# Mafia: The Old Country And Gen Con Takeaways

An episode of [The Game Informer Show](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/335246945), 8 Aug 2025, 1 h 40 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/67306093/gishow_728_audio.mp3

In this week's episode of The Game Informer Show, our host Charles is joined by Wesley and Eric to talk about Mafia: The Old Country, a prequel set in early 20th century Sicily, as well as the experience of Gen Con 2025, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, and Wheel World. We discuss knife fighting and stealthy sneaking, the power scale of Metroidvanias, and... I'm reading a note here about Italian frogs? The Game Informer Show is a weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Thursday for chats about your favorite titles – past and present – alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from around the industry. Subscribe to Game Informer Magazine: https://gameinformer.com/subscribe Follow our hosts on social media: • Charles Harte (@chuckduck365) • Wesley LeBlanc (@wesleyleblanc) • Eric Van Allen (@seamoosi) Jump to a specific discussion using these timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 04:18 - Mafia: The Old Country 35:05 - Gen Con 2025 1:10:26 - Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound 1:17:05 - Wheel World

## Transcript

[0:13] Speaker 1: Welcome to the Game Informer Show, a weekly podcast covering
[0:17] Speaker 1: the video game industry. Join us every Thursday or Friday
[0:20] Speaker 1: on this week for a discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews,
[0:23] Speaker 1: and exclusive reveals, alongside Game of Former staff and special
[0:27] Speaker 1: guests from around the industry. I'm one of your hosts,
[0:29] Speaker 1: Charles Hart, and today I'm joined by Wesley LeBlanc.
[0:33] Speaker 2: Hello. Hello, I'm back. I'm barely live, wow, and making
[0:41] Speaker 2: sacrifices to be here.
[0:43] Speaker 1: Yes, to serve your magazine.
[0:45] Speaker 2: It's not much of a sacrifice. I'm on like day
[0:47] Speaker 2: seven and feeling pretty normal, so I actually wanted to
[0:50] Speaker 2: come on and talk and do something other than rot
[0:52] Speaker 2: away in my quarantine.
[0:53] Speaker 1: Couch Fair and Eric Van Allen.
[0:57] Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, week two. I'm still live. I'm still going.
[1:04] Speaker 1: It's you know, you know, we're having a great week
[1:06] Speaker 1: at Game Informer. When everyone's introduction is like, well we're alive,
[1:11] Speaker 1: that's the bar right now.
[1:13] Speaker 2: The worst part about this kind of stuff, like these
[1:15] Speaker 2: weeks is like it all just stays with us, like
[1:17] Speaker 2: none of it gets to go out and no one
[1:19] Speaker 2: knows why. Yeah yeah, hell, but wow, is this week?
[1:23] Speaker 2: Hell not not Game Informer's fault, Like weird.
[1:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's my fault, everybody. I did it. I walked
[1:30] Speaker 3: in the room and then I just knocked everything over.
[1:32] Speaker 3: So it was terrible.
[1:34] Speaker 1: It was it was funny, just listeners.
[1:37] Speaker 2: It's all.
[1:37] Speaker 1: It's a bunch of like scheduling stuff and people are
[1:41] Speaker 1: sick and everyone's traveling, so we're just shorthanded and then
[1:44] Speaker 1: the travel there's all these mix ups and whatever. And
[1:47] Speaker 1: in one of our meetings, editor chief Matt Miller was like, Eric,
[1:50] Speaker 1: just so you know, this is this is a crazy week,
[1:53] Speaker 1: and Eric's like, I get it, it's just Tuesday. And
[1:55] Speaker 1: we're like, I can't. We can't emphasize enough how much
[1:58] Speaker 1: this is not just Tuesday. So much going on.
[2:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fine, things are chill, but I was I
[2:05] Speaker 3: was talking to to Brian earlier today. I told him,
[2:08] Speaker 3: you don't sign up for the big leagues and then
[2:11] Speaker 3: train for t ball. You know, you show up to
[2:13] Speaker 3: play and sometimes things go a little bit awry. This
[2:18] Speaker 3: is what you suit up for. This is what the
[2:20] Speaker 3: professionals handle. It's all good.
[2:23] Speaker 1: It is funny though, because it's like that that metaphor
[2:27] Speaker 1: is kind of like you're getting you're getting ready to
[2:30] Speaker 1: hit really fast baseballs and it's like we're doing that.
[2:33] Speaker 1: But also right now the field is flooded with like
[2:36] Speaker 1: three inches of water and nobody knows why. And that
[2:38] Speaker 1: doesn't really have to do with the baseball skills you've accrued,
[2:41] Speaker 1: but we all have to do with it.
[2:43] Speaker 3: On top of the exactly you're trying to hit baseballs,
[2:45] Speaker 3: the field is flooded, the ump behind you has like
[2:48] Speaker 3: a shoe that he's trying to thwack you in the
[2:49] Speaker 3: head with while you're not looking at It's, uh, there's
[2:53] Speaker 3: always the USI of ump Yeah, honestly, I want to
[2:56] Speaker 3: I want that to be a game where you are
[2:58] Speaker 3: just like the umpire and a base ball game, and
[3:00] Speaker 3: you just like call the most annoying plays and.
[3:04] Speaker 1: You hit people.
[3:05] Speaker 3: I was going to say, let me tell you about
[3:06] Speaker 3: the magical game of blaze ball that ended all too soon.
[3:10] Speaker 3: Didn't quite have that, but had some elements of that.
[3:14] Speaker 1: Definitely the closest thing. Well, this week we got a
[3:18] Speaker 1: fun show for you. We're going to be talking about Mafia,
[3:21] Speaker 1: the Old Country. I'm gonna be talking about my trip
[3:24] Speaker 1: to gen Con, and then West is going to talk
[3:26] Speaker 1: about his reviews for wheel World and Ninja Guiden Rage
[3:29] Speaker 1: Bound before we get started. Just as always a reminder,
[3:33] Speaker 1: we make a magazine. You can subscribe to it at
[3:35] Speaker 1: gameformer dot com slash subscribe. Our next issue coming out
[3:40] Speaker 1: is The Vampire the mass Grave blood Lines two issue,
[3:44] Speaker 1: so if you subscribe now you can read that digitally.
[3:46] Speaker 1: I think we've passed the window for physical so if
[3:50] Speaker 1: you subscribe now, you'll get whatever the next issue is
[3:53] Speaker 1: after that in your mailbox, and then ten issues for
[3:56] Speaker 1: that year long cycle. But yeah, I wrote that was
[3:59] Speaker 1: my cover story. That was very fun. Game looks cool.
[4:03] Speaker 1: I'll have some more coverage going up. But if you
[4:05] Speaker 1: want to read that and all the other stuff digitally, like,
[4:08] Speaker 1: you can subscribe there and yeah, anything else, any other
[4:13] Speaker 1: housekeeping stuff. I think that's good. Let's just jump into
[4:18] Speaker 1: Mafia the Old Country. This is a Mafia prequel, I believe,
[4:23] Speaker 1: and Wes, you're the one that you just put your
[4:26] Speaker 1: view of today.
