# A Look At Nintendo's Year Ahead, Plus Overwatch's Big Overhaul

An episode of [The Game Informer Show](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/335246945), 6 Feb 2026, 2 h 16 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/69850745/753_audio.mp3

It's a jam-packed show this week, as 2026 is running full-steam ahead. Alex, Marcus, Charles, and Eric sit down fresh off the Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase to share their reactions and favorite reveals, then Charles divulges some details from a recent Nintendo preview event where he played a slate of the handheld's upcoming games. After the break, Alex discusses what he played of Overwatch's big overhaul -- so massive, it's dropping the "2." And to cap it all off, Charles talks about the long-awaited launch of Mewgenics, and Marcus shares his thoughts on Nioh 3 so far. It's a feature-length episode of The Game Informer Show, so grab a cold beverage and enjoy. The Game Informer Show is a weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Friday for chats about your favorite titles – past and present – alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from around the industry. Jump ahead using these timestamps: • 00:00 Intro • 04:32 - Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase Reactions • 22:07 - Nintendo Switch 2 Previews • 1:00:13 - Overwatch • 1:28:20 - Mewgenics • 1:48:57 - Nioh 3

## Transcript

[0:08] Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody to the Game Informer Show, a weekly
[0:11] Speaker 1: podcast covering.
[0:12] Speaker 2: The video game industry.
[0:13] Speaker 1: Join us every Friday for discussion with the latest gaming news, reviews,
[0:17] Speaker 1: and exclusive reveals, alongside Game Informer staff and special guests
[0:21] Speaker 1: from around the industry. I'm one of your hosts today
[0:24] Speaker 1: Alex van Aiken, and today I'm joined by Marcus Stewart.
[0:29] Speaker 2: How are you?
[0:30] Speaker 3: I'm doing good? I at the time they were recording,
[0:34] Speaker 3: I heard the fans all having a good time last
[0:38] Speaker 3: week talking about my headphones, and.
[0:41] Speaker 1: I want to let you you gots whatt the UFO
[0:43] Speaker 1: three thousands on right?
[0:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, which I was told they look beautiful. And then
[0:47] Speaker 3: it comes to find out a bunch of little group
[0:49] Speaker 3: a of smart asses down there fun. But this is
[0:53] Speaker 3: the last time you'll see these because as we're recording,
[0:56] Speaker 3: there's new headphones literally coming into mail.
[0:59] Speaker 1: All right, we'll hold you do it. We're also joined
[1:02] Speaker 1: by Charles Hart.
[1:04] Speaker 2: How you doing, Charles? Marcus? Headphones kind of look like
[1:06] Speaker 2: if the Tom and Jerry.
[1:08] Speaker 4: Tom was wearing headphones and Jerry pulled down head hard
[1:12] Speaker 4: and then Tom had to put the headphones back on.
[1:14] Speaker 4: But there was a big head shaped lump in them.
[1:16] Speaker 4: If you're an a your listener, that's kind of what
[1:18] Speaker 4: it looks like I thought.
[1:19] Speaker 3: You're going to do. I thought you're gonna go the
[1:21] Speaker 3: other way. If like it looks like I got someone
[1:23] Speaker 3: hit me in the head while wearing them and a
[1:24] Speaker 3: little bump, just push, there's.
[1:27] Speaker 2: A lot of way the headphones with a hammer on
[1:32] Speaker 2: the head. Yeah, definitely. Also I'm doing well.
[1:37] Speaker 1: Hello, welcome rounding out the show today, Eric van Allen, Hello.
[1:42] Speaker 2: Hi, join us later for the Viking funeral for Marcus's headphones.
[1:46] Speaker 2: We're gonna set them adrift on the ocean. I think
[1:50] Speaker 2: they'll flow. They've got so much they do.
[1:52] Speaker 3: What they do look buoyant for people wondering. My headphones
[1:56] Speaker 3: broke like two weeks ago, and because I'm like a
[2:00] Speaker 3: cheap bastard and I tend to wear things until they
[2:04] Speaker 3: like explode, basically like, I wasn't in a rush to
[2:07] Speaker 3: replace them, but they kept getting worse and then I
[2:09] Speaker 3: had to tape the sides. But you can see there
[2:13] Speaker 3: they're really really struggling to hold on there. For audio listeners,
[2:18] Speaker 3: you'll have to go to the YouTube version to see that.
[2:20] Speaker 3: But like I said, they're literally just like this is
[2:24] Speaker 3: it for them. This is the last time you'll see these,
[2:26] Speaker 3: so like I think, you know, enjoy it while last,
[2:28] Speaker 3: let's hold a nice eulogy for them right now because
[2:31] Speaker 3: their replacements are literally here are going to be here
[2:33] Speaker 3: very soon.
[2:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll have the last laugh.
[2:37] Speaker 3: Yeah, this is where you or Eric have to edit,
[2:39] Speaker 3: like a compilation of g I clips where I wore
[2:42] Speaker 3: these like all the best moments.
[2:45] Speaker 2: You know, some Sarah McLaughlin like playing in the background.
[2:48] Speaker 3: I would like that. Actually, yes, please do that.
[2:50] Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, welcome to the Game Informer Show. Everyone, It's
[2:55] Speaker 1: going to be a great episode. You got a lot
[2:57] Speaker 1: to talk about Nintendo direct reactions. Charles played several new
[3:02] Speaker 1: Nintendo games and partner games coming to the console soon.
[3:06] Speaker 1: I'm going to be talking about I flew out the
[3:08] Speaker 1: Blizzard and played the new Overwatch update. What is really
[3:13] Speaker 1: feels like an overhaul? And then Charles you played Mugenics.
[3:17] Speaker 1: And then we'll round up the show with Marcus's thoughts
[3:19] Speaker 1: on Neo three so far.
[3:21] Speaker 2: But before all that, I do just.
[3:23] Speaker 1: Want to say, if you're a listener of the show
[3:24] Speaker 1: and you want to support us, please consider picking up
[3:27] Speaker 1: a Game Informer magazine subscription.
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[4:05] Speaker 1: Stop has them, and you can go and purchase them.
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[4:26] Speaker 1: And yeah, we really appreciate it. Thanks for giving us
[4:28] Speaker 1: your ears this week, and I guess we'll get into it. Eric,
[4:33] Speaker 1: you wrote up a great article that people can check
[4:35] Speaker 1: out on Gaminformer dot com that was everything announced at
[4:40] Speaker 1: the February Nintendo Direct Partner showcase. Of course, there are
[4:44] Speaker 1: you know what two dozen announcements or so, maybe maybe
[4:47] Speaker 1: not quite that much, but a fair amount trailers. That
[4:51] Speaker 1: is not all announcements, you know, we got updates on
[4:54] Speaker 1: games we've note about, but there were a couple of
[4:56] Speaker 1: new things. And rather than you know, folks can go
[5:00] Speaker 1: and read that whole article and see all the trailers
[5:02] Speaker 1: and stuff. But I thought we'd each pick out, you know,
[5:06] Speaker 1: one of our highlights from that direct and chat about it.
[5:10] Speaker 2: Do you want to kick us off, Eric?
[5:11] Speaker 3: Yeah?
[5:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you said, I think it was mostly a
[5:15] Speaker 2: lot of things we either knew about or you could
[5:17] Speaker 2: maybe suss out was going to happen. You know, Final
[5:19] Speaker 2: Fantasy seven remake just came to switch to makes sense
[5:22] Speaker 2: that rebirth would be right around the corner, is Sheldough.
[5:25] Speaker 2: I think that's a bit sooner than most of us
[5:27] Speaker 2: thought it would be for me personally.
[5:30] Speaker 3: Though.
[5:31] Speaker 2: The standout came second in the direct, second top billing
[5:37] Speaker 2: a little game I don't know if you'all heard of
[5:38] Speaker 2: it called paranorma site. This one's called The Mermaid's Curse.
[5:42] Speaker 2: It's coming out in two weeks and that's wild. Yeah,
[5:47] Speaker 2: I was saying before the podcast started, if you told
[5:49] Speaker 2: me that Square Nix was announcing a new game, and
[5:54] Speaker 2: I had to pick what I thought it was. I
[5:55] Speaker 2: would get probably about fifty deep before I thought that
[5:58] Speaker 2: there was a new Paranormou site coming, and that's not
[6:01] Speaker 2: you know, a commentary on the quality of Paranorma site.
[6:04] Speaker 2: I love that first game. I think it's a really
[6:06] Speaker 2: really incredible adventure horror game. It's just such a weird
[6:11] Speaker 2: thing and such a niche person, you know, you'd think
[6:14] Speaker 2: niche thing that you maybe would imagine that screen. Nick woulday, Okay,
[6:18] Speaker 2: we're going to do one and we'll move on from it.
[6:20] Speaker 2: There were a lot of games kind of in that
[6:22] Speaker 2: window that kind of got one offs Your Harvest Stella's,
[6:25] Speaker 2: your do Field Chronicles, your Project Triangle strategies, that got
[6:31] Speaker 2: one game and then kind of moved on from So
[6:35] Speaker 2: to see Paranorma site get another entry and what looks
[6:38] Speaker 2: like an anthological series, kind of a Dark Pictures type setup.
[6:43] Speaker 2: Very excited for this. The first game was a It's
[6:46] Speaker 2: set around a battle royale that happens at night and
[6:49] Speaker 2: in a small city in Japan, where different people are
[6:54] Speaker 2: kind of granted cursed objects that give them power and
[6:57] Speaker 2: they have to try to eliminate each other in order
[7:00] Speaker 2: to be the one left standing, and they can bring
[7:02] Speaker 2: a loved one back from the dead. Is the legend.
[7:05] Speaker 2: Damn that sounds cool. It's very good.
[7:08] Speaker 4: Mentioned this game on the podcast before, and I added
[7:10] Speaker 4: it to my Steam wish list like while.
[7:13] Speaker 2: We were recording. So the fact that now.
[7:15] Speaker 4: Like a few months after I've learned about the first game,
[7:18] Speaker 4: they're making a second, I'm.
[7:19] Speaker 2: Like, oh, yeah, came out. The first one came out
[7:23] Speaker 2: in twenty March twenty twenty three.
[7:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, I know there's a big content update back in October.
[7:31] Speaker 2: But maybe maybe we would have talked.
[7:33] Speaker 1: About I don't know, but yeah, I remember, I remember
[7:36] Speaker 1: back when this I think you were talking about it
[7:39] Speaker 1: around Godie that time of year in twenty twenty three.
[7:43] Speaker 1: How like, I don't know if it made your list
[7:45] Speaker 1: or not, but you were considered, it.
[7:46] Speaker 2: Was, it was on my it was on my list
[7:47] Speaker 2: back then. I was not a lot of game and
[7:49] Speaker 2: former at that time, but.
[7:52] Speaker 3: Twenty twenty three was an amazing year, so that's a lot.
[7:54] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[7:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's a really really fascinating game. I
[7:58] Speaker 2: think if you like adventure stuff games and not just
[8:01] Speaker 2: your Phoenix rights your don Gan rampas your zero scapes,
[8:04] Speaker 2: but also things like the Seventh Guest, some very throwback
[8:08] Speaker 2: kind of point and click horror. This nails a lot
[8:11] Speaker 2: of that, and it looks like from what we saw
[8:13] Speaker 2: on the trailer, they've got some really cool additional things.
[8:16] Speaker 2: They always have very finicky little mechanics kind of puzzle
[8:20] Speaker 2: boxes to figure out. The game plays with perspective in
[8:24] Speaker 2: really interesting ways. I don't want to say too much
[8:26] Speaker 2: to give away too much, because there's some really great
[8:28] Speaker 2: twists that the game throws at you. The first paranormicite,
[8:30] Speaker 2: I think within the first hour pull some really great tricks.
[8:34] Speaker 2: But one of my favorite things is that it is
[8:36] Speaker 2: a first person adventure game point and click, and you
[8:40] Speaker 2: will often be placed in kind of three sixty diramas
[8:43] Speaker 2: that you have to basically like if you're sitting in
[8:45] Speaker 2: a swivel chair like I am right now, you can
[8:48] Speaker 2: kind of pivot left and right, but you do it
[8:51] Speaker 2: very slowly, and so if you're sure, there's some great
[8:54] Speaker 2: moments with that, if you're like, there's there might be
[8:57] Speaker 2: something just behind me, have to slowly turn. And I
[9:02] Speaker 2: saw in the trailer and I used it as lead
[9:04] Speaker 2: image for the new story that I wrote for GI
[9:07] Speaker 2: this morning. But they had a little mirror that you
[9:10] Speaker 2: could hold up to like look behind you, and the
[9:12] Speaker 2: character was like slowly rotating with the mirror held up,
[9:15] Speaker 2: and I was like, that's that's going to be so good.
[9:18] Speaker 2: That's going to be fantastic. It is a series that
[9:21] Speaker 2: does some really cool stuff, and if you especially like
[9:23] Speaker 2: the zero Escape thing, playing with like meta textual or
[9:27] Speaker 2: like even blueprints, like high level outside the narrative, fourth
[9:31] Speaker 2: wall breaking stuff, it also does some of that. So
[9:35] Speaker 2: I would highly recommend that if any of that sounds good.
[9:37] Speaker 2: I genuinely think that Paranorma site, the first one is
[9:40] Speaker 2: one of Square Enix's like cult classic underappreciated gems. So
[9:45] Speaker 2: to see it get a second game, I'm thrilled. I
[9:48] Speaker 2: cannot wait. And it's only two weeks away, February nineteenth,
[9:51] Speaker 2: I believe. Yeah, yeah, was was the release date, and
[9:53] Speaker 2: it's on Switch and Switch to it looks like and
[9:57] Speaker 2: other platforms. Maybe I don't know if there's been a
[9:59] Speaker 2: press release yet. Ter Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, sounds great. Yeah,
[10:06] Speaker 2: check that out. Paranormal site make time cool? Great?
[10:10] Speaker 1: Charles, what about you? What do you have a standout
[10:12] Speaker 1: from from the direct.
[10:14] Speaker 2: Can I take yours? Because my answer is, yeah, let's
[10:16] Speaker 2: both talk about it.
[10:17] Speaker 1: Let's both we talked before the show what we were
[10:21] Speaker 1: You were actually gonna pick that one.
[10:23] Speaker 2: We'll do a co op pick.
[10:24] Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Alex and I both both liked Orbitals. I mean,
[10:29] Speaker 4: so my real answer is that like, nothing, nothing you
[10:31] Speaker 4: really jumped out at me. I was doing something else
[10:34] Speaker 4: at the time. I was doing an interview. But none
[10:38] Speaker 4: of these are making me like super excited.
[10:41] Speaker 2: Did did you watch the orbital?
[10:43] Speaker 3: Do you have it?
[10:43] Speaker 2: I know you're busy.
[10:44] Speaker 1: Did you have a chance to watch the trailer for Orbitals?
[10:46] Speaker 1: I thought, because yeah, it was the first amountment, Like,
[10:49] Speaker 1: there are a lot of there are a lot more
[10:51] Speaker 1: mechanics and systems that were shown off that look awesome.
[10:57] Speaker 1: Number one, Uh just really really reminding me a lot
[11:02] Speaker 1: of like in terms of like the places that you're
[11:04] Speaker 1: visiting and the setting reminds me a bit of Citizen
[11:07] Speaker 1: Sleeper with some of the and I guess it's more
[11:12] Speaker 1: you know, there's more of that in kind of dystopian
[11:15] Speaker 1: sci fi, but like the you know, the big plant
[11:19] Speaker 1: harvesters and like going and and shooting water on platforms
[11:24] Speaker 1: to make giant you know, fauna shootout.
[11:27] Speaker 2: So you can use them the platform.
[11:28] Speaker 1: I know, there's something about there's a very I love
[11:31] Speaker 1: like seeing weird nature in sci fi. Maybe that's more
[11:35] Speaker 1: so what I'm talking about is like I want to
[11:37] Speaker 1: see the the you know, the propagated flora and fauna
[11:42] Speaker 1: that that they've been farming on a space station. Like
[11:44] Speaker 1: that stuff is always super cool to me. And that's
[11:47] Speaker 1: what I think. That's what reminds me a lot about
[11:49] Speaker 1: Citizens Sleeper, the first one, especially the the you know,
[11:54] Speaker 1: towards the end of that game, you kind of see
[11:55] Speaker 1: some of that stuff, and I just think that's such a.
[11:59] Speaker 2: Fun thing to explore.
[12:00] Speaker 1: But there's a lot of different mechanics shown off, not
[12:03] Speaker 1: just that, but you know there looks like you can
[12:07] Speaker 1: play the music and play drums as well. For people
[12:09] Speaker 1: who'd missed us talking about this what a month ago
[12:12] Speaker 1: or so at the start of the year, Orbitals is
[12:16] Speaker 1: think think like a haze light game such as like
[12:20] Speaker 1: It Takes Two or split Fiction. It's that kind of
[12:23] Speaker 1: game where it is a split screen game, but personal
[12:27] Speaker 1: left and the right are you know, there are two
[12:29] Speaker 1: different perspectives being rendered and you're kind of going on
[12:34] Speaker 1: separate paths, not necessarily just staying together, and each of
[12:37] Speaker 1: you are kind of like one half of a coin
[12:40] Speaker 1: that is needed to solve puzzles, and this is Orbitals
[12:44] Speaker 1: is like that, but it is pulling from like nineties
[12:47] Speaker 1: early two thousand's anime and it looks incredible. It's from
[12:54] Speaker 1: Kepler Interactive. They're publishing it. I think the game's being
[12:57] Speaker 1: developed in Tokyo, I believe by shape Form, and it's
[13:02] Speaker 1: we got news that they're targeting a summer twenty twenty
[13:05] Speaker 1: six window, and I'm personally excited even more because I
[13:09] Speaker 1: have this game drafted on our fantasy league.
[13:13] Speaker 4: Eric and I aren Do you guys ever feel like
[13:16] Speaker 4: it's unethical to participate.
[13:19] Speaker 2: In fantasy leagues? As No, there's nothing at stake, It's
[13:22] Speaker 2: it's mostly just us having fun, and like, what's just fun?
[13:26] Speaker 2: I find it really interesting because we end up in
[13:28] Speaker 2: situations where you're kind of trying to stay ahead of time.
[13:32] Speaker 2: How do I think this game is going to turn out?
[13:35] Speaker 2: Versus how does it turn out? And I'll also say
[13:40] Speaker 2: that I regularly forget that I'm in a fantasy league
[13:43] Speaker 2: and then log in after three months and go like
[13:46] Speaker 2: oh crap, I'm loosen. I will say.
[13:50] Speaker 4: The other thing about Orbitals that I did internalize is
[13:55] Speaker 4: it has game share, which I'm very excited about.
[13:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, because I'm game share with older Switch systems too,
[14:01] Speaker 1: I believe.
[14:02] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[14:02] Speaker 4: Yeah, So I'm really excited because I'm definitely gonna be
[14:04] Speaker 4: playing this with my fiance. But I like the idea
[14:07] Speaker 4: that like I could have it on the TV and
[14:10] Speaker 4: she could do a handheld or vice versa or something,
[14:14] Speaker 4: or we could just both be somewhere where there's not
[14:16] Speaker 4: a TV and just yeah, that's it's a nice game
[14:19] Speaker 4: pad exactly.
[14:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, just hanging out right there, right behind something.
[14:24] Speaker 3: I see it.
[14:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, let's go. Uh well yeah, Orbitals looks great. Marcus.
[14:29] Speaker 2: What about you?
[14:29] Speaker 1: What was your your highlight from from this direct?
[14:34] Speaker 3: I have, like, I guess, like one main highlight and
[14:36] Speaker 3: a couple of sort of just like huh, like that's
[14:39] Speaker 3: that's interesting picks. My main one is Adventures of Elliott.
[14:43] Speaker 3: The Adventures of Elliott the Millennium Tails getting a June
[14:47] Speaker 3: eighteenth release date. This was announced last year. This is
[14:50] Speaker 3: sort of the the Square Inox, kind of like HD
[14:53] Speaker 3: two d Zelda. I guess for lack of a better comparison,
[14:57] Speaker 3: Like it's like the first time we've seen the HD
[14:59] Speaker 3: two D stuf I'll apply to a genre that wasn't
[15:02] Speaker 3: a turn based RPG or strategy game where you're just this,
[15:06] Speaker 3: uh the Elliott, cool little red hat wearing guy going
[15:10] Speaker 3: around cutting things down with a sword and a shield.
[15:13] Speaker 3: Like it's got very kind of like old school Zelda vibe,
[15:15] Speaker 3: but in that like really cool art direction. I know
[15:18] Speaker 3: there's been a demo out for it on Switch for
[15:20] Speaker 3: the longest time, and I still have never played it.
[15:22] Speaker 3: I think I still have it's demo. It's good. Yeah,
[15:25] Speaker 3: I need to, but I love every time I see
[15:27] Speaker 3: the game pop up, I'm like, yeah, this looks like
[15:29] Speaker 3: I love me some like Zelda or like Zelda likes,
[15:32] Speaker 3: and you know, combining with the HG two D style,
[15:34] Speaker 3: I'm like super pumped for this. And summer good a
[15:38] Speaker 3: good month for that. I like to think I'm trying
[15:40] Speaker 3: to like because it's just after SGF and that feels
[15:44] Speaker 3: like like a good sort of like recovering from the
[15:47] Speaker 3: madness of SGF game. Like, all right, I'm gonna sit
[15:50] Speaker 3: down on my Switch and I'm just gonna play. I'm
[15:51] Speaker 3: just gonna cut some things down and adventures of that. Yeah,
[15:55] Speaker 3: so that's nice. And then kind of my quick hits
[15:58] Speaker 3: are the Super Bomber Ran Collection, which is like a
[16:01] Speaker 3: complete surprise as far as I know, I don't think
[16:02] Speaker 3: this was announced beforehand, but it's out today shadow Drop,
[16:06] Speaker 3: and it is like a retro collection of like all
[16:09] Speaker 3: the old school Bomberman games as well as I think
[16:11] Speaker 3: two that never came to the West. Interesting and it
[16:15] Speaker 3: includes like you know, local and online multiplayer. They added
[16:19] Speaker 3: a boss rush mode, so like it's been a long time,
[16:24] Speaker 3: so I've really gotten into bomber bangs. I think a
[16:26] Speaker 3: lot of kind of like like the more contemporary Bombermans
[16:29] Speaker 3: haven't really done it. You know.
[16:32] Speaker 4: I played one Bomberman game and I famously did not
[16:35] Speaker 4: like it.
[16:36] Speaker 3: Right, I remember the madness of the at least of
[16:39] Speaker 3: the lower implications, the one that you played Charles. But
[16:43] Speaker 3: like back in the day, like on S and E S,
[16:45] Speaker 3: I used to love Bomberman. It was like one of
[16:47] Speaker 3: the og like party games for me. So to have
[16:50] Speaker 3: like just a giant bundle of them together, that just
[16:53] Speaker 3: sounds like that's going to be just like it's gonna
[16:55] Speaker 3: be one of those switch games. That's just always installed
[16:57] Speaker 3: in case they're like really friends or like you know,
[17:00] Speaker 3: like at a party and it's like, hey, let's just
[17:02] Speaker 3: do some four player Bomberman right now. Let's we have
[17:04] Speaker 3: like six seven games to choose from, and then the
[17:07] Speaker 3: other one. I don't even know if this will be good,
[17:09] Speaker 3: but it made me laugh is a Tokyo scrambled.
[17:11] Speaker 2: Okay, I'm glad you're bringing this up, because I was
[17:14] Speaker 2: still bringing up survival adventure game that I think they
[17:18] Speaker 2: said it was, yes action game.
[17:20] Speaker 3: You're you're playing a woman who's like on a train,
[17:24] Speaker 3: and then everything goes wrong, like the tunnel that you're
[17:27] Speaker 3: traveling over collapses on itself, and then it turns out
[17:30] Speaker 3: like underground, it's filled with these night dinosaurs.
[17:34] Speaker 2: They're not dinosaurs, they're not dios zinos, And as far
[17:39] Speaker 2: as I can tell, the only difference between a zino
[17:41] Speaker 2: and a dino is like really cool hair, Like all
[17:45] Speaker 2: the dinosaurs have like sweet there's like veloci raptors, like
[17:48] Speaker 2: sweet mohawks and like mains and stuff.
[17:51] Speaker 3: Like they're just weirdly furry reptiles. And you're just like
[17:56] Speaker 3: sneaking around trying to like dodge these zinos and it
[18:00] Speaker 3: looks so dumby spells.
