Video Gamers Podcast - AC: Mirage Release, Fallen Aces and Redfall has Fallen - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Video game hosts Paul, Ryan and Josh bringing you the week's hottest video game news like no other gaming podcast can. There’s a lot happening in the gaming world this week and we’re here to catch you up! Assassin’s Creed: Mirage has released and it’s a mixed bag for people. Redfall is dead and we chat about a very neat looking video game called Fallen Aces that is worth a look, plus much more from the best gaming podcast! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214 and Nate Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com//videogamerspod Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/videogamerspod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Video Games Covered This Week: Assassin's Creed Mirage Redfall Fallen Aces Last of Us 2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome back to the Video Gamers Podcast, where we break down all things related to gaming. Today is Thursday, so that means we are going to be breaking down recent gaming news, and we will offer our thoughts on those stories from the last seven days. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he is trying to team up to take out some other vampires, but unfortunately, he's all by himself.

It's Josh. out some other vampires but unfortunately he's all by himself it's josh all by myself last year i described someone as being the worst singer in america i think you're possibly the worst singer in the world there it is i knew you would take the bait josh wait a minute what's that did you just fish that out of me paul a hundred percent i knew i i knew if i used that phrase josh is gonna start singing you called it right before we started recording too i think i know what josh will say oh i love it all right and then joining josh and me he is running around throwing alarm clocks, banana peels, and rats around his apartment. It's Ryan. Why are they after me? Oh, what a fun game. I can't wait to talk about it here a little bit later in this episode.

All right. So before we start breaking down news, please come toss us a follow on socials. You can find us everywhere at Video Gamers Pod. And we also rely on listener support through Patreon to keep this show running. If you want to sign up, you'll get some great perks like exclusive access to our Squadcast episodes, shout out on the show, some very cool stuff like that. You can check it out at MultiplayerSquad.com. And we would also love if you would rate our show five stars and leave a written review through Apple Podcasts. All right josh and ryan i think the biggest news story of the week is that assassin's creed mirage released on the

fifth we were pretty hyped leading up to the release we talked about it quite a bit i think all of us watched about as much footage as we could and reception has been mixed i would say it's kind of where the game has kind of landed. The game is sporting a Metacritic score of 77 from critics and a very nice 6.9 from users. Nice. Are either of you guys going to pick up Assassin's Creed Mirage? This is one of those games where I think I would enjoy it, to be honest, but I don't know that I'll ever pick it up.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the game, but from what I am hearing, it's just a good game. It's not a great game. It's not a bad game. It's just good. And honestly, to me, with all of the games that are out there and the games that we play for the podcast and stuff like that, I don't know that I have the interest in picking up just a good game where it's not going to surprise me in any sort of way. Yeah. I'm kind of along the same vein. I think I know I'll like it and I'll enjoy my time playing the game.

But like you said, with as much as we have to play, I still, I know I this it's like a broken record but i feel like i haven't done anything in starfield yet still so there's just there's so much more to do and and uh so i think this is going to be one that i may wait for sale but i will definitely i'll definitely get it in the future just i just not sure when when once i see that price hit that golden spot for me, I'm going to snatch it up. I'm with you too, Ryan. If this game came out and it had anything like an 85 or higher in Metacritic, I think I would just buy it right now and pay full price. And I know a lot of people are enjoying it, but given the sort of overall tepid response, I think it's more of a wait until it's on sale. I went ahead and looked up some user reviews to try to get a sense of what people were

saying about the game. So I thought I would actually share them here on the show in case you guys were curious. One review is left by Matrix48, and they rated the game a 4 out of 10. And this is what they wrote. That moment when you take out 14 years old gameplay from the refrigerator and wish that it will make a good game out of it. Mirage has some moments of nostalgia, but most of the time you sit bored because of the story and you don't care about the poor voice acting that sounds like six year olds learning to read, which is annoying and not precise. It seems like the biggest criticisms are that pretty much every quest is go assassinate this guy and come back which i thought was a funny complaint because it's assassin's creed that's