[4:27] Speaker 2: Dave recorded, Yes, yeah, Mafia the Old Country, which is
[4:31] Speaker 2: out when you're listening to this, it's already out. It
[4:35] Speaker 2: is a loose prequel, like it takes place in the
[4:39] Speaker 2: same universe, and it's the earliest portion of the Mafia
[4:41] Speaker 2: series timeline. But for the most part, it is standalone
[4:45] Speaker 2: unless you're like familiar with last names and locations in Mafia.
[4:50] Speaker 2: But for the most part, you can play this and
[4:51] Speaker 2: not worry about anything that comes after, although the games
[4:54] Speaker 2: that come after are really great, better than this game unfortunately. Yeah.
[4:59] Speaker 2: So I gave Mafia the old Country of six. I
[5:03] Speaker 2: wish I was giving it a higher score because I
[5:05] Speaker 2: really really loved the Mafia series. I especially loved Mafia
[5:10] Speaker 2: Definitive Edition in twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, and
[5:13] Speaker 2: this game was supposedly taking a lot of cues from that,
[5:17] Speaker 2: like in the lead up to the game's release in
[5:20] Speaker 2: the press and marketing and whatnot. So I was really
[5:22] Speaker 2: excited for it, but ultimately it's just it.
[5:26] Speaker 1: Oh what, sorry, I was gonna ask as someone who
[5:29] Speaker 1: doesn't know Mafia. Yeah, was the Definitive Edition? Was that
[5:32] Speaker 1: like a full remake?
[5:34] Speaker 2: It was a very very pretty maybe Unreal Engine five,
[5:38] Speaker 2: if not like a very late Unreal Engine four remake
[5:41] Speaker 2: of the first Mafia game, which is my favorite of
[5:45] Speaker 2: the series. And it's it's like a type of game
[5:49] Speaker 2: we just don't really get anymore in the sense to like,
[5:51] Speaker 2: it's here's some missions play each mission, and then you
[5:55] Speaker 2: have a story that plays throughout each mission, and then
[5:57] Speaker 2: the game's over and there's not really much to do,
[6:00] Speaker 2: which people liked, and Mafia two opened up a little bit.
[6:03] Speaker 2: Mafia three went way too wide as an open world game,
[6:07] Speaker 2: way too checklist, and people were like, whoa whah, well,
[6:09] Speaker 2: none of that, none of that. So when Definitive Edition
[6:11] Speaker 2: came out, it was like a return to form, and
[6:15] Speaker 2: it did well enough that I think two K Games
[6:18] Speaker 2: the publisher and Hanger thirteen was like, oh, we should
[6:20] Speaker 2: maybe return to our roots, and that's what Mafia the
[6:23] Speaker 2: Old Country is trying to do.
[6:24] Speaker 1: It is.
[6:26] Speaker 2: It's some acts and there's like quests within each ack,
[6:30] Speaker 2: but it's basically like point A to point B, two
[6:32] Speaker 2: point C to the end of the game, Like there's
[6:34] Speaker 2: no real reason to explore. There are some collectibles out there,
[6:38] Speaker 2: and there's like a kind of hard to find explore
[6:40] Speaker 2: mode if you want to go out there and search
[6:42] Speaker 2: this beautiful world for those collectibles, but you don't really
[6:47] Speaker 2: how because you have to go to Chapter replay and
[6:52] Speaker 2: then at the top of that, which is like on
[6:54] Speaker 2: the main menu, you have to go to Explore, and
[6:56] Speaker 2: then Explore puts you into the world without any like
[6:58] Speaker 2: quests or anything like, you don't just you can't just
[7:01] Speaker 2: necessarily mosy around in this world, like if you want
[7:04] Speaker 2: all the collectibles to be on the map, and you need
[7:06] Speaker 2: to be in the explore mode, which is odd choice,
[7:07] Speaker 2: but honestly, I don't just think it's one people are
[7:10] Speaker 2: gonna There's really there's no reason to go find the
[7:13] Speaker 2: fifty weird per collectibles or like the newspapers unless you
[7:18] Speaker 2: just want to be in this world more, which Hangar
[7:23] Speaker 2: thirteen is aware of. Like they they have been saying
[7:25] Speaker 2: this is a linear story focused game, and it is.
[7:28] Speaker 2: There is a like a huge emphasis on the storytelling.
[7:34] Speaker 2: It's just unfortunately for me, it didn't really pan out
[7:37] Speaker 2: to be much. I think kind of the thesis or
[7:41] Speaker 2: crux of my review is everything in Mafia the Old
[7:45] Speaker 2: Country you've seen before, and there's a good shot it's
[7:48] Speaker 2: been done better. The story is not really going to
[7:52] Speaker 2: surprise you, and it's going to be very predictable in
[7:56] Speaker 2: some instances, like so predictable, and they I don't want
[8:00] Speaker 2: to call it like Chekhov's Gun type stuff, but like
[8:03] Speaker 2: I think they were leaning way too much on like teases.
[8:05] Speaker 2: It's it's so obvious where the game goes, and if
[8:09] Speaker 2: you're familiar, I don't even think you need to be
[8:10] Speaker 2: familiar with like mafia media, like in pop culture to
[8:14] Speaker 2: know where the story is going. Like it's it's a
[8:17] Speaker 2: very basic premise. That said, it's it's still an enjoyable one,
[8:20] Speaker 2: Like it's still fine, it's it's a fun mafia story.
[8:23] Speaker 2: I'm always gamed for these types of stories. They don't
[8:25] Speaker 2: need to be surprising every single time. But given the
[8:29] Speaker 2: storytelling throughout a series, I kind of did hope this
[8:31] Speaker 2: one would be a little more impactful.
[8:35] Speaker 3: The one.
[8:36] Speaker 2: Not one thing. There are a couple of good things
[8:38] Speaker 2: I have, like a nice little fun persona background on
[8:41] Speaker 2: my computer, and then now I'm like, I look over
[8:43] Speaker 2: and I see like that Firehouse.
[8:45] Speaker 3: That's the best case for we've ever seen on a podcast.
[8:50] Speaker 3: We do not.
[8:51] Speaker 1: We do not.
[8:51] Speaker 2: We are not sponsored by Firehouse subs.
[8:54] Speaker 1: Although it's it's also funny because if you had YouTube Premium,
[8:57] Speaker 1: you still have to see these these ads in the background.
[9:01] Speaker 1: Wait do you really I'm saying, because so you'd be
[9:05] Speaker 1: watching someone at home, be sitting on their couch watching
[9:08] Speaker 1: gaming form show. Right, and then even within the Game
[9:11] Speaker 1: Former show. We have an ad in the background for.
[9:15] Speaker 3: Firehouse Wild of the YouTube premium turned off your ads
[9:19] Speaker 3: on other people's ads. You know what I'm saying, Like.
[9:22] Speaker 1: You're watched like a cyberpunk nonsense.
[9:25] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, why is that not our cyberpunk future? You know,
[9:29] Speaker 3: why don't we just have.
[9:32] Speaker 2: Yes, Firehouse? That sounds delicious right now. That said, uh,
[9:38] Speaker 2: the game is set in Sicily, which is they did
[9:41] Speaker 2: a really good job of like creating an early nineteen
[9:43] Speaker 2: hundred Sicily, which I love. I really love Italy. My
[9:47] Speaker 2: wife was born and raised there, Like I go to
[9:49] Speaker 2: Italy often. It's it's a place I cherish in my
[9:51] Speaker 2: heart a lot, which is one of the more exciting
[9:54] Speaker 2: aspects of this game. And they did a really good
[9:56] Speaker 2: job recreating that portion of Italy, which Sicily is like
[10:00] Speaker 2: its own island. It's a very unique part of Italy.
