The Ringer-Verse - ‘Metroid Prime 4,’ ‘Marvel Cosmic Invasion,’ and ‘Five Nights at Freddy's 2’ Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

After stepping inside Samus’s visor for the first time in years, Ben and Polygon's Giovanni Colantonio compare notes on the much-anticipated ‘Metroid Prime 4: Beyond,’ a great game grafted onto parts of other, less-good games. In their spoiler-lite chat, they puzzle over the game’s discordant elements, praise its strengths, and analyze how it fits into the franchise’s lineage before assessing the Switch 2's launch-window lineup now that Nintendo has released its last title of 2025. Then Jessica Clemons joins Ben to discuss their impressions of a new beat-'em-up brawler, ‘Marvel Cosmic Invasion,’ and a new video game movie that’s been beaten up by critics, ‘Five Nights at Freddy's 2.’ Intro (0:00)‘Metroid Prime 4’ Overview (3:00)'Marvel Cosmic Invasion' Review (1:06:34)Reactions to ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 2’ (1:39:49)Outro (1:56:47) Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Giovanni Colantonio and Jess ClemonsProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up? It's Todd McShay, host of the McShay show at The Ringer and Spotify. We're building this thing up and I couldn't be more excited to be back, talking college football and everything NFL draft with the most informed audience out there. That's you. My co-host, Steve mentioned I will be with you three times a week throughout the football season with all the latest news, analysis, and scouting intel from around the league. For even more insight, subscribe to my newsletter, the McShay report, to access my micaw. drafts, big boards, tape breakdowns, and other exclusive scouting content, you can't get anywhere else. It's going to be a great season. And I hope you'll be with us at the McShea Show every step

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I am Benvenberg, senior editor for the Ringer and head space pirate of button mash. I don't endorse or condone game piracy, to be clear. Only space piracy. And in the words of Samus sidekick Miles McKenzie, it's about to get real nerdy in here, if it hasn't already. Later on this episode, Jessica Clemens will join me to discuss new beat-em-up game Marvel Cosmic Invasion and new beat-up by critics movie Five Nights at Freddy's 2. Another Night at Freddy's.

That's not the actual subtitle. It doesn't have one. But first, I see someone glowing green in my visor, scanning, scanning. It's Giovanni Colomtonio, editor at large for Polygon. Geo, welcome. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here, much like Miles McKenzie, is happy to be in Metroid Prime 4 Beyond.

So happy. No one has ever been happier to appear in a video game. In fact, I'm going to greet you like an NPC in Metroid Prime 4 greets sims. Okay. Okay. at Polygon, I never expected to see you here. It's an honor to be in your presence. I can't wait to team up with you.

That was that. That was good. I think at the end, though, you would have to be like, by the way, make sure you've hit the record button to make sure that you're saving your progress right now. Make sure to check your map. And don't forget to bring me your weapons to upgrade. Well, thanks for not greeting me the way Samus greets them,

which is with dead silence. Pure silence. That would be cool. If I was really like playing the role in this, you would not hear a word for me during this. Not conducive to podcasting, unfortunately. Well, terrible podcast, it's true. Not among her many strengths. We've got a few more button mashes to come this month.

Reactions to the Game Awards, our own Game of the Year discussion, Fallout season two coverage. But this episode will probably feature the last new games we will cover on the podcast this year after a month's long marathon of releases. And we've got a doozy today. the extremely long-awaited Metroid Prime 4 Beyond developed by Retro Studios

eventually and published by Nintendo this week for Switch and Switch 2. And Gio, I know Metroid Prime has distracted you from the true attraction of Nintendo's holiday season, Kirby Airwriters. We'll get to that. We'll assess the Switch's launch

window now that Metroid is closing the books on Nintendo's 2025 titles, but I am glad that you are here to talk prime with me today because, man, what a weird game. It's a weird one. Often a very good game, to be clear, but also an extremely confounding game with all of these disparate elements that don't quite come together. And you can, it's probably a cliche to say, you can see the seams, but it's true of

this game in a way that it is not typically true of a Nintendo franchise flagship release. where you can just sort of see, I think you may have referred to it as the rough drafts in your review for Polygon. You can see all of these different versions of the game that Metroid Prime 4 could have become. Some may be better than the version it actually became. Yeah, you know, I think like required reading for this game

before you played, if you really want to understand what's going on, it's not going back and playing like Metroid Prime 3 and like figuring out where the story connects. It's not going back and playing Metroid Prime Hunters, which is the introduction of the silics, the villain in this game that is never explored. Playing Metroid Prime's Federation Force, weirdly. That is, like, this game is a direct sequel to Federation Force.

But honestly, the text that you need to understand what is going on here more than anything is Nintendo just released an art book about the history of Metroid Prime. And in it, there's like a lot of producers notes about, like, oh, what the series went through. And it's really interesting because they're very transparent about, like, we couldn't figure out a way

to make the series commercial through its life. And it kind of is the producer of the series, you know, from the Japan side of Nintendo talking about like retro studios having all of these very Western pitches for it. And actually like there's a whole part where they talk about Metroid Prime 2 and they say they really wanted to do a game where you rescue Galactic Federation troopers. And they wanted that to be the format of Metroid Prime 2 and you go and each area has a different person that you save. And Nintendo was like, no, that's not really a good idea for this. But they were like, we should do something about the Galactic Federation later. And then that came to fruition in Federation Force. They were specifically like, that's the reason we made Metroid Prime Federation Force.

And I think as soon as you understand that and understand like this conflict of them never knowing how to modernize the series and it being like retro studios wanting to kind of put Western elements into it, but Nintendo not wanting to do that and knowing the development history of trying to get to this game and how development history started on it, then you can really see way clearer why it's such a hodgepodge of ideas, because it really reads like Nintendo started trying to make a Nintendo game, handed it over to Retro and was like, fine, do all the ideas that said we couldn't do before, but also please do the things we're asking you to do alongside that. And it's a little messy because of it. Yeah, and uncommonly messy because Nintendo is very

secretive and although sometimes their games take a while to make, typically there's not much public drama. And this was the rare exception to that, where this game was announced in 2017 at E3, which still existed. That's how long it was. And then a couple of years later, it was rebooted. It was restarted. Reportedly, it was being developed by Bandai Namco originally, which ironically was just acquired by Nintendo, job well done, I guess. And then it was handed back to Retro, which had developed the original classic Metroid Prime trilogy, and Nintendo said, okay, you do it. And even then, it took several years finally to come through fruition, such as it is. And you just kind of touched on it there. For me, for you, for fans of this franchise, a new Metroid

is a major event, any Metroid, let alone the first Metroid Prime game in 17 years, arriving eight years after it was announced. And yet, there is the... this disconnect between what critics and kind of hardcore gamers think of Metroid and what the public at large thinks of Metroid, which is maybe nothing at all much of the time because it's, it's the, I think of it as the third part of the Triforce essentially in Nintendo's flagship franchise,

it's Mario Zelda and Metroid, right? They're the NES franchises. I guess you could lump D.K. in there if you'd like to also. Kirby gets in there somehow in the center of the triphorice. Sure, the soft marshmallow re-center. But it has never been a sales juggernaut or a really cultural sensation the way that those other franchises have.

Metroid Dread is the high point for the series in terms of sales, about $3 million, which is, you know, good as many games go, but not for Mario and Zelda. It's a small fraction of that, right? It's dwarfed by many other Nintendo franchises. Metroid Prime sold about 3 million copies, too. that's kind of the high point here. And so in my mind, this is, well, clear out it's Metroid Prime. This is the huge holiday title. And it's true in influence, but the influences sort of outsize in relation to the sales.

Yeah, it's kind of the Nintendo series for like the really bought in Nintendo fans, right? And there were a couple of those, I think. Like, Animal Crossing used to be that before it kind of had its mainstream moment. Like, I think you always have games like that. I think the thing that's really interesting about Metroid and it's played. and kind of Nintendo is it's kind of more disparate than people think. I think people think of Metroid and they're like, oh, it's this moody, isolated, like, 2D Metroidvania that is all kind of like quiet and whatever.

And that's like true if you're thinking of super Metro right, which is still everyone's touch point of like, that's the Metroid game, right? That's when we think of Metroid, that's what comes to mind. And also Metroid Prime One to some extent, which I think was like, that was direct. coming off of that game in a weird way. Like, crazy to think, but it was. And I think people forget that the Metroid series is actually like two separate things, which is, yes, there's that meaty, like, quiet 2D Metroid.

But the Metroid Prime series for a while has also been, you know, like Nintendo Space Epic where they have NPC characters that they're trying to explore and dialogue and talk and trying to make their like... Halo-esque almost mainstream sci-fi. Yeah. Yeah, when Metroid Prime 3 came out, that was like... the thing about that game. It was very clearly like, oh, they think that Metroid can be their halo and they have all these aliens talking. So I think there comes to be this weird disconnect

where people look at Metroid Prime 4 and what is happening in it and they're like, what is this? This isn't Metroid, but it's kind of like, well, it is. It's just the parts of Metroid that people don't necessarily love as much of the other parts of Metroid. And that makes it like such a weird thing to discuss. Yeah. And you said it's the series for the true Nintendo diehards. And that's probably true to an extent. I guess it might also be the series for people who are not normally Nintendo players, because it is kind of an outlier in a sense. It's more Western-style gamey game, more adults, I mean, by Nintendo standards, right? Moody, atmospheric, kind of creepy at times. And so I wonder whether the way that this turned out is a reflection of some

aspiration to make it more mainstream, because I think the reason why it hasn't really broken out in that way, despite being super influential, despite having a genre half named after it, right? Is that, look, Metroidvania's are incredible games, but they can be frustrating. They can be not for everyone. You can bounce off of them. And so I wonder whether the idea with Metroid Prime 4 was to sound down some of those edges and reduce the barrier for entry, make it more accessible, or whether it's something that goes hand in hand with what increasingly seems to be Nintendo's design philosophy,

these days, which is sort of create a sandbox, let people play in it. You know, the post Breath of the Wild, you know, Odyssey, echoes of wisdom, just give players the tools in the toolbox and then let them manipulate the world, make it open world, right? There's just a lot of elements here that you can kind of think, oh, this is what they were going for. Do you think it's one or the other or a bit of both? I think the problem is that it probably was all of those things at some point in the last like eight years or however long it's been, right? Like, I really think that there was probably a version of this game coming off of like Breath of the Wild success where they said, oh, we wanted to be open-ended and not be, you know,

like you get an ability and you have to go here. You see that desert area. That's like one of these weird half-baked ideas in the game where you feel like there was a different game here at some point. You have this expansive open world, quote unquote, desert area that you cross through. It's kind of a transport hub. And it's like kind of has some stuff to do and has some like, like Zelda like shrines, but there's not that many of them.

And it like feels weirdly underdeveloped as an area. And you can almost feel that there is like a game that was supposed to be there. There was open ended. And I remember the place where that started to feel like maybe this was a different game at some point is when you first get out to that area and get your motorcycle, which is like, you know, the second biome you get a motorcycle. You get a call from good old Miles McKenzie on the thing. And he goes like, hey, you have to find three more teleporter keys. There are three biomes. why don't you go where you want to go next?

And you're like, oh, cool, you can do these in any order. That's so different for Metro-Ride. I went to the ice biome because it was the closest one to me. I get there. I get like one room into it. And it's like, here's the thing I can't pass because I need an upgrade for. And I'm like, oh. There's some ice.

I need a heat beam. Yeah. And then I get a call from Miles McKenzie on my thing who just told me to go anywhere. And he goes, why don't you go to the volcano? And it's like, what, what's going on? So I really do think there must have been a draft of this game. And maybe not. Maybe it's just a weird design oversight, but it feels like there was a draft of the game that might have been a, hey, what if a Metroid game like you play in any order?

And maybe that's why it didn't work because that concept just doesn't actually work at all. But I also think to the other thing that you said about like sanding it down to kind of help more players come in, I 100% think that is probably more intentional. I think that you see a lot of like nudge systems in this game, especially in the Galactic Federation, right? The big thing in this game is that you have NPCs that act like Navi from Zelda and tell you exactly where to go. They will point at a door and say, this is the way out of the room, even when there's no other door in the room, so you know that that's the door that you have to go through. And it does feel a little bit like it is built out of how do we modernize this a little bit? How do we make it so people don't feel as lost? And I think there are really smart ways they handle that and really overbearing ways they handle that.

