been gone for three years it's finally back it's the end they've got to tie it all up this trailer is looking great i just hope that it can all end in a satisfying fashion in a single season they got enough time to do it they might as well it should my fear my only fear is that i'm like oh because it's the

final season. I'm like, this probably costs, I'm assuming they're stopping now because this show probably costs so much to make. And they're like, we're not doing this again. And it takes so much time to make. Yeah, the first season took six years to make. So three years is cutting that in half. First animated

show, streaming show, to get an Emmy. So I'm like, you guys put in that work and you're getting your dues. But I know that you're like, look, we're not going to touch this, especially after Umbrella Academy. All their flops this year, they're like, Netflix is like, I'm not doing this anymore. We will never overstay our welcome when it comes Starcane and I love them for that.

And I love it for it. That trail looks great. Picking up right after where it left off is what it looks like it's doing. It's incorporating a couple new characters and those new characters like Warwick I'm so excited for. It's going to be such a fun show. That's a show that's genuinely so beautiful that I've become numb to it where I'm just like, okay, I guess you're just going to give me like every single frame of this is going to be the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen?

I was looking at every second, every frame of this trailer. And I was like, Haley Steinfeld is just ruining. not ruining, like just taking over the game for voice acting and animated roles where the animation is stretched to as far as it can go. I was looking at every type of art they were doing for this, because when they're hitting these punches and these licks in the shows, it changes the animation style and the camera work that they're doing. And I was like, this is across the Spider-Verse all over again. And Haley, Haley's Timefeld is in both of these properties. She is just, how do you get to audition for roles where you know the animation's going to be beautiful?

It's like the reverse Aquafina. She'll always get the good projects. I'm like, God damn it. I was like, and she's just making money. Sorry, I'm jealous and also envious, and I love Haley Seinfeld. It's a little of a weapon. So that's number one, Haley. I love Haley. Tomb Raider, the Legend of Harcross, that comes out earlier.

There's a lot of Tomb Raider on the way, live action, animated, games, etc. And I don't have a huge appetite for it personally, but I'm willing to watch. It's been a while since we've seen something like this. It looks different from the previous depictions we've seen on screen. There's good pedigree of people making this thing. So let's hope, right? There have been a lot of good Netflix animated shows based on video games. So maybe this will be the latest.

This one, it looks really good. I like the, I don't know what the animation studio is, but it's the same style as the Critical Role show that's on Amazon. Voxmachina. And I was like, oh, this looks really fun. It looks very violent. And I'm like, they can get to those degree of violent in blood because it's animated. I'm like, it looks, I'm going to watch it.

So as far as like the Tomb Raider live action film that we got with like Walton Goggins in it, like that was like maybe like six years ago or so. You're talking about, what's her name? Oh my God. Is not Vycander? It's not that girl. Alicia Vecander?

Is that the other? Yeah, yeah, it is. It is. So the one with Alicia Vakander, like surprisingly not a disaster, but I've always wanted a Tomb Raider adaptation that like really gave got that right and like nailed it. And it wasn't quite there. and it's never been quite there. I think this looks like this is a step in the right direction,

but maybe not as exciting as I might have liked it to be. Looks great. I'm definitely going to check it out, and that could be a pleasant surprise. Yeah, it's from Powerhouse Animation Studios, the same groups that made Castlevania and Castlevania Nocturn and Blood of Zeus, et cetera. So, yeah, I'll check out what they make. Lastly, I think the most interesting experiment here is Secret Level,

which is an anthology series based on MAPT, many different video games, 15 in this first season. Again, good pedigree of the creators coming from the people who made Love, Death, and Robots. And Prime Video and Netflix are just throwing money at video game adaptations over and over. We've seen this with Netflix. Prime Video, of course, had Fallout. Like a Dragon Yakuza is coming soon. I'm kind of concerned by how little karaoke there is in that show and how serious.

I will have so silly it seems to be. But yes. About that show, regardless of what happens. I'm hopeful, but we'll see. They're definitely going with a different. tone. We got a teaser for that back in July. But secret level, first of all, there appears to be unconfirmed Keanu in this, too, in that there's an armored core episode, and the trailer did not confirm Keanu, but showed an extremely Keanu-looking person would be weird if it wasn't Keanu. So,

Jack Black and Keanu just competing to be in the most video game projects, apparently. And I'm really fascinated by this because I'm into it, but I'm kind of curious about whether there's, you're will be an audience for this, whether there will be a constituency, because the thing is they're pulling from all sorts of different franchises, including hilariously Concord, which will have an episode in Secret Level, even though the game is long gone. But you've got episodes based on Spilunky and Sifu and Armored Corps and Unreal Tournament and Concord and who is the fan of all of these things, you know? So I could see people tuning in for that one episode, but are they going to watch all 15? This is something we.

We struggle with on button mash where we cover video games. So, okay, well, what does that mean? That's a huge umbrella. Big tent, lots of different franchises. People play on certain systems. They play certain franchises. They have no interest in others. So it's hard to hit on every high point.

And so that's what secret level has to do. But if it works, it's a pretty compelling concept. I think as far as when I saw Love Death of the Robots, I think that's more or less what I got out of what you described. what secret level might be. Like there were a couple of shorts that I absolutely loved and then there were others where I'm like,

ah, that wasn't okay. Like that was fine and I can appreciate the work that they put into it. But I can almost want to watch everything that comes out of this. I'm now like, Concord actually shot up the list of like my most needed to see from this show actually.