[10:04] Speaker 2: There's also an incredible Italian dub that actually takes into
[10:08] Speaker 2: account that it's set in Sicily, and they use the
[10:10] Speaker 2: Sicilian dialect instead of the Italian dialect, which is great
[10:13] Speaker 2: because the Sicilian dialect is so different that my mother
[10:17] Speaker 2: in law, who is one hundred percent Italian born and
[10:19] Speaker 2: raised there, very fluent, says that Sicilian might as well
[10:22] Speaker 2: be like a different language. She can kind of understand it,
[10:24] Speaker 2: but like you can't. Just Italians can't go to Sicily
[10:28] Speaker 2: and speak it as if they were fluent. It's its
[10:30] Speaker 2: own thing. So she thought it was really cool that
[10:33] Speaker 2: they use the Sicilian dialect versus the Italian dialect, which
[10:37] Speaker 2: I think that is that's a really nice not a
[10:39] Speaker 2: detail that I'm sure a lot of people won't care
[10:42] Speaker 2: or appreciate, But I do want to give Hanger thirteen
[10:45] Speaker 2: some credit there because I think that's cool.
[10:47] Speaker 1: I do also want your mother in law's opinion on
[10:50] Speaker 1: other games. I like a concept of like a column
[10:55] Speaker 1: of like my mother in law's favorite games that she's
[10:58] Speaker 1: watched me play. Well, she's like offering from an injury
[11:01] Speaker 1: right at your house.
[11:02] Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, she has broken her shoulders, so weird. She's
[11:05] Speaker 2: been living at her house for like a month and
[11:07] Speaker 2: probably another month. And also the COVID I got hit
[11:10] Speaker 2: her today unfortunately. So now it's just my wife is
[11:14] Speaker 2: the last bastion of immunal hope and my daughter shout
[11:21] Speaker 2: out to my wife because she is lifting mountains tube
[11:24] Speaker 2: to maintain our household while we're all going through it.
[11:28] Speaker 2: Shout out Wes's wife, Gabby.
[11:29] Speaker 1: Hell yeah, that's good.
[11:30] Speaker 2: That's good Italian Women.
[11:34] Speaker 4: If there's one thing you take away from this, this podcast,
[11:36] Speaker 4: the game and former though, shout out Italian Woman, I
[11:39] Speaker 4: was gonna say, we need to get on your INTI
[11:41] Speaker 4: persona now, just like a carousel of pictures of your wife.
[11:45] Speaker 1: What Yeah, I love Anyways, I.
[11:50] Speaker 2: Need to get like an eel of Italian Woman's shirt
[11:52] Speaker 2: next episode. I would like ironically wear that too.
[11:57] Speaker 3: A lot of questions answered by my shirt, you know.
[12:04] Speaker 2: But yeah, so like the Italy part of this game,
[12:07] Speaker 2: I think they really nailed. It's just like everything else
[12:09] Speaker 2: is so boring is not the right word, because I
[12:13] Speaker 2: had a fine time. It's just so middling. It's just
[12:15] Speaker 2: depressingly middling. Like the gameplay is seems cool at first,
[12:21] Speaker 2: like you're going around old Sicily, you're doing like shootouts,
[12:25] Speaker 2: you're doing stealth sequences where you're stealthing through a warehouse
[12:29] Speaker 2: and there's enemies with paths and you have to track
[12:32] Speaker 2: their paths and then get behind them and choke them
[12:34] Speaker 2: out or knife them and your knife has durability and
[12:37] Speaker 2: blah blah blah. But like what you play the first
[12:40] Speaker 2: time during a stealth sequence is what you're going to
[12:42] Speaker 2: play the last time during a stealth sequence. There is
[12:45] Speaker 2: virtually no growth in systems or any kind of progression
[12:49] Speaker 2: in that regard. You can unlock different knives, maybe they
[12:53] Speaker 2: do different things. I don't know. I switched around my
[12:56] Speaker 2: knives and never really noticed much difference. The biggest one
[12:59] Speaker 2: I liked was like it auto looted enemies that I
[13:02] Speaker 2: killed with the knife takedown. But like, I don't know,
[13:06] Speaker 2: it's so mind numbingly easy, and I was on like
[13:09] Speaker 2: the standard difficulty and I even went up to hard
[13:11] Speaker 2: to see if that would change anything, and for the
[13:13] Speaker 2: stealth it didn't. I mean you were It is the
[13:16] Speaker 2: most bog standard stealth game, like crouch from cover, get
[13:21] Speaker 2: behind somebody and choke them out, and you don't even
[13:24] Speaker 2: have to be that like sly. You can. If they're
[13:27] Speaker 2: looking at you, just walk faster and get behind them
[13:29] Speaker 2: and you'll be fun.
[13:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, like for real, I've been playing this too, and
[13:33] Speaker 3: that was one of the first things I noticed was
[13:36] Speaker 3: they give you the option. They say, you know, it's
[13:38] Speaker 3: a big deal. When you go buy your first knife
[13:40] Speaker 3: and you go to a store and there's like an
[13:43] Speaker 3: old lady who just has a box of knives that
[13:46] Speaker 3: you're pulling from and it's it's fun, it's flavorful, it's good.
[13:49] Speaker 3: And then I was looking at all the stuff and
[13:51] Speaker 3: I remember seeing one that was like, oh, like throwing
[13:53] Speaker 3: knife takedown or something like that. It may implied that
[13:56] Speaker 3: there was a new takedown I was going to unlock.
[13:58] Speaker 3: And then I did a stealth section right after it,
[14:01] Speaker 3: and I just played it the same way because it
[14:03] Speaker 3: seemed like it was very clearly signposted to be played
[14:07] Speaker 3: in the way that the game teaches you how to
[14:09] Speaker 3: play a stealth segment right at the beginning is okay, well,
[14:13] Speaker 3: there's two guys and they're talking, and one's going to
[14:15] Speaker 3: peel off that direction. One's going to peel off that direction,
[14:17] Speaker 3: and they're going to look at a wall for a
[14:19] Speaker 3: little bit and they'll give you time to go up
[14:22] Speaker 3: and er and then throw them in a box and
[14:25] Speaker 3: ad repeat. I didn't even I stopped looting the bodies
[14:28] Speaker 3: after a while because I didn't see a huge point
[14:31] Speaker 3: in it for me, because I just I had more
[14:34] Speaker 3: wetstones than I ever needed to keep my knife sharp,
[14:36] Speaker 3: and honestly, there wasn't a ton of combat or anything
[14:41] Speaker 3: to speak of that made me really want to engage
[14:44] Speaker 3: with that stuff. So I was really surprised. And then
[14:47] Speaker 3: to hear you come back and be like, oh, actually
[14:49] Speaker 3: that the game just does that. It's it's like that, yeah, yeah.