like what the game is um but here's like one last review this one was left by ang v morgan they left it a nine out of ten i don't really get why people are angry about this game. Sure, it is not the best Assassin's Creed, but doing parkour smoothly and traveling across Baghdad is an amazing experience. The atmosphere is gorgeous and the story was nice. The world really feels like it is alive and the combat is interactive. Thank you for this game and bringing back the nostalgia that we were looking for, Ubisoft. So yeah, I think it's just one of those games that everyone seems to admit, no, it's not nearly one of the best, but it's just perfectly fine. Is that fine though? That's the thing, right? We have a listener, shout out to

Ace, right? But Ace is a massive fan of the Assassin's Creed series, has played every single one of them. I mean, has all 47 entries. Yeah. Like, you know, a hundred percent of them, DLC, all that stuff.

I mean, absolutely just as a huge fan of the series and ace the other day basically said, listen, I mean, he bought the collector version, got the really cool statue, which I thought was actually really neat.

Um, and basically was like, the game's okay. You know, it's, it's an okay game. Like was there wasn't, it wasn't a lot of praise, but there wasn't a lot of disdain for the game either. Um, and basically was like, the game's okay. You know, it's, it's an okay game. Like was there wasn't, it wasn't a lot of praise, but there wasn't a lot of disdain for the game either. But is that like today's day and age, maybe we're just spoiled because it's 2023 and we've had

amazing games, but like, is that enough? You know, because for me, maybe it's the volume of games that we play, but for me, a game that's just okay is almost bad just because it's not great. And I know that's not fair all the time, you know, and I don't want to sound like elitist in the sense that like every game has to be Baldur's Gate three and Starfield and Cyberpunk and all that, because that's not realistic either. But why play a game that's just okay when there's so many other games out there that are beyond that? Yeah. I mean, gamers have limited time and money, right? Like you can't play everything. So you have to prioritize it. It's not like a movie where you just watch it for 90 minutes to

two hours and then it's over. You can crank out two movies a day. You can watch every movie, basically, that comes out. Gaming's not like that. So I think unless you're a pretty hardcore Assassin's Creed game, you're probably more ignoring these kinds of entries that are a little bit more middle of the road. Kind of famously, I've said this a lot, but the last one I really enjoyed was Black Flag. And even that is going back quite a long ways. But that's because it added the naval combat and it really did a good job on that. So it felt different. It's almost like I'd rather play a game that is unique and different, even if it's like a five out of 10, then I think I would a game that is just thoroughly like Mirage where

it's like, it's a seven out of 10. It's nothing new. There's nothing innovative. I'd almost rather the experience of seeing somebody that tried something new and failed versus something that just played it completely safe the entire time. Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, not every, you brought up movies, not every movie is going to be a banger, an amazing 10 out of 10 movie. Food, we love food on this show. Not everything you eat is always going to be your favorite meal you're going to have to just eat kind of some regular food sometimes you know so so with games they do take a lot more time there is a lot more invested of your life so

some people that maybe don't have that amount of time or that are a little picky or choosy you know you may not pick this one up, but I definitely see how people could be on both sides. Again, not everything is going to be great, but if it's a good game that you enjoy and you have fun, it'd be better if it wasn't $70 to do that.

That's the thing. They're releasing a lot of these devs are releasing these games that are ho-hum, decent games that are fun fun and enjoyable but they're the same price as the best game that came out that year you know so what are you gonna do you're gonna you know well and from a pr standpoint probably not the best call to add denuvo in a day one patch People were a little peeved about that. This was shady, man. Dude, listen. I was laughing at all the patches, man. I'm not against Denuvo. I know some people hate it. I'm not saying I enjoy it. Don't get me wrong, right? But it's like, I get that people want to protect their game from

piracy, okay? And there's some people that think, hey, Denuvo affects performance on PC, and so we don't like it. If you know that people don't like something and you hide it from them and then release it after the game releases as a day one patch, that is shady, regardless of whether it affects performance or not. Like you are intentionally withholding information from gamers because you know how it's going to be perceived. That's like lying to me, man. Honestly, if I don't tell my wife, hey, I went to lunch, you know what I mean? It's like,

why am I hiding this? She doesn't care if I go to lunch. But the fact that you felt like you needed to hide it tells you everything. This is shady. Quit being shady. The cover-up's always worse than the crime, right? All right.

