Video Gamers Podcast - Halo Infinite Campaign, Video Game Awards and The Matrix is Real - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are back with another incredible This Week in Gaming. In this stupendous episode, we break down our thoughts on the Halo Infinite Campaign, chat the Video Game Awards and then The Matrix demo brings Paul chills? Can it really be that good? Tune into your favorite gaming podcast to find out! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad  Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, Josh here. I just wanted to take a second and let you know about this amazing new product called MultiplayerSquad.com. It's the greatest new addition to gaming. Well, I mean practically life. It's sure to fill you with glee, help you make new friends, and expose you to all sorts of awesome memes. It's got the best community of gamers around, and more than that, it's the best way to help support the show and let us keep providing awesome content. What? I gotta read this disclaimer for legal reasons. Warning. MultiplayerSquad.com can cause feelings of joy, happiness, companionship, ownage, and all around sense of being awesome.

If you notice yourself acting more like Josh, please discontinue use immediately and seek professional help. Hey, who put that in there? Paul! Hello, everybody! Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are two dads that love talking about gaming, and we release new episodes every Monday and Thursday. Since today is a Thursday, we are going to be breaking down this week in gaming. But first, we do need some introductions. I am your host, Paul. And then joining me,

it's the man who murdered the winning game of the year. It's Josh. Why? Why? Why are you going to do me like that, Paul? You know, it's funny. We're going to talk about that here in a little bit. But I remember, I don't know if I did it on air, but I do know that you and I were talking and I said, we were talking about the games in 2021 and the Game of the Year awards coming up and all that. And I do remember saying, if I had to pick one that I think will win, it's going to be It Takes Two. And you kind of went, really? And I went, yeah, I mean, looking at all the games, that's the one that stands out to me. And then as people do, they went, but Josh, you murdered that game in your deep dive. And I went, no, I didn't. And then they pulled up the history of it. And sure enough, I did murder it. And that's when I went, well, darn it, man.

Yes, we deep dove, it takes two, quite a while ago. You were not really a fan. I was kind of wondering if it's maybe like grown in favor over time, because I thought it was fine. I enjoyed it. I liked it. It was short. I was more of the mindset that it wasn't necessarily worth a full price game, but we have it number 43 out of 62 on our leaderboard. We've got it below things like the Cave and Cuphead and GTFO. So yeah, we were pretty down on It Takes Two, which ended up winning the whole thing. I think part of it is timing. There are times where we are just super busy and we have to kind of grind through a game for the show sometimes. And then there's times where we get to just take our time and kind of play what we want, or a game really grabs us and we can't wait to hop in. And I think It Takes Two caught me in one of those periods where it's like, I didn't really want to play it a whole lot.

And so I think that kind of like grouchiness about having to play this game, it might have affected my decision there. It's kind of like a book, right? I remember if you tell me, it doesn't matter if it's the best book in the world, because I do a lot of reading, right? Josh, this is the best book in the world, but you have to read it. I'm instantly going to be like, kill me now. Well, yeah. And you know how it is. Like if you just play the game in a stressful time of life that sometimes seeps in and it can change your experience, you know, same with movies, right?

Sometimes you just see a movie the first time and you hate it and then you watch it again and you're like, what on earth was I thinking? Yes, exactly. Yeah. Now, I don't know that you and I will ever dip our toes back into It Takes Two. No, never. I think probably not. But yes, we've got lots of thoughts on the 2021 Gaming Awards.

We're going to get to that in a couple of minutes. Whenever we do our This Week in Gaming episodes, we always like to talk about what we've been playing this week and then also talking about gaming news. And I know that this week, for you and me, and basically everyone else we know, we've all been playing the Halo campaign. Yeah, Halo campaign came out. I jumped on it right away. And then unfortunately, I got super busy between work and house stuff. And I got a total of like two hours of Halo campaign game time up until about two or three days ago, where I really got to sit down and play it for many hours. And man, it is great, Paul. It is so fun.