[18:02] Speaker 2: I know, z I n os I think, yeah, literally,
[18:06] Speaker 2: It's just the thing that caught my eye about this
[18:09] Speaker 2: announcement that I didn't even register until I was watching
[18:12] Speaker 2: back through the direct for the recap. It has game
[18:17] Speaker 2: Share in it, but the way the game share works
[18:20] Speaker 2: is it says up the four people can play together
[18:23] Speaker 2: from their own systems with just one game. Using the
[18:25] Speaker 2: Nintendo Switch to Systems Gameshare feature, you can distribute the
[18:29] Speaker 2: controls between everyone or give a single player full control,
[18:34] Speaker 2: so you could have four different people controlling a single
[18:38] Speaker 2: character a stream each. I was one is doing like
[18:41] Speaker 2: one person's doing camera controls, I think, and somebody else
[18:44] Speaker 2: is maybe doing inventory or something. It was unclear in
[18:47] Speaker 2: the direct. I feel like I would need to watch
[18:49] Speaker 2: it again because it goes pretty fast when they show it.
[18:51] Speaker 2: But I was like, that seems Tailor made for an
[18:56] Speaker 2: incredible live stream.
[18:58] Speaker 3: So that's line. We all need to get Tokyo Scramble
[19:02] Speaker 3: codes and we surprise super replay. We all try to
[19:05] Speaker 3: beat to.
[19:08] Speaker 2: How many game Former editors does it take to beat
[19:11] Speaker 2: Tokyo Scramp. I mean it's out next week. This happen thing.
[19:17] Speaker 4: It has to be the next super reeplay. But we
[19:19] Speaker 4: are almost done with the Black Night we are.
[19:22] Speaker 3: Yeah, it does a good chance we'll be done on Friday,
[19:24] Speaker 3: it happens. But yeah, the Ziono's man, they're coming, got it.
[19:28] Speaker 3: It takes four people to deal with those things. The hair,
[19:31] Speaker 3: you know. So yeah, that looks so dumb.
[19:33] Speaker 1: And we could do an overlay where the buttons that
[19:36] Speaker 1: the person are responsible for are on their webcam so
[19:40] Speaker 1: people know like which button they're supposed to Ye.
[19:43] Speaker 3: This is like this equivalent of being in a school
[19:46] Speaker 3: play and two people have to beat a horse and
[19:48] Speaker 3: it's like, all right, am I the butt or am
[19:50] Speaker 3: I the front? But like you add two more each.
[19:52] Speaker 2: One leg of the horse. Yeah, it's a it's a
[19:55] Speaker 2: wheelbarrow race. Where have you ever done those where two
[19:58] Speaker 2: people are like one person's running the other one's holding
[20:00] Speaker 2: the other person's legs and they have to like run
[20:02] Speaker 2: in the front on their hands like that.
[20:04] Speaker 3: It's like a video game megazor.
[20:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, wow, well great, anything else you wanted to
[20:12] Speaker 1: shout out, Marcus before we wrap up?
[20:14] Speaker 3: That's pretty much it. I mean, there's other stuff that
[20:16] Speaker 3: looks cool, but it's a lot of stuff that we
[20:17] Speaker 3: knew about.
[20:18] Speaker 2: You know, yeah, there are a few things on this list.
[20:22] Speaker 4: You were going to say, I was gonna sy, I
[20:24] Speaker 4: feel like we should mention the Bethesda stuff.
[20:25] Speaker 2: I think it's like.
[20:26] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's cool.
[20:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, it is just news worthy of the very least.
[20:30] Speaker 2: I think.
[20:30] Speaker 4: I think we're all of the mind that it's like
[20:31] Speaker 4: games we've played before on other systems, but if you've
[20:35] Speaker 4: never played it before, you want to check it out
[20:37] Speaker 4: on to go. They've got other scrolls obliviing remastered Fallout
[20:41] Speaker 4: four and any of Jones in the Great Circle are
[20:43] Speaker 4: all coming to switch To. Which Fallout four is coming this.
[20:49] Speaker 2: Month anniversary edition? Correct? Yeah, right, which is yeah, Livness
[20:57] Speaker 2: sometime later, I said this early, but it felt like
[21:01] Speaker 2: a very middle of the showcase announcement and not an
[21:04] Speaker 2: end of showcase announcement. I was a little surprised, and
[21:07] Speaker 2: I maybe, you know, the the Heat of Oblivion remaster
[21:10] Speaker 2: coming to switch To, which is probably the most notable
[21:13] Speaker 2: of these announcements, although Great Circle running on the switch
[21:16] Speaker 2: To also pretty impressive too. But it just felt like
[21:20] Speaker 2: a very strange note to end on, not a new
[21:24] Speaker 2: game reveal or anything like that, especially when there was
[21:27] Speaker 2: other stuff I think stuff like Grand Blue Fantasy, Relink
[21:29] Speaker 2: finally coming to Switch, and with the Ragnarok expansion that
[21:33] Speaker 2: they announced, I think like Kyoto Zana Do looks kind
[21:36] Speaker 2: of cool and a lot of stuff in here. It
[21:39] Speaker 2: was just kind of like a little bit more poppy.
[21:41] Speaker 2: But I get that that's a little bit more niche
[21:43] Speaker 2: interest than like Bethes does. Is it's going to be
[21:46] Speaker 2: the big seller. Everybody's going to buy a Bethesda game
[21:50] Speaker 2: on their own their switch. It's going to happen.
[21:52] Speaker 3: So that's what I was gonna say, Like, if you
[21:53] Speaker 3: don't have like a big new thing to show, then
[21:55] Speaker 3: he may as well end in a like a big name.
[21:57] Speaker 3: So like, yeah, camera, like, hey, I'm ringing some stuff
[22:00] Speaker 3: over to you, guys. I'm Santa Claus with a bag
[22:03] Speaker 3: of gifts where you switched to owners.
[22:05] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we're gonna stay on the Nintendo train because Charles,
[22:12] Speaker 1: you flew out to New York to play several uh
[22:18] Speaker 1: new games updates all that stuff. I'm gonna pass it
[22:20] Speaker 1: to you because you know what you played. But I
[22:24] Speaker 1: know we're gonna be talking about Mario Wonder DLC Virtual Boy.
[22:28] Speaker 1: You checked out Pragmata and Ari Requiem, is that right?
[22:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, I played all those.
[22:33] Speaker 4: I hopped on a passenger car on the Spirit Tracks
[22:36] Speaker 4: and that Nintendo's train up to New York.
[22:38] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
[22:40] Speaker 4: So this is my first Nintendo event. I've never been
[22:43] Speaker 4: to one before. So, like I've been to stuff at
[22:47] Speaker 4: Summer Game Fest of like like a properly produced like
[22:51] Speaker 4: when you do a cover trip, it's like, oh, this
[22:53] Speaker 4: is the studio. You're just kind of hanging out and
[22:55] Speaker 4: we'll be nice to you and get your food and
[22:56] Speaker 4: stuff or whatever. And then sometimes it's like this is
[22:59] Speaker 4: a preview trip. We like decorated the set and there's
[23:02] Speaker 4: like snacks out and stuff, and like I and then
[23:05] Speaker 4: I this Nintendo one. I show up. It's in the
[23:08] Speaker 4: lobby of this like fancy building. The guy's like, can
[23:10] Speaker 4: I get you a coffee or anything? I was like,
[23:12] Speaker 4: do you have any waters? Actually he's like yeah, sure,
[23:14] Speaker 4: comes back with a canned water.
[23:16] Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, it's this kind of place.
[23:18] Speaker 3: Cann You're like bar for like, oh, this is.
[23:22] Speaker 2: I'm drinking a can.
[23:24] Speaker 4: I've never bought a canned water before. It's not flavored water,
[23:27] Speaker 4: just like plane canned water was like that they were airports. Yeah, anyways,
[23:35] Speaker 4: there was also like like waiters in suits that would
[23:38] Speaker 4: cut like I just I was like a lot of
[23:40] Speaker 4: Batman stuff lately, but just like it feels like a golla.
[23:45] Speaker 4: Bruce Wayne would be at where like a random door opens,
[23:48] Speaker 4: a waiter comes out and he's like, was you like a.
[23:51] Speaker 2: Steak and freaked bite?
[23:53] Speaker 4: And it was like it was like little pieces of
[23:56] Speaker 4: steak on like tiny fried potatoes. They had like uh,
[24:00] Speaker 4: Caesar Brussels sprouts, was like a Brussels sprout that they
[24:03] Speaker 4: injected Caesar salad dressing into.
[24:06] Speaker 2: They had what has happened at this event?
[24:08] Speaker 4: They had truffle grilled cheese bites with a little shot
[24:11] Speaker 4: class of carrot turmeric soup.
[24:13] Speaker 2: Oh, I've never been to it. Yeah, this is way
[24:16] Speaker 2: more and I had been to.
[24:18] Speaker 1: I had been to Nintendo events and I have not
[24:20] Speaker 1: experienced this.
[24:21] Speaker 4: There was I took like a picture of at one
[24:24] Speaker 4: point they had like many cream puffs. They had many
[24:26] Speaker 4: cheesecake bites, and then they had a wall with like
[24:29] Speaker 4: a bunch of like strings with clothes pins and they
[24:31] Speaker 4: were attached. They had bags of little snacks of you
[24:35] Speaker 4: could just take and ghost. So I got like a
[24:36] Speaker 4: blueberry OSSI granola for the morning and a white cheddar
[24:40] Speaker 4: hol of paniol popcorn bag for that night. And it
[24:42] Speaker 4: was that like not like pre like it was obviously
[24:45] Speaker 4: pre package, but it wasn't like a brand I recognized.
[24:48] Speaker 4: It was just like the fancy Snacks bread.
[24:50] Speaker 1: Anyway, that's an important question. Yeah, everyone's wondering this. How
[24:55] Speaker 1: many cream puffs did you eat?
[24:58] Speaker 2: Uh? I only ate like two. The thing I actually
[25:01] Speaker 2: control self control. They had uh peri Pierrie chicken skewers,
[25:06] Speaker 2: and somehow I kept I kept running into the chicken
[25:09] Speaker 2: skewer guy, like I don't know if this guy.
[25:14] Speaker 3: He keep coming up to you, maybe like he's just
[25:17] Speaker 3: like I know this guy likes him. I'm just gonna
[25:19] Speaker 3: keep making my rounds. And so.
[25:22] Speaker 4: I love the idea of being one of those waiters
[25:24] Speaker 4: and just being like, I'm just gonna pester the hell
[25:27] Speaker 4: out of this.
[25:27] Speaker 2: One guy and be like beer Chicken, perod Chicken.
[25:30] Speaker 1: I'd have bets on who I could feed the most
[25:33] Speaker 1: part chicken too, I had I to Uh, I wore
[25:36] Speaker 1: cream puffs.
[25:37] Speaker 3: I went to an event for Codvein two a few
[25:39] Speaker 3: months ago, and it was a very similar sort of vibeh.
[25:41] Speaker 3: It was like a bunch of really fancy finger food
[25:43] Speaker 3: with waiters coming up to you and say, hey, you
[25:45] Speaker 3: want this. And I had a person that had like
[25:47] Speaker 3: these little kind of like fried chicken things that were
[25:49] Speaker 3: like really good and no one else was taking them.
[25:52] Speaker 3: So she's like you can have two, and I'm like okay.
[25:54] Speaker 3: And then from that point forward, like her and another
[25:57] Speaker 3: person that had the fried chicken thing kept coming up
[26:00] Speaker 3: to me like literally got around literally every few minutes
[26:04] Speaker 3: as I'm trying to talk to people, someone will come
[26:06] Speaker 3: up to be like fried chicken.
[26:07] Speaker 2: And it was like, hey, we got to get rid
[26:08] Speaker 2: of this stuff.
[26:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Like did I establish myself as like that's
[26:12] Speaker 3: the fried chicken guy over there?
[26:13] Speaker 2: If you work in the food service industry, please write
[26:17] Speaker 2: in and let us know, because I've been convinced that
[26:19] Speaker 2: this does happen, because the last time I had any
[26:22] Speaker 2: situation like that was not an event. They basically take
[26:25] Speaker 2: me into a basement and put me in front of
[26:26] Speaker 2: a CRT for most events, but at a friend's wedding,
[26:31] Speaker 2: they had you know, catering and waiters who were going
[26:35] Speaker 2: around with organs and appetizers and shout.
[26:37] Speaker 1: Up Brendan groom. I'm guessing you're talking about.
[26:39] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I did think that there were people
[26:42] Speaker 2: that they zeroed in on because they'd come out with
[26:44] Speaker 2: full plates and you know, you got to get rid
[26:46] Speaker 2: of the food on your plate, get back, get some more.
[26:48] Speaker 2: So I think they started zeroing in on the people
[26:50] Speaker 2: that were eating certain stuff so they could keep Our
[26:52] Speaker 2: group was.
[26:53] Speaker 1: Definitely going in one. There was like some mac and
[26:55] Speaker 1: cheese bites that the group was really crazy.
[26:58] Speaker 2: We were going in on on that.
[26:59] Speaker 3: Did you like the cheese much at a major anger
[27:01] Speaker 3: like our Senio Hall?
[27:03] Speaker 1: No, No, I don't have that problem.
[27:07] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[27:07] Speaker 1: Anyway, sorry to interrupt. No, you were at a Nintendo
[27:10] Speaker 1: preview event.
[27:11] Speaker 4: I also Yeah, I was gonna say just the waiters
[27:13] Speaker 4: made me feel underdressed for a Nintendo preview event, which
[27:16] Speaker 4: was crazy.
[27:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, where you're surrounded by an army of Alfred's.
[27:19] Speaker 2: So exactly, uh you know, in a room of alfred anyways.
[27:27] Speaker 4: Uh yeah, So I hope you had a little pod
[27:30] Speaker 4: and we were going around playing all these different games.
[27:32] Speaker 2: Started out with uh.
[27:34] Speaker 4: Super Mario Brothers, Wonder, Nintendo Switch to Edition plus Meet
[27:38] Speaker 4: Up in Bellow Bell Park. That's the full title of
[27:41] Speaker 4: the game. That's all that fits all that's good. Se Yeah,
[27:47] Speaker 4: I saw the the the Nintendo representatives had to they
[27:51] Speaker 4: had to say the full title anytime they addressed it,
[27:53] Speaker 4: which I really know they had to.
[27:55] Speaker 3: Did you take that by making them say it over
[27:58] Speaker 3: and over?
[27:59] Speaker 4: I should have the right Today today you'll be playing
[28:04] Speaker 4: Super Mario Brothers, Wondering Attenniswich two Edition plus Medium Billabill Park. Yes,
[28:08] Speaker 4: on Ntennis was two on this TV and like it
[28:10] Speaker 4: was just very clearly like a challenge that they were
[28:12] Speaker 4: up to. Anyways, if you're if you're not familiar with it,
[28:15] Speaker 4: it's like it's a new expansion's coming out March twenty six,
[28:17] Speaker 4: I believe, and adds a bunch of stuff to the game.
[28:21] Speaker 4: But the main attraction is Attraction Park, which is just
[28:27] Speaker 4: like an area that's kind of like theme park themed.
[28:30] Speaker 4: And it's a bunch of multiplayer games. So there's there's
[28:32] Speaker 4: seventeen local multiplayer games, and then there's six online multiplayer games,
[28:38] Speaker 4: and they range from some are co ops, some are competitive,
[28:40] Speaker 4: and then all the online like wireless ones are competitive also,
[28:46] Speaker 4: and we played a bunch of them and they're fun.
[28:47] Speaker 4: I got to play as Rosalina, a new character. Okay,
[28:51] Speaker 4: but so just an example of one of them. There's
[28:54] Speaker 4: one where you're tossing it's like a hot potato game
[28:57] Speaker 4: with the bob bomb. It's like a big golden bab bomb,
[28:59] Speaker 4: and it'll have a talking flower will say a character's name,
[29:03] Speaker 4: and you got to toss the bomb to that character
[29:06] Speaker 4: or else the timer will go down. And that was
[29:08] Speaker 4: when we kept losing, not because the timer went down
[29:10] Speaker 4: too low, but because if you throw the bomb off
[29:13] Speaker 4: the cliff, you instantly lose, and we just keep eating
[29:16] Speaker 4: the bomb incorrectly. There's another one where, uh, you are
[29:23] Speaker 4: some people are using mouse controls on the joy Con
[29:26] Speaker 4: and they're drawing donut blocks, and then other people have
[29:28] Speaker 4: to like navigate through a level on the platforms that
[29:31] Speaker 4: you're drawing. There's another one where it's.
[29:35] Speaker 2: Only draw donut blocks.
[29:38] Speaker 4: Correct, There's there's other there's other like things for them
[29:42] Speaker 4: to stand on. It's not just like a big empty
[29:44] Speaker 4: field with only donut blocks.
[29:46] Speaker 2: But it's like you're, okay, so you're like placing donut blocks,
[29:49] Speaker 2: You're not actually like drawing them. Uh.
[29:52] Speaker 4: When I say drawing, I'm saying like it's like as
[29:55] Speaker 4: if the brush was donut blocks. So I clicked down
[29:58] Speaker 4: on the mouse okay, and it would rag a line
[30:00] Speaker 4: of donut blocks.
[30:01] Speaker 2: O got it.
[30:03] Speaker 4: The struggle there for me was they're very the controls
[30:07] Speaker 4: really wanted you to make straight lines, so it wanted
[30:09] Speaker 4: it to be horizontal or vertical. So I would try
[30:12] Speaker 4: to draw like a staircase and it would it would
[30:15] Speaker 4: be like the Hyppot News of a triangle, and it
[30:16] Speaker 4: would auto correct it to like a right angle, so
[30:21] Speaker 4: it would make all these like impossible jumps. But I
[30:22] Speaker 4: realized that it wants you to do like a bunch
[30:24] Speaker 4: of horizontal platforms to help them get up somewhere, or
[30:28] Speaker 4: to like direct you know, one of the spikes spike
[30:32] Speaker 4: balls to go a certain place or to avoid at
[30:34] Speaker 4: certain things. So yeah, then like some of the competitive ones,
[30:38] Speaker 4: there's like a red light green Light one where there's
[30:40] Speaker 4: a giant king Boo in the background and if you're
[30:43] Speaker 4: moving when he looks at you, then you get stunned
[30:45] Speaker 4: and you drop some coins.
[30:47] Speaker 3: That's when that's what they were going for, clearly.
[30:51] Speaker 2: Obviously Sniper back there, there's one where.
[30:56] Speaker 4: You all have baby Yoshi's and you're trying to get
[30:59] Speaker 4: as many fruits as possible, and all these are like
[31:02] Speaker 4: that's that's uh An Island attraction. I guess you can
[31:06] Speaker 4: just go to in the park, but there's a bunch
[31:08] Speaker 4: of different levels and.
[31:09] Speaker 2: Like difficulty levels there.
[31:10] Speaker 4: So like one of these attractions isn't just you throw
[31:13] Speaker 4: the bomb back and forth and that's the game and
[31:15] Speaker 4: you did it. It's like there's I don't know how
[31:17] Speaker 4: many stages there are, but let's just say like seven
[31:20] Speaker 4: stages of increasing difficulty where you have to go do
[31:23] Speaker 4: that with other people. And Yeah, I thought I thought
[31:27] Speaker 4: it was fun. I thought now that I knew there
[31:31] Speaker 4: was I don't think I really had a grasp of
[31:33] Speaker 4: the scope of it, but it is a thing that
[31:35] Speaker 4: I feel like it'd be fun to just like sit
[31:37] Speaker 4: down with some people and just like grind through all
[31:39] Speaker 4: the coop things together, just try to get like good
[31:42] Speaker 4: scores and get.
[31:43] Speaker 2: To all the highest star counts.
[31:45] Speaker 4: Yeah, it does maintain kind of my thing of like
[31:49] Speaker 4: I don't know when this comes out, Like I'm sure
[31:51] Speaker 4: a lot of people played this game solo, but this
[31:55] Speaker 4: seems to be a primary multiplayer focused DLC. So if
[31:58] Speaker 4: you're like a solo player, I don't I don't really
[32:00] Speaker 4: feel like there's a huge draw to get this and
[32:04] Speaker 4: nothing that I was shown implied that there's plenty of
[32:06] Speaker 4: other stuff they're adding, though they're also adding it's a
[32:10] Speaker 4: switch to edition also, so the resolution is higher. But
[32:14] Speaker 4: like the resolution on the main game was like fine,
[32:17] Speaker 4: the performance was fine. They're adding in costar Luma, which
[32:22] Speaker 4: is a thing that you can another a second player,
[32:25] Speaker 4: or as long as there's one other player, one of
[32:27] Speaker 4: the players can use a mouse just kind of drag
[32:30] Speaker 4: Luma around the screen and pick up coins and stun
[32:32] Speaker 4: enemies and stuff. But yeah, I thought I thought it
[32:36] Speaker 4: was fine. I thought it was good. I wasn't like
[32:38] Speaker 4: blown away, but it was like I was like.
[32:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, Mario Mario Party Games. That's that's fun.
[32:43] Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't seem like something I'm going to go
[32:44] Speaker 1: back to play, to be honest, but maybe if you're
[32:47] Speaker 1: if he didn't play Mario Wonder, it's kind of like, oh, okay,
[32:50] Speaker 1: there's some more to the package.
[32:53] Speaker 3: Now more Wonder.
[32:54] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[32:54] Speaker 4: I mean to be clear, it is if you never
[32:56] Speaker 4: played it, you got to buy the game. They also
[32:57] Speaker 4: got to spend twenty bucks for the LC so it's
[33:00] Speaker 4: not really like a I don't see this bringing new
[33:02] Speaker 4: people in. I know there were some people that complained
[33:05] Speaker 4: that they didn't think the base game was like a
[33:07] Speaker 4: good multiplayer experience, which.
[33:10] Speaker 2: I disagree with. But this is a more multiplayer specific experience.
[33:14] Speaker 2: Sure is this? Is this a pack in with N
[33:17] Speaker 2: s O? Do you get this through the N s O?
[33:20] Speaker 2: I believe it is not.
[33:22] Speaker 4: I think I looked it up recently and it was not,
[33:24] Speaker 4: which I was interesting. Yeah, other than that I played,
[33:31] Speaker 4: I played some Mario Tennis Fever. I didn't play a
[33:34] Speaker 4: ton of that, and I was bad at it.
[33:37] Speaker 3: Did you get to use Baby Luigi or Baby Sorry
[33:41] Speaker 3: Baby wall.
[33:42] Speaker 2: I had the option. I chose not to. He kind
[33:44] Speaker 2: of freaked me out a little bit. But someone I
[33:46] Speaker 2: played against.
[33:46] Speaker 4: It, it's a It's a game that was very overwhelming,
[33:52] Speaker 4: which surprised me. It's a thing that like you would
[33:54] Speaker 4: expect to go into and it's like, oh, it's tennis,
[33:56] Speaker 4: but it's Mario, and Mario as like an adjective modifier
[33:59] Speaker 4: on a game means like fun and chilling party. But
[34:04] Speaker 4: there there's so many characters. They all have different like
[34:07] Speaker 4: stats and abilities, and there's so many fever rackets, and
[34:10] Speaker 4: the fever rackets are like the gimmick in this game
[34:12] Speaker 4: where they each have like a special power, and it's
[34:15] Speaker 4: like every twenty second and twenty Sixon is even generous,
[34:18] Speaker 4: but we'll say every twenty seconds someone uses an ultimate
[34:22] Speaker 4: move from like Super Smash Bros.
[34:24] Speaker 2: You just like I have no idea how I'm supposed.
[34:26] Speaker 4: To counter this, where like, uh, I'll think I hit
[34:29] Speaker 4: a good shot in the outside, and then my opponent
[34:32] Speaker 4: Wallauigi will just use his fever racket turn the ball
[34:35] Speaker 4: into a bullet bill and then if it hits me,
[34:37] Speaker 4: I die and he wins the point that happened to
[34:39] Speaker 4: me multiple times where I would just get hit and
[34:41] Speaker 4: die and lose the point. So it's the thing that
[34:44] Speaker 4: like you have to know what the fever rackets do
[34:46] Speaker 4: and you have to understand how to counter them if
[34:47] Speaker 4: you're gonna play like a proper match with someone that
[34:49] Speaker 4: has the abilities.
[34:50] Speaker 1: Mario Tennis, I feel like always has like a bit
[34:53] Speaker 1: of a curve difficulty curve that you gotta kind of
[34:56] Speaker 1: get over, and once you're over, it's like it's really
[34:59] Speaker 1: smooth and you you're like, once you understand what each
[35:01] Speaker 1: of the characters do, you're like, oh, okay, we gonna have
[35:03] Speaker 1: some really solid back and forths now, Whereas like what
[35:07] Speaker 1: if you It sounds like even played a ton of
[35:10] Speaker 1: Mario tennis in the past.