And the times where they just let, the times where they just kind of like let retro studios trust what retro studios does best, which is really smart environmental design, or the parts where it shines and the parts where they're like, we need a third nudge to tell players where to go is the part where it kind of falls apart. Yeah. And on its best, Metroid Prime 4 is as good as any Metroid.

There are absolutely moments where I just fell into the flow and I felt like this is classic Metroid Prime. This is what I wanted. This is what we waited for. But then there are all these discordant. notes and all these interruptions. And that, what you're identifying there just felt like anathema to me as a Metroid player.

And as you're saying, there's precedent for all of these things. There have been NPCs before. There have been voiced lines, et cetera. But, you know, Metroid contains multitudes. But sort of the essence of Metroid feels like Samus shows up on some planet by herself and has to just go slunking and upgrade gradually. and everyone leaves her alone to take their business. And so to have someone constantly chiming in,

some of my favorite parts of the game, it's not a coincidence that they take place when I'm out of radio range. So miles, well-meaning Miles can't contact me. No one can tell me to check my map or open this door or that door because you're supposed to bang your head

against locked doors in Metroid, which is one problem why people, again, bang their heads off of this franchise sometimes. You know, I sometimes think, that maybe the Metroidvania is like the purest expression of gaming or if I had to choose one genre on my desert island, I might take Metroidvania games because they kind of combine everything that games can do well, everything that's good about games, puzzle solving, exploration, action, combat, that sense of progression and empowerment. It delivers all of those things,

but it also delivers gating and frustrating you because you don't have the item that you need to jump on this thing or open this door and tons of backtracking. And for better or worse, there's a lot less of that in this game. And as you noted, in your review, this is essentially a Zelda game. It's sort of an old-school Zelda game in which the keys that you have to collect are in dungeons. Each biome is a dungeon and you go to each one and you sort of solve puzzles and there's a boss and then you go to a different one. it's ironically less interconnected than the typical Metroid game,

maybe even though there is this open world gesture, you're kind of going here, solving all the problems, going there. And yeah, you can come back when you get a better gun or a grapple or whatever it is and you can explore some other areas. But typically it's extremely linear, you know, maybe more so than most asteroids. Yeah, it's funny because even the open world part of it, like the transport hub desert area, is really just like Hyrule, from Ocarina of Time, right?

Where, like, that is a space that exists to give the world a little bit of, like, scale, but mostly just exist to, like, not put all these biomes next to one another so that you have to cross through one to get to the other, right? Yeah. And there are, I think, a lot of really smart ways that Retro Studios solves for some of the things that make people bounce off of Metroid games. I think there are some really not great things that happen here, too, right? You know, the handholding and all that stuff.

But to their credit, like, the one thing that I think this game does incredibly well, is the way that, like, making you go back and look for things works is it's not so much like, hey, there was a whole area you couldn't access in this first biome you went to. Go back to it, walk through the space and get back to the room that you need to get to. It's a lot more like, hey, there are puzzles that are built, like, that are right in front of you, that you didn't even realize were puzzles until you kind of got the right tool. Right. Yeah. I'm not complaining about more Zelda in my Metroid, to be clear. That's a blend of two things I like a lot.

Yeah, for sure. And like, but that's where they do the Zelda Pink Smart, right? It's kind of like, oh, cool. I went back and I didn't realize that like this vehicle, like, I think one of the early ones is like in Fury Green, which is the first area you go to. There's kind of like the hub area where like all the Federation people go to. And if you walk on the door outside of it, there's like this weird vehicle. And it's just kind of sitting there and it looks like a set piece.

And if you scan it, it's like, hey, something might happen if you electrify both ends of this vehicle. And then if you come back when you have that, if you have like observed the world instead of just walked through it and use the scanner, which is such an important part of the series, you realize like, oh, that is a puzzle. There's not like a ton of rooms to go in that I haven't gone in, but there are secrets within the rooms that I've been through. And that's a little bit more Zelda than Metroid. And I think that's really successful. And I think like the, I've read about this, but like, I totally agree. This is like a 3D Zelda game more than a Metroidvania. It has the Metroid vina DNA, but those two things are really closely related, right? They're both kind of

gear dating and getting the tool you need. The difference is that like Zelda games are happening on like that dungeon scale, whereas Metroid games are happening on that macro scale, right? So you get an item in a Metroid game, suddenly more of a world opens up, whereas Metroid is doing that within its biomes. It's like, hey, you got the thing in this biome. Now you can access a little bit more of it while you're here. And you're going to use the tools that you picked up here to kind of like learn how that tool works. And then once you go backtrack, you'll realize like,

oh, that's a utility for it that I didn't realize back there. And I think that's like a really subtle twist of the formula that actually does really, really work when they're just kind of focused on that. And so it's weird. I think if you come into it looking for like a Metroidvania,

you're going to be very disappointed because it is super linear and hand-hieldy and all this stuff. But I think if you like are one of those people who's like, uh, Breath of the Wild's cool, but I miss classic Zelda Dungeons. It kind of hits, and that makes it such a weird project. Yeah, yeah, one thing I've talked about in this podcast is that I like when these classic 40-plus-year-old Nintendo franchises can kind of run along parallel tracks where you have the 3D version and the 2D version.

So you get Odyssey, but you also get wonder, or you get tears and Breath of the Wild, but you also get echoes. And Metroid has done that for years. You get Prime 4. You also get Dreads. And I could maybe make the case that Metroid is better suited to 3D, not just because it started there, but because something about the gameplay just kind of hits harder in 2D. But I like that there can be both, at least in theory, that we can have prime and we can also have sort of the throwback vintage super Metroid-style 2D games, even if it's kind of on an intermittent sporadic schedule because it's Metroid, so it's never a top priority for Nintendo or. for players. Yeah, we'll get one once every six years and it'll be, it's like, oh, maybe they're remaking Metroid Fusion. I don't know. Maybe they're doing a multiplayer game. And to be clear,

the lineage here, I believe you made the case a couple months ago that Metroid Prime, the original, is the greatest Nintendo game ever. I did. You still stand by that, lay out the case. Yeah, no, I stand by that. I think it's just like such a, especially like for the time that it came out, there was really nothing like it because like the console first person shooter was rising, right. And like everyone was like really rushing to make their halo and that was the hot thing. This was 2002. Yeah. Yes. And Nintendo I think is at its best when it kind of looks at the landscape and where everyone is following the same trend. It's like, well, what's the Nintendo version of this, right? Like what is what is a Nintendo game that is a shooter look like? And I think Metroid Prime was such a smart answer to that because it was like, well, you know, what if we put something in first person and you have an arm cannon? But what if we take the things that are really core Nintendo design, which is like exploration. and secrets and all of these like very NES or like Super Nintendo era things

and you put that in 3D space and we just make some really incredible spaces that you get lost in that you really buy into where you feel like you're part of that world in the same way you do in like a Zelda game like a really fully realized vision and I think combining that

with the way that they put you in first person and really make you feel like you're in that suit and they do a lot of tricks to do that right, the thing where like, if light flashes on your screen, you see Sammis' eyes for a second. Yes. It's a very physical game. You kind of, like the double jump, you feel the chunkiness of it. When you jump, it's not just like a smooth motion.

I think it's just like one of, I mean, I think it's the best like first person game ever, just in terms of like really actually making you feel like you are in that suit, that it is mechanical and that, you know, I don't know, it's so fascinating to me. So yeah, I think. And then once you factor in, like, I think it has an unbelievable sound. just as a work of craft, the sound, the art design, the level design is beautiful. And I mean, the way it tells a very subtle story about the backstory of what's happening in that world. I think it does literally everything I want a video game to do.

And Metroid Prime 4 does a lot of that, but it also kind of doesn't trust players fully to like accept a lot of that on its own. Yeah. It's funny 20 plus years ago playing on GameCube. I remember finding the visor kind of an encumbrance, which I guess was part of the point because it puts you inside Samus's claustrophobic soup. But on smaller screens with lower resolutions, there is kind of a visibility issue that does not bother me now on a massive screen in 4K, et cetera. So I kind of appreciate that. But I also do like that, yes, it makes you still feel like Samus. I love the booming muffled thump of weapons inside Samus's visor. You're hearing it

as she hears it, not as it's heard in the world, essentially. And that's still, I think, a strength of this game, the soundtrack, the sound design. It sounds great. There's a really nice soundtrack, you know, kind of remixed classics and some new stuff. And I guess that's sort of the basic description of the game, remix classic with some new stuff. But the new stuff just does not always stand alongside the remix classics. Or at least, I mean, look, Samis is psychic now.

that's sort of the hook, or at least it seems like it will be the hook early on. Sammas has psychic powers. There's a whole almost extinct alien race called the Lamorne, which never stopped reminding me of Lamorne Morris from New Girl, but that's probably just me. That kind of took me out of things a little bit when I just reminded of Winston from New Girl every time I'm reading about alien lore, very somber. But that's just a me problem. But, but.

It has this excellent environmental storytelling, as this franchise always does, and it's done really well here. And I can't stop scanning. Just never stop scanning. I play these games at a very deliberate pace because despite Miles McKenzie and his exposition, I'm not getting that much of a dump on the Lamor. You're getting that from scanning all the items in the world. And so it's not a run-and-gun shooter. It's a shooter technically, but it's the same sort of lock-on,

strafe. It's a shooter that is kind of half-puzzle game because you're just trying to find the weak point. Again, almost in a Zelda-esque way and then exploit that. And there are fantastic boss fights in this game. I think that's still a strength. There are also sometimes when it is more of a run-of-the-mill shooter, almost just like survival mode, like waves of enemies running at you. And it's not as successful then because that's just not what Metroid is really, right? The controls are, if anything, smoother and more satisfying than ever. And I think that some of it's been streamlined. And there's kind of like a, you know, when you're scanning, you can shoot and it'll just shift back out of your scanning visor. And you can do a little dodge dash move. And there's a neat, slick little animation when you morph out of the morph ball and all these nice little touches.

So it controls like a dream. But then those new elements like the psychic this and psychic that, it kind of just turns into old run-of-the-mill Metroid elements, you know? Yeah. And it's just like, oh, this is the psychic version of that thing that we've seen a million times before. The psychic thing is like one of those. There's multiple things in this game where, like, I think when you get to the meat and potatoes of it, that part of it is so great and it saves a lot of this game.

But yeah, it's a lot of those new ideas where you can really feel like this was probably fundamental to the early draft of the game. They were probably like, oh, yeah, Samas is going to have psychic powers. That's going to be a twist. and like you get a couple of new abilities where it's like, ah, cool, like she has this lasso and like that's interesting. But that's kind of just the grapple beam like in how it was used in previous ones, right? And like you start to feel that a lot of the abilities are just like, yeah,

her spider ball is psychic power now instead of a regular power. And then it's like there's a fire beam and an ice beam and an electricity beam. And that almost supplants the psychic stuff in a way. And then you're just back to traditional metric. And that stuff's not even psychic. Like those things are like, oh, we found chips in the world. And like, Miles McKenzie is going to put them on. And like there are two separate games there, right?

There's the one where it's like you are finding like the Lamorner, a very technical race, right? And you're finding all of their kind of tech left behind, which is already a perfectly good like setup for a Metroid game because it's like, okay, yeah. So you're going to find the morpaw bombs. And you're going to find stuff because they have this technology. And they build this mechanism into the game of like, you have an engineer who can install this. stuff. That's so smart. But then they're like, also she has psychic powers and you're like, okay, at some point these were two separate games, right? And they just couldn't pick one. They didn't want to give them one. Yeah. And I think also like you can see that tension in the

Silux story where it's very clear that Nintendo. What Silux story? Yes. Exactly. It's so clear that Nintendo at some point when they did Federation Force and hunters or whatever, they were like, we're going to start teasing this villain that has kind of nothing to do with retro. Right. It has more to do with the people who made Federation Force. And when Bandai or whatever was like working on it beforehand, that was the story. And when Retcher inherited it, they were like, hey, this is the story of the game.

And Retro came in and was like, okay, we're going to do that. But also, we don't really care about that. And we're going to transport Samus to a world and basically do the Chozo storyline from Metroid Prime One, which is about like Samus finds an extinct race and is trying to figure out what happened. And they're like, we're going to do that because we can do that well.

And Silox will appear sometimes and not do anything in. I don't know. And yeah, that's where the tension is, I think. And I think, like, the more you can put that stuff away and be like, well, at least it's still fun to play in those moments, the more I think it's, like, easy to see what it does well. But it's definitely a weird thing to think about a lot when you break it down in the moment. Yeah, it's like either too many cooks in the kitchen or underbaked. It's some combination of both.

