The Ringer-Verse - 'Big Walk,' 'Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls,' and 'Beast of Reincarnation' Reactions. Plus, the Greatest Gaming Glow-Ups. | Button Mash

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

Fresh off their exhilarating cooperative playthrough of 'Big Walk,' Ben, Matt James, and Steve Ahlman hit the highlights of a busy week in gaming. (Is there any other kind?) First, a slightly self-loathing Ben comes clean about his purchase of a PS5 Pro. Then they share their impressions and reviews of 'Big Walk,' a co-op puzzler and potential Game of the Year candidate, as well as the long-awaited return of 2D tag-team Marvel fighting in 'Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls' and Pokémon maker Game Freak's new action-RPG, 'Beast of Reincarnation.' Finally, in honor of the 10th anniversary of 'No Man's Sky,' they share their all-time top five games that made major improvements after release, as well as the five games they wish had gotten glow-ups but never did. Intro (0:00)'Big Walk' (9:00)'Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls' (37:39'Beast of Reincarnation' reactions (57:31)Greatest gaming glow-ups (1:13:51)Outro (1:45:27) Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Matt James and Steve AhlmanProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg of Butmash and proximity chatting with me. Our two cherished friends and colleagues who shared a transformative co-op experience with me this week. And I'm not even talking about how transformative a co-op experience this podcast will be. First, we have Ringer Deputy Art lead Spider-Matt James. Hello, Matt. Hello. Great big walking with you and Steve this week.

Oh, fantastic. Ringer Senior Audio producer and Big Walker sipping from some big water. It's Captain Almerica himself. Steve Allman, welcome, my friend. Oh, yes, I got my steps in, and you can only hear me because I'm that much closer to you. But if I walk away, it's going to go away. How's it going, then? It does feel like I got more exercise this week than I actually did.

I got very little because we were big walking. But we were walking all over the place. That counts, right? There's got to be some sort of digital, I don't. know, conversion value there, but we were moving our fingers on the thumbsticks. That counts for something. We are indeed here to have a talk, a big talk about Big Walk, the new co-op sensation from the makers of Untitled Goose Game, and two other newly released games, which we have

also been playing, the return of 2D Marvel fighting games in Marvel token fighting souls, and Pokemon Maker Game Freaks new action RPG souls-like beast of reincarnation. And then, in honor of No Man Sky's 10th anniversary, yes, No Man Sky's turning 10 this Sunday, we will be sharing our all-time top five post-release gaming glow-ups, as well as our top-five list of games we wish had gotten glow-ups, but never did. It's not too late. But before all that, I have a confession to make. And you guys already know this, but I have to come clean to the listeners. I purchased a PS5. Pro. I did it. Oh, no, Ben. I did it. I know. I am not a proud new PS5 Pro owner. If anything, I'm an ashamed or sheepish PS5 Pro owner because it feels like an extravagant purchase. And you were wrestling with this, Steve, when you got your Steam deck. And you were saying you really like your Steam deck, but also it's conspicuous consumption. Right. And PS5 Pro, I had put off for years. And up to this point, I had resisted every kind of mid-generation console refresh,

just slims, minis, pros, X's, OLEDs. I had drawn a line. I was not going to do it. You were not going to get me to buy multiple versions of the same console until this week. And I gave in, and I'm just a dirty, dirty PlayStation pig, and I'm disgusted with myself. I don't think. Well, I'm not going to acknowledge that.

It's a little strong. He just overpaid a bit for something. That's all. I did. And here's the thing, Ben. Yeah. It may be like that type of consumption, but as of now, it's still an appreciating asset from all of our. That's the thing.

All of our considerations. This is only going to get worse. And that's the world that we live in now. And this might be the last council you ever buy. So, you know, congratulations. That might be so. Yeah, it's overpaid, but it's underpaid relative to what it'll probably cost three months for now or something. So in a way, I'm saving money. That's how I'm just the

fun of us. And we might never get a PS6. That's the thing, right? You had take two CEO Strauss Zelnick, who did announce that there is a GTA extended look trailer three premiering on Netflix, of all places, on August 27th. For all of six hours? Yeah, we will be covering it, of course, when it drops there and then on YouTube later that day. But Straszellick was also talking about how he thinks in the next three years or so, we'll all just be streaming our games and we won't need consoles anymore, which people have been saying for years, obviously, and I wrote something before this console generation about whether it would be the last console generation. Little did I know what would ensue. But people have been speculating about this for years, but the big thing

holding it back is always that people just have too much latency. There's just not enough internet connectivity in this country all over the place. There's just too much lag, not enough access. Strauss-Zelnik believes that in the next few years that problem will be solved. I'm somewhat skeptical, but there is more incentive for that to happen, given that consoles keep getting more and more and more and more expensive. So if we could just not have them at all, of course, this was partly in him more or less shrugging about the end of physical discs and saying that, hey, we won't have disks because we won't have consoles anymore. Anyway, I guess I'm ready for that future.

If there's no next console generation, I've got my last console ever, so we'll see. Also, I mean, I wish I had done this if I was going to do it. I should have done it before the most recent price hike this spring. So I'm kind of kicking myself for that. Then again, there were some Xbox series price increases, which had been forecast before, but the specifics hadn't been announced in Europe, in Australia, in other regions of the world. And now in some of those places, a Series X costs as much as a PS5 pro in U.S. dollars. So again, I'm feeling less bad about it than I would be otherwise.

Yeah, not a great deal. Yeah. Also, Samsung just came out a week ago and said, don't worry, guys, it's going to get worse. Next year in possibly 2028, the chip shortages, the Ramageddon is going to get even worse than it has been. So, again, I had no choice. I was forced to. They had me over a barrel. And also what ultimately prompted me to do this. I had been thinking about it for some time and talking myself out of it. And yes, it was partly the fact that GTA-6 is coming. And even if it doesn't run at 60 frames per second or something, I doubt it will on any system until it comes to PC someday, maybe. But it will be enhanced in some way. But also, it was one of the games we played for this pod, Beast of Reincarnation,

that ultimately pushed me over the edge because it was stuttering and chugging so much on my trusty base PS5 that I finally said to myself, I'm not going to live like this anymore. All of the things to make you, I know, to upsell you on this. To be clear, yeah, we will talk about Beast. I would not say that Beast of Reincarnation alone justifies splurging on a PS5 Pro. It absolutely does not.

It does it even have PS5 Pro? It does. It does. Thank you for asking. Okay. Yes. And were the performance issues entirely? resolved by my PS5 Pro purchase? No, no, they were not. But when I got my PS5 Pro and I started playing Beast, it had a PS5 Pro menu or mode in the settings. And I put it on. It made me feel

so special. It made me feel like the velvet rope had been lifted. Like I was getting some sort of bottle service. No, you can't come in. Oh, sir, yes, please. Please come in and enjoy our PS5 Pro mode because you are a very important PS5 pro owner. I feel bad about this. They're going to string me up when the revolution comes. I will be hanging on that wall. But until then, I will be enjoying slightly improved frame rates and resolutions.

I've got a question for you, Ben. So you've made this choice. You've made your bed and about to sleep in it. When your time comes to purchase a steam machine, will this also be happening now with this level of mental gymnastics? Because again, like, this was my, this was ultimately my impetus for getting a steam machine. And I was very happy with my purchase.

And it feels like this is what you're doing because you couldn't buy a steam machine right now. That was part of it, that that was not easily available. And I was able to purchase a PS5 Pro. But I don't know. I had been thinking about it for some time. I do think that it has improved in the sense that they've fudged with the upscaling. And it works better than it did at first when sometimes it was actually counterproductive and made things look and run worse.

So they've fixed that. They've tuned that up, and most or a lot of games now are shipping with PS5 Pro enhancements as the PS5 Pro has gotten a bit more pervasive. So it does feel like it's a little bit better proposition now, but I still feel bad about it. Anyway, don't judge me or do. I'm judging myself. Nothing you can judge me about will be worse than what I have thought about myself. But nonetheless, here I am and here we are.

And the very first game that I played on my PS5 Pro was, of all things, not actually Beast of Reincarnation, but Big Walk, which was not really a game that you need. You're crushing it right now with all of these high-end games. I know. Yeah. This is not exactly the type of game that you need a cutting edge graphical rig to play or enjoy. However, regardless of what system you play Big Walk on, you must play Big Walk on. you must play Big Walk. That is the important thing.

This is developed by House House, the small, maybe four-person Australian indie dev, published by Panic for PS5s, Switch 2, PC, and Mac, with cross-play support, which we made use of as we played this week. And this is technically not the new Metacritic King of 2026 because of Sectory, the twin-stick shooter from May that has the highest score,

but with few reviews. But other than that, Big Walk has now dethroned every other game on the Metacritic leaderboard. And based on our playtime, and we did play it to completion, I cannot disagree. This is, I think, maybe the best gaming experience of the year for me. I don't know if you guys feel the same. We played this together. Matt and I played the whole game together. Steve was absent for five hours or so of walking in the middle,

because he had life things to do. He had dinner to cook. Evidently, that's something Steve does on the regular. I was just thinking, go get some gamer soylent and join us in Big Walk. But no. So Steve has a social life. We learned. Congrats.

However, he was not missed. He was, if anything, dead weight. You know, we actually, we worked through the game more quickly without him. No, that's not true. We did definitely miss you. I mean, the game was so great without you, but we missed you nonetheless. But we were there at the start altogether, and we were there at the end altogether. And man, what a great game.

Matt, we jumped back into this shortly after rolling credits because we had not had enough and there's more to do. And I don't think we're done big walking. I don't think we are either. I know I'm not, regardless of whether that's with you guys or not, because I feel like I'm going to be playing this game a lot because I'm going to make pretty much Everyone who I'm friends with who plays video games play this game. Yeah.