[35:12] Speaker 4: I played, I played some of Ace's, but it's it's
[35:15] Speaker 4: a game that I don't I don't think was bad.
[35:17] Speaker 4: It just didn't make for a great demo if you
[35:19] Speaker 4: don't know what all the things do. It also is
[35:22] Speaker 4: it does a thing that Kirby Air Riders did that
[35:24] Speaker 4: I wasn't a fan of, which is if you're in
[35:26] Speaker 4: a single player menu screen, you hover over each character,
[35:29] Speaker 4: it's like, oh, Donkey Kong does this, these are his stats,
[35:31] Speaker 4: this is the type of character here. That's what this
[35:32] Speaker 4: character does. And you hover over the fever racket, it's like, oh,
[35:35] Speaker 4: this will when I hit it, it will make an ink
[35:37] Speaker 4: blot land on the field, and then it'll block the
[35:39] Speaker 4: cameras or whatever. If you have more than one player,
[35:42] Speaker 4: all of a sudden, you don't get those summaries or
[35:44] Speaker 4: those stat breakdowns. You just kind of have to hurt
[35:45] Speaker 4: you know what they do, You just pick them out.
[35:47] Speaker 4: So I was glad that I did a match or
[35:50] Speaker 4: two on my own first, But then it just gets
[35:52] Speaker 4: into a thing of like you're in a doubles game,
[35:54] Speaker 4: everyone's using a different fever racket and you have to
[35:57] Speaker 4: just figure it out. Yeah, but a few hours in
[36:01] Speaker 4: I think it would make sense. And I'm sure that
[36:03] Speaker 4: if you're like a Mario Tennis sicico, it's not gonna
[36:05] Speaker 4: be that much virtile. You also turn them off if
[36:07] Speaker 4: you feel like doing that.
[36:09] Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, so you also played the Virtual Boy.
[36:13] Speaker 4: Right I did. I didn't throw up.
[36:20] Speaker 2: Eventuality, Like did they have buckets nearby for people or.
[36:24] Speaker 4: If they did, they weren't like public they were.
[36:28] Speaker 3: Yeah, the little chicken skiers and little like airplane bags
[36:33] Speaker 3: have like Mario and Luigi on them.
[36:35] Speaker 2: That would be so funny.
[36:36] Speaker 4: On that note, I did get a tennis I did
[36:38] Speaker 4: get a free tennis ball for playing Mario Tennis.
[36:40] Speaker 2: That's always. It wasn't branded. It was just a it
[36:43] Speaker 2: was just a greed tennis fall. You all them out
[36:46] Speaker 2: of the tube in the back and just bought your
[36:50] Speaker 2: They bought your opinion, Charles, there were lots of you,
[36:54] Speaker 2: all the free food.
[36:55] Speaker 4: You were like, that's not about opinion, but one a.
[37:00] Speaker 2: Tennis ball from academy. Yeah, that's the problem.
[37:02] Speaker 3: But you were I think you asked if any of
[37:05] Speaker 3: us had ever played Virtual Boy. Yeah, I don't. I
[37:09] Speaker 3: don't think I ever have. I've definitely like I've put
[37:13] Speaker 3: my eyeballs into a virtual boy before, but I don't.
[37:16] Speaker 3: I don't think i've ever actually like turned one on
[37:18] Speaker 3: and played a game that I can recall. But I
[37:20] Speaker 3: you know, just getting into the position, you're like, oh,
[37:24] Speaker 3: this seems like a nightmare to just sit down and
[37:27] Speaker 3: the position exactly like this is okay.
[37:34] Speaker 2: So the switch slots into the virtual boy, right, so
[37:38] Speaker 2: you're kind of putting it in like you would with
[37:40] Speaker 2: those those VR goggles that you can put your phone into.
[37:43] Speaker 2: Kind of sure, yeah, do the joy con stay attached
[37:46] Speaker 2: to then like the barrel of the virtual boy or
[37:49] Speaker 2: do you kind of just like go with kimbo on
[37:52] Speaker 2: each side of it? And justin I had, I had
[37:55] Speaker 2: I had a switch? Where does the.
[37:58] Speaker 4: So so I didn't. Yeah, I didn't have to touch
[38:02] Speaker 4: it or anything. It was just like up on but
[38:03] Speaker 4: it was it still was it tripod mounted?
[38:06] Speaker 3: Did you saw?
[38:06] Speaker 4: Yeah, It's like it was like a full proper virtual boy.
[38:10] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[38:11] Speaker 4: But now, so I'll get to your your question is
[38:15] Speaker 4: not crazy?
[38:17] Speaker 2: Second, the berganomics of this thing are driving me crazy.
[38:21] Speaker 2: They can't sleep.
[38:23] Speaker 4: It comes with when when they showed it. It was
[38:26] Speaker 4: just sitting there on the table. There's also like different
[38:30] Speaker 4: stations for each thing. There were four Virtual Boy tables,
[38:33] Speaker 4: and I never saw more than one person over there
[38:35] Speaker 4: at any given time. The tables are all adjustable, so
[38:38] Speaker 4: I walk over and they start like cranking the table
[38:41] Speaker 4: to like lift.
[38:41] Speaker 1: The tables are adjustable the stand that the Virtual Boy
[38:48] Speaker 1: is on the table.
[38:50] Speaker 2: But they didn't. They didn't bother.
[38:51] Speaker 3: They're like, you're probably gonna want a standing table you're
[38:56] Speaker 3: going to.
[38:58] Speaker 4: And my my vertic is that it didn't make me
[39:02] Speaker 4: throw up. I put my head in, it worked, my
[39:05] Speaker 4: glasses fit in there. I was like, honestly, this thing
[39:09] Speaker 4: works as advertised.
[39:12] Speaker 2: Did I like love the games?
[39:15] Speaker 3: No?
[39:16] Speaker 4: But what what game from nineteen ninety five are you
[39:19] Speaker 4: gonna drop in front of me with no warning that
[39:21] Speaker 4: I am gonna love? I was on All Things Nintendo
[39:24] Speaker 4: yesterday with Brian, and I was like, my parents met
[39:29] Speaker 4: after the Virtual Boy was discontinued.
[39:31] Speaker 3: That's like my way for it discontinued. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[39:35] Speaker 3: They had eyed each other and they're like, well till
[39:37] Speaker 3: this thing's gone, I can't.
[39:38] Speaker 2: Talk to her exactly. It's like a butterfly effect thing
[39:40] Speaker 2: imagine that the virtual boy had stuck around, what would happen? Yeah,
[39:44] Speaker 2: I didn't exist?
[39:45] Speaker 4: Yeah now yeah, so it worked and it was fine,
[39:49] Speaker 4: and I was like, yeah, I don't know, it's kind
[39:51] Speaker 4: of cool. It's like a fun historical thing that it's
[39:53] Speaker 4: just like these kind of weird, obscure games you couldn't
[39:56] Speaker 4: play very easily, and now there is a way to
[39:58] Speaker 4: play them.
[39:59] Speaker 2: That is my verdic.
[40:00] Speaker 4: That's like if if you know what a virtual boy
[40:02] Speaker 4: is and you're like, I wish I could play these
[40:05] Speaker 4: games on my switch, you are able to do that.
[40:08] Speaker 4: If you're not a Virtual Boy fan, I don't know
[40:11] Speaker 4: why you would get this thing. It's one hundred dollars
[40:13] Speaker 4: plus the n dentdo Switch expansion pack. And to Eric's point,
[40:19] Speaker 4: there's also a cardboard model. And Eric was like, do
[40:23] Speaker 4: you have to put the joy cons in the thing?
[40:25] Speaker 4: And I cannot find any evidence that there is a
[40:29] Speaker 4: stand for the cardboard model and we have seen any image.
[40:37] Speaker 4: I think ideally you would, but I haven't seen an
[40:39] Speaker 4: elastic band, Like, there's no pictures of anyone.
[40:43] Speaker 2: To your hobby lobby and getting that yourself, Yeah.
[40:46] Speaker 4: You should, yeah, correct, you should style the image. I
[40:51] Speaker 4: have seen is of the joy cons on the side
[40:55] Speaker 4: of it with the lens in the middle. So it's like, yeah,
[40:57] Speaker 4: like you're in a submarine a psychopath.
[41:03] Speaker 1: You've got the click wheel from the viewfinder and yeah, yeah.
[41:07] Speaker 4: And to be clear, I'm not one hundred percent sure,
[41:09] Speaker 4: but I saw one there. It was just kind of
[41:11] Speaker 4: sitting in a They wouldn't let us touch it the
[41:14] Speaker 4: glass display.
[41:14] Speaker 3: Like this thing's fragile aus hell guys.
[41:17] Speaker 1: And I was like playing my virtual boy on the plane.
[41:21] Speaker 1: The guy in front of me leans his chair back.
[41:24] Speaker 1: Virtual Boy on the plane is like a Charles throw
[41:28] Speaker 1: up curse.
[41:28] Speaker 2: It's like that.
[41:30] Speaker 3: Sounds like a like a gen Z Internet challenge.
[41:35] Speaker 2: One of my one of my favorite things to do
[41:37] Speaker 2: with my switch, genuinely is if I'm traveling or something
[41:40] Speaker 2: and I've got kind of a night off, I'm not
[41:42] Speaker 2: doing anything or whatever, head down to a bar or whatever,
[41:45] Speaker 2: sit down, post up, pull my switch out. I did
[41:47] Speaker 2: that on this last trip. I played some Octopath Traveler zero.
[41:50] Speaker 2: I was having a drink at the bar. I was
[41:51] Speaker 2: having a good time, and it's kind of like having
[41:53] Speaker 2: a kindle. You just are playing a video game and
[41:55] Speaker 2: now all I can do is picture somebody sitting down
[41:57] Speaker 2: at the bar, like ordering a pine then pulling up
[42:01] Speaker 2: the virtual Boy just sitting there at the bar, Virtual Boy,
[42:06] Speaker 2: and I'm picturing an even more curse of Virtual Boy
[42:09] Speaker 2: bar where all of the inhabitants are all on their
[42:15] Speaker 2: warned us about.
[42:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the Satari hotels they're making.
[42:19] Speaker 3: It's about time Nintendo stood up the meta and said
[42:22] Speaker 3: bet oh god Charles. By the way, I don't did
[42:29] Speaker 3: the reps say anything about like the the hundred dollars
[42:33] Speaker 3: Virtual Boy kind of like replica? Is that to scale
[42:35] Speaker 3: with the original Virtual Boy? Like is that just a
[42:37] Speaker 3: one to one recreation of it or did they do
[42:40] Speaker 3: anything to it at all? I mean, like in terms
[42:43] Speaker 3: of like the actual model, to improve it at all
[42:45] Speaker 3: or is it just like Nope, this is what it was.
[42:48] Speaker 4: I didn't ask, but it seemed pretty accurate based on
[42:52] Speaker 4: like the one time I've seen a Virtual Boy in
[42:54] Speaker 4: person and seeing it there like it was it was
[42:56] Speaker 4: a chunky device, Like it seemed to me that they
[42:59] Speaker 4: had if they wanted to make it sleeker, they failed,
[43:04] Speaker 4: Like it just looks like it just looks like how
[43:06] Speaker 4: it did before.
[43:07] Speaker 3: Yeah, the original controller, like the little dinky controller came with.
[43:12] Speaker 3: I assume that's not there.
[43:14] Speaker 2: Uh yeah, there's no alternate controller.
[43:15] Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, funny if they tried to repackage that, like
[43:20] Speaker 3: the N sixty four controller, like you can with charge
[43:22] Speaker 3: you eighty bucks for a replica Virtual Boy controller.
[43:25] Speaker 2: Yeah. I think if I if I squid my eyes
[43:28] Speaker 2: really hard, like like borderline closed and everything's blurry, I
[43:32] Speaker 2: can be like, this is a cool thing for games
[43:34] Speaker 2: preservation and being able to play these things in an
[43:38] Speaker 2: ergonomic form factor that is similar to the manner in
[43:41] Speaker 2: which they were released originally. That's great. I love that.
[43:45] Speaker 2: But then I look at the price tag and the
[43:47] Speaker 2: actual ergonomics of the Virtual Boy and everything around it,
[43:52] Speaker 2: and I'm like, I really want to know who is
[43:57] Speaker 2: like chomping at the again. If you are that person,
[44:00] Speaker 2: please let us know. I'm genuinely curious. I'm fascinated by
[44:03] Speaker 2: this thing.
[44:04] Speaker 3: So I will say they went about this the right wags.
[44:07] Speaker 3: There's there's a version of this. I almost wish they
[44:09] Speaker 3: did were Could you imagine if they had not announced
[44:12] Speaker 3: the GameCube library and this was the first like new
[44:15] Speaker 3: classic game library for.
[44:16] Speaker 2: Switch to that would be so awesome.
[44:19] Speaker 3: How angry people would be that they did this before GameCube,
[44:23] Speaker 3: but they did it. They did it the objective like
[44:26] Speaker 3: right order, Yeah, yeah.
[44:27] Speaker 2: Someone in the bag is like, we can't. We got
[44:29] Speaker 2: to do Path of Radiance before this comes out, all right,
[44:32] Speaker 2: we can't wait till after.
[44:36] Speaker 1: Also, I love how that, like you know, when there's
[44:39] Speaker 1: not when there's like a console or game that's not
[44:42] Speaker 1: for us, we can always fall back on. Well, it's
[44:44] Speaker 1: good for games preservation, so it's really really.
[44:46] Speaker 2: Important for that.
[44:48] Speaker 1: I wouldn't touch it with a thousand football, but it's great,
[44:52] Speaker 1: great preservation.
[44:52] Speaker 4: And it's also like preservation. It costs one hundred dollars
[44:55] Speaker 4: and also have to pay them forever to play.
[44:58] Speaker 2: Switch your eyes really narrow, like like we're talking no
[45:02] Speaker 2: light coming in barely through the lashes, and you're.
[45:05] Speaker 3: There when you put it that way. This is more
[45:07] Speaker 3: expensive than the original Virtual Boy ever was.
[45:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, what do they cost us to get here? Anyways?
[45:15] Speaker 2: The last thing preservation. Last thing I.
[45:18] Speaker 4: Did, Actually there's two things I did. I'll have a
[45:21] Speaker 4: special surprise at the end.
[45:22] Speaker 2: But I got to.
[45:25] Speaker 1: Play because the collection is coming to the Virtual Boy,
[45:28] Speaker 1: I got to play.
[45:31] Speaker 3: Virtual Jesus Shot VR.
[45:36] Speaker 2: Uh do you think? Never mind?
[45:40] Speaker 1: Charles really trying to keep the train on the tracks.
[45:43] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[45:43] Speaker 4: Well, I was just like there was a lab of
[45:45] Speaker 4: v are, like, I wonder if that would work with
[45:47] Speaker 4: the Virtual Boy headset, and it's gotta.
[45:50] Speaker 2: Have all the like chords and stuff that we're attached
[45:53] Speaker 2: to it. So you're just doing all this man the
[45:55] Speaker 2: Virtual Boy everywhere.
[45:57] Speaker 3: There's probably a good chance that this was born out
[45:59] Speaker 3: of life OvR, right, like they did that and then
[46:03] Speaker 3: someone said, you know, we could make like a cardboard
[46:05] Speaker 3: when it boy, and yeah, and then it's just kind
[46:08] Speaker 3: of ball rolling from there.
[46:11] Speaker 2: Anyways.
[46:12] Speaker 4: I I also played Pragmata and Residue a Requiem on
[46:15] Speaker 4: Switch To, which was cool. Those two games were very
[46:17] Speaker 4: good and exciting. Marcus, you played Progmat at Summer Game Fest, right.
[46:22] Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounded like it was the same. I mean,
[46:24] Speaker 3: I think I was going to it's the same as
[46:25] Speaker 3: the public demo, which is then what you played.
[46:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I played.
[46:30] Speaker 4: Marcus played Pragmata and Residue Requiem. Eric, you're dying over there.
[46:34] Speaker 3: What happened?
[46:36] Speaker 2: It was just slowly turning purple.
[46:39] Speaker 1: We're trying, we're trying to get back on track, and
[46:42] Speaker 1: I just saw I just got through Alex's mind thing
[46:48] Speaker 1: to say, I'm just picturing the guy who comments on
[46:51] Speaker 1: our videos, who's like, I hate the word association jokes.
[46:55] Speaker 2: He's just raging in his.
[46:56] Speaker 1: Car, screaming, trying to listen to a normal podcast.
[47:00] Speaker 3: I mean, he can escape if he wants to escape this,
[47:02] Speaker 3: he can get a virtual.
[47:03] Speaker 2: Boy and yeah pod, Yeah, all right, I'm done. Every
[47:10] Speaker 2: time I pass across your eyes, you're just sitting there, like, yes,
[47:17] Speaker 2: Pragmata I played.
[47:19] Speaker 4: I was gonna say, I know. Marcus played Resting Recommend
[47:21] Speaker 4: Summer game Fastest Year. He also played Pragmata. I played
[47:25] Speaker 4: both the demos he played then but now on the
[47:27] Speaker 4: switch to. So it wasn't like new stuff no one's
[47:31] Speaker 4: seen before. And we learned the Partner Showcase that the
[47:34] Speaker 4: Pragmata demo is coming to switch to for everyone. But
[47:38] Speaker 4: I don't I don't know if this Residue Requiem demo
[47:40] Speaker 4: has been publicly available.
[47:42] Speaker 3: Did you get to play a Leon? And okay, it
[47:45] Speaker 3: was just or Claire.
[47:47] Speaker 4: Grace yea, but yeah, So I I played both games,
[47:52] Speaker 4: and I was I was impressed that they ran pretty well.
[47:54] Speaker 4: I I like it was honestly in both instances, I
[47:57] Speaker 4: was like, this is the best case scenario for a
[47:59] Speaker 4: Switch two port, and the notion they're coming out like
[48:02] Speaker 4: on the same day is really cool because a lot
[48:03] Speaker 4: of times you'll get yeah, you know, like what we're
[48:05] Speaker 4: doing this Bethesda thing where it's like a year and
[48:08] Speaker 4: a half later it will come to switch to and
[48:10] Speaker 4: it'll look worse, and it's like, that's cool that it's
[48:13] Speaker 4: here finally, But it's not like, I don't know, it's
[48:16] Speaker 4: so so many trade offs to get it portable, and
[48:18] Speaker 4: now it's a thing where it's like, yeah, you're you're
[48:20] Speaker 4: paying a little bit for the graphics. But like Resting
[48:23] Speaker 4: a Requiem especially, I was playing it and I was
[48:25] Speaker 4: very immersed and I I was not thinking about the
[48:28] Speaker 4: fact that this was on a switch too. I was
[48:30] Speaker 4: just like, oh my god, I'm gonna die. I'm terrible
[48:32] Speaker 4: at this game.
[48:33] Speaker 2: That's great.
[48:34] Speaker 1: That's kind of a great takeaway to know, because you know,
[48:39] Speaker 1: I am one of those people. I'm like, do I
[48:40] Speaker 1: sacrifice some of that fidelity for the option to play
[48:44] Speaker 1: on the go and for people who are just on
[48:46] Speaker 1: switch you know, you can kind of be part of
[48:48] Speaker 1: the zeitgeist as it's you know, that's a fun thing
[48:50] Speaker 1: that's I think, ways into people's you know, purchase decisions.
[48:53] Speaker 2: You know that's cool.
[48:55] Speaker 3: Though, Did you play a doctor on doctor? Did you switch?
[48:59] Speaker 4: I had the option for both, but I I did
[49:01] Speaker 4: the demo on docked. But I'm pretty sure there were
[49:04] Speaker 4: people that played on dock that I.
[49:05] Speaker 3: Heard, Wait, you played doc or you played.
[49:08] Speaker 2: I played docked, So I played, I think I said.
[49:10] Speaker 4: On yeah yeah, uh but yeah, and and Pragmata also
[49:17] Speaker 4: looked good.
[49:19] Speaker 2: I think in both of them.
[49:20] Speaker 4: The biggest the biggest place you notice it is in
[49:22] Speaker 4: the cut scenes, just because it doesn't have the tech
[49:25] Speaker 4: to render it in as high detail as the like
[49:28] Speaker 4: bigger powerful consoles or a PC. I was saying, like
[49:31] Speaker 4: the Ari engine has a distinct like hair rendering tech
[49:34] Speaker 4: where you can see it's a little bit thinner and
[49:36] Speaker 4: less like there's us volume on the switch to versions,
[49:40] Speaker 4: But when you're actually playing the game, it's like it's
[49:43] Speaker 4: it's like you're on PC and you took it from
[49:45] Speaker 4: high quality graphics to medium quality graphics, but the performance
[49:48] Speaker 4: is good. You don't really think about the fact that
[49:51] Speaker 4: it could be running at like super super fancy yeah
[49:55] Speaker 4: stat so.
[49:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, playing that game on dock seems tricky just because
[49:59] Speaker 3: it relies on a dpad so much, and a joy
[50:01] Speaker 3: Con dpad has never been like super great because it's
[50:04] Speaker 3: just those little, those little buttons, and if your hands
[50:08] Speaker 3: are like even like medium size, like pressing nose for
[50:10] Speaker 3: a long time and especially as fast as you have
[50:13] Speaker 3: to do it in that game doesn't sound like super great.
[50:15] Speaker 3: So that seems like one, if I got him on switch,
[50:17] Speaker 3: I would just be playing doc with the pro controller.
[50:19] Speaker 4: Yeah, and to that note, the pro controller. I did
[50:22] Speaker 4: play Residentvil Requiem with the Resident Evil Requiem switched to
[50:26] Speaker 4: pro controller.
[50:27] Speaker 3: It made it scarier. One.
[50:30] Speaker 4: Uh, yeah, that thing, that thing is ugly, right, that's
[50:33] Speaker 4: like just kind of honestly, it.
[50:36] Speaker 3: Just kind of looks like the original pro controller or
[50:38] Speaker 3: to switch one.
[50:40] Speaker 2: More text on it.
[50:41] Speaker 3: Yeah, like.
[50:43] Speaker 4: It's the newspaper clipping, but the news the letters are
[50:47] Speaker 4: interrupted by the logo of the switch to so it's
[50:50] Speaker 4: like resist switch to Ville.
[50:54] Speaker 2: It looks like somebody accidentally got their newspaper stuck inside
[50:57] Speaker 2: their pro controller. Yeah.
[51:00] Speaker 4: And seeing in person, also like it pops a lot
[51:02] Speaker 4: less than it does in images, so it's like kind
[51:04] Speaker 4: of a faded.
[51:05] Speaker 2: It doesn't look as.
[51:06] Speaker 4: In like I wish it was white, you know, I
[51:07] Speaker 4: wish it kind of like stood out that it was
[51:09] Speaker 4: like this is a newspaper.
[51:11] Speaker 2: Instead, it's like it's.
[51:13] Speaker 3: Not like the sort of like red and white that's
[51:16] Speaker 3: kind of like the key art for the game.
[51:18] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I definitely would have preferred something boulder. Do
[51:22] Speaker 2: you any alternate colorways for the Switch one Pro controller?
[51:26] Speaker 2: I'm thinking about it.
[51:27] Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a Zeno Blade one. I have a brother
[51:31] Speaker 4: Smash pros one.
[51:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking it up online. Oh, I see color
[51:37] Speaker 1: that's so strange looking.
[51:41] Speaker 2: Huh.
[51:41] Speaker 3: Here's my Switch one Pro controllers a breath.
[51:44] Speaker 2: So what I'm saying is they all kind of.
[51:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, I got it. Actually, it's the most first parties.
[51:50] Speaker 3: I got it from the Nintendo store that's inside of
[51:52] Speaker 3: the Nintendo of America, like their office.
[51:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, because a lot of the like uh, Splatoon ones
[51:59] Speaker 2: and things like that had different kind of lower handles,
[52:02] Speaker 2: but then the base of it was always that kind
[52:04] Speaker 2: of like black matte finish that would have maybe a
[52:08] Speaker 2: different pattern on it, like the Splatoon one had the
[52:11] Speaker 2: splats and things like that. Yeah, And so I was
[52:13] Speaker 2: trying to think if they ever had any solid color
[52:16] Speaker 2: separate ones and I'm looking at a list of all
[52:20] Speaker 2: the official ones. It looks like they all kind of
[52:22] Speaker 2: had that.
[52:23] Speaker 3: Here.