[14:54] Speaker 2: It's kind of a funny we're throwing knife thing. I
[14:56] Speaker 2: don't I had that night, like I unlocked a bunch
[14:58] Speaker 2: of knives, just trying different things out. I never got
[15:01] Speaker 2: a prompt or a tutorial or anything on the throwing
[15:03] Speaker 2: knife takedown, so I don't know if it just means
[15:05] Speaker 2: an animation that happens sometimes which I did never see,
[15:09] Speaker 2: or if there's like a whole system with that. But
[15:12] Speaker 2: I was like, well, okay, sure stealth is stealth. It's
[15:16] Speaker 2: like and it sucks because I recently just played Eric
[15:19] Speaker 2: Schulm The Stolen Dream and I gave that an eight,
[15:22] Speaker 2: and that was a really good stealth game that had
[15:26] Speaker 2: My biggest problems with it weren't with the stealth. The
[15:27] Speaker 2: stealth was amazing, and I really liked the way the
[15:30] Speaker 2: AI moved around the world and acted a part of
[15:33] Speaker 2: the world to like inhibit your stealthy progress. Like you said, Eric,
[15:36] Speaker 2: these guys are just like standing around to be taken out.
[15:40] Speaker 3: They blair witch themselves into the corner. Yes, so you
[15:42] Speaker 3: can take them out one by one and.
[15:47] Speaker 2: Before yeah, you throw one coin and they're like, oh
[15:51] Speaker 2: my god, I do see that coin.
[15:53] Speaker 3: I forget which game it was where developers started having
[15:55] Speaker 3: it so that if you threw the bottle and they
[15:57] Speaker 3: could see the trajectory of the bottle, then they ai
[16:00] Speaker 3: would be like, I saw you throw that across my
[16:03] Speaker 3: field of vision. Right, so if they saw kind of
[16:05] Speaker 3: go left to right across their path of vision, they
[16:07] Speaker 3: turn and be like, I saw you throw that, dude.
[16:10] Speaker 3: But in this game, I tried that and he just
[16:13] Speaker 3: looked immediately to the right was like what was that
[16:15] Speaker 3: over there? And I was like, oh, okay, gotcha all right? Yeah.
[16:18] Speaker 1: Is is stealth like a significant portion of the game
[16:21] Speaker 1: or is it just like especially bad.
[16:23] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's a major portion of the game.
[16:25] Speaker 2: Every sequence of the sequence is start as stealth, and
[16:30] Speaker 2: you can fail in stealth and then it becomes a shootout.
[16:33] Speaker 2: But like the premise of the game is like, we
[16:36] Speaker 2: aren't super abundant with guns. There's no Tommy guns. This
[16:38] Speaker 2: is like nineteen oh four, although like you can get
[16:42] Speaker 2: guns pretty easily if you want, Like, they put a
[16:45] Speaker 2: lot of focus on the knife aspect of Enzo the
[16:48] Speaker 2: protagonists like build, which is to say, like, if you
[16:53] Speaker 2: fail the stealth and you go into a shootout, there's
[16:55] Speaker 2: gonna be guns everywhere. You can buy your own guns,
[16:58] Speaker 2: but also every enemy drops the gun and you can
[17:01] Speaker 2: encounter every single gun in the game. Honestly, in like
[17:03] Speaker 2: one shootout, they just be dropping all their guns everywhere.
[17:06] Speaker 2: And the shootouts I enjoyed more than the stealth. But
[17:10] Speaker 2: the shootouts again are nothing. They're doing nothing unique or interesting.
[17:14] Speaker 2: They are just third person cover, pop out and shoot people.
[17:19] Speaker 2: The AI is not particularly good or like threatening. I
[17:25] Speaker 2: just happen to enjoy shooting guys in the head with
[17:27] Speaker 2: a shotgun more than slowly knifing them out, and I
[17:32] Speaker 2: can get through encounters faster by shooting. But I mean,
[17:36] Speaker 2: there's not much going on here in terms of combat,
[17:39] Speaker 2: whether you're stealthy or shooting.
[17:40] Speaker 3: Unfortunately, it's a bit of a bummer because I was
[17:44] Speaker 3: really excited about this game because when I think back
[17:47] Speaker 3: to some of my favorite open world games and also
[17:49] Speaker 3: kind of like crime based games, crime story games. Two
[17:53] Speaker 3: that immediately jump to mind are Sleeping Dogs and Yakuza
[17:56] Speaker 3: games that I think make really good use of the
[17:59] Speaker 3: fact that gun exist but are not prevalent, and it
[18:02] Speaker 3: creates almost a like, yeah, a sliding scale of how
[18:07] Speaker 3: dangerous weapons are. And when you introduce a gun like
[18:10] Speaker 3: that carries consequences, that carries a significant impact to the story.
[18:15] Speaker 3: People can die now instead of just like punching each other.
[18:18] Speaker 3: And Mafia I thought was going to do that for
[18:20] Speaker 3: a while. I did think it was goofy how often
[18:22] Speaker 3: you could kind of get slashed with a knife and
[18:24] Speaker 3: still be walking around later. I was like, I don't
[18:27] Speaker 3: I don't think that's like something you just brush off, dude.
[18:31] Speaker 3: That I saw your.
[18:34] Speaker 2: Uh comedically large in sentences. So like you you buy
[18:37] Speaker 2: and it looks like a little switchblade, and then you
[18:39] Speaker 2: go out there and he whips it out and it's
[18:40] Speaker 2: it's like an eight inch blade, and I'm like, that one.
[18:43] Speaker 2: That's a one shot kill.
[18:44] Speaker 3: Right, It's a decent blade. Yeah, And so I was
[18:46] Speaker 3: I was kind of excited for that aspect. I was like, Okay,
[18:48] Speaker 3: we're going to scale it back. Even when you watch,
[18:51] Speaker 3: you know, a mob movie, you know when somebody pulls
[18:55] Speaker 3: a gun. Maybe they pull a gun, but when somebody
[18:56] Speaker 3: actually shoots it and uses it, that is an escalation,
[19:00] Speaker 3: that is a heightening and games often try to do that.
[19:03] Speaker 3: But then video games are video games, so you're you're
[19:06] Speaker 3: going to shoot people because that's the video gamey like
[19:09] Speaker 3: brain go birth thing that happens. And I was really
[19:12] Speaker 3: excited for Mafia to kind of play around in that space,
[19:15] Speaker 3: and it seems like it just didn't do much with
[19:18] Speaker 3: the potential there.
[19:20] Speaker 2: Yeah, they do try to play into that space a
[19:23] Speaker 2: little bit with what I'll call boss fights. It's one
[19:27] Speaker 2: one on one knife tools, which is cool because that
[19:29] Speaker 2: does go back to like Sicilian mob history. They were
[19:31] Speaker 2: big on knives and like it was an honorable fight
[19:35] Speaker 2: to like drop your weapons and fight each other with knives.
[19:39] Speaker 2: But the game doesn't really like play into that enough.