Since we won't deep dive it, I'm giving it a marry right now. Yes. Some people had asked if we were going to do a whole separate deep dive on just the campaign, and the plan is no. So Josh and I have no problem sharing our thoughts of it right now. Now, you have not quite finished the campaign yet, right? I have not. I feel like I'm probably either halfway or like two-thirds of the way through. Okay. So I finished it up just yesterday

and I thought it was such a wild ride. I thought it was great. Now I don't know about you, but since I have not played any Halo campaigns since when they first released, I did not remember anything about Halo. I did not watch any videos of what you need to know about Halo up to Infinite. And so I just jumped in and started playing the game. And I felt so lost for the first two hours. And then eventually you get caught back up and you can put all the context clues and it all clicks together. And in this game, you do get some kind of flashback type stuff that kind of explains things. So eventually, I was able to really enjoy the story. But it did make me think that I probably needed to do a little bit more

homework. I watched one of the videos because I did not play Halo 5. And I don't know that I ever finished the campaign on Halo 4. If I did, it's been a long time and I don't remember a lot of it. So I did watch one of those Primer videos. But then that's when I realized that the Halo story is very convoluted. And it really branches out in a lot of different ways. And so even having watched that, I'm still a little bit lost from time to time. But the gameplay is just top-notch, man. I am so impressed with Halo Infinite in both the campaign and the multiplayer game.

If they hadn't released it so close to the end of the year, this would easily have taken Game of the Year, I think. With the other... Knowing what games were up for Game of the Year, there's no way that Halo Infinite doesn't win that across the board. Because they gave us phenomenal multiplayer, which we did do a deep dive on. We will not have the chance to do a deep dive on the campaign. But when you take the two and put them together, dude, this is one of the best game releases that I can remember in a few years, to be honest with you. Yeah. It's been such a great experience, both single player and multiplayer. Now, I know that there have been some technical issues. Even just yesterday,

we were having trouble playing multiplayer with a group of friends. Oh, that was the worst. Big Team Battle was down and all kinds of stuff. Now, one thing I do need to poke fun of a little bit is that you and I both played it on Game Pass, right? Oh, yeah. Now, how did you feel about the install procedure to get the campaign

installed? It was so confusing. And I still double-click my Steam icon for Halo, and it launches, and I click Campaign, and it says you don't have the campaign. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that Alt F4, open my Xbox app, click to launch Infinite. But oh man, this game had to download so many times. It was so funny. I was confused as to how many times Halo Infinite was going to be installed on my computer,

because we did pick it up on Steam to play the multiplayer. Steam is my preferred platform. I just like having all my things in one spot. But then you can get the Halo Infinite campaign for a dollar if you don't have Game Pass already for three months. That's the deal of the century. And so I was like, well, that's what I'm going to do. But then I go to download just the campaign. And it's like, you can't download that without downloading multiplayer. And I'm like, but I already have multiplayer. But then I go to download just the campaign and it's like, you can't download that without downloading multiplayer. And I'm like, but I already have multiplayer. But then I realized,

oh wait, it doesn't know I have multiplayer because I have it on steam. Right. And then, yeah. So I now have two copies of halo multiplayer on my computer. Yes. One copy of the campaign.

Both of the icons are exactly the same on my desktop. So I have to move them to like opposite corners so i know which one's the campaign and which one's the multiplayer well and i know that this is a unique problem because not everyone will have gone through it the same way you and i did but the the the steam version had to download a 20 gigabyte update and then you had to download everything in xbox but then once you launch the xbox version and click campaign then it says well now you need to download the campaign version so it was just download after download after download thank goodness i've got gigabit internet

because this would have taken so long to download i would have been pretty upset if I had to just wait forever. But yeah, once we got into the campaign, it was everything that I hoped for and more. And honestly, I think it's the grapple hook that really makes this campaign. I want to go back in time when we trolled the grapple hook, because when they showed off the demo a year ago, and the gameplay footage, and everybody went, that's all we get after a 20-year wait is a grapple hook like come on yeah and you and i trolled it we were like oh grapple hook's not gonna do the grapple hook makes this game like i'm not afraid to admit when i was wrong but i'm swinging from trees like spider-man i'm grappling enemies i'm doing all kinds of super