[52:24] Speaker 2: I'm posting the image in our in our slack right now.
[52:28] Speaker 3: As you do that, Charles, how did it feel as
[52:30] Speaker 3: someone that was the co pilot on our Residual Outbreak
[52:34] Speaker 3: super replay you finally got to control an Ashcroft for
[52:37] Speaker 3: the first time? How was that for you?
[52:38] Speaker 2: I did? It was It was fine. It was u.
[52:43] Speaker 4: It's interesting demo because you don't I mean, it purposefully
[52:46] Speaker 4: wants to make you feel very powerless, powerless, but you
[52:48] Speaker 4: also can't do.
[52:49] Speaker 2: All that much, like you don't have any weapons or anything.
[52:53] Speaker 4: I also it reminded me of Residentevil seven a lot,
[52:56] Speaker 4: which for context, I played Resideval seven in eight like
[53:01] Speaker 4: over December January Break. I had never played a Resident
[53:05] Speaker 4: Evil before, and that was like my introduction to the series.
[53:09] Speaker 4: I loved A I tolerated seven. It's too scary for
[53:12] Speaker 4: me and also made me incredibly motion sick at the start.
[53:16] Speaker 3: Doesn't make you feel better that the director of seven
[53:18] Speaker 3: is the director of Requiem.
[53:20] Speaker 4: Well, I noticed, I guess because I started writing this
[53:23] Speaker 4: demo and I was like, golly gosh, this is scary.
[53:25] Speaker 4: And also I'm going to throw up. The nice thing
[53:28] Speaker 4: is that so I did get motion sick. The thing
[53:32] Speaker 4: that screwed me in seven is there's no persistent dot
[53:36] Speaker 4: in the center of the screen on the PS five
[53:38] Speaker 4: version I was playing.
[53:40] Speaker 2: That's something that.
[53:41] Speaker 4: Really helps me, like keep my bearings, especially if it's
[53:43] Speaker 4: in first person. And I could have switched a third person,
[53:48] Speaker 4: but for whatever reason, I was really determined to play
[53:50] Speaker 4: first person requiem. But you can turn on the persistent
[53:53] Speaker 4: dot in the menu even in this demo I played,
[53:55] Speaker 4: so it was like it helped helped a lot. It's
[53:57] Speaker 4: an improvement over seven, which I looked it up and
[54:00] Speaker 4: several people were like, yeah, I've always tried to play
[54:02] Speaker 4: this game and it makes me so sick in the start.
[54:06] Speaker 4: But seven gets better once you get a gun because
[54:08] Speaker 4: then there's the radical on screen that helps.
[54:10] Speaker 3: Yeah. I like knowing that residue will seven got you
[54:12] Speaker 3: motions like but the virtual boy can do it. Yeah,
[54:15] Speaker 3: that's quite a metric. Yeah.
[54:18] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[54:19] Speaker 4: And my last super fun surprise thing is you guys,
[54:24] Speaker 4: I got to see the talking flower toy.
[54:28] Speaker 2: Oh huge they were.
[54:32] Speaker 4: There was a few scattered about the event space, and
[54:35] Speaker 4: I walk up to an end representative, and I said,
[54:38] Speaker 4: are these things on right now? And they're like yeah,
[54:41] Speaker 4: but the speakers for all the games are so loud,
[54:44] Speaker 4: so you probably won't hear those.
[54:46] Speaker 3: So how does that thing work? Again? Is it like
[54:48] Speaker 3: sotion sense or how do you make it talk?
[54:50] Speaker 4: So it's it's a talking flower has a speaker box
[54:52] Speaker 4: and has a bunch of voice lines that says stuff
[54:55] Speaker 4: like you hear in the game, and when you turn
[55:00] Speaker 4: it on, it does voice lines about twice an hour
[55:05] Speaker 4: at random intervals.
[55:07] Speaker 3: Oh, so it's out of nowhere.
[55:09] Speaker 2: Just you'll just have it on and then here I
[55:13] Speaker 2: think you're neat, so you're.
[55:16] Speaker 3: Just like signing up for jump scares. It sounds like yeah.
[55:19] Speaker 4: Also, uh, it can you can change it to other
[55:23] Speaker 4: languages and sometimes, though it said in the random voices,
[55:30] Speaker 4: it'll randomly do a different language than the one you
[55:32] Speaker 4: have selected.
[55:33] Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know about like that. That sounds like
[55:36] Speaker 3: like like I used to little quips.
[55:37] Speaker 2: And then from the corner of the room, it's like
[55:39] Speaker 2: a flowers screaming German at you.
[55:43] Speaker 3: Like that makes it sound like it's positive. Like it
[55:45] Speaker 3: reminds me of when I used to have an Alexa.
[55:47] Speaker 3: Every now and then when I had like an update,
[55:49] Speaker 3: it would be like really quiet in my apartment, and
[55:50] Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, Alexa would chime in with
[55:52] Speaker 3: something like unprompted, and it would scare the crap out
[55:55] Speaker 3: of me, Like it sounds like just signing up for
[55:57] Speaker 3: that willingly of just flower head quiet. And then here's
[56:01] Speaker 3: something in Swahili.
[56:02] Speaker 2: I don't know, Yeah, who buys the talking flower so
[56:06] Speaker 2: his Alexa has something to talk to? Is that any
[56:10] Speaker 2: I was thinking?
[56:10] Speaker 4: Also, yeah, like a like a game Enfarcar story where
[56:14] Speaker 4: we're like new talking flower DLC adds malevolent cats phrases
[56:19] Speaker 4: where it's just like I'm watching you or Alexa turn
[56:23] Speaker 4: off all the lights.
[56:26] Speaker 3: Is this Nintendo's like everyone has their like AI chat bot?
[56:30] Speaker 3: Is this there?
[56:31] Speaker 2: Is?
[56:32] Speaker 3: Yeah?
[56:33] Speaker 2: This is like committed to anime wife who on your
[56:36] Speaker 2: desktop but it's just a smiling talking flower now and
[56:39] Speaker 2: start talking to each other and then plotting against you.
[56:43] Speaker 2: Is Yeah.
[56:44] Speaker 4: There's also a thing on it where it's like, uh,
[56:47] Speaker 4: you can set into quiet mode for certain times of
[56:49] Speaker 4: the day, So if you're like I don't want to
[56:50] Speaker 4: talk to me while I'm sleeping, you can turn it
[56:52] Speaker 4: off for period of time. You can have an announced
[56:55] Speaker 4: the hour of the day, but it says sometimes it's wrong,
[56:59] Speaker 4: which I was like, what does that mean? Either it's
[57:02] Speaker 4: a clock or it's not. It's not just it's not
[57:05] Speaker 4: just randomly like uh. And also it can set like
[57:10] Speaker 4: it can wake you up in the morning, I think.
[57:12] Speaker 4: But if the time is wrong, maybe then.
[57:16] Speaker 2: Then what it was? Because my talking flower didn't wake
[57:20] Speaker 2: me up at the right time.
[57:22] Speaker 3: And they're building these as features right not yeah that
[57:25] Speaker 3: worked out.
[57:26] Speaker 2: I don't know it was.
[57:27] Speaker 4: It was very odd and I just love Also some
[57:30] Speaker 4: of the catchphrases are just like where am I? Or
[57:36] Speaker 4: like sleeping with my eyes open?
[57:38] Speaker 3: Again? I forget like we say talking to but like
[57:42] Speaker 3: this talks at you. You're not conversating voice recognition or anything.
[57:48] Speaker 3: It's not an it's not an Alexa.
[57:50] Speaker 4: There's also a button you can press on it to
[57:52] Speaker 4: make it talk. If you just want to be like, oh,
[57:54] Speaker 4: it's my thing at talk, it'd be like dy, yeah,
[57:59] Speaker 4: what a man?
[58:00] Speaker 3: Who is this? Great question?
[58:04] Speaker 2: Great question?
[58:05] Speaker 3: It sounds like an unreliable alarm clock at best, and
[58:09] Speaker 3: just like a scary like voice machine at worst. I
[58:13] Speaker 3: don't know this.
[58:14] Speaker 2: This is to figure out that I'm a terrible person,
[58:16] Speaker 2: because I now want to buy like twelve of these
[58:19] Speaker 2: and just to hide them in my friends and stuff,
[58:22] Speaker 2: and so yeah, yeah, Alex, it seems like if you
[58:26] Speaker 2: start hearing voices in the middle of the night.
[58:28] Speaker 3: This sounds like this would be a nightmare. Like someone's
[58:31] Speaker 3: gonna buy this thing and bring it into like their
[58:33] Speaker 3: quiet office is like a desk decoration, and it's gonna
[58:36] Speaker 3: drive their coworker's nuts.
[58:37] Speaker 4: They're so funny, guy, and don't tell them. It's also
[58:43] Speaker 4: a thing that like, who's a fan of this character?
[58:46] Speaker 4: Like I understand liking it or wanting like I could
[58:48] Speaker 4: see getting it as like a figure just to have
[58:50] Speaker 4: on your shelf.
[58:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a cute character.
[58:53] Speaker 4: Yeah, but just like having it on all the time
[58:55] Speaker 4: is like yeah, anyways, that was That was my Nintendo preview.
[58:59] Speaker 2: It was Chicken and Flower. You've heard of This should
[59:02] Speaker 2: have been an email and now we have this should
[59:04] Speaker 2: have been an ambo. That's that's where we're at. Is
[59:08] Speaker 2: there not one already of the Talking Flower of the
[59:10] Speaker 2: Talking Flower?
[59:11] Speaker 3: There might?
[59:12] Speaker 4: I think they announced Mario Wonder Ambos.
[59:14] Speaker 3: Yeah. I want to get this and an alarm o
[59:17] Speaker 3: and have them both be my alarm clocks.
[59:20] Speaker 2: There is a talking flower ambo as it looks like
[59:22] Speaker 2: it's paired up with Captain Toad. Yeah, you gember from
[59:29] Speaker 2: to Flower.
[59:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, they always inseparable. We can't have one without the other.
[59:34] Speaker 1: Week yea, Uh well cool, Well, we're going to take
[59:37] Speaker 1: a quick ad break. We're going to come back and
[59:39] Speaker 1: talk Overwatch, Mugenics, and Neo three. We'll be right back
[59:44] Speaker 1: right after this. Welcome back to the Game Informer show. Marcus,
[59:50] Speaker 1: you did get new headphones, but.
[59:53] Speaker 2: Sadly they're not charged.
[59:55] Speaker 3: No, they exist.
[59:58] Speaker 2: They exist.
[59:58] Speaker 3: So next week, well, I or like by the time
[1:00:03] Speaker 3: you're listening to this replay probably will have already happened.
[1:00:07] Speaker 2: The debut. Yeah, tune into replay for the debut.
[1:00:13] Speaker 1: Uh well, let's get into Overwatch. Like I said, I
[1:00:16] Speaker 1: flew out to Blizzard last week and played that, and
[1:00:22] Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure people have already seen by now,
[1:00:25] Speaker 1: you know, but they are dropping the two from Overwatch too,
[1:00:29] Speaker 1: and it is just going back to being.
[1:00:31] Speaker 2: Overwatch, but Overwatch to technically technically.
[1:00:38] Speaker 4: Yes, technically a sequel still but not called Yeah, even though.
[1:00:42] Speaker 2: It did they realize like why it was a bad idea.
[1:00:46] Speaker 2: Maybe Alex, you can probably speak to like what they
[1:00:49] Speaker 2: have actually said on record, but it has the feeling
[1:00:51] Speaker 2: of it's it's turning into a League of Legends, a
[1:00:55] Speaker 2: situation where it's like this is a service game and they're.
[1:00:59] Speaker 1: Yeah, movie calling it like a forever game.
[1:01:02] Speaker 3: I just think this is like an HBO Max situation
[1:01:05] Speaker 3: where like how much money was spent on that damn too?
[1:01:08] Speaker 3: In terms of marketing, we're just going to go back
[1:01:11] Speaker 3: to the old thing.
[1:01:12] Speaker 1: And in terms of yeah, like building out like totally
[1:01:15] Speaker 1: different skew and like you know, different executable.
[1:01:19] Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, a lot of a lot of work, but.
[1:01:22] Speaker 3: Well a realm We're born was already taken, so.
[1:01:26] Speaker 1: They go, but yeah, so overwatches going back to just
[1:01:30] Speaker 1: being Overwatch, and yeah, you're right, Eric, I did talk
[1:01:33] Speaker 1: to uh, some of the executives. It was in a
[1:01:35] Speaker 1: group interview setting, so no one on one stuff, but
[1:01:39] Speaker 1: they were kind of just speaking about yeah, you know,
[1:01:41] Speaker 1: I don't think they necessarily are are saying Overwatch too
[1:01:47] Speaker 1: is a mistake, but they are saying this is where
[1:01:50] Speaker 1: the game, what the game needs now, and you know
[1:01:54] Speaker 1: we're going to They did mention they they they are
[1:01:57] Speaker 1: really they're for Overwatch is to you know, have it
[1:02:02] Speaker 1: be like a return to form that's kind of like
[1:02:04] Speaker 1: their standard right now. And even in like you know,
[1:02:07] Speaker 1: this new narrative arc is called Reign of Talent. It
[1:02:11] Speaker 1: kicks off February tenth, and it's all about how Talent,
[1:02:15] Speaker 1: the villainous organization in the Overwatch universe. There's like a
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: lot of internal conflict and there's like, you know, kind
[1:02:22] Speaker 1: of a coup happening inside for the leadership role of Talent,
[1:02:27] Speaker 1: and so there will be in game cinematics. They've said
[1:02:29] Speaker 1: that it's like beginning the middle end, like this will
[1:02:32] Speaker 1: all be in the launcher. You can see all the
[1:02:34] Speaker 1: story happening in Overwatch, as well as like timed events,
[1:02:38] Speaker 1: you know, pick your side, who are you fighting for
[1:02:41] Speaker 1: kind of thing with you know, themes.
[1:02:44] Speaker 2: Of Talent versus Overwatch, and there're.
[1:02:47] Speaker 1: Got a lot of the limited time events and stuff
[1:02:50] Speaker 1: that are coming over the next year will fit into
[1:02:52] Speaker 1: that theme. But alongside this first season of Reign of Talent,
[1:02:59] Speaker 1: they're literally just called it Overwatch Season one. Very confusing, but.
[1:03:06] Speaker 2: It is.
[1:03:07] Speaker 1: And internally when I'm interviewing them, they are clearly referring
[1:03:11] Speaker 1: to the game as like, yeah, in twenty three, we
[1:03:14] Speaker 1: want to do this like they're clearly referring to it
[1:03:16] Speaker 1: as the real season number, but publicly having to talk
[1:03:21] Speaker 1: about it.
[1:03:21] Speaker 2: It is like season one, very confusing.
[1:03:24] Speaker 3: It's like rebooting the narrative almost a little bit of
[1:03:28] Speaker 3: like we're setting it's like Marvel Comics when I said
[1:03:30] Speaker 3: issues back to number one, but it's still continuing the narrative.
[1:03:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so they're doing that. But along
[1:03:38] Speaker 1: with this first new season, they're launching five new heroes
[1:03:43] Speaker 1: at once on February tenth.
[1:03:45] Speaker 2: Crazy.
[1:03:47] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, used to be lucky
[1:03:50] Speaker 1: to get what five or six heroes a year if that,
[1:03:55] Speaker 1: and now you're getting five and one season and they've
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: committed to doing one hero per season for the rest
[1:03:59] Speaker 1: of the year.
[1:04:01] Speaker 2: They did say we were at ten total.
[1:04:03] Speaker 3: By the way over the course, Leader, I would love
[1:04:07] Speaker 3: did you ask Alex or did anyone at room ask,
[1:04:10] Speaker 3: like how much of like Marvel Rivals influenced that decision
[1:04:14] Speaker 3: of like because they pump out characters so quickly, it's
[1:04:16] Speaker 3: like like that is that just the way to go? Now?
[1:04:19] Speaker 3: Like we got to keep up with that pace.
[1:04:22] Speaker 1: They that we didn't ask that specific question. I think
[1:04:24] Speaker 1: there was you know, people kind of referenced more the
[1:04:27] Speaker 1: more so like League or Dodo or like, you know,
[1:04:31] Speaker 1: as like having these massive rosters, right, And I don't
[1:04:37] Speaker 1: have the exact quote on me, but you know, in
[1:04:39] Speaker 1: one of my talks, they were they were like, it's
[1:04:42] Speaker 1: you know, adding a new hero is like the most
[1:04:44] Speaker 1: exciting thing you can do for players in Overwatch, and
[1:04:49] Speaker 1: so they really want to get They've also mentioned that
[1:04:52] Speaker 1: like they have really over the last couple of years,
[1:04:56] Speaker 1: not templatized, but like they have made new faster ways
[1:05:02] Speaker 1: and better tools to turn out heroes faster.
[1:05:05] Speaker 2: And one of the one of the.
[1:05:07] Speaker 1: Critiques that they got that you know, we brought up
[1:05:10] Speaker 1: was like, hey, a lot of the heroes are kind
[1:05:12] Speaker 1: of like they're all just kind of like hot humanoids,
[1:05:15] Speaker 1: you know, And they kind of mentioned how like going
[1:05:18] Speaker 1: forward they think they had like you know, they they
[1:05:21] Speaker 1: tackled jet Pack Cat, which is one of the new heroes,
[1:05:23] Speaker 1: which is very much not a templatized character. And the
[1:05:29] Speaker 1: reason that they have those templates to begin with is
[1:05:31] Speaker 1: like when you're making cosmetics for a character, having all
[1:05:35] Speaker 1: of your meshes and stuff fit well on the model,
[1:05:39] Speaker 1: you know, it's important. And so like, as they were
[1:05:42] Speaker 1: as you introduced a new hero, you have to also
[1:05:44] Speaker 1: promise to make more cosmetics for them, and so when
[1:05:47] Speaker 1: those cosmetics are you know, more aligned, you know, it
[1:05:52] Speaker 1: makes sense to have some some characters that are that
[1:05:54] Speaker 1: are humanoids. But they do admit that, like, you know,
[1:05:58] Speaker 1: I think actually folks asked, you know about Mama Wong,
[1:06:03] Speaker 1: which is like a long rumored character, and orang a Tank,
[1:06:09] Speaker 1: which is like that They specifically mentioned like, yeah, we're
[1:06:12] Speaker 1: kind of, like, you know, thinking about maybe going and
[1:06:16] Speaker 1: checking that out now that we've kind of conquered an
[1:06:17] Speaker 1: animal that isn't Winston, Like the new Jetpac cat is
[1:06:21] Speaker 1: just an animal, right, it doesn't speak, it has what
[1:06:25] Speaker 1: they talked about, like one of the big challenges were
[1:06:29] Speaker 1: the voice lines, because everything has to tie into the
[1:06:32] Speaker 1: ping system and tie into like so many people play
[1:06:35] Speaker 1: Overwatch without speaking because they just use the voice lines.
[1:06:39] Speaker 1: And how do you make a real life cat, Like
[1:06:41] Speaker 1: how do you make a cat that is like grounded
[1:06:45] Speaker 1: and being a cat? How do you communicate all of
[1:06:48] Speaker 1: those things that voice lens are supposed to communicate while
[1:06:50] Speaker 1: still being you're just meowing?
[1:06:52] Speaker 3: Right wait?
[1:06:53] Speaker 1: And they spent a ton of time on that and
[1:06:56] Speaker 1: they said they like finally got it right. We're like,
[1:06:58] Speaker 1: even though the cat's meowing, you can kind of tell, like, oh,
[1:07:00] Speaker 1: he's saying get on the payload or get group up.
[1:07:04] Speaker 2: I guess it's just like all me owls.
[1:07:09] Speaker 1: But you like the inflection the like they've said, like
[1:07:15] Speaker 1: internal testing has like really given them a lot of
[1:07:18] Speaker 1: confidence that like they are you know able to like
[1:07:21] Speaker 1: do those do those right?
[1:07:23] Speaker 3: I feel like that might be true for like cat people.
[1:07:26] Speaker 3: I don't know if you're if you're like not a
[1:07:28] Speaker 3: cat person.
[1:07:29] Speaker 2: I'm a cat dad, and I'm giving you like a
[1:07:32] Speaker 2: bit of a side eye right now, Like I don't
[1:07:35] Speaker 2: I don't know.
[1:07:36] Speaker 4: I assume it's a human voice actor, yeah, doing the
[1:07:40] Speaker 4: cat sounds, which to me is like I can understand
[1:07:43] Speaker 4: how that could be.
[1:07:44] Speaker 1: You can add inflections and stuff. That's actually when I
[1:07:47] Speaker 1: paid to me, I don't know why that's that's so
[1:07:50] Speaker 1: strange to me.
[1:07:52] Speaker 3: I thought they were doing like a stray situation where
[1:07:55] Speaker 3: they just recorded like at Yeah, that's to me, Yeah,
[1:07:59] Speaker 3: I didn't.
[1:07:59] Speaker 2: Know if it was a you know, it's a voice
[1:08:01] Speaker 2: actor being like.
[1:08:01] Speaker 3: Cow, So are they trying to sound like a real
[1:08:05] Speaker 3: cat or is the joke? Yeah, it just sounds like
[1:08:07] Speaker 3: a person.
[1:08:08] Speaker 1: Like like it sounds like a real cat. I have
[1:08:10] Speaker 1: played the game. It's I've played the character. Okay, they
[1:08:13] Speaker 1: do a good job.
[1:08:14] Speaker 2: It's funny. We'll talk about it later. I doubt the
[1:08:16] Speaker 2: joy at work. I'm questioning the practice that goddess.
[1:08:20] Speaker 3: I was wondering if it would be like, we'll talk
[1:08:22] Speaker 3: about it, assume, but eugenics they go the other way
[1:08:24] Speaker 3: with a joke, is that all the cats clearly are
[1:08:26] Speaker 3: just a person doing like a poor cat. Yeah, okay,
[1:08:31] Speaker 3: but I'm also just gonna say, like, what the little
[1:08:34] Speaker 3: hamster that's on the wrecking ball thing, I don't remember
[1:08:38] Speaker 3: his name, but like it's.
[1:08:39] Speaker 2: Around inside a robot and the robot talks, gotcha.
[1:08:45] Speaker 3: That's where I kind of fell off Overwatch. I couldn't remember.
[1:08:47] Speaker 3: It was like he didn't talk.
[1:08:49] Speaker 1: Okay, no, no, he communicates via the robot.
[1:08:52] Speaker 3: Gotcha.
[1:08:53] Speaker 1: And they're like, well, this character, we don't want just
[1:08:55] Speaker 1: all of our animals to talk through robots. So let's
[1:08:58] Speaker 1: let's come up with a system where you know, after after,
[1:09:02] Speaker 1: after you have played enough games with with a jet
[1:09:05] Speaker 1: pack cat on your team, you know what the callouts are.
[1:09:07] Speaker 3: So there you remember the mew for let's get let's push.
[1:09:12] Speaker 2: No, I don't. Can you imagine getting cat for bad calms?
[1:09:16] Speaker 2: That's awesome. I'm coming around on this.
[1:09:20] Speaker 3: What is the trash talking meal sound like?
[1:09:22] Speaker 2: Oh, man, don't ask me. I don't know.
[1:09:26] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's pretty good.
[1:09:29] Speaker 1: But it was really cute at the beginning of the
[1:09:31] Speaker 1: matches because I was like waving and saying hi to
[1:09:33] Speaker 1: the person on my team that was the cat, and
[1:09:35] Speaker 1: the cat is going yeah, but it like it was cute.
[1:09:40] Speaker 3: I was like, what is great hip box? And that
[1:09:42] Speaker 3: cat paper seemed like it'd be like a really small
[1:09:45] Speaker 3: character and be like hard, well, no, it's a cat.
[1:09:48] Speaker 1: He's on a he's on a flying contraption a huge
[1:09:52] Speaker 1: because it looked like small though, right, his head box
[1:09:57] Speaker 1: is small, like he's a small character.
[1:09:59] Speaker 3: Okay.
[1:10:00] Speaker 1: Her name's Fika, which means like an afternoon nap or
[1:10:04] Speaker 1: like a coffee It's like a coffee nap, like kind
[1:10:06] Speaker 1: of a coffee break or something in uh finish or
[1:10:11] Speaker 1: something like that.
[1:10:12] Speaker 3: That's cute, kittish, Actually.
[1:10:16] Speaker 2: Yeah, kittish.
[1:10:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
[1:10:18] Speaker 2: We're talking about a lot about the cat. There are
[1:10:20] Speaker 2: four other heroes.