It was such an incredible gaming experience because it focuses on things that I very much value in my life, right? Like communication and friendship. And that's kind of what big walk is about. Yeah. Just kind of like a really simple, beautiful experience of a video game. Yeah. for those who haven't seen it, it's hard to describe. I would say it's almost friend Slop meets mist or something like that.

It has some of the aesthetics of Friendslop, primarily in the character models, which are just sort of lo-fi guys who are sort of circles placed on top of each other. They're gender neutral. I shouldn't even call them guys. There's some sort of creatures, walklings, people have been calling them. And you're in this world that is empty apart from you. and whomever you're playing with or empty of people, at least. There's plenty of foliage and plenty of activities. And you're walking around and you are solving puzzles.

And there are various gates and you have to solve puzzles. And you get in exchange for solving those puzzles, these red orbs, which Steve has been calling doohickeys. So that kind of caught on with us. Everyone has their own names for the red eggs. They look like congs, the pet toys. It do look like congs. You get those.

and you put them into these places where you're supposed to collect them and you unlock various things. And it sort of levels you up from a traversal standpoint. So you can unlock a train that is going around and around the map. You can unlock a gondola, a chairlift that will make it a little easier for you to go places so that you don't have to walk alone. And ultimately, there's a giant green wall at one end of the map. And there's a big black ball on the other side of the road. the giant green wall and it's all very mysterious and you don't know why you're there or what you're doing or what the wall or the ball are, but you just have to progress and solve these

puzzles together and figure out the mysteries of this world. And it is wonderful. Steve. I think this game is beautiful. I think the thing that Matt that you said is that like it really does cultivate an experience rather than like focus on capital G gameplay because like the true like essence of what this game is and like what a few rare exceptions of the quote unquote friend slop genre is is kind of cultivate like cooperation

and like controlled chaos. Like we see these things online where like popular streamers are like doing the gamble with your friends or like the mecha chameleons where you're just hiding in plain sights and you're making all of these things. They're doing one thing very well. And Big Walk really specializes in giving you very, like, on paper, simple tasks to achieve with people.

And it's all based on your buy-in to participate fully to have the best experience. I understand that that's a very simple thing, but it's kind of the essence of what makes good-hearted play imaginable. It's what makes good D&D amazing. It's what makes good, like, social exercises great. And it's what makes this game great. the mere fact that we have proximity chat is probably the most important aspect of this game and the kind of big social contract that you make with it

in order to have this immersive experience because as the game progressives, that level of proximity chat and being able to hear somebody in certain ways versus not hearing somebody in certain ways and having to rely on different forms of communication within the game that you use, yourselves and your peers invent, that's magic.

And that's really the thing that this does so well that based on your buy-in and based on your commitment to experiencing this game, you will have the best time with it. Am I wrong? You're not. Yeah. Yeah. And even though we're comping this to friend slop and it has sort of that friend slap veneer, it's not really like that.

I mean, it might resemble peak or repo or something like that on a superficial level. But it's not really janky like a lot of those games. I mean, we had a couple connection issues over the course of our playthrough, but nothing serious. And everything else is pretty polished and play tested. It feels like they really put this thing through its paces, made sure all the puzzles were airtight. And they really were. Matt, we played what, maybe 10 hours or more probably it took us to beat this, quote unquote. And then we get to our end game and there's still more to do.

But, you know, 10, 15 hours depending on your pace. And I don't think we encountered a single puzzle that felt frustrating, did we? I mean, no. No. I don't think we did. I mean, everything, that's one of the real standouts. And I think something that might get overlooked in people talking about this game is that, you know, they set up the framework for this to be a great experience through, you know, several things, the proximity chat, the, way that you can use your arms.

You can raise them. You can put them out to the side out in front of you, so you end up being very communicative with your hands and your arms in a game, which is interesting. I mean, they set up all these reasons why the game is going to be a communally great experience.

But ultimately, these puzzles are at first glance kind of challenging and kind of, you know, hard to figure out, but they are so balanced in that you know, just by kind of tinkering and playing around, you start to see what the goal is and how you might achieve that goal. And that's something that happens, you know, together as you talk things out and

discuss things. Or in certain circumstances, when you can't hear each other, you've figured out by, you know, visually seeing what each other is doing and stuff. So the, yeah, the construction of these puzzles is widely varied. There are so many different ways that they build these things out and they're just like a joy to discover what each one of them is.

And I think the real magic of that is that the instructions for participating in those puzzles is not explicit at all. It will just be a room full of blocks with symbols and a couple of corkboards and a button. And based on, how all of you interact with it, it's immediately like, okay, well, if we can, I don't know, push this

button to communicate something to somebody and to say, well, this is the right thing, this is the wrong thing. All of those things happen in quick sequence. And based on what you just discovered throughout the level, that can be very easy or that can be like you kind of sit with it for a second. And like, I've found that like I'm horrendous at certain aspects of puzzles. and I like not so much sitting on the sign lines but I'm like okay I'm the button guy rather than being the person that like actively participates in certain aspects

of the puzzles but like everybody has their moment to shine and it's because again like this wonderful participatory buy-in that is not only accentuated by the fact that you're on this island to discover everything

but it's enhanced by the fact that all of these things have their own goals within them. There are goals to just unlock a train or unlock another method of transportation or another aspect of the island that keep things going even when you are seemingly aimlessly moving about and not just solving puzzles. Yes, you were button mashing not just on this podcast

or in Marvel token Fighting Souls, but also somehow in Big Walk. But it's true, it just never feels like the puzzle goals are ambiguous even though the ways that you can solve them are kind of up to you. We never really felt like, wait, what are we supposed to be doing here? We knew exactly what we were supposed to be doing, and then we had to figure out how to do it. And then we felt a real sense of achievement and accomplished this almost like euphoria when we solved some of those puddles that we instinctively expressed in the game with our characters by just emoting with our arms and legs and whatever else, right? So it was so nice to solve a puzzle and then, you know, raise my hands and see you guys raising your hands.

And it's just simple pleasures. And, you know, it's, I would encourage people not to look anything up, which we didn't. And there were certain items that we just did not know what their purpose was until the very late. Yeah. But the mystery is part of the pleasure. And because you won't really get so stumped or stuck. And if you do get stuck on any particular puzzle, there are. many others that you can, you know, you can just go for a big walk and you will find something else

to do. So that's nice, too. It's almost like death stranding or elden ring, you know, you get stuck on a boss and, well, at least it's an open world. You can go somewhere else and do something else. It does remind me a little of death stranding in that a lot of it is about the kind of arduous traversal. You know, a lot of it's just like there's a day-night cycle, which is maybe the fastest day-night cycle in any game, I can recall. I mean, the sun is. is booking it as you're watching it. Yeah. And when it's nighttime, that's a real impediment to walking because you can't see in front of you. Now you have some glowing eyes, basically, which is good because it helps you keep track of other players and it illuminates a little bit

around you. But you really have to think like, okay, can we make this excursion at nighttime? Or if we do, we have to bring flashlights, we have to bring walkie-talkies. Like, you don't want to get separated. It's not as if there's any threat. I mean, there are no enemies. You can't die or anything. It's like, the threat is loneliness or isolation? Like, whenever I got separated from you guys, I was like, no, where'd they go? Come back? They can't hear me.

It's like 1993 again, and you're hanging out with them all, and no one has cell phones. And you said you'd be here in front of the game stop at a certain time, and your one friend isn't there, and they miss out on the entire day. Yes. Because they weren't where, and that's kind of like how this operates, if you're not, you know, cheating and using alternate means of communication. Yes. But even if that does happen, they have systems like, you know,

there are certain colored houses where you can fire off a flare, you know. So if someone's truly lost, you can shoot up a flare and then, you know, wait. However long, there's a lot of waiting in this game, and that is by design. They have engineered a lot of circumstances for you to be hanging out while solving a puzzle or while using some of the not-so-fast travel systems? Yeah, one memorable puzzle actually requires that you spend a certain amount of time on it. And yet we were all excited when we unlocked the trains, and then we realized you can't call the trains and you can't reverse the direction of the trains.

The trains are just running on their timetable, and you have to get on boards. I mean, literally, like, you just have to wait for the train to show up, and it tells you where it is. and it's kind of peaceful and contemplative. And also like a little bit creepy at times. I mean, there's this tunnel system underneath everything where there's like an echo and there's like a sound deadness. And it's, you know, Steve, you were likening it to backrooms, right?

It's kind of got that. It reminded me of Puranesi, the Susanna-Clark novel, the author of Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell or squid game. Like there's a little squid game aspect to the color coding and everything of it. But there's also like a very breath of the wild style sense of exploration and discovery. In fact, at the very beginning, when we went out, there's almost a great plateau type reveal where the whole world is laid out in front of you. And such clever little innovations, like there's one room that's just a map room and it's just a physical model of the entire world. And you can just walk around.

It's almost like an overworld. an RPG or something, you just walk around this map. And then there's no map in your menu, but you could take a screenshot of the map room, or there's a physical paper map that you can carry around with you. It's just, it's kind of lo-fi in certain respects, but just so clever and so creative. And like all the iconography of it, the design, the red orbs, the keys that you get. Like, it's all just ripe for, for meming, you know? It's just. so distinctively designed. It's brilliant.

It's very visually easy to parse as well. And I think that's why they have a very natural-looking terrain, and yet all of the structures and objects are kind of bright, solid colors. And that visual language of the game helps so much, especially in the puzzles, too. The way they communicate things feels very fair. Like, you know, we walked around to countless puzzles on this island solving them. And I can't think of a single instance where we just, like, didn't see something critical because it blended in or something, you know? It all felt very fair and very well communicated visually, which really, like, to encounter that many puzzles in a game and not feel like, you know, a certain percentage of them were kind of crap or, like, the game.

game logic there wasn't super good or they were all good and they were all fair and it's kind of shocking as someone who plays a lot of puzzle games to to encounter a game in which the hit rate on a puzzle is that high well and I think it's because they like the puzzles themselves are very simple by nature it's more so the fact that you have they're determinants upon cooperation. And that's entirely up to the players. Whereas something that's like a solo operation, but incredibly in depth, like blueprints or something like that. That game will make you like see through the code in the matrix if you're thinking hard enough. And you'll be having pads of papers out, like decoding different ciphers and all of these things. Like this is more so like,

all right, who is able to go and figure out who can like make this cork board, makes sense to somebody 80 feet away from the map in order to put some numbers on a digit pad and for some reason then we get this little do-hicky. It's entirely based on the cooperation of the players rather than the difficulty of the puzzle. It's clever. It's certainly like well constructed, but it all is based on, again, like that magical word, buy-in. Yeah. It reminds me of Outer Wild.