[19:42] Speaker 2: I'm not sure if I just know that because of
[19:44] Speaker 2: my history with Italy or if the game is does
[19:46] Speaker 2: a good job of explaining that, because often you like,
[19:49] Speaker 2: my dude's carrying a shotgun on his back, like a
[19:52] Speaker 2: large shotgun. He's got a pistol shotgun and my knife
[19:54] Speaker 2: and then I'm about to go fight this guy and
[19:57] Speaker 2: all of a sudden, those are gone and we just
[19:58] Speaker 2: got knives out. I'm like, well, hold on, I'm already
[20:01] Speaker 2: doing bad things. I just murdered like twenty people with
[20:04] Speaker 2: a gun. I have no problem just blowing your face
[20:07] Speaker 2: off with a shotgun. Which there are other moments in
[20:09] Speaker 2: the game where you have these big enemies that you
[20:11] Speaker 2: think you would get an honorable death and the game's like, nah,
[20:13] Speaker 2: shoot them in the head. So it was kind of
[20:15] Speaker 2: like funny to be like, Okay, I guess we're doing
[20:17] Speaker 2: a knife duel now because we have to do a
[20:19] Speaker 2: knife tool, which, like the rest of the game, the
[20:22] Speaker 2: first knife duel you do is going to be the
[20:24] Speaker 2: same as the last knife duel. There is a perry
[20:27] Speaker 2: window that's pretty simple to hit. There is a evade window,
[20:31] Speaker 2: which there's a big light like a slash on their
[20:34] Speaker 2: arm that lets you know you can evade, and you
[20:36] Speaker 2: just want a perfect dodge and perfect parry so that
[20:38] Speaker 2: you can counter with big damage. And other than that,
[20:41] Speaker 2: you're just thrusting with triangle and slashing with circle and
[20:44] Speaker 2: sometimes breaking their guard with R one. They're kind of
[20:48] Speaker 2: like they're so repetitive though, they every single fight. When
[20:53] Speaker 2: you get to halfway health, there's like a cut scene
[20:55] Speaker 2: where they struggle and like, oh, Enzo is not going
[20:58] Speaker 2: to make it, and then nope, you got to slam
[21:00] Speaker 2: square over and over and over and oh he gets
[21:02] Speaker 2: out of it, and now it's time for the second
[21:04] Speaker 2: phase of the fight. No different from the first. Just
[21:06] Speaker 2: a kind of old school style QT cut scene in
[21:10] Speaker 2: the middle, which is fine, But whenever you do that,
[21:12] Speaker 2: like fifteen times across fifteen hours, it's like, what are
[21:15] Speaker 2: we doing here? Why do we need to have this
[21:17] Speaker 2: many knife fights? And they don't work?
[21:20] Speaker 3: It's like the makeshie, you're awake?
[21:22] Speaker 1: Check right?
[21:23] Speaker 3: Yeah honestly, yeah, yeah, you're still there.
[21:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you gotta can I ask.
[21:29] Speaker 1: What it is about like the original Mafia games that
[21:33] Speaker 1: you liked so much that you feel is like not
[21:35] Speaker 1: present here or is just done not as good?
[21:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, honestly, I think and I kind of touched on
[21:40] Speaker 2: this in my review a little bit. As much as
[21:42] Speaker 2: I love Italian countryside and like Sicily in the early
[21:46] Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds, I do think the environment is kind of
[21:49] Speaker 2: a detriment to the game, because when you think of Mafia,
[21:53] Speaker 2: like it's fun driving around on these like prohibition eraic
[21:56] Speaker 2: cars and going into flashy banks and casinos and underground
[21:59] Speaker 2: bars and the environments like Scream Mafia, and they give
[22:02] Speaker 2: you some some cool stuff. And there are some cool
[22:04] Speaker 2: environments in Sicily, don't get me wrong, But for the
[22:06] Speaker 2: most part, you're like traversing around dilapidated buildings and like
[22:11] Speaker 2: Roman aggression ruins that are like kind of destroyed and
[22:14] Speaker 2: that kind of all looks similar at a certain point,
[22:17] Speaker 2: and you're just kind of like shooting out in the open.
[22:18] Speaker 2: I've seen other reviewers call this game like almost like
[22:21] Speaker 2: a Western, and I think that's a really good way
[22:24] Speaker 2: to parse It's like it does feel more like a
[22:26] Speaker 2: Western than a mob adventure game, which is fine and stuff,
[22:31] Speaker 2: but for me, I was just kind of missing like
[22:33] Speaker 2: the spirit of the Mob and Mafia one. You're kicking
[22:36] Speaker 2: down a door with Tommy gun in your hand and
[22:38] Speaker 2: just like unloading on the place Scarface style that kind
[22:41] Speaker 2: of thing. Like you're in these flashy environments that make
[22:44] Speaker 2: you feel like you're coming up in the world as
[22:46] Speaker 2: a Mafia member, and that's something I really appreciated, and
[22:49] Speaker 2: I just think ultimately, like the other the metropolis environments
[22:53] Speaker 2: that are in the games are probably just better, Like
[22:55] Speaker 2: they just work better for these type this type of storytelling,
[22:58] Speaker 2: especially Mafia Definitive edition that Lost Haven, which is like
[23:01] Speaker 2: Chicago esque. Basically it's bright neon lights, the water's reflecting
[23:06] Speaker 2: off the streets, the car, it's fun to drive around
[23:08] Speaker 2: the cars, and there's like a radio that plays like
[23:11] Speaker 2: era specific music. It just gets the vibe. It's a
[23:15] Speaker 2: it's a much better vie vibe from Afia, and I
[23:19] Speaker 2: guess there's no way to get around that if you're
[23:21] Speaker 2: going this far back in the timeline, like nineteen hundred.
[23:23] Speaker 2: Sicily is a place that's well documented. You can see
[23:26] Speaker 2: that it is not Chicago or New York. But ultimately
[23:30] Speaker 2: it kind of just as much as I love Sicily
[23:32] Speaker 2: and the environment, it does take away from the Mob
[23:35] Speaker 2: and Mafia aspect of the game. But yeah, it's yeah,
[23:42] Speaker 2: it's it's a mostly just forgettable game for me, which
[23:45] Speaker 2: sucks because like, I really do enjoy these games and
[23:48] Speaker 2: I would like a reason to jump back in. But
[23:51] Speaker 2: the story isn't all that compelling, the characters aren't all
[23:54] Speaker 2: that compelling. You're you're pretty much getting your like cliche
[23:56] Speaker 2: trope cast here. There's like a trophy romance, although very
[24:01] Speaker 2: good Italian woman. I'm saying I love Italian.
[24:06] Speaker 1: It was it was gonna be a five, but every
[24:08] Speaker 1: every Italian woman on the screen bumped it up to
[24:11] Speaker 1: us six.
[24:12] Speaker 2: I have three screenshots on my computer from this game,
[24:15] Speaker 2: and all three are the same.
[24:18] Speaker 1: We pull up we both less his screenshots and it's
[24:21] Speaker 1: just like his wife's face photoshopped onto all of the
[24:24] Speaker 1: women in the game.
[24:25] Speaker 2: Like wow, shout out Italian, shout out, shout out. Is
[24:30] Speaker 2: there anything else I'm missing at this game? I don't
[24:33] Speaker 2: think so. I think it had a lot of potential.
[24:37] Speaker 2: I was really rooting for it. Six isn't the worst
[24:40] Speaker 2: score ever. I do think like I spent and this
[24:42] Speaker 2: is a fifty dollars game too, we don't really I'm
[24:44] Speaker 2: not really interested in like trying to like, how how
[24:47] Speaker 2: long was it? Like twelve to fifteen hours? Okay, yeah,
[24:52] Speaker 2: you could probably beat it faster too. I try to
[24:54] Speaker 2: do some due diligence with like reviewing it. But I
[24:57] Speaker 2: bet if you're stuck to just like fool on mainline,
[25:00] Speaker 2: like maybe ten hours. But yeah, it's a fifty dollars game,
[25:04] Speaker 2: so like budget title or whatever you want to call it.