So moving off of Assassin's Creed, next on the docket here, we've got a couple things regarding the Last of Us franchise, which of course Ryan and I are enormous fans of. First of all, there have been rumors of a Last of Us Part II remaster for quite some time. There has not been any official announcement from Naughty Dog. However, the composer of the music from the first two games had posted that he is working on a new version of the game. And now we saw this week that one of the artists has listed The Last of Us 2 remastered on his LinkedIn profile. So I think we can pretty much take it to the bank

that this is definitely in the works. The weird thing is that the game is barely three years old. I think some people don't even realize that this game released in the summer of 2020 came out, you know, right after the beginning of the throes of COVID the last game of the year winners were just Elden ring.

It takes two. And then the last of us, part two, not very long ago at all. Does it seem like we need this remaster already, three years later? No. No, it doesn't. And will I buy it? Absolutely.

Oh, you're the problem, Ryan. Yeah, I know I'm the problem. How many copies of Skyrim do I have? I can't help it. I can't help it. These games that I love and I get sucked into, post-apocalyptic worlds or open world crazy things like Skyrim do I have? I can't help it. I can't help it. These games that I love and I get sucked into, post-apocalyptic worlds or open world crazy things like Skyrim, all of them, I'm a sucker for it. I wish I wasn't, but yeah, I'm probably going to buy it.

The very first thing when I saw this was, already? I had to look when Last of Us 2 came out because I was like, it's really not been that long. Right? Like my memory is not just like fooling me on this came out in 2020. Yeah. When do we start remastering stuff three years later?

Like, isn't that when you're supposed to get like a DLC? Like, come on, dude. It's crazy. I remember when the last of us, the first one was remastered.

That seemed way too soon. So I had to go back and look up the dates for that. And it's even funnier. The last of us part one came out in June of 2013. The remaster came out July of 2014. It was only 13 months later and they remastered the first one. So in a way, I'm almost surprised they waited three

years for this one maybe they were trying to work on something else now i will say i will say initially because if i recall correctly and i it may i think it's the last of us too maybe it's just the last of us but i remember the pc port was a disaster that's the first one was that the first one okay yeah the second one's not on pc then my brain kind of went oh well it makes sense if the pc port was really bad that they're gonna like re-release this and fix everything but then i was like wait a minute i'm not sure that last of us 2 is even out on pc no i don't i don't know i haven't played these games you know so but crazy not a good it's wild you're crazy man the uh the other part of the last of us story here

is that there are now rumors that the multiplayer game that has been in development has been axed we know that naughty dog has laid off several contractors and an insider has said that development has stopped and they are canceling the multiplayer project we don't know if that's true or not but that would be a real bummer because Naughty Dog has actually given us some really good prior multiplayer content, both with Uncharted and The Last of Us Part 1. So I'm a little disappointed if this is in fact the case,

but I hope that it's something that they can revive. Me too. Man, I remember playing so much of that Last of Us 1 online. It was so much fun. You just go in. Everybody's creeping around. You can throw your bombs and stuff.

It was just my play style, my type of game. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I was really bummed to see this. But I do appreciate when developers kind of look and see, okay, this isn't going to work. Let's focus on what we can do right now and, and focus on that and get that done. And then maybe we can come back down the road or something like that. So instead of just putting out,

you know, stuff that's kind of half baked and not going to turn out well and just look bad on them. So it's a little bit of an odd decision because I mean, I don't know the specific numbers. I haven't looked up like naughty dogs, finances or whatnot, but like we got this huge Uncharted movie we've got this enormously successful HBO franchise that we now know is going to go several seasons I'm not sure why

they're scaling back and laying people off it really feels like things are humming and moving really swimmingly with Naughty Dog but But I mean, yeah, for whatever reason, maybe this is just what they're cutting back on. It doesn't take as many people to remake a game. That's definitely true. Unless you're working on Star Wars KOTOR, right? Oh, man. All right, well, guys, it's about that time. Let's go ahead and take a short break.