I think maybe that would be the best comp except it's co-op and you're going on this adventure together and it's so thought-provoking or or portal. I mean, I'm dropping some greatest hits comps here, but it it does remind me of original portal experiences and just the co-op perfection. Not that there's exactly one core mechanic the way that there was in portal, but there are certain bedrock puzzles that they riff on throughout the game and they get more and more complicated and you sort of develop. ways to solve them and you get better and better at it. And it's just so satisfying. And we saw in the credits, even the credits are clever. I won't say exactly how, but we saw Bennett Fadi's name listed. He had a special thanks and was one of the playtesters, apparently, the maker of baby steps and getting over it and quap. And there's certainly an aspect of that just like, can we walk up this hill? You know, how many times did we say, okay, we want to get to that tower over there? Can we walk up there?

or is it too steep? Because sometimes you're just barred. You get stuck on a rock or something, and you have to find a winding way around. Although it is sort of satisfying once you are walking, as actual walking can be satisfying. And you sort of feel some endorphins. We were all hopping.

It should really be called Big Hop. I guess Big Hop is another game from this year. But rarely were we actually walking. It just you want to just bob as you are walking. You kind of hop. And even though the characters are kind of lo-fi, the landscape is very pretty. Again, it's not like Crimson Desert graphical showcase or something, even on my PS5 Pro, not to brag. Congratulations.

This was not PS5 Pro enhanced, by the way, at least not with an explicit mode. But when we were on the chairlift, I was seeing some pop in or fade in, you know, textures were updating because they couldn't load everything. But it's very pretty and peaceful and soothing and calming. By the way, I meant to mention Sony is now getting a refund for the illegal tariffs that have often been cited as rationale for console price hikes. But like Nintendo, and unlike some non-gaming companies, Sony does not intend to pass those savings along to consumers unless a loss of forces them too. Yeah, I know. So thanks a lot, Sony. Anyway.

I wanted to mention, you know, you said you were talking about the. the games that this reminded you of. One that it had me thinking of was, and this may sound surprising, but hear me out, overcooked. And I say that in the sense that Overcooked is a game with very simple controls. And if you're playing at co-op,

the real game of Overcooked is communicating with the other person, sussing out a system that will work efficiently to get through each level. and I kind of had that same feeling playing Big Walk. There wasn't anything about the puzzles that were physically difficult to accomplish. The whole game of it was really us sussing out our system for solving the puzzle. I stand here and you stand there and when this happens, you do that and pass that along to this person

and sort of run through the whole process verbally before executing it. And so, yeah, it had me thinking of overcooked. I think that this maybe is an even better example. I mean, the things that we kind of had to figure out on our own, in our own systems, I would love to just watch certain puzzles be played by other people who would, I'm sure, come up with completely different systems that we just never would have thought of to solve that puzzle. We had to communicate like a double-digit number using using, using 12 tiles

and there were three different symbols so each symbol had four tiles and we had to figure out how to somehow communicate a double digit number through those symbol tiles and I'm sure that people playing the game did it a different way than we did and I would love to see that

and it's at it times like that when I knew that like okay I'm just going to be the guy that pushes the button and I'm not going to be the guy that tries to figure out what a star means Yeah. And I think the comp to overcook is, overcooked is fair, except where,

you know, as overcooked is like a, like, it is a cortisol generator with how stressful that game can be because you're on a time crunch and you're like constantly having to like, wait, wait, this is the opposite of that in that.

It is quite mellow. And even the fact that, it's on your own time. It's definitely on your own time. And you never feel the pressure to get it right. it's more so, again, you put it on yourself to be like, man, how do we figure this out? How can we make this make sense? And the slow aha moment of solving that puzzle, of having that confetti like burst and that little like, I guess like fanfare of trumpets happen.

Like that's euphoric when that turns out to be right. It's so exhilarating. I felt so proud of us. It's just like, we did it, guys. We're great at the game whenever we would solve something. I don't wish to spoil the end of this game But like the last like two hours of this game Really is something beautiful

And it's because of the fact that it truly shows How your your team and the people that you have played this with Have grown in your communication with one another And been critical to your success. Oh yeah. Yeah Remember when we played split fiction last year man and we had our complaints about that game, but the end was pretty brilliant. And we were, I mean, some of the most memorable experiences we had in gaming. And we kind of wish, well, couldn't they just build the whole game out of that? And maybe they could have to some extent, but also it's iterative and it builds on itself

and it increases. And that's the way it works with this. I won't spoil anything either because you have to experience it yourself and go in cold. But it builds on the previous however many hours you spent are essential to the end game, and it totally delivers, and it's so satisfying. And this game is 20 bucks retail. It's free on PlayStation Plus. So if you have any system, you owe it to yourself. And any friends. That's the, yeah, that's the problem. You know, that's the ultimate challenge. Yeah, that I regret to inform you. You do have to have friends in order to play this game. There's no lobby. And I'll be curious to see if they ever add that, because I know the big walk Reddit, a lot of people have been just like looking for group on there as if it's

wow or something. There's no way to match it. It's all code based. Yeah, and I think that they should keep it from being like a rando thing. I think you should have to form some connection in the real world because I don't think you should play this with randos. You need to be playing it with people who you have some sort of stakes with in real life or in, in, in real life, or in, a virtual community that you're part of. I think there needs to be some... Because, you know, when you play games with strangers, there's just an inherent, like,

what are the odds that this person is actually, like, worth my time, right? You're almost dismissive of strangers online instantly. And you really need to come to this from, like, a place of trust, I think. Otherwise, it could really kind of go awry. And I think we should also talk about, like, the number of players that you approach playing this game with.

Because as Ben mentioned, we played with two or three people the entire time. I think it goes up to what, like 12 or something possible. Yeah. And the game will load. You have to tell it whether you're playing with two, three, or four or more people when you load in because some of the puzzles need to be scaled based on how many people are in it. But I think that, you know, we had a great time playing with two people.

great time playing with three people. I could see if you have too many people that it could get very chaotic to communicate. I'm curious what you guys to think would be like the right number of people to play this with. I can't possibly imagine. I was worried that two would feel like not enough and we'd feel like we were getting some pale shadow of the experience. But no, no offense, Steve, but it was still great and fun with two. And it does ramp up. I mean, I mean, it changes the configuration of the puzzles so that it supports more players. But, yeah, if you were playing with 12 or something, I think it would be kind of chaotic. And maybe that would be its own different brand of fun.

Maybe that would be even more overcooked-esque. But I don't know. I thought two and three was wonderful. So, but I agree, it is helpful to have at least a person you're playing through the entire game with so that there's some consistency. because the host of the game, you start with the host, and that retains your progress. So otherwise, you'd be just kind of jumping in wherever. I guess you could have like a let me solo her for Big Walk, who is just jumping into help people with certain puzzles. But it really is more satisfying if you can play through.

But the nice thing is, low barrier to entry because it's on just about every non-X-Box platform, low price. And it's not that mechanically complex or the controls aren't. difficult, unlike the game we're about to talk about next. And so I think you can confidently recommend it to someone who's not really a regular gamer. So you could convert someone with Big Walk. That's what I'm saying. And just please do try it. I think this arguably is my game of the year so far.

I mean, this is, oh, look at that. Matt's holding up a Red Kong. Yeah, I've just realized that within my eyesight of where I'm recording, there is a dog toy that looks exactly like the middle. What the hell? Oh, my God. Grubkin has a tiny one too. Yeah, I feel such strong emotions surrounding that shape and color right now.

I will hold it throughout the rest of the podcast. Keep it safe. Don't lose it. And hold it with two hands directly out in front of you at a 90-degree angle. Yes. I might raise it up. I might raise it up. Hold it over your hands over your shoulders for the rest of the episode.

All right. Go check out Big Walk. Maybe we will talk about it more. I know we will on our game of the year episode because this will certainly be in contention. And I think we could probably spend the whole episode on it. But we cannot because we have other. stuff to discuss. So we'll just restrict ourselves to small talk about Big Walk. And now we will talk about Marvel Token Fighting Souls, which is developed by Arc SystemWorks,

published by Sony for PlayStation and PC. And this is a 2D tag fighter, Marvel characters, Marvel license. It's been almost a decade since the last new Marvel versus Capcom game. So there's a lot of pent up demand for this. And it's coming to us from Arc SystemWorks, which is one of the most venerable accomplished makers of 2D fighting games. I mean, Guilty Gear, Blaze Blue, lots of licensed stuff, Dragon Ball, Grand Blue Fantasy, etc. And interestingly, Arc System Works made Dragon Ball Fighter Z, which kind of killed Marvel versus Capcom in a sense, or came out shortly after Marvel versus Capcom 3, which had its issues, and it came along and was acclaimed.

And some people at least moved on to Dragon Ball Fighter Z. wasn't the only reason. But now Marvel Token Fighting Souls comes along and says, what if we revitalize this genre? And we've had a whole lot of options for Marvel brawling and fighting. We talked about Marvel Cosmic Invasion last year. Marvel rivals is still being supported. Marvel's Wolverine comes out next month. Lots of Marvel. But this is something people have been pining for for a while. And review codes did not go out prior to release because Sony didn't want reviewers to be playing this thing before the global servers went live. So we just sunk as much time into this as we could in the day or so preceding this podcast. But I think we've gotten a good sense of it.