[25:06] Speaker 2: But I don't really I don't try to like quanticize
[25:09] Speaker 2: that into my review, like games good or not without
[25:12] Speaker 2: being fifty bucks. But like, if you're fine with like
[25:15] Speaker 2: a fine Mafia game at fifty bucks, sure go for it.
[25:19] Speaker 2: If this was like twenty bucks, yeah, easy recommend. It's
[25:21] Speaker 2: a fun, little weekend whatever game. I just think, set
[25:26] Speaker 2: your expectations because it's not. It's not at the part
[25:28] Speaker 2: with the rest of the Mafia games, and I wish
[25:32] Speaker 2: it was. I wish it was. I hope this is
[25:33] Speaker 2: not like a death nail in the Mafia series. I
[25:36] Speaker 2: do think there are some cool ideas here that the
[25:39] Speaker 2: team could build on. I do think there's a lot
[25:41] Speaker 2: more storytelling to be had in this universe, and they
[25:43] Speaker 2: clearly care about it. But yeah, we'll see I hope.
[25:48] Speaker 2: I hope it sells well. I guess despite me, I'm
[25:50] Speaker 2: not ensuring that, which is weird to say, but like
[25:53] Speaker 2: I love it.
[25:53] Speaker 1: It is weird, and it is weird to be a
[25:56] Speaker 1: critic and also a fan of a thing of Like
[26:00] Speaker 1: often I review a game and I'm like, this one's
[26:02] Speaker 1: not it, but they should make another one, and if
[26:04] Speaker 1: they learn from this one, it'll be better. But it's
[26:06] Speaker 1: hard to be like it's a six out of ten,
[26:09] Speaker 1: and then what happens happened more or less in line.
[26:13] Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not nearly as far to feel like I
[26:15] Speaker 3: could definitively put my own score on the paper. But
[26:19] Speaker 3: when I was talking to Wesley about this stuff, I
[26:22] Speaker 3: was kind of thinking about the parts that I'd liked
[26:25] Speaker 3: so far and the parts that I hadn't liked so far,
[26:27] Speaker 3: and it sounded like the parts that I hadn't liked
[26:30] Speaker 3: so far would continue to propagate, mainly the kind of
[26:34] Speaker 3: missions that I didn't really like. I don't love a
[26:37] Speaker 3: mission where you described it super well in your review, Wesley,
[26:41] Speaker 3: that you get on a horse, go somewhere, talk to somebody,
[26:46] Speaker 3: Get back on your horse, go somewhere, talk to somebody,
[26:50] Speaker 3: and it's like, compared to like a Sorkin walk in
[26:52] Speaker 3: talk is just a ride and talk where you're just
[26:55] Speaker 3: going from place to place to place in talking the
[26:57] Speaker 3: whole time. And I think that became a staple of
[27:01] Speaker 3: open world games, especially you know, games like Red Dead
[27:05] Speaker 3: love that stuff, and I think it can work to
[27:07] Speaker 3: varying degrees, but it can weigh on you too, especially
[27:11] Speaker 3: if the things you're doing when you get to a
[27:13] Speaker 3: place are not inherently interesting. You're kind of just showing
[27:16] Speaker 3: up and standing there while two characters talk or watching
[27:19] Speaker 3: a cut scene and then leaving. It's like, Okay. There
[27:22] Speaker 3: was one cool moment in one of those where it
[27:25] Speaker 3: was when you're first given a gun and you're told
[27:29] Speaker 3: to basically intimidate someone with it. So in the middle
[27:31] Speaker 3: of talking, you pull the gun out and you point
[27:34] Speaker 3: it at somebody and then he's like, he's not giving
[27:38] Speaker 3: up the money that you need to collect, and so
[27:40] Speaker 3: the guy's like, you know what to do, and then
[27:42] Speaker 3: the objective thing is like, hey pointed at his son,
[27:46] Speaker 3: and it's like, okay, now we're doing like mob stuff.
[27:48] Speaker 3: Now we're doing and I imagine that doesn't happen very
[27:51] Speaker 3: often in the rest of the game. That felt like
[27:53] Speaker 3: a very mission specific moment. Yeah, but that stuff is cool,
[27:58] Speaker 3: but it sounds like there's not enough of it to
[28:00] Speaker 3: carry the full game. And that's that's kind of a bummer,
[28:05] Speaker 3: because I do I liked Mafia three more than most.
[28:08] Speaker 3: I think that was actually my personal favorite in the series.
[28:11] Speaker 3: I think Mafia two is okay. I never played Mafia one.
[28:13] Speaker 3: I should go back and rectify that at some point,
[28:15] Speaker 3: But I actually liked the story and the setting and
[28:18] Speaker 3: the theme of Mafia three a lot. It had a
[28:20] Speaker 3: decent time with the action of it too, Yeah, more
[28:23] Speaker 3: than most.
[28:24] Speaker 2: Ocky three story is like that might be the best.
[28:26] Speaker 2: It's awesome, and the things they do with like that
[28:28] Speaker 2: period of history is really cool. It just it was
[28:31] Speaker 2: like a product of its time, twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen,
[28:34] Speaker 2: like Ubisoft Checklist type open world, which is yeah.
[28:38] Speaker 3: Which is weird because Mafia the Old Country feels like
[28:42] Speaker 3: a product of that time in some ways, like it
[28:45] Speaker 3: really reminds me of playing a game from that era,
[28:49] Speaker 3: you know, a decade ago or so. And in some ways,
[28:53] Speaker 3: I think we are seeing an almost revival of the
[28:56] Speaker 3: Xbox three sixty mindset of here's this tight, focused, quirky
[29:01] Speaker 3: single player action game. We're moving away from like the
[29:04] Speaker 3: super Prestige Triple A games, and we're moving back to
[29:07] Speaker 3: sort of like reasonably scoped and budgeted single player action games.
[29:12] Speaker 3: And I like that a lot. I think there's some
[29:13] Speaker 3: cool games coming out because of that. But I don't
[29:15] Speaker 3: know if Mafia handled the jump so well, and I
[29:20] Speaker 3: do hope there's more because I like a good mob story.
[29:24] Speaker 3: Man it's it's good, and I was really excited for
[29:26] Speaker 3: this one. You know, I'm a little bit basic and
[29:29] Speaker 3: all that, but I love Godfather Part two, I love Veto,
[29:33] Speaker 3: I love all of that stuff, so I was really
[29:35] Speaker 3: hoping for some of that to come through here.
[29:38] Speaker 2: Yeah. Another thing you mentioned about the the riding on
[29:41] Speaker 2: the horse or like in a car and going from
[29:43] Speaker 2: place to places. There's like interesting conversations that happen atop
[29:47] Speaker 2: those horses. It's kind of like b stuff. But then
[29:49] Speaker 2: the game also just says like it puts a little
[29:52] Speaker 2: prompt like skip drive or skip.
[29:55] Speaker 1: Look or whatever.