All right, next up here on the the list there is an upcoming game called fallen aces and i'm just going to go ahead and read the steam description that way people kind of get a sense of what this game is they say it is a first person shooter crime noir that plays right out of the 90s and looks straight out of a comic. All right. Now this week we got nine minutes of new gameplay footage and to maybe provide a little bit of context here, this game has like the animation style of the Wolf Among Us. It has a very similar feeling or vibe to like the early Max Payne games or like the movie Sin City. And I also love that it's got some touches to like some older gaming nostalgia. Your little character avatar,

as you take more damage, gets bloodier, kind of like Wolfenstein back in the day. Yeah, this game is like chock full of nostalgia, 90s crime stuff. I don't know about you guys. I think this game looks sick. I don't... He took me on a wild ride here, Paul, I think this game looks sick. I don't... This is...

He took me on a wild ride here, Paul. Because you're the one that found this game. And you were like, hey, I think we should talk about this. I'm watching this demo. The first minute, I'm like, this game looks terrible. This looks like it was made by a single person. The art style is okay. The guy is...

The animation is just him... I don't know. It didn't grab me. And guy is, you know, the animation is just him. Like, I don't know. It didn't grab me. And then the more I watched, the more I went, wait a minute. Okay. This looks all right. Oh, that's a neat idea. Dude throws a banana peel by the door and it's very gangsters, you know?

And then by the end, I am just freaking in love with this, this nine minute trailer that I've seen. And I'm'm like this game looks amazing nice what do you think ryan i did the same thing i was because you had told us i think this looks great josh said he thought it looked awesome too and then i watched it i remember audibly saying like halfway through they're right this looks awesome i was so excited in the beginning he he gets up and i know you mentioned it in the intro and stuff you know the alarm's going off and he just picks it up and he's like

oh and he just chucks it against the wall and it just the animation blows up and then yeah you know there's another part he's going through you're shooting your gun he runs out of bullets and he just chucks the gun at the guy hits him in the head you know i i absolutely loved the way the animation looked i loved uh the little kind of quirks throughout it the style of the game it was real gritty kind of had that deep dark feel to it um i was in love i'm i'm super excited i would say that this has an incredible amount of attitude and style yes that's what came across to me like almost immediately. This is no run of the mill game. You've not,

you've probably not played anything like this, even though there are similar aspects to other games. So like, for example, you get the, the character narration of the main character telling you why he's doing what he's doing. You get the comic book strips where it's looks like you're just reading a

comic and it's just voiced over and that's exactly like max pain but whereas max pain is like just normal 3d animation this game looks like you're playing in a comic book world everything is almost like 2.5d yeah in a weird way like you see flat textures everywhere but you're still running inside the world there's just really neat little flourishes that i loved when something makes noise like the phone rings and it says ring ring above it like in a comic book like i thought that stuff was so cool but then it's not just like a run of the mill run around and punch or shoot guys. They start showing you things like stealth takedowns or setting little traps with things like the banana peels. There are

finisher moves that I found hysterical where you'll like pick a guy and like punch him in the face and then throw him into the wall or, you know, things like that. Kind of like you, Josh, the more and more I saw, the more and more I fell in love with this game. It looks so much fun. This is one where you're going to have to check out the video. I'll post it to our Discord server just to make it easy to find too. But it really does,

the art style really does remind me of like, you had the comic book, but it was like it had the 3D page on it and you put the glasses on. And that's where like, you said it perfectly, Paul, it's kind of like 2.5. The enemies are 2D.