And I was playing on PlayStation PS5 Pro. In fact, I don't know if I mentioned that. Yeah, I don't know if you heard. Yeah, not to brag. you guys were playing also on PlayStation, base PlayStation? Yeah, the poverty PlayStation. Yeah, yeah.

Can somebody get these beggars out of here, PlayStation? Pitiable PlayStation. We will note, we have not played this on PC, and it seems like that's where a lot of the issues are. Everybody's hating this on PC right now. The open beta a couple weeks ago had major performance problems on PC, and usually when that happens, I mean, that's why you have an open beta, and you're like, okay, I guess we better fix this.

And evidently they didn't. We're just like, well, all right, we'll put it out anyway. People had boot up problems on all systems. Matt, you encountered that briefly and worked around it. But judging by the Steam reviews and the feedback and some statements by Arc System Works, they're working on that, but still some major issues when it comes to PC performance. Didn't encounter that on PlayStation, though, works mostly fine for me and for us, I suppose. But what do we think of the core gameplay here?

Matt, you may have played the most of this of any of us? I think so. I played through, it has several modes, obviously. It has kind of like a story mode where there are kind of like five, I think, like groups of heroes that you can play through a story mode through with. And I did two of them. I did the Avengers one and the X-Men one. I hopped into the online area.

They have like a, you know, you can choose your, customize your avatar and roam around this kind of like digital lobby where there are also some really silly little mini games around where you can actually play the game against other people. And I think that this game is going to be a big hit. I think that it is one of the most visually stunning games of the year. It looks absolutely gorgeous. It sounds incredible. It has a really nice art style to it. And the story mode is kind of peppered with these full animated cinematics. And then also these kind of comic book panel storytelling sections that are all like really beautifully done.

It's kind of really high production value. And it feels great to play. And I don't think that I'm going to. going to play it much for as good as it is because I just feel like I've gone back to an era of my life that is over personally as someone who used to play you're not going to go back to the old you James you're not going to be the bugs bunny with the gun meme I think that the when you boot up the tutorial for this game which it comes with which is very in depth and well done might I say

goes on for a long time because this game is very very complicated. It's like an hour long tutorial. I felt like I had beaten the game when I beat the tutorial. I'm like, okay, roll credits. I don't want to start with a complaint, but it's literally you boot the game for the first time and you're immediately thrown into the tutorial. I hate that.

I like that. I think it actually lets you skip it if you don't want to do it. I don't think it's right. But like to let that be like a, this is a nitpick, but like let that just be a section of the main menu rather than just immediately throwing me into that because you don't know who I am. You don't know like what my...

Obviously, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing in this game. Yeah. But no, no, no. Some people don't. I see what you're saying. It's a long tutorial. I think maybe they could have had two tutorials,

a basic one and then a more in-depth one later. Well, there were different chapters or stages of it, but yes, it was all of a piece. It is very long. And then I got to the end of that. And then, as I said, I played through the story mode. twice with different characters and teams and stuff.

And I still feel like my understanding of this game after having spent, I don't know, probably six or seven hours with it, I feel like I have probably attained a comprehension level of roughly 25% in terms of what's going on in this game and how the systems work. It is just, there's just so much. to learn and to have to understand. And on top of that, you are playing with four characters at once against four different characters at once.

And some of the characters, the way they function is not just like, oh, it does a different move when you do down-to-forward punch. Like, some of them have just, like, ways that they work that are extremely different than other characters, which is great. but it's also like there are going to be people who sink hundreds of hours into this game and it's going to be one of their favorite games of all time. There's a tremendous amount of depth here and I

just look at it and go wow, this is the best thing ever for someone who's not me. I think that that's like kind of the perfect encapsulation of when it comes to us. Whenever we get handed a fighting game to cover for this show and we're like,

this is really great for somebody else. Because obviously these games are tailor made for a embedded and passionate community of gamers that we're just not really that much a part of. And we have to look at this from an outsider's perspective from most of the time. And

that's okay. But I think that to this game's like extreme compliment, arc system really knows how to cater to that community while also attempting

to be somewhat accessible and somewhat welcoming to people that just want to play a cool fighting game with cool Marvel characters. There's also another good part in this beginning where after you clear the tutorial, there's like a couple of questions to be like, hey, how new are you to fighting games?

Okay, how new are you to fighting games really? Because if you're a stupid baby, like a lot of people, that's okay. but we're going to do something to this game that makes you feel a little bit better if you're a stupid baby. And that's great. I like that.

And it gives me, it allows me to like kind of let myself go and allow myself to like really kind of take my time because fighting games are very much about going into the lab and learning a certain amount of combos or a certain amount of systems in order for you to feel comfortable enough with a character or a set up or a certain thing.

Yeah. To even attempt going online or to attempt going something that's even outside of the realm of your difficulty because if you do, that gets, like, it'll hand you your ass every time. And Arc Systems is really, really, really good at making

that as simple as possible. While still, I guarantee you, this will be at main stage at Evo. This will be confirmed for Evo. Yeah, confirmed for Evo. This will be carrying a bunch of that hardcore scene for a very long time.

It doesn't matter what we think, because this is going to be long-lasting. This is what those gamers have been clamoring for since Marvel versus Capcom, too. But also, this game isn't just for the sweats, right? Like, if you release a Marvel game, you can't just say it's for the niche, the now-nitch genre. It used to be. Fighting used to be a mainstream genre.

It is now a niche genre. You can't release any Marvel game in any genre and expect it to not overwhelmingly be played by, to be blunt, casuals because it is the biggest IP in the world. And I think they've done a great job of sort of being able to onboard people new to fighting games. It is sort of impossibly complex for a newbie to the genre to fully parse. But I still think that they do a good job of introducing the concepts and making it as palatable as they possibly can. and hoping that your love of Marvel will carry you to keep on learning and discovering how everything works. Yeah, and I said this on the most recent episode of Ringerverse Recommends because I was covering Avatar Legends, the fighting game, also recently released, because we are just swimming in all sorts of 2D fighters and tag fighters.

There were like none that came out last year. Yeah, and then this year. Yeah, I mean, 2XCO, Invincible Verses, which was. covered on button mesh, Avatar Legends, the fighting game, which is not a tag fighter, it's 1V1. DC-KO just announced tag fighter. That doesn't count. Yeah, I mean, it's mobile only.

It's free to play, but nonetheless, right? Everyone's trying to get in on this. And so when I see something like this. Also, pronounce it as it's named. It is Dicko. We all know it is Dicko. Okay. But when I see one of these games, so first I ask, well, is this just kind of a quick cash in?

Are they just using the license but not really? doing it as a labor of love. And that's not the case here. No, clearly there's just a ton of effort and affinity for the comics and the characters put into this. And yeah, they spared no expense. I mean, the production value is really impressive. The single player campaigns are written by comics god Kieran Gillen, right? Who's kind of like, I mean, it's overkill, really, to have Kieran Gillen write these things because the story mode for a fighting game, it's always going to be fairly weak, right, because it's always just some justification for setting up fights and usually for having heroes who are allies to fight each other and there always has to be one weird reason for that

to happen. But even so, the writing and the artwork, which is also done by accomplished illustrators, that stuff really sings. Yeah. Yeah. And like you said, the premise is not like that deep, but they still manage to, what those segments do is they give you a good sense of who the, characters are. Yes, and introduce you to the whole roster. There are 20 fighters out of the

box, and so you have five campaigns. Each one features a four-player team, and so you get to know all of them if you play through them. They're somewhat repetitive because the premise of each single-player campaign is the same, right? It's like, you know, Earth's heroes have to rise up to answer a challenge from the promoter and champion of the universe. Yeah, basically. And I, yeah, They use kind of these deep cut Marvel characters, the promoter and champion in the universe, which was fun. So, yeah, it's about as good as something like that can be, I think. So after you figure out, okay, is this just kind of a make-a-quick buck using the license, or is it really done with love? It's the latter.

Then you say, well, who is this for? Is this for casuals and button-mashers and people who just like Marvel and want to have their characters fight? or is it for that pro scene? And it feels more for the latter. I mean, it's tough because with any esport, it's hard to balance those things because you have the people who play the game on an incredibly elite level who are playing the same game as, you know, me, right? And so that's really tough to balance.

And I thought they did a decent job because, yeah, it's a really long in-depth tutorial, but at least they recognize that they have a lot of lessons to impart and that you do have a lot to learn and they prioritize that. Whereas something like Invincible Verses, I felt like I needed more of my hand held. I didn't totally follow it. Or Avatar Legends, the fighting game, like there just wasn't much. They kind of dropped you in. And then you can't even like change the CPU difficulty level in the single player.

Like it's really bare bones, even though it was a pretty good game. Yeah. This one, you can adjust the difficulty level. And like, even though I didn't really know what I was doing, I could beat the single player campaign. I mostly just button mesh my way through it. but it worked, right? I was able to progress and not get stuck.

So it's tough, and the skill ceiling is going to be really high, and that's going to lead to a long life for this game, presumably among the people who will play it. It does maybe limit this as, you know, an object for mass appeal. But if you devote yourself to it, it really does. I mean, in the tutorial, it feels like learning a new language. It honestly feels like I'm trying to learn an entirely new language on the fly, and that's true of almost any fighting game

unless there's some simple strip down mode but because so many fighting games are tag team now and this one is not just 2 v2, it's 4v4, although it starts 2v2 and then you kind of unlock additional characters in each match. It's just so complex

and there are so many ways to play it that it will last forever for those who have the patience and the aptitude. Listen, I liken this to, if you're going with learning the new language, technique. This is like learning Chinese, but at least it gives you duolingo. Like it will have something for you to make you even feel marginally accomplished. And of course, they want to do that because who doesn't want to have a cool fighting game

with all your favorite Marvel characters? Like I had a blast playing as Doom, even though I kind of didn't know what I was doing, but like, hey, we have a cool finisher and like I learned how to get a good juggle combo going. And as basic as that sounds to anybody who is playing this even remotely more professionally than me, I still had a great time with it. Do I still recommend it? Absolutely. Because as far as fighting games this year are concerned, this is by far the best that you can do. I do have one major, major complaint that I cannot get over. Okay. And it is specific to the PlayStation platform, whether you're playing on the Poverty PlayStation or the pro. Yeah, I don't know. We can only afford some of

much, Matt. PS5 Pro doesn't come with enhanced D-pad, unfortunately. Again, you can't see this on video, but Ben is actively doing a money spread this entire pot. Yes, he's got his monocle out. And yeah, it sucks playing this on a dual sense. The D-pad is trash. I can't.