[29:55] Speaker 2: Oh interesting, So I'm like, okay, well are you even
[29:59] Speaker 2: like confident and the riding here or like like it's
[30:02] Speaker 2: like a war of two worlds. Like one group's like, well,
[30:05] Speaker 2: people don't want to drive for ten minutes to the
[30:07] Speaker 2: next destination and yeah, and then the riders are like,
[30:09] Speaker 2: well we wrote really good dialogue. And I was like,
[30:11] Speaker 2: it was just weird to see that. And I often
[30:15] Speaker 2: end up did skipping because I was like, well, if
[30:17] Speaker 2: they don't want me to drive, if they're not interested
[30:19] Speaker 2: in giving me something for fifteen minutes, then I will
[30:21] Speaker 2: because sometimes the conversation was good they would go the
[30:24] Speaker 2: whole fifteen minute drive and then other times it would
[30:26] Speaker 2: be like thirty seconds and then it's just quiet and
[30:27] Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, well yeah, Usually in the countryside is.
[30:31] Speaker 3: In like La Noir, they would do it to where
[30:33] Speaker 3: they would do the conversation and then when it ended,
[30:35] Speaker 3: the little thing would pop up and be like, hey,
[30:37] Speaker 3: do you want to finish the ride?
[30:38] Speaker 2: Like yeah, no, not this this is just like skip
[30:41] Speaker 2: it all if you want. Who cares last thing? None
[30:45] Speaker 2: of this is in my review because this is like
[30:48] Speaker 2: I don't know, I guess experimental tech on PC. But
[30:50] Speaker 2: like the DLS and the video stuff is like kind
[30:54] Speaker 2: of borked right now. If you use the frame generation
[30:58] Speaker 2: stuff to like get your frame rate up, it's a mess.
[31:02] Speaker 2: It gets very blurry and like kind of sludgy on
[31:04] Speaker 2: the outsides, and the captions and ANYUI on the screen
[31:08] Speaker 2: gets real shaking weird. Don't recommend. And then the DLS
[31:11] Speaker 2: like resolution scaling stuff is pretty wonky too. Pretty much,
[31:16] Speaker 2: just if you're going to use any of the DLS
[31:18] Speaker 2: into stuff like DLSS stuff, your game's going to be
[31:22] Speaker 2: a little weird sometimes. And also me and Eric both
[31:27] Speaker 2: have this problem. I don't think it has to do
[31:28] Speaker 2: with like the experimental tech. I think it's just the
[31:30] Speaker 2: game if you're playing on a frame rate higher than
[31:32] Speaker 2: thirty or uncap like I was. For example, when the
[31:35] Speaker 2: cutscenes which go down to thirty half and every single
[31:38] Speaker 2: time it will have a weird three second stutter where
[31:41] Speaker 2: it's like trying to jump from one hundred and twenty
[31:43] Speaker 2: frames to thirty. Funny, it sometimes ruins very impactful moments
[31:48] Speaker 2: at other times and obviously just ugly to look at.
[31:52] Speaker 2: But I wouldn't say it's like broken on PC or anything,
[31:55] Speaker 2: but be aware of those issues.
[31:57] Speaker 3: Yeah, I was playing uncapped. I was joking with Wesley
[31:59] Speaker 3: that my whole week has been playing the game of
[32:02] Speaker 3: how do I make this look good? Because you know,
[32:05] Speaker 3: I'm over here recording b roll and everything the b
[32:08] Speaker 3: role that you're probably watching on whichever side of the
[32:10] Speaker 3: screen that I put it on. But there was all
[32:14] Speaker 3: kinds of stuff with screen dooring faces on some of
[32:18] Speaker 3: them weird pop in depending on what DLSS I was using,
[32:22] Speaker 3: because it has I believe FSR, DLSS and whatever unreals
[32:29] Speaker 3: version is all as options, and I think it's worth
[32:33] Speaker 3: mentioning for PC specifically because you have to flip through
[32:37] Speaker 3: some weird settings and toggles to turn it off. Like
[32:41] Speaker 3: getting to the point where everything is turned off was
[32:44] Speaker 3: actually kind of difficult to find in the menus compared
[32:48] Speaker 3: to other games that have had those options before. It
[32:51] Speaker 3: seems like they wanted the player to use them. And
[32:54] Speaker 3: every time I used auto detect to kind of say like, okay,
[32:56] Speaker 3: well recommend me my system settings based on what I have,
[32:59] Speaker 3: which is pretty beefy. I've got a forty seventy super
[33:03] Speaker 3: in mind and a pretty decent CPU. And it was
[33:08] Speaker 3: still it was showing on the meter like you have
[33:10] Speaker 3: eleven gigs a video card available, you're gonna use two.
[33:15] Speaker 3: And I was like, what are what are you talking about? Well,
[33:18] Speaker 3: why are we doing it this way? And it would
[33:19] Speaker 3: always be like, oh, just use the DLSS, use the FSR,
[33:24] Speaker 3: It'll reduce the load. And then you would have weird effects,
[33:26] Speaker 3: weird hair, weird faces, screen dooring during pivotal moments, and
[33:31] Speaker 3: I was having to go back and re record scenes
[33:34] Speaker 3: because I was like, that looked not good. That didn't
[33:37] Speaker 3: look good. So I'm curious to see if once this
[33:41] Speaker 3: game is out and open, if there'll be driver updates,
[33:44] Speaker 3: you know, there's always kind of Day one graphics drivers
[33:47] Speaker 3: or even Day plus five graphics drivers that kind of
[33:50] Speaker 3: try to tune this. But I am curious to see
[33:53] Speaker 3: what the long tail on this looks like, what the
[33:55] Speaker 3: Digital found retake on it looks.
[33:57] Speaker 2: Like, yeah, was shut out. They just went chat last week.
[34:02] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[34:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, of note only Steam codes for pre release, so
[34:06] Speaker 2: like they're trying. They have a PS four pro PS
[34:10] Speaker 2: five pro patch coming and on PS five base they
[34:12] Speaker 2: want performance to be sixty fps, but they weren't sure
[34:15] Speaker 2: if they were going to hit that. From what I've
[34:18] Speaker 2: read online, none of us at staff have codes for consoles,
[34:21] Speaker 2: so like, yeah, wait, maybe wait for Digital Foundry or
[34:25] Speaker 2: you're going to be testing it yourself. PC is a
[34:28] Speaker 2: little weird. I do think PCs mostly fine though, like
[34:30] Speaker 2: it's there are some weirdness to it. It's not like unplayable,
[34:34] Speaker 2: but like it definitely could use some work. No idea
[34:36] Speaker 2: on consoles though, so go with your own risk there. Yeah,
[34:42] Speaker 2: that's that's Mafia. It's a It's a six out of
[34:44] Speaker 2: ten and probably the most six out of ten game
[34:46] Speaker 2: I've played in a minute.
[34:48] Speaker 1: I think my one contribution to the end of that
[34:51] Speaker 1: conversation is that a walk and talk on horses should
[34:54] Speaker 1: be called a canter and banter. Good.
[34:57] Speaker 3: I like that.
[34:57] Speaker 1: Good?