It's almost like Paper Mario, where it's like, you can see them turn, and they're animated, but when they flip around, it's just like a 2D character. And a lot of the world is that way, but the way that you interact with the world is just really neat. And then the rooms are obviously 3D and stuff, but it's like 2D, but with a lot of depth to it. It's just really neat. And then the rooms are obviously like 3D and stuff, but it's like 2D,

but with a lot of depth to it. It's just really hard to explain. But a few minutes into this trailer, I was in hook, line, and sinker. The voice acting is funny. It's got a very mobstery feel to it. I mean, it's got a detective feel to it as well, which I liked. And it gave me, in a weird sense, like you mentioned it, Wolfenstein and a little bit of like doom with some of the animations and like gunplay and stuff where it's like, you're getting like a three frames per second type, like kickback on a shotgun or something like that. But it just works, man. I don't know where you found this, Paul, but this is like, this is like digging in the dumpster and then like pulling out like a $20

bill. Like, I don't know what it is, but this, this game in the dumpster and then pulling out a $20 bill. I don't know what it is, but this game really looks interesting to me. Absolutely. Navigating through that world, even you can go through, I love the ability to go full on and attack these guys, but then there's also a stealth aspect.

You're going through a vent. You can raise up the vent and you sneak through and then you come around and then he's got a freaking judo chop. can see you know when you judo chop these guys hey yeah austin powers style learns it from watching a commercial though remember he sneaks up behind a guy and it's on the tv and it's like action doll with judo chop and you hear the guy said ain't nobody ever gonna sneak up on me and judo chop me and then your guy goes how i thought that was awesome i agree with you guys it's definitely a major i get like detective dick tracy callback you know you're you're just kind of through this dark gritty world and and uh all the yeah everything about it i'm i'm so stoked for this

game there is no release date yet so we're not sure when it'll drop there is no release date yet. So we're not sure when it'll drop. There is a free playable demo on steam, which I did play through and checked out and it plays pretty fun. I really do enjoy this style of game. It's kind of clever. It is very throwback where you are trying to go into this building to save a woman who's been kidnapped. You also have to retrieve her black book diary. That's got like evidence in it. And so as you're going through this building, you can stealth or you can fight, but there's like hidden passageways

you can discover by flipping certain switches or you can shoot and blow up like a fire extinguisher and that'll blow a hole in the wall. And now there's like a secret passage that way. So there's some stuff like that that's very neat. And it's just, it's very gritty. I like the whole idea of having this like crass detective who's like ultra violent and there's like a lot of profanity, but all the narration of why he's doing what he's doing. This one really spoke to me. Well, we'll definitely keep an eye on, uh, on this one here called Fallen Aces.

All right. And then moving on to the next story here. This is probably the last time you'll ever hear us mention the name of this game in the same phrase as news. But Redfall, one of the biggest disappointments of the year, has seen its player base absolutely drop like a rock. I saw an article this week on TechSpot that said Steam players are having trouble making a full team of four to play online. And that sounded like an exaggeration to me. So I went to Steam charts to go look, and guys, on Saturday, okay,

this is on a weekend in the middle of the afternoon 37 people were playing redfall no dude in the entire world on steam 37 and i looked over the last seven days to see where it dropped and bottomed out do you want to know its low point over the last seven days. Oh, man. Three people in the middle of the night a couple days ago. You literally did not even have four people playing in the entire world. This game's only five months old, guys. It seems to pretty much

be dead, at least on PC. Now, Paul, you're being overdramatic because they just released a large patch for Redfall that now allows you to play at 60 frames a second great and that surely three other people in the world that surely has fixed things it did not fix things and my name's not surely and so i am looking at the concurrent player count right now paul and how dare you slander this game?

There are 51 people playing currently. It has more people today, huh? Oh my goodness, man. Hey, who knew? If you make a game that's boring, has bad mechanics, and doesn't run well, guess what? People don't want to play it. Regardless of if the idea is sound or you are a well-renowned studio, if you make a game that doesn't play well and is boring and bland, it's not going to last. And that's honestly what we're seeing with Redfall.