cool stuff. Multiplayer last night, I used the grapple hook in the best way imaginable. It was one of those things where, yes, the grapple hook genuinely makes this game. I don't think it would be the same without it. And that's weird to say because of how hard we trolled that back in the day. But I agree 100%. It really makes the game incredible. Well, it was interesting that it got brought up in our Discord, and it's exactly what I did as well. I immediately put my Spartan cores into upgrading the grapple hook because I was having so much fun with it. And when you cut that cooldown to where it's only, I don't know, like four seconds, you are constantly grappling everywhere,

and you can have it stun your enemies. And so anytime I was fighting just the little guys, I would just grapple hook everyone, melee it in the face, melee to the next one, hit them in the face, and there's nothing more satisfying than doing that in Infinite. It was so much fun.

That is the exact right word it is satisfying beyond belief even the like the fusion coils and stuff like grappling one of those to you and then chucking it in the face of like a big brood or something like that it just it feels so good uh the the banished i feel like they should have cleared out some of those coils because they're everywhere. They were left and right. Yes, they are everywhere around the ring and in the open world. It was actually quite funny.

I mean, I guess you need them to power all the technology, maybe. But it is funny how many of them there really are. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. We could talk and gush on Halo Infinite Campaign all day. But it's been one of the biggest happy surprises in a game to come out in a while. Because we had our reservations. They released the multiplayer. That wound up being great. They said, the campaign's coming a little bit later. They released the campaign. And I think it's universal, man. I have not talked to anybody yet that went, eh, the campaign's okay. I mean, all of our old school Halo fans are loving it.

People that haven't played Halo from back in the day are loving it. I don't know anybody that has said, I feel like it's just okay. And that's saying a lot. Yeah. If I had to be a little nitpicky the only thing i would say is especially in the last third of the game you get a lot of go find a power seed and plug it in and you kind of get that a lot at the end and so that was getting a little repetitious but other than that the the combat is so fluid and i i really have no complaints about this game at all it's rather shocking because i even read that initially they were trying to make Halo such a big open world. They ended up cutting two thirds of it out.

That makes me sad now. Because knowing what the game is and how good it is, I want more and I haven't even beat it yet. I was literally telling people this the other day. I'm taking my time and I don't generally do a lot of the go collect and save the squads and blow up the propaganda towers and all that. But I'm doing everything I can because I don't want to beat the game. I want to be able to play it. And that's crazy to say, but I know that if I just play the storyline, I've probably got a few more hours until I'm done. And to think that this game could have been...

They compared it to Zelda, was the article that I saw, where they said, hey, this initially was going to be as big as the open world of Zelda Breath of the Wild. And I went, please do that. This is great, and I want more. Maybe we'll get that with the next installment i don't know but yeah what what a blast i ended up just kind of shotgunning the the campaign because once you beat it you can finish everything else in the open world so i actually got an achievement for beating it under eight hours so i don't know exactly how long it took but that's the only thing is it's just a little short. It really leaves you

wanting more. I'm probably still going to dabble and 100% it, but I really just wanted to beat the campaign and try to avoid most spoilers. Now, I think the other big news of this week is that we had the gaming awards. We had a lot of trailers. We had a lot of stuff released and come out here over the last week. But I think the one thing that we really need to address is the Matrix Awakens tech demo, which released on console. Yes. And I had a chance to play it. Now, you don't have a modern console. I went searching. I did not realize initially that it was only on console so of course i go to steam and i type it in and nothing pops up i go back to the article

i'm reading it i had watched the video and i'm like i want to experience this myself uh because i have a you know high-end graphics card and all that and that's when i realized oh i can't download this or play it because i don't have an Xbox Series X or a PS5. But you do. And so you got to try it? I did. And I know that you at least sought out some video and some footage of it, right? So even though you couldn't play it, you at least wanted to experience it. I was kind of curious of your take first before I share mine, being able to experience it. I was kind of curious of your take first, before I share mine, being able to see it live. Okay. So I watched the video on this. The big thing is, it's almost photorealistic. The big hubbub for people that haven't seen it

is this is the best demo for Unreal Engine 5 that has been released. It's basically almost to the point where you cannot tell that this is not real life. And that's a little bit of a stretch to me. I mean, maybe I just have better eyes, but the graphics are absolutely unheard of. It really, really is impressive. Now that said, this entire demo is just a reticle on a car. And you holding down the button is what it looks like from a gameplay perspective. And it's like, this is why I love good graphics. I've always said I'm a little bit of a graphics snob, but graphics do not make a game. And I know this is just a demo, but I got so bored halfway through this video because it's just shooting the hoods of cars nonstop.