[1:10:20] Speaker 3: Dropping next, but they're not cats Alex.
[1:10:23] Speaker 2: That's true.
[1:10:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, Domina is a tank and she puts out like
[1:10:29] Speaker 1: uh like astral like or Astra hard light barrier, so
[1:10:33] Speaker 1: I think like like a Ryan Hart Shield or or
[1:10:37] Speaker 1: you know, uh any of the other Shield character or
[1:10:40] Speaker 1: Matra Sigma. But hers is a giant like horseshoe shape,
[1:10:45] Speaker 1: so you can kind of like turtle yourself in in
[1:10:47] Speaker 1: some really fun ways. And then she's all about just
[1:10:51] Speaker 1: like zone control and she's a poke tank.
[1:10:54] Speaker 2: She's cool.
[1:10:56] Speaker 1: My favorite character from The Bunch to actually play was
[1:11:00] Speaker 1: she is the older sister of a character in the
[1:11:03] Speaker 1: game that's already in there. He's a support named Wu
[1:11:07] Speaker 1: Yang and he's got like a water stastiny. Yeah, so
[1:11:11] Speaker 1: she's like the older sister and she's all about controlling
[1:11:14] Speaker 1: flames and so her she has a pair of fans
[1:11:18] Speaker 1: that ignite people on fire, and after you get enough
[1:11:21] Speaker 1: hits in uh, they they catch on fire and have
[1:11:25] Speaker 1: like a burn status, and then you can use your
[1:11:28] Speaker 1: alt fire to fan a ton of like oxygen on
[1:11:32] Speaker 1: the flames to deal extra damage. And she also has
[1:11:36] Speaker 1: like her old can be used dead or alive, and
[1:11:39] Speaker 1: it changes based on context. So when she's alive, she'd
[1:11:42] Speaker 1: like kind of does this big dive in and this
[1:11:45] Speaker 1: AOI you know, explosion. But if you wait and you
[1:11:50] Speaker 1: you go in really hard and you die and you
[1:11:52] Speaker 1: kind of like go the enemy team to being towards you,
[1:11:55] Speaker 1: you can do you come back to life with an explosion,
[1:12:00] Speaker 1: which is like a cool mechanic. I like kind of
[1:12:04] Speaker 1: weaponizing your death. You know, death isn't always necessarily uh
[1:12:09] Speaker 1: you know, a bad thing, and I think it's cool
[1:12:11] Speaker 1: to to kind of.
[1:12:12] Speaker 2: I've always bring that idea to Overwatch.
[1:12:14] Speaker 4: The opposite of a suicide bomb, Yeah, a resurrection bomb.
[1:12:21] Speaker 1: A life bomb, a life bomb.
[1:12:24] Speaker 3: It's my favorite.
[1:12:27] Speaker 1: Squad, but I like her a lot. She's really cool.
[1:12:34] Speaker 1: M Ray is the one I think getting the most
[1:12:36] Speaker 1: flak online because he literally just looks like a fan
[1:12:39] Speaker 1: fit character and he's like a a shooter. He has
[1:12:45] Speaker 1: a he's got a burst rifle and you can aim
[1:12:48] Speaker 1: down sites and then you can pull out a you can.
[1:12:51] Speaker 1: His whole thing is he's like a living weapon. So
[1:12:54] Speaker 1: he pulls out like this like burning hot pistol that
[1:12:58] Speaker 1: is like kind of like part of him kind of.
[1:13:01] Speaker 2: And when you have that.
[1:13:01] Speaker 1: Pistol out for like five or six seconds, you run faster,
[1:13:05] Speaker 1: you jump higher. You compare that with his grenade, which
[1:13:07] Speaker 1: explodes after a bounce, and you can do grenade jumps
[1:13:11] Speaker 1: to get to higher areas or to shoot over you know,
[1:13:16] Speaker 1: a tank that's blocking you, or or kind of get
[1:13:20] Speaker 1: a different angle. So he's a lot of fun rounds
[1:13:22] Speaker 1: of like halo grenade jumps back in the day. And
[1:13:26] Speaker 1: then his alt is he like turns into the I
[1:13:29] Speaker 1: think it's called the Living Weapon, and he turns into
[1:13:31] Speaker 1: like he because he goes like all cybernetic fiery stuff
[1:13:35] Speaker 1: and shoots these giant bursts and you can choose to
[1:13:38] Speaker 1: either do really rapid bursts of his weapon or you
[1:13:42] Speaker 1: can do charge up shots and shoot like really big explosives.
[1:13:47] Speaker 1: And then the last person we haven't talked about, but
[1:13:50] Speaker 1: we actually haven't really talked about jetpac Cat and what
[1:13:52] Speaker 1: the what she does? Yeah before jet pack Cat, Yeah
[1:13:55] Speaker 1: before Jetpaccat is Mazuki Musuki. He is a young ninja.
[1:14:01] Speaker 1: He's a healer and he has his casa like his
[1:14:04] Speaker 1: big hat like traditional Japanese hat that he throws and
[1:14:08] Speaker 1: it bounces between characters and heal them and then when
[1:14:11] Speaker 1: it returns to him, it heals himself.
[1:14:13] Speaker 3: So he's like he's kind.
[1:14:14] Speaker 2: Of like.
[1:14:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's kind of like Lucio where he's got
[1:14:19] Speaker 1: a healing ore around him, but unlike Lucio where it's
[1:14:23] Speaker 1: just kind of like static healing unless you do the
[1:14:25] Speaker 1: boot the healing boost, uh, you have to. Mizuki's resource
[1:14:30] Speaker 1: has like a resource tied to his heels where the
[1:14:35] Speaker 1: it's almost like a multiplier and you have to like
[1:14:36] Speaker 1: stay in combat, stay healing your allies to keep his
[1:14:40] Speaker 1: healing uh like power at max charge. Right, So he's
[1:14:46] Speaker 1: got other abilities that like let him lock down enemies
[1:14:48] Speaker 1: with like chains and then his ultimate summons like a
[1:14:53] Speaker 1: circular green barrier of sorts that heals enemies inside and
[1:14:59] Speaker 1: deflex bullets and other projectiles from the outside. He's a
[1:15:03] Speaker 1: cool character and he's all about kind of what if
[1:15:05] Speaker 1: a support had to notably also his his main weapon.
[1:15:10] Speaker 1: You throw it and it bounces off the walls, so
[1:15:12] Speaker 1: you do like a lot of cool like tech stuff.
[1:15:16] Speaker 1: But yeah, that's a music key. And then yeah, jet
[1:15:17] Speaker 1: pack Cat is always flying permanent flight. That's like they're
[1:15:22] Speaker 1: passive and they can pick up in tow allies and
[1:15:27] Speaker 1: enemies over the battlefield, and yeah, they're they're a lot
[1:15:32] Speaker 1: of fun, a lot of shenandas can get up to.
[1:15:34] Speaker 1: I didn't get a great you know, hands on with
[1:15:38] Speaker 1: jet Pat Cat and like a hands on experience because
[1:15:42] Speaker 1: we had no comms in our demo, so nobody was
[1:15:45] Speaker 1: on MIC. And then I'm playing with a bunch of
[1:15:47] Speaker 1: people I don't know, so there's not really a lot
[1:15:49] Speaker 1: of synergy happening. And you have to you can't just
[1:15:52] Speaker 1: pick people up without their consent as jet Pack Cat,
[1:15:55] Speaker 1: unless you unless it's an enemy and you're using your ultimate,
[1:15:59] Speaker 1: then you like dive in. It's called cat Napper. You
[1:16:01] Speaker 1: dive in, knock get Himy's back, and you drag one
[1:16:03] Speaker 1: with you and you can like lob them off the
[1:16:06] Speaker 1: map or take them out of the firefight like far away,
[1:16:09] Speaker 1: so that you know, if they're a key, you know, opponent,
[1:16:12] Speaker 1: like a tank, you can just take them away and
[1:16:15] Speaker 1: it kind of disrupts the flow of just.
[1:16:17] Speaker 2: Like UFO, abduct them and take them out.
[1:16:19] Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but you can do that to your allies,
[1:16:23] Speaker 1: but they have to consent. So it's like you toggle
[1:16:26] Speaker 1: this mode on and you go and I think it's
[1:16:29] Speaker 1: called a lifelink, and you go from first person to
[1:16:33] Speaker 1: third person and you get kind of like a movement
[1:16:36] Speaker 1: boost a bit, and then they have to elect to
[1:16:39] Speaker 1: like grab on and latch onto you, and then you
[1:16:42] Speaker 1: can be you know, you can have a bashing turret
[1:16:45] Speaker 1: flying in the sky just bashing people. Or you can
[1:16:49] Speaker 1: pick up a Ryan Hart let him go and he
[1:16:51] Speaker 1: can alt from mid air from above people and come down.
[1:16:55] Speaker 2: There's a lot of cool stuff.
[1:16:56] Speaker 1: Diva olts. They're saying Diva can alt like mid air
[1:17:00] Speaker 1: and you can drop her on people.
[1:17:02] Speaker 2: That's crazy. Yeah, it's like the.
[1:17:07] Speaker 3: Thing is probably healthier for the game, but part of
[1:17:10] Speaker 3: me wishes that you could just grab your teammates without Yeah.
[1:17:14] Speaker 2: I do think like the problems are worth the are
[1:17:19] Speaker 2: worth it for the moments. I would also be curious
[1:17:22] Speaker 2: if you can do like junk rat tires and things
[1:17:24] Speaker 2: like that.
[1:17:25] Speaker 3: If if that.
[1:17:25] Speaker 1: Kind I think so, I think, I know, I know
[1:17:29] Speaker 1: you can pick up Bob hashes Bob.
[1:17:32] Speaker 2: I think she can. Yeah, if you can pick up Bob,
[1:17:34] Speaker 2: you can probably pick up like torp turrets and junk
[1:17:37] Speaker 2: rat tires and things like.
[1:17:38] Speaker 1: Potentially, we asked specifically about Bob. Nobody asked about turrets
[1:17:43] Speaker 1: or drunk Rat.
[1:17:44] Speaker 2: But picturing the end of the dark Knight rises, but
[1:17:47] Speaker 2: it's jet pack Cat flying off with the junk rat
[1:17:50] Speaker 2: tire the ocean. Yeah, there there is.
[1:17:57] Speaker 1: What was I gonna say, Shoot, it's about jet pet cat.
[1:18:02] Speaker 1: Oh h And in our in our session, I was
[1:18:07] Speaker 1: speaking of the Japanese journalist with Famitsu, and he was
[1:18:11] Speaker 1: saying in his session that somebody there were two jet
[1:18:17] Speaker 1: pack cats. Was like mirror match. All of our matches
[1:18:19] Speaker 1: were miror matches because everyone was trying to play the
[1:18:21] Speaker 1: same heroes. But one jet pack cat use their old
[1:18:25] Speaker 1: to drag an enemy off the map, and another jet
[1:18:28] Speaker 1: pack Cat came in and saved their Their teammate was
[1:18:32] Speaker 1: there and and saved them.
[1:18:36] Speaker 2: Could you jet pack cat grab a jet pack cat?
[1:18:40] Speaker 2: I create you can't?
[1:18:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, to create a stack of grabs? Oh yeah, oh
[1:18:47] Speaker 1: there if they are if they had your teammate grabbed,
[1:18:51] Speaker 1: can you then grab the jet pat cat?
[1:18:53] Speaker 2: And I think so?
[1:18:54] Speaker 3: Can jet packs?
[1:18:56] Speaker 2: I think so? And then we need mothers, We need
[1:19:00] Speaker 2: like road Hog to hook one of the cats to them.
[1:19:04] Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, So you know there's also they they
[1:19:10] Speaker 1: told us they didn't tell specifics, but there are like
[1:19:12] Speaker 1: some big hero reworks coming later in the year alongside
[1:19:15] Speaker 1: new maps and that kind of thing, and all of
[1:19:19] Speaker 1: like the the damage, tank support, they all have like
[1:19:23] Speaker 1: passives right now, and those passives are getting even like
[1:19:26] Speaker 1: further proliferated or distinguished rather by they're now a bunch
[1:19:32] Speaker 1: of new sub rolls and subclasses like within like tank
[1:19:36] Speaker 1: has like I don't know, the tank. Tank has like stallwart,
[1:19:39] Speaker 1: they have initiator, and they have another one, and then
[1:19:44] Speaker 1: like damaged Dealers have like flank, sharpshooter or Alex.
[1:19:49] Speaker 2: If you want me to read them, sure, yeah, just
[1:19:52] Speaker 2: real quick.
[1:19:52] Speaker 4: Yeah, Tank is Bruiser, initiator, Stallwart, Damages Sharpshooter, flank or specialist.
[1:19:58] Speaker 4: Recon Support is tactician, medic and survivor.
[1:20:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, and each of those sub rules have a unique
[1:20:07] Speaker 1: passive and on the character select, rather than everyone just
[1:20:10] Speaker 1: being grouped up in three buckets, they are now you know,
[1:20:15] Speaker 1: those buckets kind of exist, but they are separated by
[1:20:18] Speaker 1: it's clearly denoted like under the characters like these are
[1:20:21] Speaker 1: the sharpshooters, these are the initiators, these are the flankers,
[1:20:25] Speaker 1: And so you have like if you're coming back to
[1:20:28] Speaker 1: Overwatch or if you're just like really trying to like
[1:20:30] Speaker 1: figure out, Okay, what role, what kind of play style?
[1:20:33] Speaker 1: And the am I in the mood for here's all
[1:20:35] Speaker 1: those characters that kind of fulfill that, and so it's
[1:20:39] Speaker 1: it's a nice quality of life as well as it
[1:20:42] Speaker 1: introduces new passives that are you know, pretty meaningful and
[1:20:47] Speaker 1: kind of just like further distinguish those those kind of
[1:20:52] Speaker 1: class identities from each other. So it's cool, and you
[1:20:57] Speaker 1: know that there's a bunch of UI updates and stuff.
[1:20:59] Speaker 1: You know, like you can see year year three D
[1:21:01] Speaker 1: model nowt in like the post screen and like on
[1:21:05] Speaker 1: the home page instead of like everything just being like
[1:21:09] Speaker 1: cards and like they want they're like, you have collected
[1:21:11] Speaker 1: these cosmetics, we won't you to be able to see
[1:21:13] Speaker 1: them outside of just you know, certain certain screens or
[1:21:19] Speaker 1: that kind of thing or in emotes. So, yeah, there's
[1:21:21] Speaker 1: there's a lot coming with the game, you know, they're Yeah,
[1:21:27] Speaker 1: it's it really does feel like they're making a big splash. Uh.
[1:21:31] Speaker 1: It's it's you know, this combined with last year's update
[1:21:36] Speaker 1: that that introduced Stadium, which is a really cool node
[1:21:41] Speaker 1: and like a brand like the fact that like they
[1:21:43] Speaker 1: brought six of V six back as like its own mode.
[1:21:46] Speaker 1: You know, it really does feel like, uh, you know,
[1:21:49] Speaker 1: I think they're getting close to that return to form
[1:21:51] Speaker 1: that they're talking about. They even I was, I was,
[1:21:55] Speaker 1: you know, Aaron Keller was mentioned a lot in my interviews.
[1:21:59] Speaker 1: He's kind of like the lead han show on Overwatch,
[1:22:01] Speaker 1: but folks were saying that, like he came to people
[1:22:03] Speaker 1: with like, I want to recreate that moment when we
[1:22:07] Speaker 1: first revealed Overwatch where you saw the lineup of characters.
[1:22:13] Speaker 2: And you're like, oh, what do they do? What do
[1:22:14] Speaker 2: they what? Who's that?
[1:22:16] Speaker 1: Who's that going to be? And like that that like
[1:22:18] Speaker 1: feeling of wonder. He's like, we wanted to do that
[1:22:20] Speaker 1: with this year, with this season, and so they have
[1:22:23] Speaker 1: shown off this all the silhouettes of the characters that
[1:22:26] Speaker 1: are coming this year. Uh and you know only five
[1:22:29] Speaker 1: have been revealed. But he's like they were all talking
[1:22:32] Speaker 1: about how like that's a big goal, like we want
[1:22:34] Speaker 1: to like recreate that feeling and kind of like bring Overwatch.
[1:22:39] Speaker 2: Back to like h too, Yeah, to.
[1:22:45] Speaker 1: Have it give it a return to form. So yeah,
[1:22:48] Speaker 1: it's it's it's exciting for somebody who spent years playing Overwatch.
[1:22:55] Speaker 1: And you know, I was even like not quite a
[1:22:59] Speaker 1: defender of Overwatch too and what they brought. But I
[1:23:01] Speaker 1: was like, I think it's getting a little blown out
[1:23:03] Speaker 1: of proportion, you know, sure, And you know, I had
[1:23:09] Speaker 1: eventually kind of fallen off and I was like, Okay,
[1:23:11] Speaker 1: I'm not just I'm not seeing a lot coming from
[1:23:13] Speaker 1: this game anymore. And it's very clear that like the
[1:23:15] Speaker 1: player bases dropped off, and like this really feels like
[1:23:18] Speaker 1: a big swing to get to make a.
[1:23:21] Speaker 2: Splash again and come back.
[1:23:24] Speaker 1: And I think it's you know, if you're if you
[1:23:28] Speaker 1: used to play and you're you're kind of thinking about
[1:23:30] Speaker 1: maybe checking it out, like I think it's worth it now.
[1:23:33] Speaker 3: It's where people checking it out. So that's kind of
[1:23:36] Speaker 3: what I'm wondering. Is I you noticed about me, Alex,
[1:23:38] Speaker 3: I'm not really a big competitive multiplayer guy, like at all,
[1:23:42] Speaker 3: but like Overwatch was one of the few games that
[1:23:44] Speaker 3: actually did genuinely hook me for like the first I
[1:23:47] Speaker 3: would say, like a couple of years, yeah, and then
[1:23:50] Speaker 3: it kind of lost me towards the end as like
[1:23:52] Speaker 3: pretty much like after Overwatch League started and they kind
[1:23:55] Speaker 3: of like started wearing more and more kind of catering
[1:23:57] Speaker 3: towards the super competitive side. Because what I liked about
[1:23:59] Speaker 3: it was that it didn't feel it was competitive, but
[1:24:02] Speaker 3: it didn't feel like overly competitive, and those like first
[1:24:05] Speaker 3: couple of years like just had like a really nice,
[1:24:07] Speaker 3: pleasant vibe about it. Or it's like, oh, it doesn't
[1:24:09] Speaker 3: really matter as much as I'm like maybe not doing
[1:24:11] Speaker 3: as well as other people. They don't even tell you,
[1:24:13] Speaker 3: like Katie or anything like that. And then like kind
[1:24:17] Speaker 3: of like towards dam Overwatch too, it's like, oh, maybe
[1:24:19] Speaker 3: this is I don't know something about like that that
[1:24:22] Speaker 3: old like almost like innocent magic. It's kind of like
[1:24:24] Speaker 3: diminished and gone, and I don't know if I really
[1:24:26] Speaker 3: want to engage with this anymore. I don't know if
[1:24:28] Speaker 3: this could capture that again, because I think there's just
[1:24:33] Speaker 3: been too much to introduced that they so like retroactively
[1:24:37] Speaker 3: kind of like scale back in that seems like that
[1:24:39] Speaker 3: would be counterproductive for like the majority of their fans.
[1:24:45] Speaker 1: I think that happens with a lot of multiplayer games.
[1:24:47] Speaker 1: It is like the first few months everyone's playing, especially
[1:24:51] Speaker 1: think of like an apex or something like everyone's playing
[1:24:53] Speaker 1: this game a lot of like casual players is like
[1:24:56] Speaker 1: a good mix and like things are like very fun
[1:25:00] Speaker 1: and like you're still discovering the game, and then a
[1:25:04] Speaker 1: year in the only the core you know, audience remains
[1:25:08] Speaker 1: and they are the ones who are wanting to get
[1:25:10] Speaker 1: better at the game, and so the skill ceiling just
[1:25:13] Speaker 1: continues to increase. And I find that happens with almost
[1:25:17] Speaker 1: every competitive multiplayer game.
[1:25:20] Speaker 3: It is true.
[1:25:21] Speaker 2: You go ahead, Eric, I was just gonna say, like,
[1:25:23] Speaker 2: I think there there is something to that, especially the
[1:25:26] Speaker 2: amount of content, because as cool as ten new heroes sounds,
[1:25:29] Speaker 2: that's also ten new heroes on top of what's already
[1:25:32] Speaker 2: in Overwatch that you might have missed while you were gone,
[1:25:34] Speaker 2: So that's like a lot. And then there's also the
[1:25:39] Speaker 2: fact that a lot of games like these, I mean,
[1:25:41] Speaker 2: alongside the Overwatch one announcement and this new season one
[1:25:45] Speaker 2: and all that, there was confirmation of new collabs and
[1:25:47] Speaker 2: skins and cosmetics, and it's just a lot. And there
[1:25:51] Speaker 2: was a simplicity about the original Overwatch launch, which at
[1:25:54] Speaker 2: this point was a decade ago, so you keep that
[1:25:57] Speaker 2: in mind. But yeah, yeah, it was ten years ago.
[1:26:03] Speaker 2: There was a relative simplicity to the game at the time.
[1:26:06] Speaker 2: But I also think there were in a strange way,
[1:26:09] Speaker 2: fewer guard rails, because I mean, I've been on record
[1:26:13] Speaker 2: that I never really like roll cue as an idea,
[1:26:16] Speaker 2: and I know it's not necessary to play the game,
[1:26:19] Speaker 2: but it does kind of start to define how those
[1:26:22] Speaker 2: characters interact in a space when they are kind of
[1:26:25] Speaker 2: put forward as like, Okay, well we're making a tank
[1:26:27] Speaker 2: character and they have to fit the tank slot. So
[1:26:29] Speaker 2: suddenly now the characters do have to fit within roles
[1:26:32] Speaker 2: and within boundaries and within guardrails of what a position
[1:26:34] Speaker 2: can be. So in some ways I am more interested
[1:26:38] Speaker 2: now that it seems like they're kind of trying to
[1:26:41] Speaker 2: by adding more buckets for these characters to go in
[1:26:44] Speaker 2: expand the idea of what those characters can be, rather
[1:26:48] Speaker 2: than funnel them into tighter categories of what they should be.
[1:26:52] Speaker 2: But that all remains to be seen. I am interested
[1:26:57] Speaker 2: in this. I will say it's as somebody who put
[1:26:59] Speaker 2: a lot hours into probably twenty sixteen to twenty nineteen Overwatch,
[1:27:04] Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, it sounds, it sounds really really cool,
[1:27:08] Speaker 2: and I like that they're taking a big swing at it,
[1:27:10] Speaker 2: if nothing else, because I think that's what you have
[1:27:13] Speaker 2: to do with this game, is you have to come
[1:27:16] Speaker 2: in and say, we're really trying to just top down revitalize,
[1:27:21] Speaker 2: revamp this thing, and taking the two off is a
[1:27:24] Speaker 2: big step in that direction. But I am curious because
[1:27:27] Speaker 2: there's a lot of I mean, hero shooters come and
[1:27:29] Speaker 2: go fast. I mean we cut some discussion of them
[1:27:33] Speaker 2: from this episode because we are so topic heavy already.
[1:27:36] Speaker 2: But there's High Guard, there's the new Deadlock update. There's
[1:27:39] Speaker 2: so many other hero shooters that come and go, or
[1:27:41] Speaker 2: even shooter adjacent games like Operators that come and go
[1:27:45] Speaker 2: that you know, can Overwatch stay afloat? I think is
[1:27:49] Speaker 2: the bigger question is maybe this makes a splash, Maybe
[1:27:52] Speaker 2: people come back. Do they stick to it? Do they
[1:27:56] Speaker 2: keep playing to season two? Do they keep doing this?
[1:27:59] Speaker 2: And that's my big question mark here.
[1:28:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, you know that's that's Overwatch. I'm excited
[1:28:08] Speaker 1: to check out the characters. They're they're coming out next
[1:28:10] Speaker 1: week and if I dive in, I'll be sure.
[1:28:13] Speaker 2: I'll let people know what I think.
[1:28:15] Speaker 1: But yeah, I say we move on. We got have
[1:28:18] Speaker 1: two more games we want to talk about.
[1:28:20] Speaker 2: Charles.
[1:28:21] Speaker 1: I want to hear about mugenics. This has been a
[1:28:24] Speaker 1: long time coming that it.