I hate it because I was really hyped for Redfall. And then the reviews came out and everybody kind of went, yeah, there's really nothing here, guys. And then I was just so disappointed because this is a co-op multiplayer game. I like vampires. I like supernatural stuff. It sounded really neat, but it is just unfortunately Red Falls dead. And they've come out and they've said, we're not going to let this die. We're going to keep working on this game until we make it better. We're going to turn this around. And we've seen it happen. This is, we're going to turn this around and we've seen it happen. I mean, everybody is praising cyberpunk right now. We've talked about no man's sky.

We've talked about these turnarounds, but some games, they're just not worth it, man. Go make something new and better. Learn from your mistakes. I just don't see trying to save this. To be honest,

the boats already sunk. You can't save it. There's no turning it around. It's it's yeah it's already sunk it can't sink anymore yeah it makes me sad i mean we don't ever want to see a game fail or you know developers and stuff but sometimes you learn from your failures as well so hopefully that's the takeaway on this because arcane's i like them as a developer um i think they've gone a little downhill with Deathloop and especially with Redfall. So I'd like to see them say, hey, okay, we've learned a lot from this. Now we're going to make a real banger of a video game now.

But yeah, rip Redfall, man. Yeah, rip indeed. And I know because I live in a world of self-loathing, but when I first started on the pod i remember talking about redfall thinking oh this looks awesome i'm excited it's gonna be great i think it's gonna be a great game and i couldn't have been more wrong didn't you pick it as one of your yes yes we don't need to bring that up i was just curious i can remember i think that might have been like your first or second episode i think it was the first why why what did i just say now i'm gonna think about it for another six months but i just laughed i re i re-watched the trailer this morning

and i just loved the text on the screen with the music in the background and everything and it's like slay alone or squad up i'm like yep psych yeah yeah nope oh nope that's not gonna work you can't even find a squad of four sorry better luck you know next year um yeah that sucks i uh i like like you josh i love vampires and supernatural stuff and some of this stuff looks really cool but you know it didn't work for a reason so here we are so when i was on charts, once I saw that there were only 37 people at the time, I decided to just look at all games and see how many players were playing other games with the same player count.

I think I had to go to page 140 to get to where people were playing that low of numbers. Guys, almost twice as many people were playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 compared to Redfall. No way. That game is so old. I cannot believe there were like 61 people playing that and 37 people playing Redfall.

Shockingly, if you want to put a positive spin on it, Redfall is still performing better than Immortals of Avium, which only had 28 people online. Oh, no. Oof. Big oof. I'm sorry, you devs. You guys put work into this, and then it just doesn't do good. I don't know, man. It's tough.

You've got to have bad games to have good games, know, there's balance there. And it just, it does make me feel for like the developers and the artists and stuff like that, that work on these games and then have to, you know, see the reviews and go like, oh my goodness, everybody hates this. Like we created a turd, you know? And then like, that's why I say my hope is that you learn some lessons from it. You move on and you say, Hey, okay, well, we're not going to repeat those mistakes. Yeah. Well, we are just about out of time on this episode, but Josh, I know that you got a chance to play the Talos Principle 2's demo. You want to maybe just give us the short version of what you think about it? I will say the Talos Principle, we've talked about it before. It's an amazing puzzle game. Talos Principle 2 is coming out, I think in November, if I remember the release date correctly. But they did release a playable demo.

Dude, if you love puzzle games, go check this out. They've added so much to the first game. The puzzles are still very similar, but they've added a lot of different mechanics and things like that. But I played it this morning. It's about a two and a half to three hour demo. I played the entire thing in one sitting. Absolutely incredible game. Go try the demo because this is one that I think is going to, it's really going to be something special in that genre. Yeah, I think that game will perform really well. We'll definitely keep an eye on that one as well. All right. Well, that wraps up everything in regards to news from this week. As a reminder, please go check out support options through patreon at multiplayer squad.com and don't forget to rate and review our show thank you so much to everyone out there for listening we appreciate you

all and until next time happy gaming see ya all right see everybody See you, everybody.