And you've dumped on the hub area, but I have to do some dumping on the hub area too. because it's incredible to me that the game ships like this. And I don't mean that it's broken or buggy or anything. It's just so undeveloped that I can't imagine anyone tested this and thought, yes, this is fun. This is what we were going for here because you copped it to Hyrule Fielder. I recently replayed Majora's Mask. And it has a better pub area than Prime 4 does.

And we're talking 25 years ago. There's nothing to do in this area. It's called Sol Valley, and it's a desert, and it is just a barren landscape that essentially exists so that you can cross from one biome to the next, and so that there's a reason for the motorcycle, which is called the viola. And I have no problem with the viola. It's fun enough to control. I don't mind riding around, but there's no reason to ride it except for the fact that there's this vast open space that has to be crossed. And it feels like, yeah, it's trying to be like a Breath of the Wild open environment, but there's nothing to do there. There are a very few shrines, sort of Zelda-style shrines scattered around.

And you have to collect these green crystals all over the world. So you have to run them over in your bike or shoot them, and you just have to make a meter go up to collect the green crystals. And you kind of have to collect a lot of them if you want to see everything and get to the end game. And so there's a lot of sort of enforced riding around here, but there's nothing to see. There's nothing to do. There are weirdly like birds that fly around every now and then that you can shoot with your motorcycle missiles. Yeah, for no reason. But why?

Like, yeah, you don't get anything for shooting them. They don't attack you, but you like automatically lock onto the birds. It's like, why do you want me to kill these birds? There's no power up or anything. Why are we killing these birds? I don't know, but I do it because there's nothing else to do. while I'm riding around. So I'm just like,

I guess I'll frag some birds for some reason. It's just this giant open, unfinished area. And evidently, I mean, there's like the sound of your viola and there's some light background music. But if you want to unlock the ability

to like actually select a track that you can jam to while you're riding around this desert, you've got to buy a viola amoebo for 30 bucks to make Soul Valley slightly. more tolerable, it adds absolutely nothing to this game and actively breaks up the parts of the experience that I enjoy. And I just, I can't imagine, I mean, I guess I can't imagine what they were thinking, but what they actually ended up with is just so far from the ideal version of this thing. Yeah. And I think you can tell, like, they had to design around like its limitations

or like the fact that it was empty. Because I think that the green crystal thing, and to be clear, it's not that they're green crystals. They are literally in-game universe called green crystals, right? Which is so, which is so weak, man. Yeah. And also, every now and then when you're riding around, there's like an enemy that is also riding around, but like, we don't know who they are. And when you shoot them, nothing happens. You don't get anything. It's like, it's so strange. It's just, it feels unfinished despite being in development for so long. Yeah. And the green crystal thing is like, you can tell why they're there, Right, because at some point there was this world that was really empty and they were like,

we need to give players something to do while they're going through here. So how do we make them engage with this? How do we make it so it's not really boring to go through it? So they're like, well, if we put a bunch of green crystals around, players can smash through them, right? And it's a weird placebo that you realize later in the game. Because what I'll say is that like, without, I guess, like, spoiling too much, there are like very large deposits, like crystal deposits that you are not able to break early in the game. and eventually you get something

that allows you to break those and when you do, they give you like a fourth of the crystal bar so you are wasting your time if you are collecting the small crystals throughout because like if you just wait to that point of the game and get those things, you can fill up that bar in like five minutes

you know, so it's really like oh we need to put something for players to do but also we don't want to make them grind and do this so like I don't know, we'll just later in the game you can just do it and it just feels like they couldn't figure out put in that world and you know you have those Zelda like shrines but also all of them require a specific item in the game to get into each one so it's like you're doing them linearly you can

only hit the like six shrines or whatever there are in a specific order like the entire way through and it's like it it just figures again it feels like they were like what if a Metroidvania was open world and open ended and at some point they were like that's impossible because of the way that that geargating works in these games and they just kind of left in some part of the of it that don't quite work. Yeah, and it's odd because you can go back to interviews that were done in 2015 with the producer of this game, who was sort of sketching out some of the elements that are in this game.

So it's been on his mind, it's been in the works for so long. And that's part of the expectations ratchet up, of course, among Metroid Prime lifers who are finally getting a new Metroid Prime game, and you're expecting it to really do something new and innovative the way that the original Metroid Prime did. oh, this is how Metroid can work in 3D, wow, this is groundbreaking. And you would expect after such a long layoff that Metroid Prime 4 would come back

with something that would just blow our socks off. And it just doesn't do that. So it's sort of a victim of the circumstances, I guess, in a way. It's like, man, we finally got Silk Song and Metroid Prime 4 this year. It happened. They're not vaporware, their realities. One of them was exactly what everyone was wanting

and expecting and hoping for and worth the weight. And then there's Metroid Prime 4, which just feels like it could have been and feels like sometimes, yes, this is what I wanted, but the whole thing just doesn't feel cohesive, sadly. Disjointed, disjointed.

And I'll give it credit in one area because ultimately, I do think it's probably like more good than not. And a lot of that just comes down to the strength of like what retro does well and the feel of that game. You know, it's the craft of it, right? And on a craft level, the one thing I will say for it is I genuinely think it has maybe the best world design in a game this year. Not the desert. The desert is very bad world design, right?

But like the individual biomes and the way that they build those are like spectacular. And I don't know how far you are through it yet. I don't know if you've been able to click the whole thing yet. But like the thing that's so smart about it is all of these games, right, like any Nintendo game, any Metroidvania is always going to have those like themed biomes, right? where it's like, oh, here's the water area, here's the fire area, whatever. It does that, right? It has the grass area. It has the electric area.

It has the fire area, whatever. But what they're so smart about doing is figuring out a way to contextualize those things in the world and like in the fiction they've built up the Lamorne to be like, hey, why is there a lightning area? Why is there an area where there's thunder and whatnot? And they come up with this whole premise of this is a very machine focused race. They have a factory and they have a factory where they are building these motorcycles that they need to cross this desert because this desert is like so expansive whatever like they they

build that into the lore of kind of like yeah they have to find a way to cross them and so they built this factory on like an edge of the planet that is like prone to lightning storms so when you go in there there's like all this lightning striking down because that is how they power the generators of that area and the moments where it's doing that and speak and communicating through that because that's storytelling right like that is that whole area where you get your bike is such a succinct story, that is so much more effective than like Miles McKenzie being like, let me tell you about the lore of the world or whatever. And I hope that retro comes out of this, you know, if this game is successful enough to give them another shot. Like, I hope they come out of an

understanding that like, that's the part you still do really well and all this other stuff, like, cool experiment, but like, I don't think it works quite as well as the stuff you're really good at. Yes. There's one area called the ice belt, which is just this frozen. lab and you're going through and there are all these cryopods with the frozen monsters inside them at no point did I think that I would not be fighting those frozen monsters very soon. Yeah, I'll turn on the generator. I'll make it warm in here. I'm sure nothing will go wrong.

Nothing will thaw out that I will then have to fight. Man, but it's so smart because it's like, again, there's an ice biome in every Metroid game. And instead of just being like, yeah, the glacier area of the planet, it's right next to the fire area. It's like, this is a lab that has frozen over, you know, and they still get to have their cake and eat it too, right? Like, have the ice area do all the like, oh, you need the fire beam to melt stuff. But they also just get to, like, do a riff on alien, you know, in that and make this, like, horror set piece that is themed or themed in such a, like, smart way. And yeah, those are,

if you hear people talking about this game, those to listeners, and you hear them talking about things like the open world and like Miles McKenzie and you're like, and everyone's like this stuff stinks. And you're still confused about why people are still positive on it, despite that. Like, that's the part of it that still outweighs it, I think. There's still so much merit in that. Yes, I was having fun most of the time I was playing. Whenever I wasn't in Seoul Valley, usually I was having some fun. And the game, like most Metroid games, it's not extremely long. You can beat this in 10 to 15 hours, you know, longer if you want to collect every green crystal. I think that, by the way. I think that. By the way,

I collect every single green crystal because I thought there was going to be a big reward. Don't. Don't do it, y'all. You just wanted to spend as much time in Soul Valley as possible. Just see the sites. I don't think I saw that boulder before. Wow. It looks like every other boulder.

Incredible. Yeah. But aside from that, it does have excellent art direction. Like, it's a really pretty game. There are some levels that are pretty breathtaking. You know, it's not graphically the most impressive game you're ever going to see on the Switch 2 hardware. But it might be the best-looking Nintendo game we've seen thus far, and it should be after this long in development and on new hardware.

I played it on Switch 2, I assume you did too. So I haven't tried it on Switch. From all accounts, it runs smoothly, which is an accomplishment, I think. You know, clearly there are some sacrifices and there's lower resolution and all of that. It's not nearly as pretty. And if you're looking for an impetus to upgrade from Switch to Switch to Switch, 2, then this is as good a reason as any, but it's not buggy or broken or, you know, terrible frame rate or anything like that. They seem to have dialed down the settings to the extent that

it runs well, aside from some longer loading times, you might have to settle in when you're going from one biome to the next. But other than that, kudos to them, I guess, on getting it running smoothly enough on both generations. And it is a pretty good showcase, I would say, for Switch 2. And something I've realized in this generation, really, is that I'm just a frame rate fetishist.

I didn't realize the extent. I always thought I was going to be a quality over performance, man, but I'm just not at all because this game on Switch 2 with supported screens, etc., docked supports 120 frames per second.

If you play at 1080p, it's locked at 60 frames per second if you play on 4K. and I just go for the frame rate over the resolution every time. And it's odd because you'd think that 60 versus 120, can we even really discern that? Would it make a difference? But I think that is actually more apparent to me

than 4K versus 1080P. And I've just learned in this generation when so many games give you the option of performance versus quality or some sort of hybrid or blend of the two that I will always opt for a frame rate over just, you know, the super fanciest rate tracing.

Yeah, see, I'm like the opposite in some ways. I'm like, I'm the kind of, I'm the kind of frame rate person. No, I, I love, I, the 120 frames per second in this game is incredible. And like, now that I've seen it, I'm like, oh, I can't go back, right? It's beautiful. Yeah. But I'm also one of those people who's like, if you show me, if I, if I load up a game and it's 30 frames per second in the first like five minutes, I'm going to be like, oh,

oh, this looks so choppy. And then my brain's going to fill in the gaps. And then it looks like 60 to the rest of the game, you know. But, but I do. Yeah, the reason why it's rewired. my brain is that I can now switch from one to the next. Yeah. And if I could only see it at whatever it was, then I just wouldn't notice anymore. But if I can instantly switch from 60 to 120, oh, okay, this is suddenly so buttery. I would not have known until you gave me the option to

just do an AB test, essentially. They should never have given us the option. It's too much power. We should have lived in bliss in the cave. They've ruined me. Yeah. Did you use the mouse controls at all? because I did not. And the mass support is one of the things that I thought was exciting about Switch 2. And yet I had no desire really to break out the mouse controls for this game. You know what?

So I demoed, like there was a demo that was going around beforehand when the Switch 2 was announced where... Yes, I tried it at a Nintendo event. Yeah. Yeah, the opening of the game, right? And when I used the mouse controls there, I was like, this is incredible. And it sold me on the Joycons, like the MouseCon or whatever.

I was like, wow, like this is so smooth. it's so accurate and more precise than you would possibly think. And in my head, I was like, yeah, this is going to be the game, like the Switch game where I really do it. And I think if it had launched with the Switch 2, I probably would have, you know, because it would still have had that novelty factor of like, oh, I just want to use this thing. But I broke it up for like a good hour or so of this game, just like, you know, I was reviewing it. So I wanted to do my due diligence there. And at the end of the day, like, I use the Switch because it's not, you know, a PC, right? Like I use it because I want to curl up on the couch and have it and like, you know, playing 120 and have it, you know, the distance from my face that I want it.

And I just found that like the game played well enough and it was still built enough around controls that even though there was this like very cool kind of gimmicky, but, but functionally gimmicky, control to it. Like, yeah, I kind of just stuck with it in handheld. And I think that's actually like a weird part of the game because I think they designed so much of it around the fact that you can use mouse controls. there's definitely some bosses where there's like, oh, there's kind of like a precise spot you can hit on it. And the lock on isn't quite lock on now. Like you lock on, but you still have to like game within the lock on thing,

which feels like they're kind of trying to push you to like use the mouse a little bit more so you can get precise with it. And I actually think it makes a couple of the boss fights, which are all fantastic design-wise, a little bit of a pain because you have to hit these like very small spots that you don't actually lock onto. You're just kind of like hovering around. So yeah, I didn't use them that much.