Only because this is going to like pretty much like, like ensconce this game for whatever it was going to be. At least it'll live on in some forms. No, like it's going to give us more than the game gave us. Like truly, it's going like it will actually be like this sort of thing that like in my heart of hearts, if this actually drums up a level of excitement for a story of what this game could have been, I hope that Sony actually looks at this and like, okay, maybe we could actually take notes.

and if they were to ever go back to the drawing board on something like this, if a story is actually the way to look at this, maybe that could be a thing that turns it around. I'm actually fascinated about, again, the level of unprecedented level of exposure that Concord's going to get after the fact. All right. Just before we started recording,

we got some sad news. The world did. And that's the passing of James Earl Jones at 93 years old. Now, we could devote an entire podcast to that. Maybe elsewhere on the ringer, others will. And maybe The Midnight Boys can discuss this at greater length later. We're already running up against our time here. But we just briefly wanted to salute James Earl Jones, bid him goodbye, thank him for his many contributions to the things that we have loved and covered.

Not video games specifically. I don't think the first line of the Obit will be that he did voices in live action, cutscenes in commanding. and conquer Tiberian Sun necessarily. It's not number one on his credits list. But you can see in video games, he's already been missed. I was criticizing the Darth Vader voice in Star Wars Outlaws the other day. You can't really replicate him without maybe re-speaching him with his actual voice samples. And look, you know him from Star Wars and you know him from some movies that might be selected in the whitest movies draft as well.

The man had range. Field of Dreams. Shout out to that. And Big Goalong, baseball movie legend, sci-fi. movie legend. Overall legend, Shakespearean actor, he did it all in his very long and accomplished life. We will miss him any brief thoughts about James Earl Jones. Earleest, honestly, was Field of Dreams before I'd ever seen Star Wars. My dad showed me that movie and his presence was absolutely powerful. He just the line, right? He gets you build it,

they will come. We're talking about, yeah, Field of Dreams. Wonderful. Absolutely legendary career and an incredible life. I'm very happy that he lived a very thorough life. 93 is very old, but he also was like in everything, even the voice up. I remember when I lived in London like 10 years ago, he was still doing stage shows. Yeah, man. I just went and saw the ladies who lunch. Oh, okay. That

musical, I can't remember the title right now. And right now it has James Earl Jones's cousin in it. And the reason I know is James Earl Jones's cousin is because his name is James Earl Jones. Wow, okay. His name is the same as James Earl Jones. And I'm hoping, like, this is very ridiculous and just a little tad bit. I'm like, he'll live through him. He'll live through them and be like, I'm going to go on and keep doing stage

and movies as James Earl Jones III. Yeah. It's tough to say taken too soon about a 93-year-old. He lived a very truthful life. Any time would be too soon, frankly, for James Earl Jones to leave us at a guy whose career spanned Dr. Strange Love to coming to America, the sequel, which I guess maybe not the best way to go out. I guess technically. It was really well. It was credit. Darry's Vader voice in Obi-Wan Canobee. So there's that.

Anyway, he will be missed. He was loved. It's shocking, almost as shocking as it can be for a 93-year-old, because I don't know how many times like me, you have seen James Earl Jones trending on Twitter, and then you click with your heart and your throat, and then you see the Denzel memes, right? No, he's not actually gone.

And this time, he was actually gone, as we all will be one time that we're a trending topic. Most of us probably will never be a trending topic. And if we are, it'll be for bad reasons. But James Earl Jones will be missed. Absolute legend. I'm sure more to come on the ringer.com. What a wonderful website, as well as on our podcast network.

Just felt like we couldn't end without saying something. But it's tough to keep it brief when you're talking about a legend like that. Jess, Steve, I will not lie. I'd have fun talking to almost anyone about Astrobot. But I especially enjoyed talking to you too. Jess, thank you. Come back soon. Never. No, I will.

Not until James Earl Jones comes back. Oh, God. All right. I'll work on my necromancy. Yeah. Please, out of everybody in the world. I want Jamesville Jones and Prince, please. Steve, always a pleasure.

You're one of my top five podcast, Steve's. Oh, right. I need you to get to five. You're my number one podcast, Steve. Oh, thank you. There's no way another Steve. Who else is the other Steve? That other Steve.

I mean, heck that other Steve's too sorry. Thanks to Devin Rodado for producing another button mash, only five days after the last one. And to our junior Remko pal for being our pal and our senior podcast manager, stay tuned for the Midnight Boys' whitest movies draft. Mal and Joe's Lord of the Rings coverage. That's going to be an HR Deep Shadow Protocol episode if there ever was one. That will be a trending topic. Yeah, that could be the one.

Mal and Joe's Lord of the Rings coverage on House of Hour. And, of course, more mashing when we return. to discuss the experience of playing as Zelda in Echoes of Wisdom. Contact us at Ringiverse Gaming at gmail.com, and if you have a PlayStation, please play Astrobot or we won't be friends anymore. That's not true. We'll still be friends. But friends don't let friends miss out on near-perfect platformers.

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