[1:28:26] Speaker 4: Has This was a god I can't remember the scenario,
[1:28:30] Speaker 4: but I looked in an old game Form magazine to
[1:28:34] Speaker 4: cross reference some kind of thing and found that like
[1:28:37] Speaker 4: editor in chief Matt Miller had written a written a
[1:28:39] Speaker 4: feature on the game in like twenty thirteen or something
[1:28:42] Speaker 4: that's like twenty.
[1:28:43] Speaker 3: Fourteen, and that's it was first announced in twenty twelve.
[1:28:46] Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, yeah, mugenis if you don't know, it is
[1:28:51] Speaker 4: a new game from Edmund McMillan, Ed McMillan at McMillan,
[1:28:58] Speaker 4: who is known for budding Isaac's Meat Boy. Uh and
[1:29:02] Speaker 4: it has that same kind of art style. It is
[1:29:04] Speaker 4: a roguelike, like a strategic RPG where it is a
[1:29:09] Speaker 4: grid based uh think like fire in them, think hundred
[1:29:13] Speaker 4: line think one of those sorts of games.
[1:29:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, Charles before just the credit him, it's Edmund and
[1:29:21] Speaker 3: Tyler Glaile is development.
[1:29:22] Speaker 2: Bart Tyler Glaile. Okay, thank you.
[1:29:23] Speaker 3: Yeah, because they made the they made the End Asnig together,
[1:29:26] Speaker 3: so this is like, okay, the second major project together.
[1:29:29] Speaker 2: Yeah cool. Yeah uh yeah.
[1:29:33] Speaker 4: So you have a party of four cats every run,
[1:29:36] Speaker 4: and they've got kind of like typical fantasy classes. It
[1:29:40] Speaker 4: kind of branches out a little bit from that, but
[1:29:42] Speaker 4: you'll have like a tank that's a lot of health
[1:29:44] Speaker 4: and you'll have a fighter that does this is more
[1:29:46] Speaker 4: damage focused.
[1:29:47] Speaker 2: You'll have a cleric who deals people.
[1:29:49] Speaker 4: And I've been playing it, uh the review in bargos today,
[1:29:53] Speaker 4: I will have a review in progress because I've not
[1:29:55] Speaker 4: beaten the game. Because it's massive. I am enjoyed, but
[1:30:00] Speaker 4: the the like steam page estimates two hundred plus hours
[1:30:04] Speaker 4: to beat this game.
[1:30:05] Speaker 3: Oh my yeah. God. When I when I did the
[1:30:07] Speaker 3: preview for this games, I played well over a dozen
[1:30:10] Speaker 3: hours of it and I was you know, I interviewed
[1:30:13] Speaker 3: Edmund and Tyler about it, and at the time that
[1:30:15] Speaker 3: I started speaking to him, they had not beaten the
[1:30:17] Speaker 3: game yet. It's like because I I'd given pretty much
[1:30:21] Speaker 3: a content complete build and they were just polishing and
[1:30:24] Speaker 3: they said that they had put in roughly two hundred
[1:30:27] Speaker 3: hours or so, and they were like, they kept stressing, like,
[1:30:30] Speaker 3: you have barely scratched the surface of what this game
[1:30:32] Speaker 3: is from what you've played, which was saying a lot
[1:30:34] Speaker 3: because I really liked what I played at the time,
[1:30:36] Speaker 3: and are like, oh, it hasn't even like really opened
[1:30:38] Speaker 3: up yet, so.
[1:30:40] Speaker 2: Take us through like the anatomy of a run. So, yeah,
[1:30:43] Speaker 2: it is a turn based RPG. You have four cats,
[1:30:46] Speaker 2: what is what does a run look like? In Eugenics?
[1:30:50] Speaker 4: So starting off, when you get later into the game,
[1:30:54] Speaker 4: you'll get to pick which act you want to play.
[1:30:56] Speaker 4: So right now I have Act one and NAKA two.
[1:30:57] Speaker 4: I know there's at least also an Act three, and
[1:31:01] Speaker 4: you'll start off in whatever the starting area is, so
[1:31:03] Speaker 4: nac to one, you start off in the alley and
[1:31:05] Speaker 4: then there's a little map and it just has some
[1:31:07] Speaker 4: like events and combat encounter as you go to. It's
[1:31:09] Speaker 4: pretty typical of a roguelike if it's like, oh, you'll
[1:31:11] Speaker 4: start off and there's a combat, and then you can
[1:31:13] Speaker 4: pick do you want to go to the treasure chest
[1:31:15] Speaker 4: or do you want to go to the question Mark Icon,
[1:31:17] Speaker 4: and it'll be like the treasure chest will give you
[1:31:19] Speaker 4: an item, the question Mark Icon will be some kind
[1:31:21] Speaker 4: of event that's like a skill check for your cats,
[1:31:23] Speaker 4: because all your cats have different stats, so it'll be
[1:31:25] Speaker 4: like you can roll charisma to convince this person to
[1:31:28] Speaker 4: join your party, or your role constitution to not take
[1:31:31] Speaker 4: damage from this thing, et cetera. And they're all very
[1:31:35] Speaker 4: ridiculous creative. I have maybe gotten the same one a
[1:31:39] Speaker 4: few times, but some of them are very rare. Right
[1:31:41] Speaker 4: before is playing this, there was one Ah god, I
[1:31:44] Speaker 4: don't even know what the manga is called, but where
[1:31:46] Speaker 4: it's the guy. I think it's a junji eto maybe
[1:31:49] Speaker 4: where everyone has a hole that's shaped like them.
[1:31:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, the ami ami Gara fault. Uh yeah, this is
[1:31:57] Speaker 2: my hole.
[1:31:58] Speaker 3: It was made for me.
[1:31:59] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:31:59] Speaker 4: I had a cat that had to roll intelligence to
[1:32:02] Speaker 4: resist going into a hole that was shaped just like it.
[1:32:05] Speaker 4: That's like an example of just the student. And like
[1:32:08] Speaker 4: the way this game goes fully possible cat would have
[1:32:10] Speaker 4: gone there, I would have lost them forever. Like it's
[1:32:12] Speaker 4: very crazy, very swingy. So you'll go through that. There's
[1:32:17] Speaker 4: like a mid mid area boss, end of area boss,
[1:32:21] Speaker 4: and then you'll get a branching path. And each act
[1:32:25] Speaker 4: has two routes, so the alley, you can go from
[1:32:27] Speaker 4: the alley into the sewers into the caves, or you
[1:32:30] Speaker 4: can go from the alley into the junk yard into
[1:32:32] Speaker 4: the graveyard. And the way it works is once you
[1:32:37] Speaker 4: unlock a biome for the first time, you have to
[1:32:39] Speaker 4: beat it, then go home.
[1:32:40] Speaker 2: And then you'll unlock the next one.
[1:32:42] Speaker 4: So to get through all of act one, it's a
[1:32:46] Speaker 4: minimum of five runs because you gotta beat up to
[1:32:49] Speaker 4: the farthest spot.
[1:32:50] Speaker 2: And then come back.
[1:32:51] Speaker 4: Okay, okay, I'm currently in Act two and I have
[1:32:54] Speaker 4: both routes fully unlocked, but I haven't beaten either of
[1:32:56] Speaker 4: those routes yet. And yeah, I mean the base base
[1:33:02] Speaker 4: impressions of the game.
[1:33:03] Speaker 2: It's very fun. I like it a lot. I've played
[1:33:05] Speaker 2: like fifty something hours of it at this point. Damn.
[1:33:09] Speaker 4: It is very dense. There's a lot of variation. I
[1:33:13] Speaker 4: have nine classes right now. Every time you pick a
[1:33:16] Speaker 4: class for your cat, you get a randomly generated starting
[1:33:21] Speaker 4: like passive ability and like active ability. So there's some
[1:33:24] Speaker 4: things that always have in common, but there's other things
[1:33:27] Speaker 4: where oh, and then the basic attack is the same
[1:33:30] Speaker 4: for every class, Like the Cleric always has a melee
[1:33:32] Speaker 4: attack that can heal allies but hurt enemies. But then
[1:33:35] Speaker 4: it might get one where it can heal ranged allies,
[1:33:37] Speaker 4: or it can cure d buffs, or it'll you know,
[1:33:40] Speaker 4: purify something.
[1:33:41] Speaker 3: I don't know.
[1:33:42] Speaker 4: There's so many stuff, and combat itself is very there's rare.
[1:33:51] Speaker 4: I don't think I've had an encounter in this game
[1:33:53] Speaker 4: where it's like, oh, okay, I can.
[1:33:54] Speaker 2: Co spy on this one. Like I don't have to
[1:33:56] Speaker 2: pay attention this one.
[1:33:56] Speaker 4: Yeah, because it's always like you'll not pay attention to something,
[1:34:01] Speaker 4: or you'll a role will go like you'll miss something
[1:34:03] Speaker 4: that you got to hit, and then all of a sudden,
[1:34:05] Speaker 4: I just had one boss I thought where Just to
[1:34:08] Speaker 4: give an example of how how crazy all these systems
[1:34:11] Speaker 4: interact are. I have a tinkerer, which is like an
[1:34:14] Speaker 4: artificer class like builds equipment and stuff. When I walk
[1:34:18] Speaker 4: with him and land on a space, he does electric
[1:34:20] Speaker 4: damage in a t shape of everyone around him, which
[1:34:23] Speaker 4: is very inconvenient but sometimes nice for boss fights. I
[1:34:26] Speaker 4: have a tank who automatically attacks anyone that hurts an ally.
[1:34:30] Speaker 4: He'll like walk three steps and then attack them, which
[1:34:33] Speaker 4: means that if my tinkerer walks up to one of
[1:34:36] Speaker 4: my allies, it'll zapp that ally and then my tank
[1:34:38] Speaker 4: will run over and hit my tinkerer.
[1:34:41] Speaker 1: And if it's really crazy, the tinker will like cats
[1:34:44] Speaker 1: like pawing at each other and finding each other. Yeah,
[1:34:47] Speaker 1: if the tinker is in a really bad position, he'll
[1:34:48] Speaker 1: slide back because I have a different cat because he's
[1:34:50] Speaker 1: moved again, and then my tank will hit him again.
[1:34:52] Speaker 2: So it's kind of like nonsense, like that you have
[1:34:54] Speaker 2: to like.
[1:34:56] Speaker 4: Did I just did one where the boss automatically attack
[1:35:00] Speaker 4: when you attack it, and it got in a crazy
[1:35:02] Speaker 4: chain that I was like, I'm just gonna go hit
[1:35:04] Speaker 4: it once and then ended up with like the half
[1:35:06] Speaker 4: of the boss's health was down, but then also like
[1:35:08] Speaker 4: one of my cats was down, and it's just like
[1:35:10] Speaker 4: it can get very chaotic if you're not paying attention.
[1:35:12] Speaker 3: Yeah. I had a thing where I don't know if
[1:35:14] Speaker 3: it's the same bosses an early boss Charles, but it
[1:35:17] Speaker 3: was like a boss where every time you attacked it,
[1:35:19] Speaker 3: he automatically advanced on the unit that attacked it last.
[1:35:23] Speaker 3: And I had it because you're also like these cats
[1:35:25] Speaker 3: have like randomly assignabilities as well as like defects quote unquote,
[1:35:30] Speaker 3: so like disadvantages that could be used to your advantage
[1:35:33] Speaker 3: if you're clever. But I had an ability where I
[1:35:36] Speaker 3: basically could spawn like my own little ads. And because
[1:35:40] Speaker 3: this the nature of this boss, I had it set
[1:35:43] Speaker 3: up to where I had the ads attacked and he
[1:35:46] Speaker 3: would like advance towards the ADS. And I had two heads.
[1:35:49] Speaker 2: What is ads?
[1:35:51] Speaker 3: I like a little unit edition like a little AI.
[1:35:54] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[1:35:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, I had two cats that could do that, and
[1:35:58] Speaker 3: so I had them. And because this boss is like
[1:36:01] Speaker 3: huge and he takes up like most of the kind
[1:36:03] Speaker 3: of like square playing field, so he doesn't really have
[1:36:05] Speaker 3: to move very far to kind of get to the
[1:36:07] Speaker 3: edge of it. I arranged my cats and like each
[1:36:10] Speaker 3: of the four corners and then had the two of
[1:36:13] Speaker 3: them with the ads on opposite sides, and basically he
[1:36:17] Speaker 3: kept getting hit by my little AI buddies and would
[1:36:20] Speaker 3: advance towards another cat. But then I had the other
[1:36:23] Speaker 3: two cats had overwatched style abilities, so he was always
[1:36:25] Speaker 3: within the overwatch, so he was pretty much just kidding, yeah,
[1:36:29] Speaker 3: like constantly moving but like couldn't do anything and basically
[1:36:33] Speaker 3: like without me really doing much. And I just and
[1:36:36] Speaker 3: I didn't plan for that. I just happened to have
[1:36:37] Speaker 3: those abilities because I rolled them and it just worked
[1:36:40] Speaker 3: out perfectly. And I remember telling Edna describing this fight
[1:36:43] Speaker 3: to Edmond, He's like, I've never seen that boss get
[1:36:45] Speaker 3: beat like that.
[1:36:47] Speaker 4: Because I couldn't do that if I tried, because that's
[1:36:50] Speaker 4: a crazy coincidence that you got that stuff.
[1:36:52] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Like he was just like but that was
[1:36:54] Speaker 3: kind of like to his point of like because it's
[1:36:56] Speaker 3: so systemic, like no run unfolds the same way, like
[1:36:59] Speaker 3: no individual battle un rolls unfold the same way, because
[1:37:02] Speaker 3: you it just depends on what you have on you
[1:37:05] Speaker 3: and just what the bosses can do and how those
[1:37:07] Speaker 3: systems interact with each other.
[1:37:09] Speaker 4: Even even in the little we have a little discord
[1:37:11] Speaker 4: just for members of press they're reviewing the game moments
[1:37:15] Speaker 4: where people will be like, hey, I found this thing
[1:37:17] Speaker 4: where if I have this item equipped in this thing
[1:37:18] Speaker 4: going and this thing going, I have an infinite attacking
[1:37:22] Speaker 4: glitch where I can kill any unit instantly with a
[1:37:24] Speaker 4: million attacks. And they were like, I guess we'll patch that,
[1:37:28] Speaker 4: just like I don't. I don't know if they're patching
[1:37:33] Speaker 4: it or not, but they were like, it just happens
[1:37:35] Speaker 4: to work out that.
[1:37:36] Speaker 2: It's yeah, anyway, this is.
[1:37:37] Speaker 3: How common that could happen, Like if you got how
[1:37:40] Speaker 3: common would it be for those stars of Align? Yeah?
[1:37:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, this sounds like so incredibly up my alley. I
[1:37:48] Speaker 2: fear for all future time that I would have spent
[1:37:51] Speaker 2: sleeping or doing human things.
[1:37:54] Speaker 4: And you can play it forever because it's so freaking long.
[1:37:58] Speaker 4: The other things I want to mention are before I forget,
[1:38:02] Speaker 4: the music is really good. Yeah, every area has its
[1:38:06] Speaker 4: own backing track, and then when you get to the
[1:38:08] Speaker 4: final boss of the area, they add in vocals and you, guys,
[1:38:12] Speaker 4: the whole time the song has had lyrics and you
[1:38:14] Speaker 4: just haven't got to.
[1:38:15] Speaker 2: Hear them yet.
[1:38:16] Speaker 3: And the lyrics are really funny.
[1:38:17] Speaker 2: They're pretty good.
[1:38:18] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
[1:38:20] Speaker 4: Then the in between runs, you have a house with
[1:38:24] Speaker 4: all your cats in it, and every time you go
[1:38:27] Speaker 4: to sleep, the cats will like breed and make new cats.
[1:38:29] Speaker 4: You'll gather new strays that come in, and there's very yeah,
[1:38:34] Speaker 4: there's very vendors. So yeah, I called eugenics, like eugenics
[1:38:37] Speaker 4: as in, you're gonna breed the cats for the best traits.
[1:38:39] Speaker 4: I have already made a decision that I'm like, if
[1:38:42] Speaker 4: any cat has a negative health score, I am just
[1:38:45] Speaker 4: not going to use them because health is like so
[1:38:47] Speaker 4: hard to come by. I'm just like, so I have
[1:38:49] Speaker 4: basically anytime I get a cat with a subpar health score,
[1:38:52] Speaker 4: I instantly donate it to one of the like vendors
[1:38:54] Speaker 4: you can donate to, or I specifically just don't let
[1:38:56] Speaker 4: them breed with the other cats.
[1:38:58] Speaker 2: Like that's how That's how I'm probably.
[1:39:01] Speaker 3: Also, can we mention that the breeding the little cinematica
[1:39:03] Speaker 3: plays like you are straight of watching these cats like
[1:39:06] Speaker 3: bang each other. That is quite funny. But also there's
[1:39:11] Speaker 3: like a lot of like secondhand embarrassment potential of someone
[1:39:13] Speaker 3: walking in on you as you're like watching these cats
[1:39:16] Speaker 3: get it on and you're.
[1:39:17] Speaker 2: Like, what what is like a twitch mode? Right, Like
[1:39:19] Speaker 2: there's like a little thing.
[1:39:21] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:39:21] Speaker 2: So I have two I have two main hurdles with
[1:39:23] Speaker 2: this game.
[1:39:24] Speaker 4: One of them is I personally don't think it's very funny,
[1:39:29] Speaker 4: and it tries very hard to be funny. There's a
[1:39:33] Speaker 4: lot of so for example, the cats breed every night
[1:39:36] Speaker 4: and there's just a humping animation, and I just don't
[1:39:39] Speaker 4: want to watch animated cats.
[1:39:40] Speaker 3: I think they get birth like immediately, like you just
[1:39:42] Speaker 3: see them like, yeah, fetus just pop out.
[1:39:46] Speaker 2: I think it's funny to say now, I think it's
[1:39:48] Speaker 2: funny because it is a shocking thing that's like, oh
[1:39:51] Speaker 2: my gosh, these cats are humping. It's crazy.
[1:39:52] Speaker 4: Fifty hours into the game, I am sick of it.
[1:39:55] Speaker 4: There is an option in the menu though, where you
[1:39:58] Speaker 4: can just turn on like safe humping animation, and I
[1:40:01] Speaker 4: like them a lot more because they've they've done a
[1:40:04] Speaker 4: few of them where it's like, how would two cats
[1:40:08] Speaker 4: of a baby's that isn't humping. It would be like, oh,
[1:40:10] Speaker 4: they summoned a demon and it was their kitten, or
[1:40:12] Speaker 4: oh a cat stork came and delivered them a kitten.
[1:40:15] Speaker 4: Those are like I think those are more funny because
[1:40:17] Speaker 4: they're like they're creative. They subvert your expectations rather than
[1:40:21] Speaker 4: like the same cat humping animations every time.
[1:40:24] Speaker 2: I just don't like that.
[1:40:25] Speaker 4: Another thing I don't like is like personally not crazy
[1:40:28] Speaker 4: about poop jokes. I again, it's a thing that's like
[1:40:32] Speaker 4: if it's out of nowhere, I can the humor is
[1:40:37] Speaker 4: humor is often just comes down to surprise and subverting expectations.
[1:40:41] Speaker 4: So if it's like you think it's gonna be a
[1:40:43] Speaker 4: clean thing and there's poop, haha, funny whatever. There are
[1:40:46] Speaker 4: poop enemies, multiple sizes. There's several poop based abilities. There's
[1:40:51] Speaker 4: several fart based abilities. There's one defect called scatological where
[1:40:56] Speaker 4: if there's poop on the your cat good hat has
[1:41:00] Speaker 4: to go to it and eat it.
[1:41:02] Speaker 2: Oh God, just the thing that I'm just like, that's
[1:41:06] Speaker 2: very binding of Isaac. It is like it's just it's
[1:41:09] Speaker 2: the thing that I'm like, I don't love it.
[1:41:11] Speaker 1: I don't think it does make sense since this game
[1:41:13] Speaker 1: has been in development for over what.
[1:41:17] Speaker 4: What for.
[1:41:20] Speaker 3: Twenty twelve? Yeah, this version of the game has been
[1:41:24] Speaker 3: in development since twenty twenty, if we want to be
[1:41:26] Speaker 3: really technical.
[1:41:27] Speaker 4: But yeah, so yeah, So it's just it's just the
[1:41:31] Speaker 4: thing I don't find particularly funny, and it's kind of
[1:41:33] Speaker 4: like a personal taste thing, but.
[1:41:36] Speaker 2: That's fun.
[1:41:37] Speaker 4: And then also like the dialogue that the NPCs say,
[1:41:41] Speaker 4: I feel like it's trying so hard to be funny
[1:41:43] Speaker 4: and a lot of times it feels like a first
[1:41:45] Speaker 4: pass at a joke that like they could have I
[1:41:48] Speaker 4: don't know, And that's all my taste. That's one of
[1:41:50] Speaker 4: the things that's keeping me from like really loving the game.
[1:41:52] Speaker 4: I'm like, if you just tried to be funny a
[1:41:54] Speaker 4: little bit less, or try to be gross a little
[1:41:57] Speaker 4: bit less, I'd be more important.
[1:41:58] Speaker 3: Have you played other like Ben McMillan games, like do
[1:42:01] Speaker 3: you just like.
[1:42:04] Speaker 4: Like Binding of Isaac is the one I have played
[1:42:06] Speaker 4: a little bit of, but not like a ton of,
[1:42:08] Speaker 4: And yeah, I'm not it's.
[1:42:09] Speaker 2: Not really my my style of thing. Really.
[1:42:13] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:42:15] Speaker 2: The other thing is that it's a Hurtle again.
[1:42:20] Speaker 4: It was more of a personal preference than like a
[1:42:21] Speaker 4: slight on the game, but is very much not It
[1:42:25] Speaker 4: does not take the modern rogue like sensibility of every
[1:42:29] Speaker 4: failure is progress. It is very much like if you lose,
[1:42:32] Speaker 4: it is a failure and you're gonna lose progress. If
[1:42:36] Speaker 4: you die your idea, your inventory has cleared out, all
[1:42:39] Speaker 4: your cats die. Uh, you can pick like it is, yeah,
[1:42:45] Speaker 4: a little more proper. You can pick like one item
[1:42:47] Speaker 4: or some coins or whatever. But it creates this thing
[1:42:50] Speaker 4: where if you die a lot, you'll get in these
[1:42:52] Speaker 4: like losing feedback loops where after a while you'll like
[1:42:56] Speaker 4: have basically no cats in your house because they all
[1:42:58] Speaker 4: died and don't.
[1:43:00] Speaker 3: Have animation anymore.
[1:43:02] Speaker 4: Yeah, you can leave a run after beating a biome,
[1:43:06] Speaker 4: which is I think the what I would do if
[1:43:09] Speaker 4: I gotten like a I had a thing where I
[1:43:11] Speaker 4: lost like four runs in a row, and I was like,
[1:43:12] Speaker 4: Jesus Christ, I need to just take a different approach.
[1:43:15] Speaker 4: But what I would do is I would just beat
[1:43:17] Speaker 4: one biome or beat two biomes and then come back
[1:43:19] Speaker 4: rather than dying the same spot every every time. Because
[1:43:21] Speaker 4: the items make a huge difference. These are like you
[1:43:24] Speaker 4: got like a neck piece, ahead piece of I don't know,
[1:43:29] Speaker 4: a weapon, just a bunch of stuff that will like
[1:43:31] Speaker 4: adjust your stats, give you more abilities. You can make
[1:43:34] Speaker 4: really good builds and stuff out of this. Just having
[1:43:37] Speaker 4: a full inventory of items to equip to all your
[1:43:39] Speaker 4: cats is like the difference between easy mode and hard
[1:43:43] Speaker 4: mode basically, Like it's get you set up so much better.
[1:43:47] Speaker 3: Because you have different gear pieces, like head pieces and
[1:43:51] Speaker 3: like chess pieces, like you can really kick them out.
[1:43:55] Speaker 2: I'll tell you how. It really reminds me of Darkest
[1:43:57] Speaker 2: Dungeon in a way. Is it kind of struts like
[1:44:00] Speaker 2: that where you're kind of you still have a foundation
[1:44:04] Speaker 2: that you're building up, and you're going out and you're
[1:44:05] Speaker 2: coming back on runs and sometimes you can lose a
[1:44:07] Speaker 2: lot of resources that you've invested in. You need to
[1:44:09] Speaker 2: like do some smaller runs and build those resources back
[1:44:13] Speaker 2: up to attempt the longer runs. Uh. Yeah, it's it's
[1:44:19] Speaker 2: similar to that.
[1:44:19] Speaker 4: I would say, it's less okay, Yeah, the resources in
[1:44:22] Speaker 4: this case, yeah, being cats and gear.