And if anything, it taught me that, like, it's probably going to take a lot for me to actually use mouse controls in the game unless it is a game that is built around them, like Dragon Drive, which is not a great. Right. But better than that. Yeah. Or if it's a PC port, if it's an RTS or something and it was designed for that from the ground up, then sure, maybe. But otherwise, could I play with my mouse on my pant leg, I guess, but I prefer not to. The other thing I realized is that almost 20 years on now from the Wii, I still am never really that happy when motion controls show up. I feel like we have not nailed motion controls. There are some limited applications of them in some games, but I turned them off in Metroid Prime form as quickly as I could, because, yeah, you can lock on and then you can do some manual targeting around that,

and you can do that via motion controls, but then that would happen at times when I didn't intend for it to happen. And so I just disabled that so that I could do it with the joystick. And that's always my move, essentially. And it feels disappointing. It's deflating. It's like motion controls should be cool. And, you know, there are times, of course.

And if you're playing in VR or something, then yeah, sure. But for your standard game, I find that they're more of a hindrance than a help. Yeah, you know, it was funny. When they announced the mouse con and everyone was like, oh, my God, they're doing mouse controls. I had a moment, and I remember writing about this at the time where I was like, but isn't mouse controls just like kind of deconstructed motion controls? Like it's a pointer, right? Like it's the pointer, but instead of pointing at the TV,

you're like putting it down and sliding it. Like it's still a physical kind of like moving an object to control thing. And I think like that does take a little bit of the mouse control wow factor out of it for me because it's almost like, oh, they did the like evolved version of the mouse controls and kind of found like, this is kind of a pain. Like, nobody actually really wants to do this. And it's like, kind of annoying to play like this. And kind of went back to like, okay, what if it was just the thing that we've been doing for decades instead?

Right. And, like, for some reason, that just makes it a little less interesting to me. I think the thing that interests me about the mouse controls that we have not seen super explored yet on the Switch 2 is, I think we forget that, like, it's not just that you have one mouse. It's that you have two, you know? and there's this possibility for using two mice at the same time, and that's a unique control scheme. But again, the only example we have of that working so far is in Dragon Drive, which is like one of the first Nintendo games of the last, like, 20 years.

So it's hard to know, like, what those controls, if they're going to be a long-term thing or if it's going to be like the IR sensor on the switch where it's like, nope, didn't work. Yeah, it has been a bit of an uneven year review score-wise for Nintendo. Even Metroid Prime 4, honestly, if you looked at, I don't know, the standard deviation of review scores, probably on Metacritic or something, it would be a pretty wide range because there are people who love this game and there are people who think it's some sort of disaster. And then there's us where there's a lot to like here, but also a lot to be disappointed about. And look, I hope that it succeeds. I hope it sells because I support Metroid and I want more Metroid. And hopefully either they are able, if they, do make a follow-up to synthesize all of these elements that just never jelled well here or to jettison some of them and go back to what worked or do something completely different from the ground up, not inheriting a game that was already a work in progress, but being able

to build the foundation themselves. I hope that there is a successor. I hope there's a five, and I hope that it will be better in some respects. But this wouldn't be a bad place to on board. On the one hand, I want people to get the full. uncut, perfect, you know, prime, Metroid Prime experience. And so I don't want to say, start here if you've never played a Metroid game. But on the other hand, maybe this could be the gateway drug to other better Metroid because, again, the barrier to entry is a little lower. Yeah.

And if you don't know what you're missing, like, if you've never played Metro Prime 1, and like I realize today, like, there are legal adults who were not alive when Metroid Prime 3 came out. Like, that is how long this game, you know, has been out of the spotlight. So if it's your, I think it's like almost like an ignorance as bliss thing, right? If you have never played a Metroid Prime game before, especially the first one, which is far and beyond, I think the best. Again, I think it's a perfect video game.

I think like you're kind of none the wiser, right? Like you don't have the frame of reference to be like, oh, these NPCs and it's destroying the isolation. And it is a really good starting point in that sense. Because then when you get to like go back to the first Metroid Prime, you're going to be like, whoa, there's an even better one of these as opposed to the other way around where you're like, oh, this is like good, but not as good as pressure. Right.

Like, actually, it's a great starting point in that respect, other than the fact that you will never know who Silux is, but nobody knows who Silux is because he was in two batsman hops. Yeah, yeah. And you can play Metroid Prime remastered, which is very pretty and came out for Switch a couple years ago, so that makes it a bit more accessible too. Okay.

Well, this has been fascinating to talk about it. It is just, it's odd, even if Metroid hasn't had perfect quality control over the years. even if it is outsourced and is not directly Nintendo developed, it's still Metroids. It's still kind of a core Nintendo property, and you do expect a level of polish and cohesion from a Nintendo published game like this that Metroid Prime 4 just doesn't consistently deliver.

But when it works, it works, and it's worth playing. And maybe before we go, we can just talk a little bit about, since this is kind of the capper for this year in the Switch 2 and in Nintendo's release slate, I believe you have played and reviewed a couple of other recent Nintendo published games, which came out last month, Hyrule Warriors, Age of Imprisement,

and Kirby Air Riders, which is sort of like off-brand Nintendo games like adjacent to core Nintendo properties, but sort of spinoffs of them, developed by outside developers. But these seem to be pretty good examples of that. and you've been hooked on Kirby Air Riders, which comes to us from the legend Masahiro Sakurai,

Smash Brothers Savant, and clearly was invested in this follow-up to the original Kirby Air Ride from 2003, who was expecting a launch year sequel to that for Switch 2? It's a frantic, frenetic kind of game, I guess also Hyrule Warriors is too in its own way. Yeah, yeah, man, Kirby Air Riders, that is such a surprise that they came this year.

I remember, I don't know if you were at, like, when Nintendo did their Switch reveal event, they had like a bunch of press come in and we all, we all watched the, I don't know if you remember when Kirby Air Riders was revealed, the tone in that room, everyone was like, what? There was, like, delight, but also total confusion

because people like forget now, like that game is Harolded as a cult classic today, and you get a lot of people who are like, oh, yeah, Kirby Air Riders was like amazing. People hated it in 2020, It was like, it was terribly reviewed. And part of the reason it was terribly reviewed and whatnot was because like it came out like a month after F0 GX and it came out a couple weeks before Mario Kart Double Dash, which were like the racing games of that generation. The two best.

Yeah. And Kirby by comparison was like a very unconventional cart racer that was doing something very weird and experimental that I don't think entirely worked. And I don't think it entirely worked because the tech of the game. Cube wasn't quite there yet. I don't think it was like up to par with the level of like weird ideas and the speed of which that game is supposed to be played. And Air Riders for me is like, oh, finally technology has caught up to what the vision of this game was, which is having something that is so like frantic and fast and chaotic and chaotic and just like a total sensor over a sensory overload blitz, right? And I think.

when you finally get to play at that speed and play at that level of, again, like, chaos that that it was built for, you start to really appreciate the design decisions that were hard to see at the time. Because it's really not that different from Kirby Air Ride. Like, it has a lot of the same modes. It has a lot of the same like mechanics to how racing works, like this one button system for racing that's like very counterintuitive if you played a racing game but becomes weirdly natural the longer you play it. You don't press A to accelerate, all this stuff. And to me, it's just a game that is a bunch of design flexes from Sakurai,

where it's like, hey, every cart racer you play, you're going to pick up the controller and you know how to play it instantly, right? Sonic, Garfield Cart 2. You pick up the controller, you're like, this button accelerates, this button's item, this button's drift, great. And there's just like a flattening of the mechanics in that game that makes everything like broadly approachable, which is fun, but also, you know, kind of makes all those games feel the same a little bit.

And Kirby Air Riders is like the only car racer I've ever played aside from the first Kirby Air Ride where it's like, no, this is a game that like you can't just pick up and just know how to play it. It wants you to learn how it works inside and out. It's deceptive because it sounds like it should be even simpler because you don't have to accelerate. You just go and then you just have to steer. And so it sounds like it's very misleading because you think, oh, well, this will just be an easy pickup

and play title. The first time I played it in five-minute burst at a Nintendo showcase event, I was like, what is happening here? Yeah, no, 100%. It's so, it's so fascinating. And I think it's just like, you see a bunch of design decisions in the game that are not driven by like, okay, what does every game do? What is the thing that is balanced? What is the thing that's like fair to do? You see a lot of stuff that's just like, I think it would be funny or interesting to do this in the game. So there's like one cart where it's like a bar of soap, basically. It, the way that it controls is it like slides around the track and it's really hard to control. And it's not like functional or balanced for the game.

It's like, no, this is just a fun idea. And like it'll kind of make you laugh and it's like kind of an interesting way, like a challenge to play the game. And it's not like the meta, right? But it's so cool that he's thinking about those things. And it is kind of thinking about like, I want you to play this game, you know, like genuinely truly play it. And I want you to engage with every single thing I'm putting in the game, like every cart, every character, every weird quirk of it, I want you to actually do those and not just like find the meta and follow that and do it. And I think because of that, it just becomes such a delight to discover every single piece of it

and discover like how this vehicle works, how this works, how this works, and then slowly start to like build up the language of the game to the point where you go into city trial, which is the signature mode, which is like this weird kind of like open world stat collecting mode. And the first time you go into it, you're like, what is going on? And after like 20 times, you're like, oh, of course, the Gordoes are falling from the sky, and I'm flying off the map and all this stuff is happening. And I know what it all means. And like the sense of mastery that comes from like understanding the design of the game rather

than pure skill-based, I think makes it so remarkable. I think it's the best Switch game of the year. Sorry, Bonanza. Like, it's Air Riders. Yeah, provocative headline from you at Polygon recently. Sorry, Arc Raiders, but Air Riders is the multiplayer game of the fall. Bold take. I agree.

I agree with myself on that. Hey, I'm telling you, once you, once you get into the city trial mode and start to, like, see what that mode is doing and the secret depth of it, like, I think I'm on to something. I think it'll age well. I feel like our creators, people are already kind of like falling off a little bit. That's just me trying to wheel it into. Pick up air riders one of these days. Everyone will just switch over. Yeah, no, it's, I think it's sort of symbolic, though, of the whole slate that Nintendo debuted the Switch to with because, you know, it's almost like,

you expect X-Men and you get X-Factor or something instead. It's like you expect a new Mario 3D Mario game or you expect a new Zelda game. And of course, we weren't going to get a new Zelda game already. We've been blessed with a bunch lately. People thought maybe there was a secret successor to Odyssey up Nintendo's sleep. But in fact, it wasn't that. It was this kind of collection of just below S-tier Nintendo franchises. And maybe I'm selling Mario Kart short

because that's obviously one of the best selling Nintendo flagship franchises, but isn't always seen as a system seller. It's not the first person sort of system seller that you associate with Nintendo. And so they have kind of had this patchwork quilt of we're not going to give you new Mario, new Zelda, new Smash Brothers,

new Animal Crossing, even, new Splatoon. We're going to give you Mario Kart. then we're going to give you Donkey Kong Bonanza, which turned out to be fantastic and exceeded my expectations and was a great substitute for a 3D Mario game because it was made by part of the Odyssey team. So no slights whatsoever.

But we're going to give you that. And we're going to give you this successor to a Kirby spin-off that people didn't like that much 20 plus years ago. And we're going to give you a new Hyrule Warriors game. And we're going to give you Metroid Prime. And that's going to be uneven. and we're going to give you Drag X Drive. We're going to throw the kitchen sink, you know?

It's just all these things. And it's worked. I mean, Nintendo Switch 2 has sold like Gangbusters. It's outselling the first system. It's outselling every console ever. Maybe that was inevitable because the install base for the first switch is so massive that, of course, there was going to be a demand for a similar successor. I think there are people who are disappointed that we didn't get certain new installments

in certain franchises. But on the whole, there are some of these games that I wouldn't have looked forward to that much. And yet, I'm happy that we have. So what's your sense of the slate for the first six or so months? I think this slate is very reflective

of the fact that like, if a game company or a console maker, whatever, succeeds and is on top, they can just get way more creative with it and way weirder it. I don't think you get this launch lineup of games unless the Switch is extremely successful. In the same way that I don't think you get like Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild and Mario

Cart 8 and all of these like all hands on deck moments, but I guess Mario Card 8 deluxe would be because it was on Wii U. But you don't get all of these like all hands on deck moments on the original switch, right? The Switch one lineup in the first year was very reflective of the fact that like, ooh, we are down in our luck. Nobody bought the Wii U. we need a success. So we need to roll out Zelda and Mario and have those mainline games be there.