If I had this on any other platform, I would have access to, you know, an actual, like, real D-pad. some way. I don't have like an alternate controller for my PlayStation. The Xbox controller has a real D-pad. PC, obviously, I've got plenty of D-pads on PC. Even Switch, like the pro-controller is, you know, it's got a pretty basic D-pad there. I would kill to have the Switch pro-controller's D-pad on a PlayStation controller for this. It feels like twice as hard playing this on a PlayStation controller, just like having, just tapping a direction twice to dash on the dual sense D-pad, I feel like I'm playing at a massive disadvantage.

Yeah. And I was feeling some carpal tunnel coming on. I was switching to the joystick just because I was feeling it. Yeah. We're old. But if I, if I was even remotely serious about continuing to play this game, I would be like, I'm just going to straight up get a fight stick. because for my sanity and also the health of my body,

I cannot play this game anymore on a dual sense controller. I love to see you in a full body cast in the hospital because you played Marvel Tokun with a D-Pact. Just two broken hands holding my big walk, McGuffin in casts. Yeah. Like Tigers pitcher Joel Zumaa back in the day with his guitar hero library. How committed are you doing that? I'm committed are you to getting a fighting stick for,

if you get a fighting stick, like that's like you're committed to fighting games, period. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So look, the game is exactly what the people who really wanted this wanted it to be. I think poor PC optimization aside.

It's the 2D Marvel tag fighter that people have been waiting for, I think. And, you know, the movement is sort of sluggish, like by design, not just because of the PS5D pad, but just it's hard to like run and sprint and air dash and stuff. So there is sort of a deliberate aspect to the movement. And then one minor complaint I had, the game is very anime inspired. Obviously, Connics inspired, but also anime inspired. And so you do have these, it's great artistically, but you have these really over-the-top attack sequences that basically trigger cutscenes.

And those go on for a while. And technically you can counter them, but then also you're a lot. opponent can counter your counter. And so there can be like a protracted period where you're blocked from making any moves, basically, because someone just triggered some special super move and you just have to sit there and take it for a while, which I imagine could potentially be frustrating, even if you're not on the receiving end of that, as I probably would be for the most part. But yeah, it's, you know, we made more than a token effort. But I think if you really devote yourself to this, the effort will be rewarded. And, you know, you.

By the way, it costs a pretty penny, right? Because 2XCO was free to play. Avatar's $30 and Invincible versus was 50, right? This is 60. And, you know, the money is on the screen. Like, you will see what you're paying for there. And the replay value will be there if you don't bounce off it because you're a noob. Yeah.

Yeah, the depth of it is insane. I could easily see people getting $60 worth of fun out of this. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. Well, that brings us to our final game for this episode. Beast of Reincarnation, developed by Game Freak, and published by Fictions for PS5, Xbox, and PC. So this is, I believe, the first non-Pokemon game by Game Freaks since 2019, I think, when Little Town Hero came out, at least non-mobile games. So that's always interesting. And this is sort of a souls-like action with RPG Elevents, Action Adventure.

You play as Emma. The year is 40-26. So we've jumped ahead a couple thousand years. The world has been blighted. There are lots of corrupted creatures roaming around and few survivors. There are Pokemon aspects to this game, namely you have animal creatures who are bonded to you and fight. with you. So there is a dog in the game, a lovely dire wolf named Koo who accompanies you and does attacks with you, almost in a sort of pragmatto way where there's kind of the action

pauses and you trigger Koo's moves while you are hacking and slashing away as Emma. And you're going around and you're basically trying to combat the blight. And there's a lot of plots, which may or may not be compelling for you. But you, you, you, you rolled credits. You beat this game, Matt, and I played it for several hours, so I have not made it all the way through, and I don't know if I will. I was initially intrigued, but then the charm started to wear a little thin as I went, but you went way further than I did, and you liked it quite a bit. I did. I mean, this is not that surprising. I'm used to this position, but I feel like I'm a bit higher on this game than most people.

Yeah. Common refrain of mine. This game has a lot of problems. It does. I'm not going to deny that. But I also found it to just be a really compelling experience despite its flaws. I think that the combat system is like the number one

thing that kept me coming back to it. I think the combat's really fun. It feels really snappy. The way that you are fighting with Emma and then using Koo's skills and then you kind of refill

the points that you can spend through Koo by using the parry with Emma. So you do need to parry a lot in this game, but it has like a very forgiving parry window. So you're parrying to fill up Koo's skills and you choose different skills

from him to use on the enemies that do different things. And it just feels, I think, think really satisfying. Now, there isn't a ton of enemy variety. There's kind of enough. And it feels like they stretch this game out when you start seeing bosses repeated, which is like the easiest tell of like,

someone told you to make this game longer than it was. Yeah, and repeated, I mean, over the course of the game, as I understand it, because I've not gotten to the end. But also, in each chapter, you're often fighting the same boss, multiple times. And also, the boss is often just a supersized version of a regular enemy that you've already fought. And the bosses have like two attacks a lot of the time and they just keep spamming that sort of. So I felt like it was visually impressive. Like sometimes they're huge and it's almost a shadow of the colossus looking kind of boss battle. But then the actual gameplay

felt sort of simplistic to me. It is a game that you can. have a good sense of in the first few hours. This is Matt's wheelhouse. For games that you need to crack open after 10 plus hours. Yeah. You didn't play a desert merchant over here, Matt James. It's just like four or five hours. But no, yeah, Matt's the guy being like, season one sucks.

You just got to stick with it until season two. It's good. Sometimes it's true. It's true. Matt, do you never DNF? a book? Are you one of those people? Look, I try to finish everything that I start. And I try not to start new things before I appreciate that. I finish. And that's why I get through a lot of games is because I, I have like, I won't let myself stop unless something is bad. I truly admire that

commitment. I really, really did. No, and it's admirable also because if you're reviewing games, I mean, this came up with Crimson Desert, too, where it's a, 100 hour or 200 hour experience and people were putting in 10 or something and reviewing it. And it's like, on the one hand, it's fair because maybe you're reviewing it for people who aren't going to sink 100 hours into this thing. And they want to know if they're going to bounce off it. As long as they're up front about the experience that you convey. On the other hand, if you say that, oh, there's nothing to this and it's boring and it's empty and it turns out you just didn't play enough to get to that stuff, it's a valid critique certainly to say

they should front load this. This takes too long to get to that. But you also know that you might not have a complete picture of the games that you're playing. Very much so. And, you know, I think I was kind of highest on this game, kind of like at the one third of the way through Mark. Like, where I had gotten to a point where I really started to understand the combat system and the upgrade, the skill tree. and the story takes a while to understand kind of what's happening. They kind of slow drip a lot of the details at first.

And so about a third of the way into the game, I'm like, this is firing on all cylinders. And then the rest of the game kind of happens, and you're like, the variety of the enemies is a little lacking. The variety of the terrain is a little lacking. The story is kind of being slow-fed. The bosses are repeating. And so this game kind of ends up feeling like they were on a great path with this.

And then someone from above said, oh, we got to get this out soon. So you all better figure out how to stretch this. We had a budget and time. And we have to hit 30 hours. Yeah, or that it could have just been a 12-hour game or something. And it would have been a really satisfying 12-hour game as opposed to feeling warmed over. No one bats an eye when. Capcom delivers a 15 to 20-hour banger.

And that's what this should have been. Absolutely. But I still, like, with all of its flaws, and man, let me tell you, some of the English voice acting is. And you know what? It's also like, I don't even know whether to fault the voice actors because it could just be like the direction that they received. Well, yeah, because Emma's not a very compelling protagonist.

There are a lot of characters that are just kind of flat and emotionless, but there's like a lower reason for that. Right. Right. But it's still not exciting to listen to them talk for so many. Because there are some extended cutscenes and just like the flattest affect. And even if there's a reason why they are like that, it's still just not very engaging. So that's an issue.

And the repetitiveness, like, there's one song that loops over and over and over and over. God, I hated that song. It's a pretty catchy tune for the first hour or so. And then it's like, you know, it. it segues into battle music when you get to a fight. But this song, this like, you know, J-pop kind of song keeps playing over and over. And I kept singing Beast of Reincarnation to the tune of wave of mutilation to myself over and over as I was. Beast of Reincarnation, Beast of Reincarnation.

Well, at least I didn't hear that for 30 hours. No, that would have been even worse. But, I mean, that's not Game Freaks fault that happened to me. But I think it was also partly because there was one song that just kept playing. So, yeah, I thought that was an issue. And also, I have some parry fatigue just because, as we've discussed, parrying is like the game mechanic now. And I don't know if this is Sekaro's fault and from software's fault. I mean, it's everywhere.

I feel like it's like a proportional relationship where parrying has ascended as fall damage has been removed. There's no fall damage in this game. There's no fall damage in big walk aside from the fact that you have to sit for a minute when you fall along with. even like Fortnite pretty much patched out fall damage now. So I feel like as fall damage has headed downhill, parrying has replaced it as like the core mechanic and the threat and everything. And I don't find it super satisfying in this game because of the big window, as you mentioned. Like it's very forgiving. I love that to be honest.