And I kind of went, okay, I've watched this for seven minutes now. Are you going to stop shooting hoods of cars? All right. So here's the thing. When you play it live and you see how much is going on on the screen at once, and this is on my 65-inch TV. So this is not like even on a large monitor. I mean, this is still just different on a giant tv i will probably sound like a complete nerd i actually got chills really as soon as the tech demo launched and you see what the world looks like and it's not just shooting the circles you get to walk around in the open world you can get into cars you can drive around so there is other

stuff that you can do interacting in the world and they give you like a little bit of a demo where you can toggle things on and off so like i don't know if you remember but we also made fun of some reveals of unreal engine when they kept talking about how many triangles could be on the screen yeah well they let you toggle that and you can see i mean this i've never seen draw distance and detail like what's going on in this game and when you toggle that and you can see all the triangles i kind of understood like why that's so important because you can just program 10 million things going on at once and it feels alive it feels like you're walking around in the real world. The fact that this is just the first tech demo,

we're not seeing anything that's finalized or polished. I cannot wait to see what they're able to do with it because I thought it was absolutely incredible. I don't think I have felt this way since the first time I saw a DVD demoed at Fry's Electronics. Wow. I'm going to have to come over and check this out then. Because like I said, I just watched the little demo on my... I'm sure it was compressed video

on a gaming website. I skipped the intro with Keanu talking and stuff like that, even though he's my boy. I just wanted to see, what are these graphics? And so that's the part that I watched was the car part where they're just shooting the hoods on the car. But I might have to come over and actually check this out if it's that impressive in person, because I feel like I missed out on that part of it. Yeah, I thought it was pretty incredible. that of any like ip or any game that you could do a tech demo of this that it's the matrix yes where the whole thing is like what's real what's fake what's computer generated what's in real life and the fact that a lot of it does look awfully realistic there's still some things with motion where you can absolutely tell okay that's a video game not a person even when you see like

karyann moss talking there's still just something about facial movement that isn't quite there yet but at least in terms of like car crashes and being able to see so much life in the big city that stuff just really gets nailed perfectly so i'm so like see that's my other concern is you can make movies that are much better. I mean, let's be honest, cutscenes in video games have always looked better than the gameplay, right? That's why they have them. That's kind of what they showcase initially. But to get that sort of graphical fidelity into gameplay is a completely different beast. And so that's why I want to see what they can do with Unreal Engine

5 in a sense of actual gameplay. How good can you make that look at that point? And I know that they have some gameplay elements, and I didn't realize that you could walk around and get in cars and stuff like that. But I'm very curious to see how this translates to a full-fledged game. What kind of graphics card are you going to need? Do we have the technology currently to be able to play a full game in Unreal Engine 5 and have it look that way? Yeah. I mean, I kind of imagine probably, at least in some capacity. You know? Yeah. I mean, when I see what the game is rendering, and granted, you're just scrolling between targets and holding shoot

you know so you're not you know moving that reticle around but yeah it's it's it's awesome just like steam and smoke and particles flying everywhere and since it is the matrix if you run over a pedestrian they kind of just like crumble into like green data and stuff like that so it's i i can't wait to see where it goes. If this is the starting point, I think this is going to be a really neat next chapter. Yeah, because they will learn how to soak more power and ability to do things out of it too. Oh, yeah. That's kind of the thing with these game engines is you can program and everybody

tries to make it wow, but then people kind of have to learn the new engine. Yeah. But then once they do, the world just opens up at that point oh yeah yeah it's gonna be used for forever so you know they're gonna have plenty of time to figure out the kinks and figure out how to make it all work um all right so that's basically what we've been playing and getting into this week i think we would be doing a disservice if we at least did not comment a little bit more about the Game Awards. So we already talked a little bit about It Takes Two.