And then later in the Switches Life, you start to get all these weird experiments because Nintendo knows, oh, sweet, people are going to buy the install basis of anything that we're releasing on this, anything that we're releasing on this is so high. Now we can put a Famicom Detective Club game out because it's going to sell, you know?

It's going to hit its audience. And I think that the Switch 2 launch speaks to how successful the Switch was, you know, where Nintendo can say, we don't need a mainline Zelda game. We don't need a mainline Mario game. We can do Hyrule Warriors. We can revive Kirby Air Ride, a game that people don't like because we have so much confidence now that the install base is large enough and that we know how to like manage these projects and the budgets of them so that like we are creating things that we think will sell and

and make profit, you know? I think that's what I really see in this lineup. I think it's very exciting. I think it's exciting that it's not a bunch of like generational classes, right? That it's not like, oh, all of these games are 10 out of 10 best game of all time. But rather like a lot of games for the sickos is how I would describe it, right? Which to me reminds me a lot of. And I should throw Pokemon legends in there just because I didn't.

And, you know, that's a big game too. Yeah. And even that, though, that's like kind of a Pokemon game for the sickos. right? Because it's not the mainline Pokemon game. It's very much like, what if we experiment and do weird mechanical stuff that we've never done before? So, yeah, I think, like, all of it is exciting because of that. And it brings me back to the GameCube era where I think Nintendo was very experimental and where you got the first Metroid Prime to begin with because it was like, yeah,

like, you know, we're riding high. So, yeah, I'm happy with it. I've pretty much liked everything that I've played with the exception of Dragon Drive. Even like Nintendo Switch Welcome Tour, which is bizarre. I like Welcome Tour too. Yeah. You know, people drag that game and I get why because it should not have cost money or like if it did, it should have been five bucks, whatever.

But like, I think that why can't a game be like learning about a piece of hardware? Like, why does it have to be a shooter or driving or whatever? And there's parts of it that are very, very boring. and there's parts where we're like, this is a catalog for switch accessories. This is kind of very transparent. But yeah, like, I even think that is like a weird thing to do at launch and be like, we could have made this like Mario's Switch tour and people probably would have liked it more, but like, whatever, who's going to make this thing?

So yeah, I've enjoyed everything here for the most part. And we're speaking from the perspective of people who had a switch for years and have other consoles. If you didn't, either of those things, if you've been a Switch. only ecosystem person, then you got a bunch of ports of other great games from previous years that were sort of old hat for us, maybe, but the first time playing for a lot of people. So that's a selling point. Or if you didn't have an original switch, well, suddenly you have a huge library to explore. And you have upgraded additions of Breath of the Wild and tears and Kirby in the Forgotten Land, et cetera. So we're kind of coming at it from switch sicko perspective

already and is it enough to satisfy us? For a lot of people, it's perfectly fine, I think. The other glass-half-full take on this, I guess, would be, well, this thing has been a sales sensation without those kind of core releases. So now whenever Nintendo does deploy those, you get a second wave. Now, we don't know when that'll be. There's kind of more of this just smattering of bits and pieces and odds and ends coming. You know, there's a new Mario tennis game coming next year.

There's Pokemon Pocopia. There's a Yoshi platformer. There's a spletoon spinoff. There's a Fire Emblem game. Right? And so one of these days, they're just going to drop the 3D Mario, and then that will be huge. But if they have managed to maintain their momentum to this point without really bringing out the big guns, apologies to Samus, then I think that's probably a pretty good sign. And then, you know, there are new movies on the horizon.

and maybe there are games that are announced as tie-ins to those movies, and that furthers Nintendo's just, we're in everything company. We make theme parks and movies and games and everything else. And, you know, they've acquired a handful of studios to try to ramp up their game production. So I assume that they have plenty in the pipeline and the fact that this was, in some respect, sort of a slow start. And yet the fastest sales start ever, that probably bodes well for Switch 2.

Yeah, absolutely. I really think they're in an interesting position. And I think all those games you listed, for sure, right? Like, that's, that's weird. But the weirdest ones where you really feel this are like, we keep forgetting that there's a Tomodachi life sequel coming out next year. And there's a rhythm heaven game coming out next year, right? And that's so, like, we can do whatever we want, right?

We can really do this. We can put our resources towards this instead of Animal Crossing right now. And, like, it's fine and we're going to be fine. Yeah, yeah. I think it's an exciting position where I really feel like you could have maybe two big tent pole Nintendo games a year and then just get away with a lot of the small stuff where a couple people pick it up here and there and some things get word about and some things don't. And if they operate like that for the rest of this lifecycle, I think they'll actually be in a pretty strong position in terms of building the library. How well that'll do long term. I don't know.

You might hit a point where people are like, there's no more games like Bonanza, you know, like that. We want more hits like that. But knowing Nintendo's track record, I think that stuff probably is coming. And Fire Unblem, you know, that'll be a big game. There's going to be an Animal Crossing at some point. There will be a Mario game at some point. So, yeah, I like the wait and see of it right now. I'm excited about like, here's a Splatoon survival game.

And maybe it's good and maybe it's not. And it's like, well, that's more interesting to me than Splatoon 4 right now. Right. Yeah. Or, you know, as long as you continue to get third party support and you have Hades 2 is a Switch console exclusive, and you have the dusk bloods coming from from software, and that can kind of paper over some of the cracks and the gaps between the big Nintendo games, and that's always essential, too, and has not always been a strength of some Nintendo systems

passed, but it was a strength of the Switch and hopefully at the Switch, too. Okay, this has been a pleasure. You have been far better company than Miles McKenzie, probably a low bar to clear, but you have sailed over it. Thank you so much, Gio, this was fun. Thank you so much for having me. After a brief break to load the second segment, which will start sooner on Switch 2,

I will be back in a jiffy with Jessica Clemens to talk Marvel Cosmic Invasion and Five Nights at Freddy's 2. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner.

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Rest in podcast power, but Jessica Clemens will always be welcome in the ring or verse, and I am always happy to have her back on Button Mash. And who better to bring on to talk Marvel and Five Nights at Freddy's, two of her core interests and favorite franchises. Jess, hello. Hi, I'm so excited to talk about my two core franchises. It's really one, two, I don't know which order it is, Marvel and Fryfutniks. It's close.

It's close. It's close. It's closer than it used to be, probably. Oh, my God. Five times. I just catch it up. I don't know. I'm still not over a secret invasion, but I am completely overwhelmed.

and enjoyed with cosmic invasion. Yes, me too. We can talk about that first because I have a feeling that you might have a lot to say about Five Nights at Pretties, and I want to just clear the room and let you run on that one. So let's start with the actual video game

on this video game podcast, Marvel Cosmic Invasion, which is developed by tribute games, published by the French company, Dottemu, for 30 bucks, for essentially every platform. If you own anything that plays video games, you can play Marvel Cosmic Invasion, Last Gen, current gen, console, PC, Linux, you name it.

This is the same developer and publisher behind the fantastic 2022 game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder's Revenge. So think Shredder's Revenge with Anilis instead of Shredder and Marvel Heroes instead of Turtles. And you won't be that far off. And to be clear, that's not a bad thing. What do you think of Cosmic Invasion? I kind of want to hear your opinions first because this feels like a game that you would really enjoy. Yes. You're not wrong. I like this game. First of all, on a Marvel lore level, not that the story is the most important part of Marvel Cosmic Invasion. So I don't know why I'm leading with that. But it's kind of adapted from the annihilation comics run from about 20 years ago, which we haven't really seen on screen so much. And I don't know whether you feel this way, but I really like,

cosmic Marvel and I like street level Marvel more so than the in-between power levels. Like give me the Spider-Man just lower-level, you know, more comprehensible powers or no power, the daredevil style hero, or just like Galactus and the Watcher and planet-sized beings. No in-between. It's either the macro or the micro for me. I think a lot of Marvel fans would agree with that because that's basically what Marvel Cinematic Universe was like, oh, these are the two finder points that people really like. Let's use these plots and not get too overwhelmed with the other things. Story-wise, it's so interesting because I was like, oh, I'm not really paying attention to it.

I'm having so much fun. When you look at it on the, like a while, when you're actually playing it, if you're reviewing it, you are looking at every corner of it. And there's so much actually into this game. But the storytelling as just a normal game player, I was like, oh, this is fun. but I'm more having fun with my friends choosing these characters and being able to like split jump into another character. But also I love the component. This is now we're getting to the gameplay. But I love the component of being able to still assist your teammate in play for a little bit.

The game has been out for a minute. It was a demo a little bit before then. And I played the demo before with a bunch of my friends and it was great. Playing it now, there's a little bit of bugs. Always going to be bugs the first day of game drops. I'm not mad about that. What I'm irritated about is the bug is that I cannot join. going co-op games.

Oh, well, that is a rough. So I am forced to play this game by myself. Unless you hook it up, I think you can still play it because I've done it already at work. You can play with your friends, coworkers, if you guys are all on one controller. You know what I'm saying? I'm not one controller, but you guys all have different controllers. I've been playing local. Yeah.

Yeah. I haven't tried to play online, though you can in theory. Yeah, you can in theory. And I think it has been helping. It has been working for a lot of people, but I know that some people on Steam are having the same issue because I was looking it up like crazy the last two days. I was like, hey, is anyone else having this issue? I can't join co-op.

I cannot play online with even my roommate. I can't play online with my friends, so I'm playing by myself. And the game is actually very hard playing it alone. It is. Yeah, I've had a hard time too. And it kind of sings in co-op. It's best played with a pal, ideally.

It's still fun playing by yourself. And you don't feel fully by yourself because even if you are playing single player, you have your two heroes on the screen. It's sort of a tag team at all times. if you are playing with someone else, then you've got four characters or you can play with up to four people, but you can tag in your alternate hero at any time. And that's kind of the gimmick here or the selling point other than the fact that it's a beat him up and it's Marvel and it's retro.

And there's been kind of a beat him up boom lately, a resurgence in this genre, which Matt James and I talked about a couple months ago on the show when we talked about Absalom. And Absalom's kind of a hybrid. it's beat-em-up meets rogue-like. This isn't really beat-em-up meets anything. It's just beat-em-up. It's just old-school. This is what you remember. Maybe if you were around back then

from the arcades or S-N-E-S or whatever it is, it's just that very retro look and retro vibes and pretty much back-to-basics with a Marvel license. And it actually kind of makes the most of the Marvel license, I would say. There's 15 heroes to start. And it's kind of an... eclectic mix. So you have some headliners. You have Spider-Man. You have Cap. You have some of the standard ones. But then you have some kind of off-the-beaten path heroes. It's like, where's Thor?

I don't know, but we've got Beta Ray Bill, which I kind of like. You know, and it's like some of the characters that the movies made huge and you've got your, you know, Iron Man and you have Black Panther. And then you have Rocket, for instance, or you have like cosmic ghost rider, you know? It's just like a kind of a jumble. It's a phylavel is in this game, you know? And She-Hulk looking appropriately jacked and Storm. So it's like you have some of the must-habs,

but then also some, oh, I wouldn't have expected that. And in keeping with the cosmic theme, you have Silver Surfer there, but you also have like Venom. It's just kind of all corners of Marvel. really represented here. And I like that. Yeah, I like that they definitely took everyone's favorite characters and was like, okay, well, it's the X-Men. So let's throw the X-Men in here. Yes, Wolverine is here.