I don't know. Like sometimes I get, you know, like in Claire obscure, people complained that there was not a enough of a window. But I just, I found that pretty satisfying. Whereas in this one, it's like, eh, I'm mostly, I'm close enough, I guess, and there aren't that many attacks. And so I was just kind of constantly parrying. I think, like, the parry window in a video game, I think has to be thought of in, at the

same time as, like, how much damage are you taking if you miss this parry, right? Like, to me, that's how you figure out, like, how tight a parry window should be. What is the consequence of this parry missing, right? And in this game, you take a lot, if you get hit in Beast of Reincarnation, you take a lot of damage. It's not like you are not a spongy character. So I think it makes plenty of sense

that the parry window and this would be fairly wide. Whereas in a lot of other games, you know, you miss a parry and, you know, it obviously hurts still, but you're not losing a third to half of your life. potentially, you know. So I like that parry window. Which games would have more forgiving parry windows as we are inundated with games that have parrises?

Well, I think that's the problem with this, Matt, because it does have a parry window. There are games that do those things. But like this game is really attempts to be a jack of all trades and it truly is a master of none because all of the things that make it similar, not fully, but like similar to a soul's like, similar to a character action game, similar to all of these influences that it clearly wears all over its sleeves, it still doesn't really have the thing that makes either of those games great. And it, I hate to whittle it down to game feel, but it doesn't feel that great to play for most of the time. I totally disagree. Really? I think that it's one

of its strengths is how the game feels. That is to me, like, one of the best things about it. I think people are, like, viewing this so much through, like, the window of, like, other game experiences. And I think the more that you, like, play this game, the more you kind of realize that it doesn't, it doesn't want to be Sekiroo. It really doesn't. It doesn't want to be, like, the things that you look at it and say, oh, is it kind

of like that? It's like, it really isn't trying to be those things, I don't think. And I think the feel of it is like literally my favorite part. And then probably like the setting. And I'm very happy that it is for you. I truly did. But like it was the one thing that I really bumped on because of the fact that like if the story wasn't grabbing me, if the music wasn't grabbing me, if the environment

definitely wasn't grabbing me. The idea that like, yes, I did like the idea that you could use that wolf in like a sort of turn based and like slow the action down, get your bearings. All of those things are constructed very well. but for some reason none of those fully came together for me, the way that it did clearly for you, which, again, I just needed a bit like 10 more hours, and maybe that would have been just.

Just 10 more hours, baby, that's it. But not 20, because by 20, you'll be a little lower on it. Yeah. Right, right, right. Of course, Koo is a good boy, and you can pet him eventually. He did sort of scare me sometimes because he keeps spawning in, like he'll disappear and then appear again. And I was like, oh, what?

It's an enemy. No, it's just Koo again. Just Koo. Yeah. And I like that you can fight with hair. You can't parry with hair. That would be harrying. But always like a game where you can attack with a long, thick strand of hair.

I thought those are just trees and roots for a while. No, that's a bit of both. I mean, yeah, there's a bit of both. I like that when you jump, like roots come up from the ground. Yeah, the traversal feels really fun to me in this one. That was really true. I loved that when I thought it was a double jump and I just like kept springing up and up and up. And I'm like, whoa, this feels great.

Yeah, that was cool. Yeah, the platforming to the extent that there is, it's satisfying. It doesn't change over the course of the game. You don't really, at least in my experience, you don't really upgrade the traversal so much. You upgrade your character and your attacks. Yeah. And it's all sort of simple, you know, here's this sword that has more attack power than the other and some skill points and charms and stuff that you can equip for Koo and Emma and everything. But it's sort of simple, sort of wrote stuff and not a lot about how you interact.

with the world, but I did like the world, and it has that game freak aspect of, like, you know, how to humans and animals and nature all relate to each other. It's violent, obviously, relative to Pokemon, but you can see some of the same sort of ethos there. It did kind of keep reminding me of other things in the way that Crimson Desert did, but in Crimson Desert, and obviously people's opinions varied. But I always, I felt like, wow, it's impressive that they managed to actually have some semblance of all these other games and put it in one game all together with this scope, whereas in this game it kept feeling to me like lesser versions of other things. There are just so many soulslikes out there.

And like, you know, it's, it reminded me of death stranding a little bit in the story and the cinematics and everything. So like death stranding meets, Sekiro meets Horizon. Definitely a lot of like blighted big animals wandering around horizon vibes. Or near, near Atamatta reminded me of a little too. Yes. All of those things I thought of while I was playing. And, you know, and then there's coup.

I mean, I was thinking like Last Guardian and Okami and animal companions and stuff. But I don't know. It just never fully jelled or distinguished itself. I liked a lot of the design of the world, but I don't know. It's hard for me to recommend it over other options out there. Yeah, and it's a very busy time. Yeah, that's the thing. I think that this to me felt like a 7.0 of a game that I loved like a 9.0.

Something about this felt kind of like a PlayStation 2 game to me in a way that that resonated with me. It's it's very like, yeah, it is too long. And like, you know, we've talked about plenty of the flaws. But, you know, I also just really like the setting of this game. And I started playing this game with Japanese language on and English subtitles. Yeah. And I should have stuck with that because I think it, I think it, I think, I think, think the the English voice acting really sets a bad tone for this. Whereas if you, if, you know, I don't

obviously speak Japanese, but I think that I was perhaps, you know, unaware of the, of the, it's just a different experience. It's the thing, we don't speak Japanese, so we don't know what bad Japanese acting. Right. Exactly. We don't know what it is. I don't know if it's good Japanese acting. Yeah, right. Yeah, I went subs overdubs with this game too, as I usually do. And I think that helped a little bit, but only to an extent. And the issue with the subs was that the text was very small, which I think is a segue into our last topic here. Because all these games were talking about strengths, flaws, none of them is a finished product,

because no video game ever is at this point. They can always be patched. They can always be updated. They could always be fixed. There can always be DLC. And we're seeing that with these games. Game Freak has already come. out. I mean, the same week that they just pushed a big patch for Pokemon Pocopia, which was a great game from the get-go, but also they fix some stuff and improve some quality of life stuff in addition to new content. And they also said, yeah, we're fixing some stuff performance issues with this game. Also, the text being too small, which has happened so many times now. I don't get it. I assume that.

Yeah, it's like it's so easy to just have an option for bigger text. It wasn't illegible. I could read it. but it could have been bigger. I think this keeps happening because I assume the devs and the QA people are just playing on a monitor that's like a foot from their screen. And so they just don't even realize that if you're playing in a living room several feet away from your TV, it's going to be too small. But they should know by now because this has happened so many times. And this is like the bare minimum from an accessibility, comprehensibility standpoint.

So they will be making the text bigger. And they said they'd be improving the pacing of the plot and the story. I don't know exactly what that will entail. But the point is nothing is ever finished, right? And the same with Marvel token, and they're going to be patching and fixing issues with that. And this is now the norm, and we're used to this. And sometimes this can really pay dividends. Speaking of No Man Sky, which turns 10 this weekend incredibly, makes me feel old because I remember covering that game on the predecessor to this podcast,

that even oriented with Jason Concepcion. And obviously, that was built up into the biggest game ever. by Sean Murray and Hello Games and just the internet hype cycle disappointed at the start. And yet it became a great redemption story because they are still updating that sucker. And they are still putting out free content. And it is so much bigger and better than it was when it came out in 2016. Just this may, they released a new update the swarm, right? So first of all, is this good?

Is it good that games get post-release fixes and that this is. so normalized. I was thinking of this in the context of physical media. Obviously, with physical media, this was harder to do and still is in some ways. Like in music, you know, you have the Kanye Ammafix Wolves a vacation of music, right, where even album releases are not finished. And there are people who are pissed right now because some high-priced LPs, if you're a vinyl person, sometimes now you get the physical record and the songs are not finished. There are. not final on there because they have to press the vinyl before the deadline for streaming or whatever. And so they'll have like half-finished tracks on vinyl that you're paying full price for.

And you can't patch vinyl, unfortunately, right? You can't just update that thing. And if you paid full price for that, well, you're understandably upset if you didn't understand that that was going to happen potentially. So we all date back to the days before games could be updated. Certainly console games. this was just not a thing. I mean, when it came out, it was what it was for better or worse.

And there are good things about this in that games can get good after their release now. But then there's the downside maybe, which is that everyone knows that that's the case and expects that that's the case. And the devs can say we can put out a game that is half functional because we can fix it on the fly. And I have sympathy for them because they're often in a tough position and games take so long and so much money to make these days. but also that's almost the expectation to the point where a lot of people won't buy a game when it comes out because they figure, well, this is not the best version of that game, and often that's right. So on the whole, Matt, do you think that this has helped, this has been a good thing, or that it has had unintended consequences?

Well, I mean, in the modern day landscape of game development, it seems like if you want to keep your job, it's a good idea to keep working on the game that you're working on forever. because lately as soon as you finish a game, there are layoffs. But no, more broadly, like, obviously it would be great if every game could be done before it's shipped,

but that's clearly not a reality. I'd rather have, you know, games grow into what they could and should be. So I think it's a good thing, even if it is going to allow more devs to escape by you know, having not finished something at release. Yeah. And it's not as if games were never buggy or broken before.

It's just that they were buggy and broken for good. There was no recourse. This is so fascinating to me because, yes, this is a very modern problem in gaming. And it's a thing that we've, like, adjusted to in the world that, like, A, there are way too, there are so many games now. And there are so many different types of choices. and options that the consumer has nowadays to dedicate their time to.

And with the invention of live service games and the thing, and like making a landscape of a game that is ever evolving and always changing and always making things that you can sink your money and time into, that makes for an ecosystem in gaming where, well, even if our game isn't live service,

if for the sake of, you know, a quarterly earnings report, we can get this out at a certain timeline and then just fix it down the road, that makes a different type of philosophy for the industry that ultimately can affect people's job security. Because it used to be, you know, PS2 eras, Xbox 360 eras. You would just make the game. It would be out. And then that industry of people working on games would either go on to another game, go off to a different job.