[1:44:25] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:44:25] Speaker 4: Yeah, when you win a run, your cats come home
[1:44:28] Speaker 4: and they're like retired cats. You can't take them on
[1:44:31] Speaker 4: a run again, but they can breed with other cats,
[1:44:35] Speaker 4: and like you, if they have good stats, they can
[1:44:36] Speaker 4: like pass those on and stuff.
[1:44:40] Speaker 2: What else was I going to say?
[1:44:42] Speaker 4: Oh, A good example of like when gear can really
[1:44:45] Speaker 4: make a difference is act too. The first area is
[1:44:48] Speaker 4: the desert, which is tough because every combat encounter after
[1:44:54] Speaker 4: you finish the run, your cat's heal a little bit
[1:44:56] Speaker 4: based on like their constitution's score. You'll heal like if
[1:44:59] Speaker 4: they've got like a max age be of like twenty
[1:45:00] Speaker 4: four of the hill like six or something like that.
[1:45:02] Speaker 4: In the desert, it's really hot and nobody heals automatically.
[1:45:06] Speaker 4: And also all heels are reduced by one, so the
[1:45:09] Speaker 4: first place you're in it's way harder. But if you
[1:45:12] Speaker 4: have a bottle of water, then it mitigates that for
[1:45:16] Speaker 4: that encounter, so you heal a little bit, and then
[1:45:19] Speaker 4: you can heal up at the end of a run.
[1:45:22] Speaker 4: You can buy bottles of water in the desert, So
[1:45:24] Speaker 4: the strat to do is do a run just to
[1:45:26] Speaker 4: the desert, buy bottles of water specifically to do that,
[1:45:29] Speaker 4: and then the next time you go run, all of
[1:45:32] Speaker 4: your cats of water they can drink, so you can
[1:45:35] Speaker 4: manage your health a lot better. And then I have
[1:45:37] Speaker 4: an item right now that it's like a hose that
[1:45:39] Speaker 4: puts a streak of like a river down the middle
[1:45:43] Speaker 4: of a map, and if you step in that with
[1:45:46] Speaker 4: an empty bottle of water automatically gets filled up. So
[1:45:50] Speaker 4: there's stuff like that where it's like there's always a
[1:45:52] Speaker 4: strategy to work around, there's always another way to play.
[1:45:55] Speaker 2: But it is not a Hades or.
[1:46:01] Speaker 4: I don't know, there's there's not like XP. You're slowly
[1:46:03] Speaker 4: building up to be like, ah, now, my cats are
[1:46:06] Speaker 4: all a little bit better because.
[1:46:09] Speaker 3: I guess you're only taking them out once, like a
[1:46:13] Speaker 3: cat can only do a full run once and then
[1:46:15] Speaker 3: they retire.
[1:46:16] Speaker 2: If you if you win one of the paths with
[1:46:19] Speaker 2: a class of cat, it permanently unlocks a new ability
[1:46:22] Speaker 2: that goes into the pool, which is cool. One of
[1:46:25] Speaker 2: my favorite classes is the Druid.
[1:46:28] Speaker 4: You start off with a crow familiar and then you
[1:46:30] Speaker 4: have a bunch of like uh uh supportabilities, which is cool.
[1:46:35] Speaker 4: And I beat one of the routes as it and
[1:46:36] Speaker 4: I unlocked a bear familiar so I can just summon
[1:46:38] Speaker 4: a bear and it's massive and.
[1:46:40] Speaker 2: It's really good and cool. I really want to play
[1:46:42] Speaker 2: this game. Yeah, I could badly want to play this
[1:46:45] Speaker 2: game right now.
[1:46:46] Speaker 4: Ye man, Yeah, I'm I'm I'm probably I probably won't
[1:46:53] Speaker 4: beat the game.
[1:46:54] Speaker 2: When I write the review.
[1:46:55] Speaker 4: I think I just want to make sure I'm I've
[1:46:57] Speaker 4: played all of the biomes at the very least, like
[1:46:59] Speaker 4: gotten into.
[1:46:59] Speaker 2: Act three properly.
[1:47:01] Speaker 4: I don't think I'm going to do a whole two
[1:47:02] Speaker 4: hundred hours, because I think I'll probably once I see
[1:47:05] Speaker 4: Act three in what it is, I'll have a more
[1:47:07] Speaker 4: firm idea of like my my grasp on the game overall.
[1:47:12] Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a great game.
[1:47:13] Speaker 4: I mentioned my caveats with it, but I think this
[1:47:16] Speaker 4: is this is going to be one of those games
[1:47:18] Speaker 4: that people get really into, sink a lot of time into,
[1:47:21] Speaker 4: and I it's definitely one that I think, as as
[1:47:23] Speaker 4: a staff Game Informer should be looking out for.
[1:47:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, I've really enjoyed what I played a bit
[1:47:29] Speaker 3: for the feature in a game, and like I said,
[1:47:31] Speaker 3: I put a good amount of time in it, and
[1:47:33] Speaker 3: just knowing like, oh, that's like nothing compared to like
[1:47:36] Speaker 3: what the full scope of his game is was like
[1:47:38] Speaker 3: exciting and intimidating at the same time. It also has
[1:47:41] Speaker 3: made me grateful that this comes out so early in
[1:47:43] Speaker 3: the year because I have like in terms of just
[1:47:45] Speaker 3: pure like end of YEW discussions, It's like, Okay, I
[1:47:47] Speaker 3: got this full year to get through.
[1:47:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, like a game that'll run great on Steam Deck.
[1:47:53] Speaker 4: Oh, thank you for mentioning that. So I have it
[1:47:55] Speaker 4: on steam Deck.
[1:47:56] Speaker 2: It does run well. It runs better than on my computer.
[1:47:58] Speaker 2: Actually I don't have a great computer.
[1:48:00] Speaker 4: The one thing with it is that it is not
[1:48:02] Speaker 4: it's not like built for controller. So you can use
[1:48:05] Speaker 4: the controller if you use a joystick to like navigate
[1:48:08] Speaker 4: a cursor around, but it's not like when you would
[1:48:11] Speaker 4: just move the joystick and you would be able to
[1:48:13] Speaker 4: like select squares or like just scroll like you would
[1:48:15] Speaker 4: have an Xbox menu. Sure that said, I played a
[1:48:19] Speaker 4: lot of it on the Steam Deck, so it's fine.
[1:48:21] Speaker 3: But I believe I know Edmund mentioned controller support was
[1:48:26] Speaker 3: something that they were looking into at the time that
[1:48:28] Speaker 3: I talked to it, as well as like other platforms,
[1:48:30] Speaker 3: because this game is only coming out at PC at
[1:48:33] Speaker 3: launch got so yeah, hopefully at least controller support isn't
[1:48:38] Speaker 3: too far down the line, but it is something that
[1:48:40] Speaker 3: they are like investigating.
[1:48:42] Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, to be clear, what it works perfectly fine,
[1:48:45] Speaker 2: with the controller.
[1:48:46] Speaker 3: It's just not clicking.
[1:48:48] Speaker 1: Yeah, you're just clicking cats in command, so totally well cool, Well, Marcus,
[1:48:55] Speaker 1: do you want to kind of take us home Neo
[1:48:57] Speaker 1: three before we get out of here?
[1:49:00] Speaker 3: Speaking of I don't know, surprisingly long games that I
[1:49:03] Speaker 3: haven't finished yet, and I had to write a review
[1:49:04] Speaker 3: and progress off Neo three. Uh this game spoiler alert.
[1:49:11] Speaker 3: So far, I have not finished it, but it is
[1:49:14] Speaker 3: very good and I'm having a good time with it.
[1:49:17] Speaker 3: As a as someone that I've played a lot of
[1:49:20] Speaker 3: the previous two Neo games, but believe it or not,
[1:49:23] Speaker 3: I never finished them, and not because really any of
[1:49:25] Speaker 3: the games, so I just for whatever reason, cause I
[1:49:27] Speaker 3: never had to play them for like work reasons. They
[1:49:29] Speaker 3: were always just like on my own leasure, and then
[1:49:31] Speaker 3: I always got kind of pulled away from them from
[1:49:34] Speaker 3: other things, and I always wondered, like, I don't know,
[1:49:36] Speaker 3: is there's I like these games? But is there is
[1:49:38] Speaker 3: it missing something where I haven't just felt compelled to
[1:49:40] Speaker 3: go back and and just like finished them off. Whereas
[1:49:43] Speaker 3: with this game, within the first like few hours, I
[1:49:48] Speaker 3: would say I already came to the like my biggest
[1:49:51] Speaker 3: metric for playing anything for work, But especially for a review.
[1:49:53] Speaker 3: Is if I were not obligated to play this, would
[1:49:55] Speaker 3: I keep playing it? And I already knew it was
[1:49:57] Speaker 3: like one hundred percent, Yes, this is really good. So
[1:50:01] Speaker 3: this is like what I appreciate about this game is
[1:50:04] Speaker 3: that it's much different than Neo one and two because
[1:50:06] Speaker 3: I think with the Neo series and sort of the
[1:50:08] Speaker 3: sort of like Neo adjacent games that Team Ninja has done,
[1:50:12] Speaker 3: is that they've all kind of followed the Neo blueprint,
[1:50:14] Speaker 3: like whether you're looking at like Woolong or to a
[1:50:17] Speaker 3: somewhat lesser extent of Rise of the ronin where it
[1:50:20] Speaker 3: is the kind of like you know, like Fashion play,
[1:50:22] Speaker 3: faster paced SOULS like game that's really loot heavy and
[1:50:26] Speaker 3: really systems heavy, like a lot. It's like a very
[1:50:28] Speaker 3: number crunchy series, like even more so than like from
[1:50:32] Speaker 3: software souls likes, because there's so much loot that you're managing,
[1:50:37] Speaker 3: and it's like they throw loot at you constantly, so
[1:50:39] Speaker 3: you're always in the menu being like, Okay, what's the
[1:50:42] Speaker 3: difference between this sword and an identical sword? Because it's
[1:50:45] Speaker 3: not just oh, the attacks higher, but they all have
[1:50:47] Speaker 3: like individual like traits where you're like, oh, this one
[1:50:51] Speaker 3: makes my stamina to go fashion, but then this one
[1:50:53] Speaker 3: really enhances this magic spell that I like to use,
[1:50:56] Speaker 3: so maybe I should use that, And then trying to
[1:50:58] Speaker 3: figure out like what's the good combination of the loop
[1:51:00] Speaker 3: to kind of like emphasize whatever build that I'm trying
[1:51:03] Speaker 3: to make, and also your main there's like twelve different
[1:51:05] Speaker 3: main weapons you can use, and they all have their
[1:51:08] Speaker 3: own individual sort of like move sets.
[1:51:11] Speaker 4: Like it.
[1:51:12] Speaker 3: It's one of those games that, like the Sikos of Neo,
[1:51:15] Speaker 3: when you really want to dive into it, there's so
[1:51:17] Speaker 3: much to like chew on. This game is still that.
[1:51:21] Speaker 3: But what I like is one they give you sort
[1:51:27] Speaker 3: of like almost doubling down on that is that you
[1:51:29] Speaker 3: have a new style, like they have like styles now
[1:51:33] Speaker 3: where you have Samurai these like stances kind of no,
[1:51:37] Speaker 3: it's pretty much like you just turn into a different character.
[1:51:40] Speaker 3: It's it almost feels like so like you have Samurai style,
[1:51:44] Speaker 3: which is the traditional Neo gameplay experience, where you have
[1:51:48] Speaker 3: four weapon stances like high, medium, low, and you know,
[1:51:52] Speaker 3: regardless of wch of the like dozen weapons you can use.
[1:51:55] Speaker 3: But it's a lot like a little slower, a little heavier,
[1:51:57] Speaker 3: a little bit more deliberate combat, and then with the
[1:52:00] Speaker 3: button you can swap to the new Ninja style where
[1:52:03] Speaker 3: you just turn into just a straight up shanoby, and
[1:52:06] Speaker 3: it changes the play style dramatically because now you're a
[1:52:09] Speaker 3: lot faster, it's focused more on evasion than just blocking
[1:52:14] Speaker 3: like the Samurai style instead of the kind of like
[1:52:17] Speaker 3: key pulse, which in Neo is sort of the like
[1:52:22] Speaker 3: like basically you can recharge your stamina early with a
[1:52:25] Speaker 3: tying button press while you're in the middle of a combo.
[1:52:27] Speaker 3: Like that's kind of like that's kind of always kind
[1:52:29] Speaker 3: of define the Neo combat, whereas the Shnoby instead of
[1:52:33] Speaker 3: doing that, you have this thing called MISS, which is
[1:52:35] Speaker 3: basically just this like really quick evede that positions you
[1:52:38] Speaker 3: behind the enemy because the ninja has does better damage
[1:52:41] Speaker 3: when you attack people from behind, like like really good
[1:52:44] Speaker 3: backstab damage. So, like the rhythm of combat with the
[1:52:47] Speaker 3: Ninja is that you're doing these crazy fast paced combos
[1:52:49] Speaker 3: and then every now and then hitting MISS, so that
[1:52:51] Speaker 3: you're just constantly shifting behind them, so they're always trying
[1:52:54] Speaker 3: to like hit you, but you're always just like out
[1:52:56] Speaker 3: maneuvering them. Uh, And it feels really good to do that,
[1:53:00] Speaker 3: especially for me because I generally prefer faster paced characters
[1:53:03] Speaker 3: and action games, or really any game in general, if
[1:53:06] Speaker 3: you give me any option, like I prefer like mobility
[1:53:08] Speaker 3: to like strength. So because of that, I've like, like
[1:53:13] Speaker 3: the Ninja class or style, whatever you want to call it,
[1:53:16] Speaker 3: is like basically my default style. Like I still use
[1:53:19] Speaker 3: the Shanoby style because there's times where it's, you know,
[1:53:22] Speaker 3: depending on the enemy, it's like maybe I need a
[1:53:23] Speaker 3: little bit more of a deliberate, power focused approach, But
[1:53:26] Speaker 3: I found that the Ninja style is for my play
[1:53:29] Speaker 3: style works well. And what's nice about Neo three, and
[1:53:31] Speaker 3: I asked this of the directors when I did the preview,
[1:53:35] Speaker 3: is that if you wanted to, you could play this
[1:53:37] Speaker 3: entire game with only one style. Like the design to
[1:53:39] Speaker 3: where like we're not going to force you to pick
[1:53:41] Speaker 3: one or the other. There isn't like a boss fight
[1:53:43] Speaker 3: where you're like, Okay, this is clearly a Ninja boss fight.
[1:53:46] Speaker 3: It's purely to your preference, which plays into what Neo
[1:53:50] Speaker 3: as a series has always done really well, is kind
[1:53:52] Speaker 3: of giving you an overwhelming amount of agency to kind
[1:53:56] Speaker 3: of tackle the game however you want. So the two
[1:54:00] Speaker 3: styles each have their own independent loadouts, which is a
[1:54:04] Speaker 3: lot because, like a mentioned before, Leo Mio is such
[1:54:07] Speaker 3: a loot heavy game where you're equipping your character head
[1:54:10] Speaker 3: to toe and every piece of equipment. So now you
[1:54:13] Speaker 3: have like two different ones Like when you swap to Ninja,
[1:54:16] Speaker 3: he has his own chest, armor plate, his own weapon,
[1:54:21] Speaker 3: sets his own items, and then you know, so you
[1:54:23] Speaker 3: can have basically two different bills at the same time.
[1:54:27] Speaker 3: So it is more the manage between the two. But
[1:54:31] Speaker 3: what is nice is that if you're someone like me
[1:54:34] Speaker 3: that like is in the middle ground of like, yeah,
[1:54:36] Speaker 3: there's sometimes I want to go in there and really
[1:54:38] Speaker 3: look at the manutia of what this chest plate offers.
[1:54:41] Speaker 3: But at the times it's just like I don't want
[1:54:43] Speaker 3: to stand as many too long. I whant to get
[1:54:44] Speaker 3: back out there cool stuff. There's a button that you
[1:54:46] Speaker 3: can hit where you can auto like like kind of
[1:54:48] Speaker 3: like optimize, but you can optimize based on do you
[1:54:52] Speaker 3: want a light build, do you want a heavy bill,
[1:54:53] Speaker 3: do you want a medium build? And then whatever gear
[1:54:56] Speaker 3: fits in that will just give you the best versions
[1:54:58] Speaker 3: of what you have to give you that if you
[1:55:00] Speaker 3: want a fat roll, we'll give you the best fat
[1:55:02] Speaker 3: rolling items. If you want to be as light as
[1:55:04] Speaker 3: possible based on what you have, this is going to
[1:55:07] Speaker 3: give you the best light like option that you have
[1:55:10] Speaker 3: available to you. So I use that a lot, and
[1:55:12] Speaker 3: then for like little things. It only affects your armor.
[1:55:15] Speaker 3: Your weapons, you still have to independently choose. But that's fine.
[1:55:18] Speaker 3: That's only like two slots and your ranged weapon. But yeah,
[1:55:22] Speaker 3: the Ninja style is so much fun, guys. It is
[1:55:25] Speaker 3: like I have like Ninja with like dual swords right now,
[1:55:28] Speaker 3: and I'm like flipping around like slicing people like a
[1:55:31] Speaker 3: like miro Le Leonardo and Ninja turtles and I've unlocked
[1:55:37] Speaker 3: so like each style has like individual skill trees that
[1:55:41] Speaker 3: have kind of like you can unlock new inherent abilities,
[1:55:44] Speaker 3: which for the Ninja is their ninja tools and their
[1:55:47] Speaker 3: ninja like magic. So instead of the four stances that
[1:55:52] Speaker 3: I mentioned for a Samurai style, for the Ninja, it's
[1:55:55] Speaker 3: just this litany of Ninja tools that you could equip there.
[1:55:58] Speaker 3: So it could be like sure again Kuni, or it
[1:56:01] Speaker 3: could be like magic like chains, there is a Kuoni
[1:56:06] Speaker 3: would chain like maybe uh he popped me with a
[1:56:12] Speaker 3: reference I wasn't expecting, or like I have one where
[1:56:18] Speaker 3: like my guy like will punch the ground and like
[1:56:20] Speaker 3: a wall of rocks will pop up, and it's used
[1:56:24] Speaker 3: that you can use it to like block enemies as
[1:56:26] Speaker 3: they charge at you, they'll just run into the rock
[1:56:28] Speaker 3: wall and get stunned, and then you can like wail
[1:56:30] Speaker 3: on them or like stop projectiles. Like there's a lot
[1:56:33] Speaker 3: to play with, and you can customize the button inputs
[1:56:38] Speaker 3: as well for everything that you do, so this game
[1:56:41] Speaker 3: and which Ninja Guy and also lets you do where
[1:56:43] Speaker 3: you can kind of like turn off button inputs, so
[1:56:46] Speaker 3: like you can have this game be as complicated or
[1:56:48] Speaker 3: as simple as you want. If you just want this
[1:56:50] Speaker 3: to be a game where you just want to hit
[1:56:51] Speaker 3: triangle and square over and over and that's it, then
[1:56:55] Speaker 3: you could do that. But if you want it to
[1:56:57] Speaker 3: almost feel like more like a fighting game where you're like, oh,
[1:57:00] Speaker 3: what is my down triangle gonna do? Because there's like
[1:57:03] Speaker 3: three different moves I can assign to a down triangle,
[1:57:06] Speaker 3: Like you can just literally just build your character to
[1:57:10] Speaker 3: do exactly what you want them to do. And it
[1:57:12] Speaker 3: is a lot of menu management, but I think if
[1:57:15] Speaker 3: you sit down and take the time to really look
[1:57:17] Speaker 3: at like, Okay, I just unlocked this other new ability,
[1:57:20] Speaker 3: and they you know, they always give you the little
[1:57:22] Speaker 3: video preview clip of what it does, and you go like, oh,
[1:57:24] Speaker 3: that looks cool and that might actually go well with
[1:57:26] Speaker 3: this other ability to have, Like I could probably change
[1:57:28] Speaker 3: these two together. You can do that. One of my
[1:57:31] Speaker 3: favorite moves I have is I one of my like
[1:57:34] Speaker 3: jumping down attacks is this like helicopter blade thing my
[1:57:38] Speaker 3: duel swords, where like he'll just like my Ninjo, she'll
[1:57:41] Speaker 3: jump up and then just spin her blades around and
[1:57:44] Speaker 3: just come down like a helicopter and just like chop
[1:57:47] Speaker 3: everyone underneath. And it's really fun to pull off. So
[1:57:50] Speaker 3: the Ninja sounds Oh go ahead.
[1:57:51] Speaker 2: Eric, Yeah, I'm just gonna say, would you say that
[1:57:53] Speaker 2: this is then for like the Neo Sickos, Like like
[1:57:56] Speaker 2: this is somebody who's played a lot of the Neo
[1:57:58] Speaker 2: games and really wants that kind of expanded tool option,
[1:58:02] Speaker 2: or you think it feels approachable enough that like the
[1:58:04] Speaker 2: three shouldn't scare off a newcomer.
[1:58:07] Speaker 3: I mean it is for the Neo Sikos, because that's
[1:58:09] Speaker 3: that stuff has always kind of been there, but it's
[1:58:11] Speaker 3: just like blown up even more here. But in terms
[1:58:14] Speaker 3: of like purely narrative. This is like an independent thing,
[1:58:17] Speaker 3: Like there's no like, there's minimal connection to the other
[1:58:20] Speaker 3: two games outside of a few characters that like oh,
[1:58:23] Speaker 3: that guy was a Neo two. But even then, they
[1:58:25] Speaker 3: have like a really nice glossary to has like complete
[1:58:28] Speaker 3: summaries of the first two games if you want to
[1:58:30] Speaker 3: read those, as well as like here's all these characters,
[1:58:33] Speaker 3: here's what they do, is their history. But like buy
[1:58:36] Speaker 3: and large, you don't need like they made it a
[1:58:38] Speaker 3: point to be like this is not you do not
[1:58:40] Speaker 3: need familiarity with those two games to play this, and
[1:58:44] Speaker 3: a lot of that. I think it's because it's also
[1:58:45] Speaker 3: a time travel story, which seems to be a thing
[1:58:47] Speaker 3: this year between this and Covein. It's like let's make
[1:58:50] Speaker 3: souls like where you're jumping around periods of time. The
[1:58:54] Speaker 3: other big thing with Neo three that I really love
[1:58:56] Speaker 3: is that it is not open world. I believe their
[1:59:00] Speaker 3: official term is open field.
[1:59:03] Speaker 2: Where the open field open zone, that sort of thing.
[1:59:06] Speaker 3: Yeah, like every era of history has its own special
[1:59:10] Speaker 3: or own individual map that is gigantic, and the map
[1:59:14] Speaker 3: is divided into different regions and pretty much you can
[1:59:18] Speaker 3: spend upwards of like fifteen to twenty hours if you
[1:59:21] Speaker 3: really wanted to uncover everything in an individual map, and
[1:59:24] Speaker 3: there seems to be several of them, or at least
[1:59:27] Speaker 3: three maybe so kind of.
[1:59:28] Speaker 2: Give you that open world feeling, but you're not. They're
[1:59:31] Speaker 2: just not connected.
[1:59:32] Speaker 3: They're not connected, but they're big enough to where like
[1:59:35] Speaker 3: one map could would be a full game in a
[1:59:39] Speaker 3: different Yeah.
[1:59:40] Speaker 4: That's open world. Like people said Assassin's Creed two is
[1:59:46] Speaker 4: like open world and you're you know, warping between different
[1:59:49] Speaker 4: cities that are all open. But I think I think
[1:59:51] Speaker 4: they don't need to put a caveat. I would just
[1:59:53] Speaker 4: say on equivalently, that's open world.
[1:59:55] Speaker 3: I think it's more like by today's definition because it's
[1:59:58] Speaker 3: as to three to I think at the time that
[2:00:00] Speaker 3: was open world, but like now we would be like, well,
[2:00:02] Speaker 3: it's not all conducted, so I don't know, but like,
[2:00:05] Speaker 3: but yeah, I agree with the charge R was, like,
[2:00:07] Speaker 3: these maps are big enough to where like even if
[2:00:09] Speaker 3: they're not all like, I can't go And it's really
[2:00:12] Speaker 3: because of the premise because like, well, one map is
[2:00:13] Speaker 3: set five hundred years before this other map, so I
[2:00:16] Speaker 3: guess I couldn't just walk over there. But like you
[2:00:19] Speaker 3: know it's they're big enough to where they feel like,
[2:00:22] Speaker 3: what worse, You aren't just wandering freely, you don't.