And then we'll put, yeah, Wolverine Storm. Can't you play as Gene eventually? Yeah, you can, yep, Phoenix. Yeah, he's in here. I haven't played as Jean. And this goes without saying, of course, I jump in playing the three main characters that I only want to play as. And I have not played as any of the other characters. Did you play with every character? not every character

but I would actually recommend I mean you might mean one character but they are actually pretty differentiated which I appreciate it's not just like a different skin and a surface level difference

for the same gameplay they actually feel like different characters and they play differently and you have some heroes who can fly which makes a pretty big difference I tend to go for the ones who can fly because you can just stay out of the way of a lot of the patties

that are just groundbound but it's good to have a combination if you have just like a you know walking surface level and a flying one then that tends to go together well but there's really like a fair amount of depth i think you can master some of these characters even if you can pick it up and play and it's definitely very button mash friendly it's not like they're super complex it is we said it ring the bell but there's not like a super complex move list or move set or anything or like really long combos or anything like that. But there is a fair amount of depth when you play with certain characters. And you can level up certain characters. So it does actually play differently depending on which character you select, which I was pleasantly surprised by. Yeah, I watched a lot of gameplay for every character. And then I was like, okay, I have my flyer. I have my long range. And then I have my person that's close up, which is either Wolverine or She Hulk, which I took She Hulk. Just straight up

brawler. Yeah. Easy took She Hook. Also, they all have different. I think. think, or at least it feels like this way, they all have different life bars. Maybe, maybe it, double check it. But every time I play a She-Hulk versus Rocket, I'm like, hmm, one of these people die quicker. One of these people die quicker. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, which, you know, it makes sense. But I'm not happy about it.

I'm not happy about it. I think that's a really fun part about it is that the characters are so. You have to make them completely different. Also, because my first instinct, when I was playing the demo, I said this was really fun. I was like, how is it going to be longstanding, you know? Yes, right. The game's 30 bucks, which I really enjoy, you know, because Nintendo's got me paying $80 for games now. But with that being said, I'm like, I still want to make sure I have like, even if I don't have any time, I want to be playing this game for a very long time.

And I think that, thank God, every character is so different because now I'm like, oh, God, I can play each of them, but then I can also put them on different teams. And so once the levels I keep beating are done, I'll be like, okay, now the time. do it through like Nova and Beta Ray. Yeah. It starts you out with Nova actually. I played with Nova first. It's kind of the default, oddly enough, and a pretty good, well-balanced character.

Yeah, even characters, you know, you have sort of the same suite of attacks essentially, but different subtleties and nuances to it. I kind of like Spidey just because he's almost a in-between character. Like you have your flying character. and your street level characters and Spitey's just a swinging character so kind of can do both.

Yeah, I like Spidey and Venom. When I was playing with my friends, they were Spidey and Venom and just swinging around. And I was like, oh, can you get down here and help me please? I'm getting my ass kicked. But I always play as, I try to, which is again a great component, being able to switch mid-fight or just get little assist

from your other teammates. Anytime someone's on the ground, I'm like, okay, I got to be Storm. I'm like, I'm going to be in the sky, I'm going to be stormed. But playing as a flyer, you said, like, yeah, I can stay up above it. It's still really hard to get those hits because you're still, like, lined up. This is the part about Turtles in Time and the X-Men one, too, where I'm like, oh, yeah,

I'm really bad at gauging where we are. That's what I was going to say. Yeah, there are occasional depth perception issues. Yeah. Not in real life. In real life, I'm incredibly coordinated, never bumped into anything. Oh, yeah, Ben? Oh, yeah?

In cosmic invasion, sometimes you just can't tell whether you're in the same plane as the enemy that you're attacking. And, you know, this is kind of an age-old beat-em-up issue, but there are definitely times where I'm just punching air. I think that's the cute part is like all young people playing this are like,

this is irritating. And then my mom's like, yeah, tell me about it. I used to live through this. It just sucks when I'm using my, like, my ultimate and it doesn't touch a single person. Yes, yes. And there's a million people around me. That happens to be

Quite often. Yeah, there's a focus bar Which you can build up by attacking stuff And then sometimes I completely wasted Because yeah, I'm just firing off and no one's in the way. The biggest note about this game, if you are button mashing, which you can completely do, try to avoid that top right button

They give you your ultimate Because when I first started playing I was like, well, no one's around me And I just did my storm lightning stuff. This sucks. Yeah. And you can't tag in other characters. anytime that uses some focus, but less,

but you can kind of do combo attacks or you can just switch to the other character entirely. If one character runs out of health, you can keep going as the other one and maybe revive them if you come across some food lying on the ground, again, a tradition in this genre. The pizza just sitting there, a hot dog that's pizza. Yep.

As food does, we just pick up street food and it makes us feel better. That's what I do. I play as Rocket Raccoon, so that's a completely okay thing to be doing. Panda. Yeah, that's on brand. The stages are pretty short, which actually, it's

very arcadey in that way. So you can play this game in short bursts. You can just play 10, 15 minutes. Now you might die repeatedly, but a playthrough of a single level is not going to take you all that long. It's got great pixel art, great animation.

I really appreciate all the little touches, all the little comics accurate stuff. It's just like, sometimes you see, if you're playing as Venom, you see Eddie under there, you know, just shows briefly great voice acting too and great music. Again, throwback. Like all of that stuff is just, it's done really well and pretty polished, I guess, except from the bug that you're encountering.

But in the actual gameplay, it's a labor of love, you can kind of tell. Yeah, I'm glad that I got to play some of it co-op before the podcast because genuinely the co-op part is probably the number one reason to play this game. Oh, definitely. I think it is made for friends. And thank God, like four, four of you can play. Four is enough, but it's so nice. It's so nice.

And then at the end of every round when you're playing at a map, you can just be like, oh, who got the most bonuses? Who got the most this points? And they, like, line you up to line you up for your friends to make fun of you. Right. It's so fun. I think it's very fun. I do think it's going to last longer than now I expect

because they made so much to do, I guess. And just like even building out the, you can read the story logs. Is it the Nova files? I love that little, I love that little tad bit. That's my favorite part of, that's a lie. It's not my favorite part of Marvel Rivals, but it's one of my favorite parts of Marvel Rivals is reading the pages of the lore for the stories, the storylines that keep going.

And I just like that they put even that little detail there. It's like, yeah, you can learn more about the maps, about the villains, the villains that become your teammates. You can learn more about this. And I'm like, oh, this is cute. Yeah. This is nice. Also, Ben, you'd be proud of me.

I checked the settings to see if there was a way that I can make it easier for me. Well, well, there was not. I'm sorry. As soon as I found out I was playing by myself, I was getting my ass rocked. I was getting murdered left and right. It actually is like in definitely skill issue 100%. Do not get me wrong. Like 100% it is my fault.

I know Steve would not have an issue playing by himself doing this. I did. And I think some other people might and you will get your shit rocked. I also think I was trying to confirm it. right here, but I found out that there is no Wi-Fi in the room I'm in. But I think the game tells you which characters are better for which maps.

Because there definitely are characters that do better on certain maps. And I think you can even just justify it, figure it out yourself. Like, I was playing as Rocket and She-Hulk. And so anytime a swarm of aliens come my way, I'm done. Yeah. It's me, like, smacking as much as I can.

You need a big area effect, just like rain down destruction all around you. You need storm or someone like that When you're in a crouch, yeah. And then when I went to Genosha, because if you do, I think if you do the campaign, you get to choose where you go on the map, and I went to Janosha, and the sedentals were whooping my ass.

I said, Shehold, get in there. I said, she'll hold, get in there. But the sedentils were ruining me. I love, they did, I don't know, the maps are really fun. They clearly love comic books. Yeah, you can tell. And I'm disappointed that now you'll never check the settings again

because you were thwarted. You checked and you couldn't change the thing you wanted to change. Well, that's it. I'm done with settings forever. I'm never going to check a setting again in my life. Never in my life. It's funny because I'm playing, I'm still playing Arc Raiders and I had to change those settings quickly. I was like, you know what? I was like, first off, I can't see anything. Also, it's very loud. I was like, everything is ruined. Yeah, I don't think you're going to get Arc Raiders level replay value out of Cosmic Invasion. It's the kind of game that I can see picking up and playing

just for years in short bursts. Well, there's only so much content, right? I mean, it takes maybe three hours to play through, depending on how much you die. And yes, it is different depending on who you play as. And there's some character progression. There's some repetition, even though you're going to different stages, different Marvel locales, a lot of repeat enemies. So there is some monotony when it comes to that. And the gameplay, you know, it's kind of you get what you see at the surface.

I mean, there is mastery to it. but it's not really a spin on the genre. It's the genre. It's a throwback. And I appreciate that. Not everything needs to be new or some hybrid or blend of genres. This is just given us the old thing that is time tested and that we love and that summons all that nostalgia with some characters we care about. And it does that really well.

But yeah, there's a limit, I think, to the shelf life. But that's okay. It's a budget price. And it's fun for as long as it lasts. I also think I guess it depends on the person. I am a person that I know a lot of people will probably visit all the old games that they played on their Switch.

When I'm traveling and I bring my Switch, I'm always playing Super Smash Bros. I'm always playing Super Smash Bros. I'm just like, for me, it's like practice. It's like practice because I go to this bar in my neighborhood. I'm not going to say which bar because I don't want anyone showing up and beat my ass. Right now I'm in second and first.

I go between second and first place. So you ain't coming in here rocking my, taking my crown away. I can't let you come to do that. But I basically treat it like now if I'm flying like practice, So I'm like, okay, then let me get my other characters in and just keep going. That's kind of how I feel about this.

Like, I'm going to, this is my like, oh, I'm waiting for something. Let me pull out this game and let me get farther in my campaign and then play it again with a new character or just jump in a quick play if the bug is gone. If the bug is gone. The bug better be gone. It's an insane bug because I'm like, the best part about this is playing with other people and I can't do it. Yeah. I can't even join a party of people that are random. Like, you can't point anybody.

Yeah. I'm feeling pretty good about superhero games. these days. Obviously, we've had some cancellations. We've had some delays. Marvel rivals has had its ups and downs. But, you know, we had dispatch this year. We had cosmic invasion. That's a strong end to the year. You've got Marvel token fighting souls coming next year. You said dispatch. And I was like, what's dispatch? And then I remember I read, I played dispatch. I literally did. And I was like, oh, yeah, because it's more story telegame than it is actual like me physically doing anything that I was like, oh, yeah, the book. Right. You watched dispatch.

And occasionally you press some buttons. And occasionally press some buttons. Yeah. I wonder how long we'll get retro games. I don't know if it's unique in gaming, but I was thinking about this. You don't really get retro movies in the same way that you get retro games. You get retro settings. You get stranger things.

You get, okay, we're in the 80s and there are a lot of 80s references. But it doesn't look like it's shot in the 80s. You know, like even the movie's Super 8 wasn't actually shot mostly on Super 8. eight. So when you have a movie that's kind of an homage to an earlier era, it still looks like a modern movie, just a period piece. Whereas in gaming, when you have a throwback vintage retro style game like this, it looks like a game that is 30 years old or whatever. Now it's still, you know, in high resolution and everything. There are modern conveniences and we don't have to feed quarters into the machine to play it. But it's so associated with that era in gaming.

You know, it's not like in movies. Once you move from silent films to talkies, it's not like people were making lots of retro silent films every now and then. Okay, yes. But in gaming, it's so prevalent to have throwback games that look like games did back then with some quality of life improvements and frills and everything. And I don't know whether that's just because we're still relatively close to the beginning of the medium compared to movies and other forms of entertainment. video games just aren't that old as a sort of sophisticated art form. And people like us can remember playing games when they actually looked like this and when that was state of the art.

But I just, I wonder whether that will always be the case, whether for the rest of our lives will be getting S&S arcade style beat-em-ups or whether it'll be that sort of gameplay, but with a completely modern look at some point. That's a good observation. I feel like there could be like two reasonings. It could be one, the fact that like, In a video game, you kind of have to immerse yourself into it versus a television show or a movie. Yeah, it's interactive.

The time will keep going. Yeah, it'll keep going. I literally, the game will not move forward if I don't move forward myself. And then secondly, I'm wondering, and this might be a most disrespectful thing to say to filmgoers, is I'm wondering because films are two hours, three hours, tops, it feels like for game players, they have to be more invested, if that makes sense, because you're playing something for, like, This might take three hours, but most games are like at least seven or eight. Yes.

Over 15, 20, 60 hours. And I'm like, yeah, I feel like if you're willing to put in that time and be that invested, you're willing to go through a lot. Not a bad way, but like, oh, yeah, I want to see this game look like this. I want to play this game that takes these mechanics. I love this game that makes me play with my Nintendo 64 controller. Whereas in a movie, it's like we're not expecting to be like doing homework or doing anything else. I just want to sit here for two hours and then be.

amazed and walk away. Right. Or I wonder, yeah, maybe it's just that the aesthetics, the visuals dictate the gameplay more so than in a movie. It can look any old way and you can tell a story that way. You can tell a story with a kind of modern trappings. But in gaming, if it's kind of a stripped down no frills, arcadey throwback like this, that kind of dictates how the game plays and what you expect from the game. Whereas when it's some fancy looking AAA polished type of title, you expect more length and more complexity and more inputs and more interactivity and all the rest of it. And so it's a way of sort of signaling that this is more simplistic compared to certain other games. But no less good, no less fun.