Like there would be this level of progression in like the thing is out in the world. and we don't see that that often with media, like you said, with like pressing things on vinyl or getting a movie out on time, things like that, even though like, you know, we've seen Game of Thrones episodes with Starbucks cups removed now. Right.

Yeah, it's spreading to other media. I mean, even a book, right, like you have another printing of a book that cuts some of the typos or mistakes or factual errors or there's a paperback edition with a new epilogue or a movie,

right? I mean, even putting aside special editions and the George Lucasification of movie making, you have, you know, directors, cuts and you have obviously 4K remasters or repressings or whatever. So it's kind of a thing in any medium, but gaming most of all, just because of how digital only it is and how all of these things are living documents, right? And so I applaud it because it is possible for games to get better and the release date is not the end. I'd still prefer that you just delay the thing until it's ready and not sally its reputation and get bad reviews and have to overcome that. But at least it is possible to do that.

And I'm glad that that is theoretically a thing. And not just theoretically, because we have come up with a few examples. Can we all agree that that No Man Sky is one of our top five post-release gaming glow-up? I mean, absolutely, without question. The way they have continued to support that game completely changed its reputation. I don't even understand how they've continued to support the game. It's actually remarkable. Yeah.

So I guess it's just they keep putting out new stuff. Every time they do, the player count spikes. People buy the base game, I guess, who hadn't bought it before. And it's just sort of self-sustaining. So when Hello puts out its successor, light no fire, which seems similarly ambitious, I hope that maybe they get it squared away and nailed down before it comes out this time, because you don't have to play on hard mode like this. But, boy, have they completely revitalized that game?

And regardless of what they come out with with this new game, like, there won't be any question that they won't be supporting it in the months and years to come down the road. So even if there is a problem or even if there is something to fix, Lord knows that they'll fix it and probably make something entirely better in the years to come. Yes. Yes. Can we all agree that another one of the games on this pantheon has to be Cyberpunk 2077? Yes, indeed.

Yes, but I think, but for the exact opposite reasons that No Man Sky was, because No Man Sky could have easily gone by the wayside as a thing that was like a fun passion project that failed. Cyberpunk needed to be fixed in order for CD Project Red to actually like have a reputation at the end of this. Like, I don't think that there would be a Witcher 4 if they just let cyberpunk rot. Like, it had to be, like, it's a matter of reputation at that point. Yeah, I don't think that No Man Sky got pulled from the PlayStation store at any point because it was so broken.

Yeah. Yeah, so we have to distinguish. I mean, there are different ways that a game can get a glow up post-release. It could just be. Or is it DLC? Exactly. Did they make the game better because they added new features and DLC and content and everything? or was it just actually buggy and broken and they made it functional?

Now, cyberpunk is both, right? So that's why it gets on this list for sure. And there's a steam cyberpunk sale going on this week. So if you have waited until now to pick up cyberpunk 27, you're in luck. It's better than ever and cheaper than ever. But this was multiple things, right? I mean, you know, the refunding, the reputational damage, how pissed people were, the fact that they hadn't shown it really running on consoles.

and then it turned out that's because it didn't. And then putting it out in that form, tanking its reputation, and then slowly but surely fixing it and just making it unavailable, pulling it back until it was ready, adding new fixes and everything. Obviously, the Phantom Liberty DLC did a lot to actually make this the game that it was meant to be. So that's an expansion, but that's part of it, right?

So it was a two-pronged thing. It was let's fix a game that. The bones are good and intriguing, but it just doesn't work. And it's pretty unplayable, at least on some platforms. Let's fix that. And then also keep expanding and refining and improving systems and making it the game that it was always meant to be. And now it's acknowledged as a classic. And not everyone gets a chance to do that.

And CD Project Red had the resources to do that because of The Witcher and everything else, where it could actually and the initial sales of this game that it was able to, to devote the time and effort and resources to fixing this game. Not everyone is in that position. Sometimes you release a game buggy and broken and you're done and you're laying people off. And that's that. So it is fortunate and unusual that they were able to devote this kind of effort to fixing that game. But boy, did it pay off.

So well done ultimately. Yeah, I'm sure that mine's eye. It's just one more update away. Yeah. I don't think that's going to get there. All right. There's one more maybe that probably we all have to include here, Final Fantasy 14. Can we?

Yeah. I mean, that's got to be on this list. Also, timely and topical because Final Fantasy 14 out for Switch 2 this week and a little bit glitchy, but mostly working just fine. And in fact, they've already patched it to address some loading issues. And obviously, you know, all hail to Yoshi P. an incredible turnaround where this game just had flagging support and seemed to be a misfire, totally turned it around, revised, re-release, and it has turned into one of the most popular,

enduring beloved MMOs for, you know, a decade or more at this point. That's right. And let me tell you, it gets really good once you're 50 hours into it. Brother, I bet. And I'm not joking. And I'm not joking. Yeah. So, yeah.

I mean, that's, you know, that turns. into just a, it's printing money. So obviously if it's an MMO, again, like Final Fantasy, you have history, you have legacy, you have some resources, you have people who are buying in and are willing to give you another chance if you turn things around with new creative teams and new direction and everything. Easier said than done in multiple respects. But yeah.

And the other thing that kind of is, the thing that's so interesting about this example of Final Fantasy 14 is that this is a multiplayer. online game, right? This is not cyberpunk. This is not No Man's Guy. This is like there is a community to manage in regards to Final Fantasy 14 that they have been managing for years

and listening to and knowing when not to listen to. And it is just like an incredible, incredible success story when you consider how much more of a challenge it is to update a game with that kind of like intense community behind it. But they built that community after dropping kind of a dud initially. Yeah. All right.

So that's three that I think we have to have. Anyone else want to suggest something else that has to be on this top five? Can I suggest one for all the wrong reasons? Not that it went worse, but this is the thing that to me, this company learned the wrong lessons from in its success. And I want to say that that's Fallout 76. Okay.

Oh, interesting. So I was going to say that should be on this list. It should. Even if it's, yeah, okay. And I think that we could all agree that Bethesda's, I think I can now call it arrogance in its development cycles. And it's, I think, I don't want to say abuse, but like I'll say taking for granted of its fan base.

over the years is kind of the prime example when it comes to Fallout 76, because if Final Fantasy 14 is the game who knows when to listen to its community and when not to, Bethesda only wants to not listen to it and assume that people will, will fix it for them along the way.

And to the community's credit, they love those games. And I can't imagine another developer that has been bailed out by its own community so often with the amount of things that they've turned out with. And it's all in credit to the people that love those games. And I think that's kind of why Fallout 76 endures

only because of its community. Yeah. And that's nothing new for Bethesda, obviously, to launch things in a buggy, broken state and have the community come through to fix it. But it's not solely the community. Obviously, Bethesda has played a part in that, too. It just was content light, right?

And it's just a different game today than it was in 2018 or whenever it came out. So that for me is probably the fourth noteworthy example. And I think I'm going to be with you, Matt, because I know what you're going to suggest for a fifth year. And I will co-sign it. But say it. Crimson Desert. Crimson Desert, baby. Brother.

Yeah. I think, yeah, we're adding a game from this year. year. And obviously we don't have the same perspective and hindsight here to say how it has evolved over a decade or years. But that's because they have patched this thing at such a furious pace. And that's ridiculous. They've crammed 10 years of updates into less than one. It's nuts. Can you, can you like go down like the Steam updates page and just like see how many they've done? Yeah. Let me tell you like when we were when we were playing this like before it came out in like, the, you know, the game reviewer period.

Like, the patches that they hit us with, like, before the game was even out, we were like, what the hell? Yeah. No, it was, we were inundated with updates, like, every day. Yeah. And they were, like, significant. And they have just, like, continued at that pace to the point where, like, it's a very different experience.

If you were to hop in, like, right now versus where it was when we first started with it. I've just never seen an update pace quite like this before. It's staggering. Yeah. And I feel like I have to just restart it and replay it at some point because it's just a different game. And Matt, we liked it. You and I liked it even as it was when it came out. And it wasn't as if it was broken exactly.

Of course, there were bugs and stuff, but it wasn't unplayable or anything. But it was like, you know, people didn't like the control scheme. People didn't like how empty the world. was in some respects, the stories, some of the systems. I mean, you can't fix that story. Well, yeah. They're not going to be able to patch that story. Yeah, but they just really fleshed out that world at a pretty impressive pace.

And I don't know how and I almost don't want to know how. Just quality of life improvements. I don't know if it's AI. I don't know if it's crunch. I don't know what is happening. But clearly it paid some dividends. I don't want to know what shop they're running over there at the Crimson Desert shop. But, yeah, just like half-assed research is here.

There have been 15 major numbered updates since release, and there have been 23 overall patches since its release. Yeah. And some of them are very significant. And, you know, we were told, like, around, you know, when they first hit us with that, like, that first patch that, like, was transformative to the storage system in the game in the review period, We were like, whoa, how are the, how is this, how did you do that so fast?

And they were basically just like, well, you know, our devs are used to making Black Desert online, which is, you know, an MMO. And they're used to just, I guess, having quick patch turn turnaround. Like, it doesn't normally exist in, like, the world of just traditional single player narrative games. Book length patch notes. It's not so okay. So that's, I think that's a solid top five. No Man Sky. cyberpunk 2077 final fantasy 14 fall at 76 crimson desert anyone want to throw out anything else i think

maybe assassins creed unity should be mentioned because that was pretty broken and has gotten a glow up and is much more bug-free than it was maybe battlefield 242 we got we probably just got the most memes out of that one back in the day yeah yeah yeah just the floating eyeballs of it all yes yes i i would hate to have missed out on that glad we had that phase battlefield 2042 definitely, you know, did some damage to that franchise before Battlefield 6 came along, but they were able to fix that to some extent in the interim. I remember when the Master Chief Collection came out, there were all sorts of matchmaking connectivity issues. Anything else stand out to you guys? I mean, like Wayfinder, the indie game that they just delisted and relaunched entirely. That was pretty

impressive. That happens from time to time. I don't know. Anything else stand out to you guys? I thought Sea of Thieves is a pretty different game from when it launched. They really fleshed that out a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And turn that into something that has somewhat of a consistent player base that keeps up with the updates. Yeah, that's a good one. All right.