[2:00:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, you're uncovering secrets. You can do well. This is
[2:00:29] Speaker 2: like a good rainy day topic for us, I think,
[2:00:31] Speaker 2: because I would say that I agree with you all
[2:00:33] Speaker 2: to a point. But then also games like elden Ring
[2:00:35] Speaker 2: or Breath of the Wild that basically said we are
[2:00:37] Speaker 2: it's one giant thing. You can get from here to there,
[2:00:40] Speaker 2: or like Skyrim as another example, you can get from
[2:00:43] Speaker 2: here to there. You can see it, you can climb it.
[2:00:46] Speaker 2: Kind of like reconfigured what we thought of open world
[2:00:49] Speaker 2: as and led to a lot of explaining stuff like
[2:00:52] Speaker 2: Pokemon Legends Rcus's Open Zone, even though it's also very
[2:00:57] Speaker 2: open world in the way it's approached. So that might
[2:01:00] Speaker 2: be a good rainy day topic for us as.
[2:01:03] Speaker 3: Sure, and some of its semantics too. But yeah, ultimately
[2:01:07] Speaker 3: the way that Neo's open world works, I really like it.
[2:01:10] Speaker 3: I'm struggling to think if I've seen another game tackling
[2:01:13] Speaker 3: open world like this, because it is like the perfect
[2:01:16] Speaker 3: middle ground between the overly guided, overly icon heavy maps
[2:01:20] Speaker 3: of you know, a stereotypical UBI Soft game, we'll say
[2:01:23] Speaker 3: and the Breath of the Wild Elder and ring approach
[2:01:26] Speaker 3: of we're not gonna tell you anything. You're it's just
[2:01:29] Speaker 3: go out there and see what you find and you know,
[2:01:31] Speaker 3: have fun. Where when you enter a new area, like
[2:01:34] Speaker 3: the map is blank, Like you pull up the map
[2:01:35] Speaker 3: doesn't tell you anything, it's just shrouded. All you see
[2:01:38] Speaker 3: is like the main objective icon in some random direction.
[2:01:42] Speaker 3: But there are exploration rewards where the more you uncover
[2:01:48] Speaker 3: on your own, you're ticking off these little uh like
[2:01:53] Speaker 3: objectives where it's like, oh, you found this many shrines
[2:01:56] Speaker 3: which are like your fast travel safe points, or you
[2:01:59] Speaker 3: found this many I don't know chess or like enemy camps. Well,
[2:02:03] Speaker 3: now because of that, we're gonna give you little passive
[2:02:06] Speaker 3: stat boots to like, hey, if you uncover this much
[2:02:08] Speaker 3: of the map, you're gonna have plus two attack for
[2:02:10] Speaker 3: the rest of the time that you're here. And in
[2:02:12] Speaker 3: the game. That's as hard as this, that's like incredibly valuable.
[2:02:15] Speaker 3: And then it's like, but if you get to like
[2:02:17] Speaker 3: tier two of exploration, we're gonna give you plus four defense.
[2:02:21] Speaker 3: And also we're gonna gradually reveal icons on the map,
[2:02:25] Speaker 3: but only the items that you were in the vicinity
[2:02:29] Speaker 3: of but you missed. So it's like, hey, you were
[2:02:33] Speaker 3: in a little town and you found like three Kodama spirits,
[2:02:36] Speaker 3: but you missed the fourth one. Well, if you uncover
[2:02:38] Speaker 3: more of the map on your own, we're gonna tell
[2:02:40] Speaker 3: you where that fourth one was, if you would like
[2:02:42] Speaker 3: the double back and just go get it. And I
[2:02:46] Speaker 3: love that because it's sort of like it's not telling
[2:02:48] Speaker 3: you where to go, like you're still sort of like
[2:02:50] Speaker 3: finding things on your own. But also by the time
[2:02:53] Speaker 3: you're kind of you filled up enough of the map
[2:02:55] Speaker 3: and you're probably ready to move on. If you're a
[2:02:58] Speaker 3: person that just like as a completionist and you're like, oh,
[2:03:00] Speaker 3: I want to just go get the things I didn't
[2:03:01] Speaker 3: find on my own, you'll look at the map and
[2:03:03] Speaker 3: all of a sudden it's like full of baldy icons, like, oh, man,
[2:03:05] Speaker 3: I guess I missed all those when I was there
[2:03:07] Speaker 3: the first time, So now I can just fast travel
[2:03:09] Speaker 3: back to its own and just go, you know, do
[2:03:10] Speaker 3: clean up. And I think that's really cool. Like and
[2:03:13] Speaker 3: also because you're also getting the stat bumps of like
[2:03:16] Speaker 3: oh I got plus two attack, I got plus four defense,
[2:03:18] Speaker 3: like you're improving your character just by exploring, Like it
[2:03:23] Speaker 3: is like such a strong hook to just go find
[2:03:26] Speaker 3: things because again, this game's hard, because these games are hard,
[2:03:30] Speaker 3: and so like any advantage I can get in battle helps,
[2:03:34] Speaker 3: and that's like one of only like several systems that
[2:03:38] Speaker 3: are all designed to like make your character stronger. Because
[2:03:42] Speaker 3: you also have god, you have your normal progression of
[2:03:46] Speaker 3: like you know, killing enemies, earning experience, leveling up, putting
[2:03:49] Speaker 3: whatever experience points into like your stats, like oh, I want,
[2:03:54] Speaker 3: you know, more stamina, more health, more, I don't know, intellect,
[2:03:58] Speaker 3: And depending on the weapon, your tie, your use, it'll
[2:04:00] Speaker 3: make that it'll make you better with that weapon. You'll
[2:04:03] Speaker 3: see down there like oh I'm using dual swords, and
[2:04:05] Speaker 3: my dual swords I go up when I pump it
[2:04:08] Speaker 3: into intelligence, so maybe I'll focus on that. But also
[2:04:12] Speaker 3: you have titles where it's basically like doing little feats
[2:04:16] Speaker 3: and then so it's like, uh, like I don't know,
[2:04:19] Speaker 3: like Ninja and Shanobi have their own title category so
[2:04:22] Speaker 3: to be like, hey, you stealth killed ten enemies, here's
[2:04:26] Speaker 3: some points to go into your Ninja feats. And then
[2:04:29] Speaker 3: when you put points into your ninja feeds. There's like
[2:04:31] Speaker 3: four things you can but points into to be like hey,
[2:04:34] Speaker 3: when you dodge now it takes up less stamina, or
[2:04:37] Speaker 3: when you attack in the air, it does more damage.
[2:04:39] Speaker 3: It's like stuff like that. And then there's like multiple
[2:04:42] Speaker 3: categories of those based on combat and exploration and so
[2:04:45] Speaker 3: like you're earning those passively in the background too, just
[2:04:48] Speaker 3: by doing things.
[2:04:50] Speaker 2: Uh that's fine.
[2:04:51] Speaker 4: Yeah, those feels significant, like you're doing more damage in
[2:04:55] Speaker 4: the air. Is it like, oh, five percent more damage
[2:04:58] Speaker 4: in the air or is it like, oh, I.
[2:04:59] Speaker 3: Can't Yeah, it feels like it's to me, especially if
[2:05:03] Speaker 3: it's something that you know you use a lot, which
[2:05:05] Speaker 3: again goes back to how you decide to build your
[2:05:07] Speaker 3: move set of like oh, I got this really cool
[2:05:09] Speaker 3: air move that I do find myself using a lot,
[2:05:11] Speaker 3: so maybe I do want this to do like any
[2:05:14] Speaker 3: bit more damage. Well, it's like welcomed. But also with
[2:05:18] Speaker 3: stuff like item drops and equipment drops, you can make
[2:05:21] Speaker 3: you can raise the percentage on how often that happens
[2:05:23] Speaker 3: through your titles or like oh, alixirs, which are basically
[2:05:25] Speaker 3: your st flags or flast like, oh, I can increase
[2:05:30] Speaker 3: the drop rate of those, or I can increase the
[2:05:32] Speaker 3: healing effectiveness of those just by again, just by doing things,
[2:05:37] Speaker 3: so you're earning those, you're also finding God, there's so
[2:05:40] Speaker 3: much to get into with this. There's there's also your
[2:05:45] Speaker 3: I mentioned before, the skill trees that you have for
[2:05:47] Speaker 3: both your inherent traits as a ninja and samurai, but
[2:05:50] Speaker 3: also every weapon has their own skill trees tied to it.
[2:05:53] Speaker 3: So this is very much a game where you need
[2:05:55] Speaker 3: to pick one or two weapons and stick with them
[2:05:58] Speaker 3: because you have to learn your weapons. So in the beginning,
[2:06:01] Speaker 3: and every neo game has been like this, we're in
[2:06:03] Speaker 3: the beginning where you choose your weapon. They give you
[2:06:04] Speaker 3: a chance to kind of pick each one up, swinging
[2:06:07] Speaker 3: around a bit, see if you like the feel of it,
[2:06:08] Speaker 3: and then kind of go from there. You'll always have
[2:06:11] Speaker 3: access to every weapon because every enemy drops every weapon,
[2:06:14] Speaker 3: so you can change any time. And what's nice is
[2:06:17] Speaker 3: that you can respect any time with no cause. So
[2:06:19] Speaker 3: if you get really invested in like a regular you know, Katana,
[2:06:25] Speaker 3: and then you've pick up a weapon where you're like, oh,
[2:06:27] Speaker 3: I got this like chain sickle thing that's super fun,
[2:06:31] Speaker 3: I'm gonna and then you realize I'm just using this
[2:06:33] Speaker 3: and I'm not really using the Samurai sword anymore. I'm
[2:06:36] Speaker 3: gonna respect all my points that I put into that,
[2:06:38] Speaker 3: and I'm just gonna put them all into the cool
[2:06:40] Speaker 3: chain thing, because I think this is my new thing now,
[2:06:42] Speaker 3: and you can do it as many times as you want.
[2:06:44] Speaker 3: And I've done that multiple times. I've just kind of been,
[2:06:46] Speaker 3: you know, sampling the different weapons and seeing what I
[2:06:49] Speaker 3: want to stick with cool so you can dig into that.
[2:06:52] Speaker 3: You can also unlock like passive abilities with like another thing.
[2:06:57] Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember the name of it, but basically,
[2:07:00] Speaker 3: the ninja and samurai have their own sort of like
[2:07:04] Speaker 3: ability meter where you have these sort of like passive
[2:07:08] Speaker 3: perks that you can turn on as many as you
[2:07:11] Speaker 3: want if you have enough of a meter left. So
[2:07:14] Speaker 3: like each passive perk takes up a portion of the meter.
[2:07:17] Speaker 3: So like, if your meter's ten points every and you
[2:07:20] Speaker 3: have like an ability that takes up five points, then
[2:07:23] Speaker 3: you've used the path your meter. And you can find
[2:07:25] Speaker 3: items that raise the limit of this meter that are
[2:07:29] Speaker 3: like worth their weighting gold, and you're all over the
[2:07:31] Speaker 3: place you find them in chest sometimes enemies drop them,
[2:07:34] Speaker 3: but again it's another thing that incentivizes you to be like,
[2:07:36] Speaker 3: I probably want to open every chest because if I
[2:07:38] Speaker 3: find another thing that raises the cap of my ninja skills,
[2:07:40] Speaker 3: I want that because then some a lot of the
[2:07:43] Speaker 3: cool passives there are like some cool ones where like
[2:07:45] Speaker 3: there's one that's like, hey, every time you dodge it,
[2:07:49] Speaker 3: so like you're fighting yokay in these games, and when
[2:07:52] Speaker 3: they summon them in the neo games, they sometimes leave
[2:07:54] Speaker 3: like a little basically like demonic field where if you're
[2:07:57] Speaker 3: fighting them in this demonic field, it makes your stamina,
[2:08:00] Speaker 3: it makes it tougher to regenerate, so you'll get tired faster,
[2:08:04] Speaker 3: and the only way to dissipate that is to do
[2:08:06] Speaker 3: your key pulse move in it, which again is like
[2:08:09] Speaker 3: the time sort of like button press to replenish your stamina.
[2:08:12] Speaker 3: But with the Ninja, it's like, oh, one of the
[2:08:14] Speaker 3: perks I turned on was hey, if you just do
[2:08:16] Speaker 3: a basic dodge well in there, it'll turn it on.
[2:08:18] Speaker 3: It'll get rid of that field, so you don't have
[2:08:20] Speaker 3: to do the like harder button plant. So I'm like, well,
[2:08:21] Speaker 3: I'm gonna have that on all the time. And it's
[2:08:23] Speaker 3: like basically things that are designed to sort of like
[2:08:25] Speaker 3: break the game's ruled a bit, so if you can
[2:08:29] Speaker 3: like just finding not only more of those skills, which
[2:08:32] Speaker 3: again you find those just from chest enemies whatever, on
[2:08:36] Speaker 3: top of the thing that raises the quoto, so you
[2:08:38] Speaker 3: can have more of those unlocked, like you're like, oh,
[2:08:41] Speaker 3: I want to look everywhere and find these, because I'm
[2:08:43] Speaker 3: finding some like wild stuff that I could have easily missed.
[2:08:47] Speaker 3: So it's it makes it is like one of the
[2:08:50] Speaker 3: most rewarding sort of like open world experiences I played before,
[2:08:54] Speaker 3: because it feels like everything is your rewarded constantly for
[2:08:58] Speaker 3: just looking around, and it feels like everything is out
[2:09:02] Speaker 3: to make you better in some way, and it's a
[2:09:05] Speaker 3: really nice compliment to like how tough the enemies are.
[2:09:08] Speaker 3: But also I would say this is probably the most
[2:09:11] Speaker 3: approachable Meal game for the reasons that elden Ring is
[2:09:14] Speaker 3: like the most approachable Soul's game in the sense that
[2:09:16] Speaker 3: if you hit.
[2:09:16] Speaker 2: A wall, you just go somewhere elsewhere else Yeah, right,
[2:09:19] Speaker 2: you're like, oh cool.
[2:09:21] Speaker 3: Yeah. And also every map area tells you like recommended
[2:09:25] Speaker 3: level too, so if you go to a region, they're like, okay,
[2:09:27] Speaker 3: my main mission is in this region. It's saying maybe
[2:09:29] Speaker 3: you want to be fifty seven if you're here, which
[2:09:32] Speaker 3: is like a loose number because it sort of depends
[2:09:34] Speaker 3: on like not only just the level, but like how
[2:09:36] Speaker 3: good you are, which is what I not. Like you
[2:09:39] Speaker 3: can do a degree of like number grinding, but you
[2:09:42] Speaker 3: still have to like read patterns and like I've had
[2:09:45] Speaker 3: bosses kill me that were technically lower level than me
[2:09:48] Speaker 3: because they just outfoxed me. So you still have to
[2:09:51] Speaker 3: like learn your class, learn your weapons, figure out how
[2:09:56] Speaker 3: to counter like all that stuff still matters on top
[2:09:58] Speaker 3: of just I have higher numbers than you. But yeah,
[2:10:02] Speaker 3: and there's other systems I don't even touched on. I
[2:10:05] Speaker 3: know we're running out of time because there's like side Quest,
[2:10:08] Speaker 3: there's blacksmithings Quest, there's there's so much in this lot.
[2:10:12] Speaker 3: There's a lot, and there's always a lot.
[2:10:14] Speaker 1: With Neo it is a dense boil it down then yeah,
[2:10:17] Speaker 1: if this is if you are like a Souls fan,
[2:10:20] Speaker 1: if you're a person who likes a Soul's game and
[2:10:22] Speaker 1: you're looking at at NEO three, like what would you
[2:10:24] Speaker 1: say would be the thing that puts it over?
[2:10:26] Speaker 2: Like like what is the reason to come to NEO three?
[2:10:29] Speaker 2: If you've played elden Ring or something and your interest
[2:10:32] Speaker 2: in this, what is the X factor that defines it?
[2:10:34] Speaker 3: I would say combat wise, And I would say this
[2:10:36] Speaker 3: is true of the Neo series in general. If you
[2:10:38] Speaker 3: like a faster paced souls like, Neo has always been
[2:10:41] Speaker 3: great for that. Like Neo was one of the first,
[2:10:43] Speaker 3: like non from software Souls likes that were good, like
[2:10:46] Speaker 3: they got in on the trend really early team Ninja
[2:10:49] Speaker 3: that is where but they also managed to stand be
[2:10:52] Speaker 3: the most like unique before anyone else because a lot
[2:10:55] Speaker 3: of people just copy the kind of deliberate combat of
[2:10:58] Speaker 3: Souls likes where they took their Ninja guid and experience
[2:11:01] Speaker 3: and blended it into like the Soul's formula where it's
[2:11:04] Speaker 3: a lot, like I said, faster pace, a bigger emphasis
[2:11:07] Speaker 3: on loots. So if you're a loot person, this is
[2:11:08] Speaker 3: like the series for you, And it's just like because
[2:11:11] Speaker 3: of how fast paced it is and how technical to
[2:11:14] Speaker 3: combat can get, it's like as much fun to wat
[2:11:17] Speaker 3: to watch as it is to kind of pull off
[2:11:18] Speaker 3: the stuff that you can do, especially again, once you
[2:11:20] Speaker 3: learn your weapon well, which I think this game even
[2:11:23] Speaker 3: more so than from software game kind of demands a
[2:11:25] Speaker 3: mastery of your equipment better because there's just so much
[2:11:28] Speaker 3: you can dig into there. But with this particular game,
[2:11:31] Speaker 3: the open world stuff that I mentioned before, I think
[2:11:33] Speaker 3: it does like a really good job of not only
[2:11:34] Speaker 3: making the open world like compelling enough to explore just
[2:11:38] Speaker 3: from like a visual and like like I guess like
[2:11:41] Speaker 3: narrative design thing, but also just all the rewards they
[2:11:44] Speaker 3: throw at you constantly. And the one thing I'll throw
[2:11:46] Speaker 3: in real quick that I forgot to mention that's like
[2:11:47] Speaker 3: huge is that there's these destinations called crucibles, which is
[2:11:50] Speaker 3: kind of like tied to the plot, where like there
[2:11:53] Speaker 3: are these kind of like demonic versions of the map
[2:11:56] Speaker 3: that you can enter and explore, and they kind of
[2:12:01] Speaker 3: like like they basically take you to like a hellish
[2:12:03] Speaker 3: version of like a certain area, and inside the crucibles,
[2:12:06] Speaker 3: it's like harder, like the enemies are harder. They're unique,
[2:12:09] Speaker 3: and you can also find these unique weapons called crucible
[2:12:11] Speaker 3: weapons that are like stronger and you can get like
[2:12:14] Speaker 3: you can learn new abilities from them that you can
[2:12:17] Speaker 3: like gain permanently if you use them enough. But also
[2:12:20] Speaker 3: they have like the downside where if you take damage
[2:12:22] Speaker 3: while wielding a crucible weapon, it like lowers your overall
[2:12:25] Speaker 3: health until you're able to like get to a shrine
[2:12:27] Speaker 3: or like deal damage back. So like they're fun risk
[2:12:30] Speaker 3: reward things. But also like I like the crucibles because
[2:12:33] Speaker 3: they're kind of like nice, nice breaks from like the
[2:12:35] Speaker 3: general open world. And also like the challenge is raised
[2:12:39] Speaker 3: up a bit whereas like, oh, okay, everything in here
[2:12:41] Speaker 3: hits a little harder. It looks cooler visually, just it
[2:12:44] Speaker 3: literally looks like you're just like fighting your way through hell.
[2:12:48] Speaker 3: And yeah, but yeah, those are like pretty crucial to
[2:12:51] Speaker 3: like the plot of this game, and I think they're
[2:12:54] Speaker 3: like another new addition to like the myriad of other
[2:12:57] Speaker 3: things that the kind of like the map and world
[2:13:00] Speaker 3: has to offer it. But like I said, I have
[2:13:02] Speaker 3: probably like a good halfway through it. I have a
[2:13:04] Speaker 3: ways to go, but I'm having a blast so far.
[2:13:06] Speaker 3: Like it's a game that I you guys ever played
[2:13:08] Speaker 3: especially open world games for a review, where you're like, man,
[2:13:11] Speaker 3: if I wasn't on the clock, I just want to
[2:13:12] Speaker 3: sit down and just like find everything, And I know
[2:13:14] Speaker 3: I don't. I can't kind of do that at the
[2:13:16] Speaker 3: run pass and stuff like oh there's a cool side
[2:13:18] Speaker 3: quest here, just this guy talk to me. I don't
[2:13:20] Speaker 3: have time to do that. I got a bullet towards
[2:13:23] Speaker 3: the main objective as much as I can. But yeah,
[2:13:26] Speaker 3: like I don't often feel that when open world games,
[2:13:29] Speaker 3: but this is when I was like, man, I'm gonna
[2:13:30] Speaker 3: clean up everything. I want to see all the abilities
[2:13:32] Speaker 3: that I missed and some of those chests and stuff.
[2:13:34] Speaker 3: It's fun.
[2:13:34] Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, you're I mean, it sounds overwhelming a bit,
[2:13:38] Speaker 1: but it is. Yeah, it it sounds like if that's
[2:13:44] Speaker 1: what you're in the mood.
[2:13:44] Speaker 2: For, then it delivers.
[2:13:46] Speaker 1: So I I will pay attention to the three I
[2:13:50] Speaker 1: kind of it wasn't on my radar at all. Some
[2:13:52] Speaker 1: of the stuff you said today is like, huh, I'm
[2:13:55] Speaker 1: gonna keep my eye on it.
[2:13:56] Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, I will say it does as it's
[2:14:00] Speaker 3: good of a job. It probably can do kind of
[2:14:02] Speaker 3: ease you into its systems, Like there's okay, pretty like
[2:14:06] Speaker 3: pretty edtorials, and there's also like there's whole systems of
[2:14:09] Speaker 3: this game to do not unlock until like fifteen twenty
[2:14:13] Speaker 3: hours in Okay.
[2:14:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, like they let you get a nice carrot on
[2:14:17] Speaker 1: the stick to know that's a that's how it kind
[2:14:19] Speaker 1: of trickles out like major stuff too, all right, well, I, uh,
[2:14:25] Speaker 1: while you were talking, Marcus, I got cent of eugenics code.
[2:14:28] Speaker 2: So it's a podcast. The podcast needs to end now,
[2:14:31] Speaker 2: so and check that out.
[2:14:33] Speaker 3: Oh I did too, I just know I just checked slack.
[2:14:36] Speaker 3: I don't even remember ask for a one, but I mean,
[2:14:38] Speaker 3: I guess they assumed like, well, you did the preview,
[2:14:39] Speaker 3: you probably want to play this.
[2:14:41] Speaker 2: Yeah, well cool.
[2:14:43] Speaker 1: Well, hey listeners out there, thank you for listening. If
[2:14:45] Speaker 1: you're watching on YouTube, thanks for sticking with us. Of course,
[2:14:49] Speaker 1: like we said at the top of the show, be
[2:14:51] Speaker 1: sure to pick up a copy of Game Informer. Head
[2:14:54] Speaker 1: over to Game Informer dot com slash subscribe and you
[2:14:57] Speaker 1: can get access to ten issues delivered to your mailbox
[2:15:02] Speaker 1: every year, and if you're international, you can get the
[2:15:04] Speaker 1: digital versions through a cheaper subscription, and of course find
[2:15:09] Speaker 1: us on newsstands.
[2:15:10] Speaker 2: Uh in the US and globally.
[2:15:13] Speaker 4: My my future father in law was like, I haven't
[2:15:16] Speaker 4: seen I have't seen any of Charles's magazines on the
[2:15:19] Speaker 4: newsstands and Barnes and Noble, and my fil was like, oh,
[2:15:23] Speaker 4: that's weird, and he's like yeah, flying off, he was like, yeah,
[2:15:25] Speaker 4: I haven't been into Barnes and Noble and I was like, Oh,
[2:15:28] Speaker 4: that that would be it. You never looked at the
[2:15:30] Speaker 4: store where they are, so that would do it. You
[2:15:33] Speaker 4: walk into the Barns and Noble.
[2:15:36] Speaker 3: Magazine. I'm having a hard time. Just did they still
[2:15:40] Speaker 3: milk anymore? I haven't seen a while, I haven't been.
[2:15:46] Speaker 2: Best by.
[2:15:51] Speaker 1: All Right, Well we're gonna call it there. Thanks for
[2:15:53] Speaker 1: listening to everybody, thanks for tuning in, and we'll catch
[2:15:56] Speaker 1: you next week.
[2:15:57] Speaker 2: Goodbye.

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