This is a good game. We're both recommending it, I think. I'm recommending it. Oh, I'm definitely $30. Yeah. $30? I'm recommending it. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. This is right up the alley of Ringervverse listeners, button mash folks. And literally, it is on everything. Yes. I love that I put it on my Switch because, again, I want to hold this while I'm playing it. I want to lay on my back. But great PC, great PlayStation, great everything, go ahead. Is it on Game Pass?

I don't think it's on Game Pass. Yeah, why would it be on Game Pass? Yeah, but everything else. For some real reason, I thought when I was looking up like, it's not working for me. Someone was like, my Game Pass said it was this. And I was like, wait. No, you know what? I think it is on Game Pass, actually.

Is it on Game Pass? Yeah, I played it on PlayStation, so I didn't know, but I believe it is. Yeah. I sold it short, so it's even more available than I thought a second ago. It is truly on everything. It's on Game Pass. You have no excuse not to play because of division now. No one has an excuse unless you need $30.

And I will be willing to give the first five people that reach out to me $10. Wow. What an offer. You heard it here first. I am not matching your funds. Wait, you got to double it. Well, please don't reach out to me. I'm not going to say.

Maybe we can get Spotify to match funds for giving events. It's a good cause. I'll reach out to my man at the top. Make people play cosmic invasion. Okay. Let's transition to something that has not received as warm reviews as Marvel Cosmic Invasion. Though we'll see if it does on this podcast. Five Nights at Freddy's, two.

Yes, they made another one. And spoilers, it won't be the last. I think we can save. It will not be the last. They don't care what you guys say online. Most of the bad is coming from actual critics. They do not care. They're going to come out with the third one and then a fourth.

Yes. So there's been a lot of video game adaptation news. Exciting, good news mostly. My beloved Twisted Metal was renewed for season three. Noah Hawley and Rob Mack are making a Far Cry anthology series. Justin Lynn from Fast and Furious is directing the Helldivers movie. What? Yeah.

What? Yeah. What? He hasn't played Hell Divers, but he's direct in the Hell Divers movie. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay, I got to go back to the news. I got to go look for them.

It's tough to keep up with the video game adaptation news. The fact that it's already December and games are still coming out, I'm getting kind of irritated at this point. I'm not going to slow down. Finally, we'll get a bit of a holiday break, relatively speaking. But let's talk about the adaptation that's here and now in theaters, Five Nights of Freddy's 2. This is the sequel to the 2020. three original adaptation that we talked about two years ago. Mostly the same creative team, written by series creator Scott Cawthon, directed by

Emma Tammy, much of the same cast, many of the same characters and actors and animatronics and frankly, story elements. But even worse reviews than before, if you didn't think they could, whatever the opposite of topping the last time, they have gone lower. it's not quite borderlands level Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes ratings but it's the next worst thing if you go by the scores

but this is not a movie for the critics this is not an art film this is not an independent prestige production this is for the fans of Five Nights and Freddy's of which you are one stop

don't deny it the way you set it up you said but this isn't for the critics. Literally, I went to a press screening, and that was the, like, a couple hours before the embargo was lifted, the first review I saw. They said, what is this trash?

They said, what did A.V. say, they said, is one of the Easter eggs is that this movie sucks? I said, damn. Harsh. You guys aren't even thinking. And it was so funny, because as soon as I saw it,

I said, well, this was better than the first one. I got agreed, you know? And I agree. I think the, okay, so this is my, as a, critic as a critic as a person that watches TV. You guys, no, I don't have the highest expectations for five nights at Freddy's ever I saw that first one.

Come on. We know what we're going to get to here. That is insane. To be completely honest, that's me with a lot of Blumhouse movies. I go, I'm here for the fun. You think I'm going into Megan hoping it's going to get an Academy Award? That's a crazy thing to say. No, I go in there for the fun.

And this is the part about scary movies that I like, and this is why this is my favorite genre is because the spectrum of horror movies, scary movies, thrillers, whatever, is so vast that you can take anything and make it into like a scary movie. And this is the animatronic Chuckie Cheese. So I'm like, yeah, I'm going to enjoy this. And I did. I did actually have fun. I thought it was funny. I mean, yeah, the scripts all over the place. But like, but again, what was I, I'm not expecting the Titanic. I don't even know what I could try to compare it to. but like I'm not even expecting Detective Pikachu out of this like I'm not I'm not expecting Sonic I'm I was expecting what I saw from the first one and this one I thought was better than the first one yeah a million animatronics oh yeah with each getting five minutes of screen time except for Chica except for Megan Fox is Chica Megan Fox is in five months of phrase too kind of you might not notice she's voicing I notice toy chika there was a semi-examination viral video that went around.

I think it was from New York Comic-Con when Megan Fox was announced as being part of this movie. And they were like, Megan Fox! And there was just dead silence in the room. Yeah, because it's for what reason? For what reason? For what reason? For what reason? There was no reason. Just get a normal

voice actor in there. Like, get someone. Why? Because you so enjoyed her voice work in Mortal Combat 1. Oh my God. I forgot. Let's get her back on the mic. You know, it's funny. Because I, again, I made a video my other job about Jennifer's body. I love Jennifer's body. Megan Fox is in it.

And I really did cherish Megan Fox. And then I saw, I pushed it to the back of my head that Mortal Kombat one cameo. Because, oh my God, that was the worst thing. Maybe I'm grouchy today. Soon to be Netflix-owned IP. We're not talking about that on this podcast because I'm not getting into this today. I'm not getting into this day. I forgot that.

And the first thing was I thought about everything else, but the things they already are going to like Game of Thrones and all the other things. I was like, oh, my God. Well, fortunately, WB games is not exactly thriving, so it couldn't get much worse. It's only going up. Netflix's closing game studios, too. So I don't know, not a brave future there.

Anyway, that's aside. We're talking about five nights of Freddy's. Yeah, let's focus on five nights of Freddy's because that's the movie of the moment. I think, and you said it earlier. You said this isn't a movie for the critics, this is a movie for the fans, which it completely is. And I think Scott even said that in a couple of interviews.

He was like, look, critics aren't going to like this movie. Yeah, but the fans I'm making it for. Which makes sense. You know, you get your property and the first movie is all over the place and then every fan is screaming at you. You're like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to actually stay as close to the material as I can. But I do think he did a really good job sticking to the main points from the Five Nights

of Freddy's lore that is actually the parts that people are enticed by. I think the lore is so deep and vast. And when you put in the books and then you put in everything else, like the sixth game, not even really kind of being his, you kind of start to get lost in it all. and then a lot of people are just making theories. I feel like a lot of people online are looking up what could be a factual, but no one actually knows.

A lot of Matt Pat videos are like theories. He's trying to like figure out how it could make sense. And people take that as like truth. And so I think it was a great idea to take like, oh, I'm going to take Charlotte and Henry. I'm going to take this story. I'm going to take Michael Afton. And I'm going to take, wait, spoiler.

Were you going to say spoilers on here? I mean. I'm not going to say, okay, sorry. I don't even know whether to save people the trouble of going or to respect. No, no, no, no. They should all, it's a first off, just like the game being $30. This movie is an hour and like, what, 30 minutes? No, I wish it were.

Oh, girl, it feels like an hour and 30 minutes. It felt like an hour and 30 minutes. It flew by because we were having such a great time. No, it's hour 40 plus. It's a little longer than the first one, honestly, which might test some people's patience if they are not in the fan base. Oh, then that will, I will say that. first and foremost, this movie is not for you if you're not a fan.

Yeah. Because you will not be, you will be confused. The script will make no sense. There is a very big character that is introduced 20, maybe 15 minutes into the movie. There sure is. Every fan knows who this is. I knew who it was. You don't know who it is until the last 10 minutes and then you go, why is that important?

Right. Yeah, to be clear, we're coming at this for very different directions. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. You know Five Nights of Preddies lore. I do not. I am not a fan of this franchise. I'm not not a fan of this franchise.

I just haven't had a whole lot of exposure to this franchise because, as you know, I'm kind of a coward. So I have not played many of these games, and I've not really familiarized myself with the lore. So I just go in cold to Five Nights of Freddy's, and I just let it wash over me, and I get to learn about my animatronic buddies and different franchise locations for Five Nights of Freddy's. The character you're referring to is clearly creepy, and clearly there is a lot more going on here, and this person has nefarious motivations. I did not know exactly who it was, but that didn't really impair my ability to understand what was happening on screen here, I will say. But, yeah, this movie is not for me the way that it's for you or for fans of the franchise, but I did kind of just embrace the silliness of it because I think this one is, quote unquote, worse. It's worse in some ways, but it kind of crossed over into so bad it's good territory for me, which the other one did not. And the first one was kind of in this in-between territory.

These are not really scary movies. They're Blumhouse, but they're PG-13. And the Chucky Cheese monsters are just, they're not that scary, really, which is good for me, because again, I'm not going out to horror movies all that often by choice. And so it's kind of perfect for me in that I can watch this and not be terrified. But this one had some moments of such stupidity and just what is happening here and nonsensical scripting that I felt like it was leaning into the spectacle of it. And I actually kind of enjoyed it more because there were some just stereotypical trashy horror movie scenes where it's just like, what are these people doing?

What are they thinking? Is this serious? There's an extended sequence where disabling the Wi-Fi connection is crucial. And it's all about like clicking on a computer to go into a screen like you in the Marvel Cosmic Invasion settings, trying to turn down the difficulty level. Trying to find the toggle off Wi-Fi while all the animatronic characters are closing in. But not closing in too fast because they got to allow time for Josh to turn off the Wi-Fi. And also he discovers that there's just a mask, like part of a head from a character just live on the desk next to him.

And if he holds it in front of his face, spoilers, I guess, sorry, then they won't recognize that he is not on their team. That's not a spoiler. It's not a spoiler, but that is directly from the game. And that's why. And I don't even know that. And I don't even appreciate that Easter egg. And I won't until I watch the Jessica Clemens new rock star breakdown.

See, it's so fun. And that's what do you literally have to do in the game. They have facial recognition, except for Foxy because Foxy's a little broken. I think it's Foxy. I think, yeah, one of them is a little broken, but like Chica and Freddie and Bonnie, it still works on. And so he literally, you literally, if you're, you have to tie, okay. Oh my gosh. See, Ben, this is why it's so much for the fans.

You have a music box that keeps them like at bay. Yes. But the music box is on a timer. You also have a flashlight. Sometimes the flashlight can go out. Of course. But there's also, you're watching the cams to see where they're moving to, to see if they're going to the vents. or from whatever.

So getting on the computer, doing all that stuff, is you using the cams. Putting on them, or using the music box was a part of that also from the games. And then the head was like, oh, last resort,

let me put on this head, and then they will walk by. But it gets quicker as the nights go on, and then you don't get a chance to put that head back on. And also, again, it does not work on one of them. It's very gaming like that.

And that's why it's sort of absurd when you translate that to a non-interactive medium and the things that we do in gaming that are sort of silly when you stop to think about it, but you don't really stop to think about it because you are actually pressing the button. When the character is doing that thing

and you're not pressing the button, then it sort of lays bare how silly it all is. But that's kind of okay. I appreciate it that it just leaned into, yeah, we're doing this. We're just doing a faithful Five Nights of Freddy's adaptation. Yes, that's what, and that's, and I think, actually, I want to go back to what you said earlier

because I completely, this is what I agree with, because I don't, no one's been like, Jessica, you lied to me. You said this was a good movie and it's bad. it is so bad that it's like a spectacle, that it's just like fun. That, oh my God, the first movie, I felt like didn't even want to try to do that.