I think the only thing I was going to say about the Game of the Year Award is, do you think it's a travesty that Resident Evil Village didn't win? Do you think it's fair that it was It Takes Two? Or do you feel like Resident Evil got robbed? I think it's fair. I think Resident takes two? Or do you feel like Resident Evil got robbed? I think it's fair. I think Resident Evil Village is the better video game overall. But it doesn't break any ground. That's the thing with Resident Evil, right?

It's a great game. They did a lot right. We rated it very highly when we did our deep dive episode on it. But it didn't do a lot to progress video games in any kind of sense, right? Technically, it's sound. Story-wise, it's great. Gameplay-wise, it's great. That's not a slam against the game at all. But I think where it takes to one, I guess, was in its co-op approach to gameplay. And it felt much more of a throwback to the couch co-op genre that has sort of died out in the last decade or so. While maintaining that new feel, the graphics in that

game are great. Animations are incredible. It feels like you're playing a Pixar cartoon or something like that. The co-op sequences are really neat. The story is there. I mean, there is a storyline. So I feel like it was a little bit more innovative in that regard. And so I understand that that probably weighed into the decision to say, hey, we're going to make this the game of the year. I guess. I feel like everything that was in It Takes Two was already in A Way Out. It's just kind of like taking it to the next step yeah it was polished it was polished and presented in a better way for sure like i still prefer a way out over it

takes two yeah i do too yeah i i i would have loved to see resident evil when i did not think it would i as i kind of assumed it would be death loop i I'm glad it wasn't. Just to be honest with you, I'm glad it wasn't. I kind of am too. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't necessarily want to reward a game that has a great idea, but the execution's fine. Deathloop had some great big ideas, but it was just so incredibly repetitive. I don't know if you have any thoughts on any of the other awards. I know when I was browsing through it, I noticed that Best Narrative fell to Guardians of the Galaxy,

which you famously love. I've been saying this whole time. Validation. Yeah. I mean, honestly, and unfortunately, it's taken a backseat to the Halo Infinite campaign. I will 100% go back to it. But I've been telling everybody that Guardians of the Galaxy, the game, in a sense, is better than the movies. And I am a huge fan of the Marvel movies. I love just about every single one of them. And Guardians of the Galaxy ranks up there as one of my favorite Marvel movies. So I'm kind of a fanboy. And to say that this video game has a better narrative and better character interactions and story than the movies does is one of the highest praises that I can give to that game. And it's so under the radar. People have heard of it. They know that it came out. But it's such a good game. Now, the combat, I think, is what's holding it back a little bit because the combat is rather simple. And people think, well, I just want to fight and blow things up. And you can do that. But the combat takes a backseat to the

character interactions in the story in this game. And I think that's why it's probably not more mainstream at this point. But it does a phenomenal job. So to see that it won Game of the Year for Best Narrative, I think is a huge nod and a proper nod to how good the story and the characters are in that game. Part of me just can't help but think that the Avengers game just failed so spectacularly that everyone just kind of wrote off the next MCU game. That is exactly what happened. I have never played the Avengers game because everybody that's played it has said, hey, it's super fun for a little bit, and then it's just terrible. You can tell it's copy and paste. They ran out of content, and they tried to just extend the

life of this game in the worst way possible. And 100%, I think that's exactly what people assume with Guardians of the Galaxy when it came out, or that this is just another game that's exactly what people assume with Guardians of the Galaxy when it came out, or that this is just another game that's trying to cash in on the franchise and the popularity of something. And so I feel like they're genuinely missing out. I have championed this game because it's a very good game. And I feel bad that it's being lumped in with Avengers, which is terrible. So, you know, yeah, maybe I'm trying to stick up for the underdog in this one, but it's way better than you think it is. Well, I'm glad it at least got recognized here with Best Narrative Award.