Sixth Man Award goes to Sea of Thieves. I like that. All right. And then lastly, do we have a top five of games that should have gotten glowups but did not for whatever reason? And maybe it just predated this practice and it came out on a cartridge and you couldn't update it. You were stuck with it forever. Or for whatever reason, it just didn't get the post-launch support that it needed or deserved. There weren't resources, whatever it was.

I'll throw out one just to get us going. Cotor 2, Knights of the Old Republic 2, which is a very good to great game in its original state. but its original state was unfinished. I mean, to be fair, we've got like a great community patch via steam that you can easily put in. And then that game is at the height of its powers. Yes.

And so when the community comes along and fixes stuff for you, then that's good. But it would be better if it didn't have to. And so when there's just a bunch of unfinished content that is unlocked and polished, yeah, I mean, that game just wasn't done, really. It's a great game.

I don't know, me being Todd Howard, CEO of Bethesda, I'm perfectly fine with that philosophy. Yeah, I know. But yeah, if that came out now, I'd like to think either they would have delayed it. It just would have taken longer, which is a double-edged sword, but probably would have been good in that case. Or they just would have patched it aggressively afterward until the game was actually finished. So that stood out to me. Matt, you want to throw anything out? Yeah, I've got a deep cut.

Xeno Gears Oh yeah RPG where you're playing one of the best games you've ever played and then you get to the second disc and they just kind of like tell you what happens

in the second half of the game I would have loved to see in some updates where you get to play the end of the game yeah that would be nice to be able to finish a game

I like that generally speaking I also was thinking about Metroid Prime 4. Again, that just kind of feels like, I know they spent a lot of time in development on that one, it feels like they could have spent some more time. Yeah. Yeah.

How do you pack? She's not even sold a million copies still. Yeah. It's, I don't know. That might have been too deeply flawed to fix in some respects, but that was a great disappointment. It seems like they just kind of gave up with fixing it and put it out to a degree. Yeah. I also think Sonic the hedgehog.

the 2006 version, Sonic 06. Oh, God. That's a notorious, like, this was supposed to be a big kind of relaunch, like Yugi Naka, the co-creator was involved. Like, this was going to be big. And then Sega rushed it and it wasn't done because they had to get it out for the holiday season in 2006, you know, 20 years ago when people really pegged releases to the holiday season. And it was like the 15th anniversary of Sonic. and they were putting out for Xbox 360 and PS3. And like the bones of the game seemed like it could have been good,

but it was so rushed and it had all sorts of issues and loading times and camera and voice acting and glitches. And it's just one of the great like what if stories, I think, because that just tanked the reputation of that franchise for years until really like the fans helped bring it back. And that just did so much damage that I think that, That's one where I could have imagined it in a different era maybe getting fixed. I don't know.

Maybe it was too deeply flawed and it just needed to get delayed. But yeah, it was kind of DOA. During this process, I was also thinking about like, you know, I was trying to think of games that were buggy that never got fixed. But I also got to thinking like, what if like none of the Elder Scrolls games had the ability to be like patched post launch and they just. Or modded. Yeah.

Or modded. And they were just were what they were on day one. even be like a sixth one in the works right now? Again, hey, you know what? There absolutely would be because again, Bethesda, done learn. Do you have any candidates, Steve? I really only had one when I thought about this and it was kind of just the game that I really wish got the love and care that it deserved and it's my biggest what have been and it was Anthem. Oh, yeah.

I loved the bones for that game. I really, really did. but it obviously had a lot farther to go. And this was at a time when EA was entirely cynical about that game's release. And BioWare was a fraction of what it used to be. And it was just the wrong game, the wrong time, the wrong company, all of the wrong settings. But I don't know, man. Anthem had a little something that I kind of wanted to explore.

Yeah. And they tried. It just they didn't do enough to fix that. and support it. And I was thinking, yeah, even in this era where you can fix a lot of things, sometimes games are too far gone or they just don't get the support. Like, Halo Infinite, I was thinking. I really liked Halo Infinite.

I liked the single player. I liked the more open world. I liked the traversal, all of that. But it shipped without campaign co-op, right, without the Ford's editor. Which was crazy. Yeah, it was not so. Yeah, it was delayed. And then they shipped it piecemeal.

long time. They should have just waited more. And then like there wasn't enough content. And ultimately they just never fully fleshed it out. And they dropped some features and there just wasn't enough to do. And it made me sad because I, I liked a lot about that game. Yeah. If only Microsoft had more money, they could have.

Yeah. Like it's goddamn halo for Christ's sake. Like how could you not? How do you drop the ball on a thing like that? And it really feels it's a genuine bummer to make the, you think that like Microsoft was going to bet the farm on this property, and this is what they do to it. Yeah, and it really halted the momentum of that franchise to the point where it was, we have to go back to the beginning in order to get people invested in this again.

Another, a couple other old ones I had in mind, Perfect Dark. Look, I loved Perfect Dark. I drafted it in RN64 draft, but it was in some modes, in some settings, pretty unplayable, and we tolerated. Look at this. PS5 Pro guy needs more than 15 frames a second all of a sudden. Yeah, I know. 15 FPS is fine, Ben.

Even with my expansion pack. Man, the rich really do eat us if we don't eat them. Even with my N64 Pro and my 4 megabytes of extra RAM, it just was not enough. Yeah, well, you couldn't play it without that, right? No, it was necessary, but also, I mean, that game, that was just, it was ahead of its time. I don't know that they could have, you know, even if you could patch things at the time. I'm not sure that they could have patched it. sort of just like a new console.

Because, you know, it came out for Xbox Live arcade years later and it was perfectly playable. So that's what they needed. But I feel like if they could have patched it, maybe there could have been a performance mode. And, you know, you could choose like high-res mode or not. It was like completely strobe light effects if you did that, even though it looked fancy. But I think maybe if they'd had more time or they had seen the reception, maybe they could have patched it to be playable at least and just dialed down. the settings or whatever was necessary. Still a great game, obviously,

but that's the thing that people remember that it was notorious for. It was just like stop motion at times. Yeah, very, very not ideal. Super quick side tangent. Now that you started talking about, Perfect Dark and real quick, there's a game coming out this week

called Agent 64 Spies Never Die on PC, and it is basically like a complete rip-off of like Golden Eye and Perfect Dark. And there's a demo out. No one lives forever or something. And it absolutely feels like a spiritual successor in a great way. And it even has like local four player like split screen.

Oh, I've seen this. This looks great. Yeah, the demo was really fun. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. Sorry to derail us. No, please.

That was relevant. Two more on my list. Resident Evil Outbreak. Now I'm not a big RE guy, obviously, or I wasn't before Requiem. But I feel like this game is not that fondly remembered, maybe because it was just a little early because it required, you know, online. It was all about online connectivity or didn't require. It was like PVE. And this was PS2 era.

And it was just maybe a little too early. There weren't enough people and online support and everything. So that was part of it. And then there were also technical issues. There was no voice chat, as I recall. And people were upset about the lack of voice chat. And so things like that, I think, could have been improved. It could have run better.

Maybe more people could have gotten on board. And, you know, some of the technical issues could have been straightened out. And it could have worked better as a network free game. And then that would be better remembered than it is. I don't know. Yeah. Well, look, there's two things to say about that. One is they are going to run out of Resident Evil's to remit pretty soon.

Yeah. They are. And so, and, you know, like with, With Requiem, we had Grace Ashcroft and her mom, Alyssa, was one of the protagonists in Outbreak. That's right. It is not completely off the table that within the next, I don't know, five, six years, they could end up doing some kind of a remake of outbreak. It's probably not going to happen, but it's time has come. Yeah, another thing, I think, because they had the start menu where you couldn't actually pause the game, right?

it was like a real time. And so if you had to do something in the menus, you could get attacked by zombies while you were doing that. And people were frustrated and they were on load times. And so some of that maybe could have been fixed. The last one I would mention is Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, which. Oh, classic. Tough one. Yeah.

Colt classic. A lot of people remember it fondly, but big time technical issues and also a kind of not fully finished in its. released form game. Yeah. And that came out. That was what, 2004, and it was for PC, right? So like they half-heartedly tried to support it after and patch it. But as I recall, like, everyone got laid off, basically, right after that game came out.

And so they were not able to actually fix it and provide expansions the way they wanted to. So it never really, at least officially got fixed and fully polished. So yeah, that one. that's kind of like, you know, good game people like a lot, but also sort of a lost opportunity. Yeah. What a bummer. Yeah. Okay.

Big thought. All right. Well, I'm glad that some games can be fixed. Hopefully the games that we discussed today will be fixed, whatever their flaws are, but Big Walk can't be fixed because it is perfect as it is. So, Big Walk, I have no complaints and it is precious to all of us and please go play it. but all the games we discussed today have something to recommend them. So thanks, guys. This was very fun.

Yeah, it's great. We're walking through these games with you today. Yeah, thanks for walking with me. And thanks to Devin Ronaldo for producing this episode and to our junior Ramgo Pal for his senior podcast management. We will be back next week with previews of Marvel's Wolverine and also Star Wars Zero Company, which comes out a little later this month, as to so many things. And we will be talking. Yeah, at the end of this month, that's when the gauntlet begins.

And that's when the boss rush of video games between then and GTA6 really starts in earnest. So we are going to be button mashing a lot between now and then. And until next time, you can contact buttonmash at ringerversegaming at gmail.com. We want to hear from you about the games we discussed. And if you have any suggestions for other gaming glowups or games you wish had gotten glowups, we want to hear them. and we will share them and we will talk to you next week. And until then, hey, I'm big walking here.