They wanted to try to make it good. And I'm like, the franchise is too, it's so crazy. Sometimes I'm, well, this isn't sometimes. And also this is not a hot take. Studios will take anything that's very popular IP and try to adapt it into a movie and some things cannot be adapted into a cinematic movie,

like a cinematic experience. And I sometimes feel that way about, Nights of Freddy's. I think the second movie, he did a good job trying to change that a little bit. So this is not a spoiler because it happens in the games. Charlotte is referred to as Charlie. And she's still the daughter of Henry Emily, Skeet Old Rich's character. But she gets locked out of the restaurant on like a dark night and William Afton shows up and then kills her and leaves her body somewhere. And there's the puppet that was basically kind of made to protect her. And bullies like, bullies are some other kids put it in its present box and trapped it in there.

couldn't get out, but it kept freaking out because it was like, Charlie's missing, Charlie's when the puppet found the dead body of Charlie, it's like spirit bonded to it and then they became one. But she wasn't really like bad. She was always protective, even as the puppet. And I think we all wanted to see that scene actually play out and to see the barionette holding her coming out of the ground was as close as we're going to get. And I was like, oh, see, Scott's trying to change it and trying to give it the same feel of the games, just in a cinematic experience. And And the first movie, they were like, if we can't make it into the movie, we're just going to take it out. We're just going to get rid of it.

And then we got Vanessa and then we got Mike who aren't the Michael Afton or the Vanessa from Five Nights of Freddy's security breach. And then it got confusing. But yeah, yeah, it's so bad it's a spectacle. And this is also how I felt about Megan. This is how I felt about Megan 2.0. I was like, yeah, the only reason I like these movies is because it's so bad. And maybe go in with that knowledge, I guess. And you won't feel so inclined to be like, this is the worst garbage.

I've ever seen. Yes. Take the stick out of your butt for a minute, reviewers. Forewarned is forearms. Yes. And really, like, it's not scary. It's jump scary. It's jump scary.

You'll be startled. There is one somewhat actually scary element of this movie, which is the marionette. Yes. The puppet master of the animatronics in this film. And that actually does kind of cross into legitimately creepy territory as more so than the animatronics do, at least for me. me. But beyond that, you know, it's, it's not creeping me out that much. It's not going to haunt my dreams, which is good in my book, at least. It's not good if what you want from a scary movie

is to actually scare you. But I think it's, when I put it on Instagram, I immediately was like, I think this is a good scary movie for a child. I was like, if I was like six, this would be a great starter. Starter scary movie. This would have been better than 13 ghosts or saw like my mom thought. Like, this is like an actual child's jump scary movie. Like, every jump scare is literally a teddy bear. It's, it's an animatronic. And people that are afraid of animatronics, this is perfect for you. Like, this is a perfect scary movie for you. Go walk up in there. Exposure therapy. You won't be scared of them anymore. But I thought the puppet actually, the marionette, was scary when it crawled like a spider. Yes. I thought so too. I didn't like it. No. I didn't like it. No.

Me neither. Yeah. Also, the movie did have a good soundtrack. The Newton brothers did the soundtrack that did X-Men 97, and that was the only thing, like, I was really paying attention to that I was like, oh, this has been good songs. Yeah. Song after song. Wayne Knight is in this movie. Oh, my God. Yeah, Wayne Knight is in the movie.

What? Wayne Knighting all over the place. Yeah. He's an asshole robotics teacher. He gives us all, you know? He's not just phoning it in. Remind the viewers where Way Knight's from? He's not just cashing the check.

I mean, he's from so many things from, from Seinfeld, from Jurassic Park, from toy story from you know everything oh yeah he isn't toy story yeah yeah from third rock from I could go on Space Jam Space Jam Distinguished cinematography

That will not be made more distinguished By appearing in Five Mids of Pretties too But you know he's not just cashing the check He's he's given it all They said they said get every 90s guy in here As soon as you can We already got Matthew Lillard gets Keith Ulrich in here

Yes also the fact that like the animals, the animatronics are hiding on Elm Street. I was like, okay, you guys love West Craven. We got it. We got it. Yeah. It's another slasher movie. There is a post-credit scene. We will not spoil what happens in that post-credit scene. It's not that much of a spoiler. I mean, yeah, it's pretty predictable. But suffice to say, there will be A5 Nights at Freddy's 3, barring an absolute box office bomb, which I don't think it could bomb hard enough for there not to be a third movie in this trilogy. The first one did quite well because the fans came out to support it. It made 80 million bucks in its opening weekend, which was sort of a surprise. Now, it didn't have

great legs, really. It didn't hang around that long. And, you know, this post- Thanksgiving pre-Christmas window is not ideal for moneymaking. I think the tracking, the projections about half as big and opening as the first one. So I don't think it's going to be a smash or anything. I don't think the word of mouth is going to be amazing, despite your efforts here on this podcast. But, you know, I think the first one, it didn't really stick around because the fans all came out to see it like day one, opening night, and it had a huge opening.

And the fans did not like it. Well, the fans got really upset about it. And that's what I feel like the not enough numbers are going to pay attention to the fact of how many fans were like, oh, I'm burned by the first one. Why would I go see the second one? Yeah, maybe so. It was our first one, and we were like, yeah, we're so excited.

And then it was like, who, they didn't do anything for the games. They didn't do anything. And I don't understand why they have three mics and three Bannasas and two bees now. I think the average moviegoer I read or ticket buyer for the first film was, it was like 80% under age 25, which is unusual. Yeah, that's you. That's me. I'm perfectly fresh 19 years old.

Gen Alpha. That was me going there. Yeah, but the youths came out for this one. I mean, it's not Minecraft exactly in terms of its popularity among kids, but it's up there. There's a Five Nights of Freddy's band base, and I'm happy for them, and I'm happy for you, and you're getting the faithful adaptation that you wanted. And it's silly enough that if all this lore is lost on you, as it is on me, if you go with

friends and it's the kind of context where you can crack jokes and no one's expecting it to be good and you lower your your bar then you could have a decent time at the theater you know you can just crack up at some of the silliness and just embrace it for what it is i also bet that merch is popping off because i just i remember being like the movie's okay but i still bought the cupcake drink cup i I didn't buy the Freddie popcorn bucket because I have too many popcorn buckets. If they had a Chico one, I would have. I would have easily, but I didn't. Also, as soon as they make merch, it goes straight to like Hot Topic, like for the movie

and stuff. And people buy the hell out of it. Because even if you didn't like the movie, you like the game. And now you can just buy more exclusive merch. Yeah, it's true. I think Hyper Rubio, who plays Abby. I think she's very good. I think.

Oh, that's a nice thing to say. Wow. Okay. Wait, what's that mean? You're not going to. Yes. Okay, maybe I'm a little, I'll be honest, too. I'll be honest right now.

I'll be completely honest. Me and child actors right now are not doing well after Stranger Things. After Stranger Things, I mean, I've been watching Shredger Things. I've been walking. It's welcome to Derry. It's a lot happening. It's hard. I'm always, as just like a human being, I'm not really for, especially in Hollywood,

and seeing how it works for children and Kugan accounts don't really actually help them. I'm like, I don't like child actors. I don't like the idea of it. You're looking out for their welfare. You don't want them to be exploited. Yeah, yeah, I don't want them to be exploited. But also, a lot of them, because you grab them so young, you don't really, they don't really expect to go through, like, the same training as, like, an adult would because they're

also kids, and their parents are nine times out of ten making them do this. So then when they grow up to be only 14, 15, and they're being in a show or a movie, I'm like, oh, was your last gig, the last movie? Because I can tell. Yeah. And I'm getting irritated at this. How is she supposed to be 11 years old? and she's acting like she's six.

I said, stop drawing. I was like, those ghost children are dead. I don't know. Maybe it's also the direction. I could see it being like the direction they're giving this girl because when she was,

this isn't really a spoiler. You see the movie or you don't. But when she gets possessed for a minute by a puppet, she's having the time of her life. And I was like, oh, there she goes. And I was like, I think they always have her direction

being really just somber and sad. But it doesn't play really well. on camera to me at least. Yeah, I thought she did a good job. I was not complimenting her character's artistic skills, because you're right. I was. When she's sketching her animatronic friends, it's like stick figures. Stick figures.

And Josh Hutcherson, his mic is like, wow, great, great job dry. I don't know if he's just humoring her or what, because I was like, that does not look age appropriate. That boat was a triangle. And I said, I said by now, and I remember being a child being like, I wish I could draw, all my friends could draw. By the time they were 11 or 12, they were drawing four-leg hands.

And I was like, oh, good job. Yeah. What is this? You're still out there. What is this, Piper Rubio? AI, too many fingers. No, I'm not a great artist either. So I'm not commenting from personal experience.

I'm just saying, kind of, you know, given her, maybe gassing her up a little more than the actual sketches deserved. I should say, I don't think she's listening to this. Piper Rubio, if you're listening to this, my beef is just with child actors. I think you're, you can get so much better and become everything in the world. I don't think that even helped. I don't think that was a nice thing to say either. I'm also on one. It's a Friday.

Cut me some slack, Piper Rubio. We could cut this short or long, however long we've gone before you have any more comments on child actors. Actually, I do. Starting on Noah Shnapp. Oh, she says she can. That was that they're cutting it. It's okay. And more so just the acting is not the person.

It's the acting. Sure, sure. Okay. Well, hopefully we've given everyone. That way. And the acting. expectations for five nights and pretties too. If you were considering shelling out on this one,

now you know what to expect and what not to expect, which is equally important. And if you want the deep dive on all the actual Easter eggs, then check out Jess's video over it, New Rock Stars. You don't have to. To be fair, I watched it once, and I was riding in the dark, and the security guard was staring me down

because he thought I was pulling out my phone. Oh, yeah. It was a new notebook every time. Right. That's how we do our notes. movies. I hope people know that now. Yeah, we go to these press greetings. Yeah, there will be security guards roving the aisles,

you know, making sure it's like, sir, I'm not pirating five nights in phrase too. I promise you. Someone else is going to do it literally by midnight. I can guarantee you any adapted from a game, it's going online immediately. And I don't know how to get it yet, but when I do

when I figure out how to use and pirate software stuff, I will do it. No, I'm joking. Wait, I'm joking. I'm a child of the 90s. I would never that scratch that too. Yeah, I will not have the cam bootleg recording of anything that I see at a press screen. But sometimes I need to see so I could just jot something down or I'm in my notes app or something. With the screen turned down all the way brightness, I don't want to bother anyone. I don't want to distract anyone from their immersion in Five Nights of Freddy's too. I promise I'm not trying to do anything that nefarious here, but yet the eagle-eyed guards just, you know. They are staring me down. Also, the way you do it in the dark is you put your finger to the side. and you just like write around your finger every inch. But sometimes if I get a new page or something crazy happens immediately, it's just words on top of words and I have to decipher what I said

and hope it wasn't a major Easter egg. All right. Thanks so much, Jess, for coming on. I know it was not a hardship for you to discuss two things that are so near and dear to your heart. But I'm happy to have you here always. You are making fun of me for Five Nights or Fridays. And not everyone here is going to make fun of me for Five Nights of Freddy. And let me tell you, I got an age.

21 on my Spotify wrapped. So technically I'm of the age bracket. Yeah. You favorite. Thanks to Devin Ronaldo for producing this episode and to our junior Ramgapal for his senior podcast management. Stay tuned for our upcoming instant

reaction to the game awards right after the show and Fallout Season 2 premiere coverage the following week. You can contact us at ring of burst gaming at gmail.com. I feel like we need a post credit scene for this episode. What can we do as a stinger here that could possibly rival

five nights and Freddy's. I could list off the five child actors that I do really like. Do it. The one from Game of Thrones that was in The Last of Us, not the newest season of the Last of Us, but I think the first season, they did a pretty good job. Oh, and also the person that played Abby when they were younger,

I also think Joey King was not a bad child actor. Oh, I'm leaving out Lindsay Lowhan. Oh my God. The number one, there was no way. What was it? What was it when they were twins? Parent trap. Parent Trap. Number one childs I'm so sorry

and then oh Leonardo Caprio was a really good child star honestly kind of better than he is today which is insane to say because it's true Toby McGuire was also a really good child star I'm choosing the old ones

but they were good oh yeah Johnny Depp when he was a child very good very good but only when he was a child you know that Freddy's has on

rotten tomatoes right now wait audience That's an audience score? Not audience Oh, the tomato meter. Oh, it has to be like 18. Are we going single digits? I would say I would say 35, but I think they're going to say 18.

It has debuted with a 12th century. Oh, double digits. There we go. And it's because of Piper Rubio. I'm joking. I was joking, Piper. I love you. We're going to have to deep shadow protocol all just as honest takes about child actors.

No. No, I said I listed off the great ones. Again, top five, number one is Lindsay Lohan. There is no way in hell that was not the best child star I've ever seen. I left off Mary Kaye, Ashley. I left off Mary Kaye Nashley. Ended off Mary Kaye Nash.

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