I think while browsing through it, the only other thing that really stuck out to me was Best Performance. other thing that really stuck out to me was best performance so the winner ended up being maggie robertson who plays lady dimitrescu from resident evil village i really thought for all the shade we threw at deathloop i thought that the voice actors for colt and juliana were both amazing they really were and i i can't help but think maybe they split the vote a little bit, because honestly, I would have given it to either one of them. And I feel a little bit sad that they both lost. I get because how do you give it to one over the other? If they had grouped them together, I think they would have won hands down. Now, the thing is, Lady Dimitrescu, I don't remember. I

mean, yes, she talks and stuff. but did she have some incredibly amazing performance? Because it's not standing out in my mind. in a while, but I felt like with Colt and Juliana, you got so much personality. There's a lot of punch in a small package. That's how it felt. Even the very short conversations, I learned so much about both characters. I don't think I would say that about any of the other nominees, certainly not Lady Dimitrescu. So I don't know. I kind of felt like maybe Deathloop got the short end of the stick there. I do agree. I think the banter between Colt and Juliana was one of the better parts of Deathloop. And so it is a little strange. And I'm 100% with you. I think that it's because they nominated both that they couldn't pick one.

Yeah, I think that has to have been what happened. Any other thoughts on the Game Awards? Anything else that kind of stuck out for you? I'm going to go back to just sounding grumpy and saying that this was such a down year for gaming, in my opinion. That is not to say that there have not been some great games that have come out this year. I mean, there have been. I mean, we've been doing a podcast for the last year on them. I just feel like there's not any major heavy hitters that were just a shoo-in. Or in years past where you have four heavy hitters,

and it's like, which one of these is going to win? This is going to be a big competition. I'm really looking forward to 2022 for gaming. 2021 was a little bit of a down year when it comes to gaming in my opinion yeah it was definitely a down year and then we are going to be doing a 2021 recap episode and we're going to be talking all about like what we thought the best game of 2021 was maybe we'll talk a little bit about what was the most overrated i think we'll just kind of come up with some of our own categories yeah and i think for some of those we might have some repeat winners because i think there were a couple of games at the top that worked really really well and i think there were an awful lot of disappointments but even just remembering that valheim came out in 2021 feels like it came out last year. So there were definitely some gems, but they were very sparse throughout the year.

Or they're unfinished, uncut gems, so to speak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know it's there. Work in progress. Right, yeah, exactly. You know it's there. You know it's going to ultimately be great, but it's just not quite done yet. And so they can't say, hey, here's this amazing gem,

because they're still working on it a little bit. Yeah. Well, I think the last thing we were going to talk about here today before closing out the episode is that I ran across an article that really made me do a double take. So I was scrolling through, and I see an article on Eurogamer that says that Forspoken, which we've talked about on the show. We've been very impressed by the trailers that it's going to be listed on Steam for 65 pounds. Now, right away, I thought, OK, well, I know that's high. OK, Josh and I are American. I'm going to have to go convert this.

I figured that was maybe like $70. Like a PlayStation 5 game. They've been saying, hey, PS5 games, $10 more. They're going to be $70 when they come out. People kind of go, well, okay. What's the big deal? Like, yeah, it's going to match consoles. No, I put it in to convert.

£65 is $86 American dollars right now. That's insane, man. That's a lot for a game. It's a lot. Now this is... So to kind of add and flesh out this story a little bit, this is Square Enix that is publishing this game. And they are also doing the PC release for the Final Fantasy VII Remake Integrate or Integard or whatever they call it for the PC version. And that is going to be $70. I don't know what the pound release is. It's high. And so there is so much backlash that is occurring because of this

price increase that we're seeing with two fairly major releases from a very well-known publisher like Square Enix. They make good games or they publish good games. The outcry has been just huge. So much so that Epic Game Store, because is it... I don't remember if it's Final Fantasy or Forspoken that's going to be exclusive to the Epic Game Store as a release for the first year. Epic Game Store removed the listing of the price because there was so much outcry for charging people more money. That's a lot of cash, man. $86 for a game, for a AAA title after taxes is going to put you into the $90. We're getting to where people are... You're looking at $100 for a video game. Yeah, which sounds crazy.

If there's anything we've learned over the last couple years, Paul, with AAA huge release titles is what? They often underperform and underdeliver. Yes. If you make the promise to me where you say, hey, Josh, if you pay $86 for this game, but it is going to be incredible. It's going to be fully complete. We're not going to try to nickel and dime you. It won't be buggy. You're going to get a solid 50 hours of gameplay out of this thing. It's going to be one of the best games you've ever played. I would pay it, right? $86 for 50 hours worth of entertainment makes sense to me for my budget when it comes to gaming. But the problem is that there have been so many huge

letdowns with AAA titles in the last couple years. There's no way I'm paying $86 for one of these. Yeah. I mean, I kind of get it. It's kind of like in the same way we've seen with movies where you don't have any middle budget cost movies. Everything's either like an indie title or it costs $300 million to make an MCU movie. Video games are kind of like that also. We see these games that are in development for eight years. Every time Rockstar comes out with a new game, Red Dead Redemption was the most expensive game of all time. Then Red Dead Redemption 2 was the most expensive game of all time. I kind of get it.

These games are costing hundreds of millions of dollars. They have to recoup those fees. I get it. We're going to have to see prices go up with inflation and everything else. But growing up when new games used to be $39.99, thinking that after tax, these games are going to be in the $96, $97 range is very hard to swallow, even if it logically, mathematically makes sense. Once we hit triple digits, that's going to be a really big mental block for me to pay for a game.

Do you know what the whole issue there is? Is it's if you want to play it when it releases. Because guess what happens to video games after they've been out for three months or six months? It's like a way down in price. Yeah. But everybody's got to play the new hotness, right? That's the big thing as a gamer is the game just released. I have to play this game, right? So much so that we've started giving them our money upfront with pre-orders

and we don't even know what we're getting at that point. So it's like, if you're willing to wait, guess what? Well, you can get this game for a really, really good price at that point. I'm getting to the point where sans this podcast, I think I'm getting where I'm willing to wait for a game. I'll wait for reviews. I'll wait for the price to come down a little bit. There's a ton of really good indie developers and games that have surprised us and a lot of other people. I think we're starting to see that shift a little bit. The one thing is, if I'm going to pay $86 for a game, it better be done. Yeah. It better be well-polished. It better work right.

And preferably not having 45 gigabyte day one patches. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yep. All right. Well, that's all that we have here today for This Week in Gaming. So Josh and I will not be releasing any new episodes here for the next two weeks. So we are going to be re-releasing some of our favorite episodes. We are going to release deep dive episodes on Monday and some of our favorite bonus round episodes on Thursdays. And so Josh and I will have those two weeks off and then we will be back with our full regular content starting in January.

And we're going to kick off the year with doing a couple of episodes. We're going to look back at 2021. And then in a separate episode, we will also talk about what we are most anticipating in 2022 gaming. And those are some of my favorite episodes. I can't wait until we are able to come back and talk about those things. And I think that's it for today. Right, Josh? That is it.

We did record some intros to these episodes that are coming up. If you haven't heard them, there's a reason that we picked these episodes. We think they're phenomenal games. And we want to make sure that people have listened to the episodes and heard what we have to say about these games as well. But they're just great. They're definitely worth another listen have to say about these games as well. But they're, they're just great. They're definitely worth another listen.

If people have already heard them as well. And instead of the twig episodes on Thursday, it's like you said, you get a deep dive on Monday, the bonus round on Thursday. So you're kind of getting that nice little double up there. Yeah. Well,

I hope you guys have a great holiday season and a great new years. And we'll be back with some new content in January. And until then, we hope you enjoy the a great holiday season and a great new year's and we'll be back with some new content in january and until then we hope you enjoy the re-releases and that's it buddy so 2021 over i was gonna i was gonna say i'll see you in two weeks josh but i i know you and i'll see each other before then but uh have a good one everybody hope you're all enjoying some great games here with hopefully some time off of work and school and we'll see you guys next time all right see you everybody