[34:58] Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, okay, man, Well next up, I'm gonna take
[35:06] Speaker 5: the reins, so to speak, keeping on the horse theme
[35:09] Speaker 5: and talk about I went to gen Con, which I
[35:13] Speaker 5: had never been to before, honestly hadn't even heard of
[35:15] Speaker 5: until a few years ago, which is a big board
[35:18] Speaker 5: game and tabletop convention in Indianapolis. And I live in Dayton, Ohio,
[35:24] Speaker 5: and so I learned that it was a thing, and
[35:26] Speaker 5: I was like, oh, I can just drive there.
[35:27] Speaker 1: I don't need to like approve travel or hotel or
[35:30] Speaker 1: anything like. I can just go for a few days
[35:33] Speaker 1: and see what it is. Uh So I did that.
[35:35] Speaker 1: And I don't know if either of you have ever
[35:37] Speaker 1: been to gen Con or like a similar large convention.
[35:42] Speaker 1: But the thing I didn't realize. So I've been to
[35:45] Speaker 1: like local conventions and stuff before. There's one super since
[35:50] Speaker 1: the Expo, which like a local gaming convention. They've invited
[35:54] Speaker 1: me to the They've only I think it's only existed
[35:57] Speaker 1: two years, and I've been both years. But that's just
[36:00] Speaker 1: you know, you walk in and there's a bunch of
[36:01] Speaker 1: booths and people are selling you know, their mercher they're
[36:05] Speaker 1: showing off pictures of I don't know, there aren't like
[36:07] Speaker 1: game developers there usually, but like you don't have tournaments
[36:10] Speaker 1: and everywhere, would you say.
[36:13] Speaker 2: Three D printed dragons everywhere?
[36:14] Speaker 1: If it's like yes, definitely, three D printed dragons, three
[36:18] Speaker 1: D printed eggs everything, And yeah, there's like meet and greets,
[36:24] Speaker 1: there's you know, fighting game tournaments or whatever. Gen Con
[36:31] Speaker 1: has kind of what I was expecting where it's like
[36:33] Speaker 1: there's you know, like hundreds of booths of all these
[36:36] Speaker 1: different like board game publishers and developers that are like
[36:39] Speaker 1: we make Wingspan, we make Everdell, we make you know, Magic.
[36:44] Speaker 1: The gathering obviously, which is the coast, is there in
[36:46] Speaker 1: a big presence, all sorts of stuff like that. But
[36:49] Speaker 1: the thing I didn't know about gen Con is it
[36:51] Speaker 1: has like thousands and thousands of events you sign up for.
[36:54] Speaker 1: There's people that have you know, panels and seminars of
[36:58] Speaker 1: like you know, D and D, people that stream playing
[37:01] Speaker 1: D and D. They'll do a live at live show
[37:02] Speaker 1: there or other related things. There's board game designers we'll
[37:06] Speaker 1: talk about their thing, and then there's also just so
[37:08] Speaker 1: many places you can sign up to just play board games.
[37:12] Speaker 1: So if there's a thing where it's like, oh, I
[37:14] Speaker 1: wanted to play this game and no one will ever
[37:15] Speaker 1: play it with me, you can go to gen con
[37:18] Speaker 1: and just sign up for a table and then just
[37:19] Speaker 1: sit at the table and then play with people. And
[37:22] Speaker 1: it works for stuff where it's like a game you
[37:24] Speaker 1: haven't bought a game. You can't find people for a
[37:27] Speaker 1: game like you know, D and D where you're like,
[37:29] Speaker 1: I don't want to write my own thing and none
[37:31] Speaker 1: of us want a DM. But we can just go
[37:33] Speaker 1: to the convention and we can all play the table together.
[37:36] Speaker 1: So it's really cool. And the first day I went,
[37:41] Speaker 1: I had an appointment. I saw a panel and it
[37:45] Speaker 1: was Eric Lang, who is a guy I didn't really know.
[37:48] Speaker 1: He did a game called Blood Rager, which I think
[37:51] Speaker 1: is his most well known thing. I don't know. All right,
[37:53] Speaker 1: First of all, let me back up real quick. All right,
[37:54] Speaker 1: you guys like board game people. I don't know if
[37:56] Speaker 1: that's a.
[37:58] Speaker 3: I'm a card game person, not a board game person.
[38:03] Speaker 1: Well represented here, Wes. Do you have like favorite board
[38:05] Speaker 1: games off top of your head?
[38:07] Speaker 2: I really like Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven, Games of Night City,
[38:11] Speaker 2: although that one's kind of hard to wrestle people to
[38:13] Speaker 2: play together for because it's like a campaign focused. Yeah,
[38:16] Speaker 2: tabletop game, the Bloodborne TTRPG is really good. And then
[38:21] Speaker 2: for like more casual things like Photosynthesis. Wingspan obviously is
[38:26] Speaker 2: a classic splendor pretty much like a lot of those.
[38:31] Speaker 2: Like I have a friend and he comes over once
[38:33] Speaker 2: a month and we just pick like five or six
[38:36] Speaker 2: random board games we have and play for hours, and yeah,
[38:40] Speaker 2: it's great. Even Villainous, Like we play a lot of
[38:42] Speaker 2: Villainous because they just keep putting out infinite sets of
[38:45] Speaker 2: that game. Jesus Christ, they.
[38:47] Speaker 1: Have They have a new one. I don't know if
[38:48] Speaker 1: you know about it, West, but it is Davy Jones.
[38:52] Speaker 2: My friend that I play with literally today went and
[38:55] Speaker 2: bought it and sent me a picture. It's David Jones
[38:57] Speaker 2: and krakatoa from Moana, the two Tomato guys. Tomato, Yeah, Tomato,
[39:03] Speaker 2: which is awesome, very cool. I like that those two
[39:06] Speaker 2: are the ones in the.
[39:07] Speaker 1: Set, very very West.
[39:09] Speaker 2: The Yes, so I love the board game's rule. Board
[39:11] Speaker 2: games are great cool.
[39:14] Speaker 1: Yeah, So I was gonna say, I went to a
[39:15] Speaker 1: panel and it was one guy did that Elizabeth Hargrave,
[39:18] Speaker 1: who's the designer of Wingspan, so it was like very
[39:21] Speaker 1: excited to see her. And then also Joe mangan Yellow,
[39:24] Speaker 1: who is like an actual big actor guy but also
[39:29] Speaker 1: like death Stroke and the Snyder credits scene he's flashed
[39:34] Speaker 1: Thompson in two thousand and two Spider Man.
[39:39] Speaker 2: He's ex husband.
[39:41] Speaker 1: Ex husband. Yes, I did. I did post a picture
[39:43] Speaker 1: with him, and a lot of people are like, well,
[39:45] Speaker 1: you met Sufia Bergar's husband. I was like, I got
[39:47] Speaker 1: news for you anyways, Uh, yeah, it was. It was
[39:52] Speaker 1: a panel with the three of them. It was kind
[39:54] Speaker 1: of an awkward panel because Eric, the guy didn't know
[40:01] Speaker 1: super nice, super Fine would jump on questions and talk
[40:03] Speaker 1: for a long time about them. Elizabeth didn't get as
[40:08] Speaker 1: much time to say stuff, and it's a thing where
[40:10] Speaker 1: I wish that the panel host had kind of like
[40:13] Speaker 1: probed her a little bit or trying to get her
[40:15] Speaker 1: to open up or make her more comfortable about the
[40:17] Speaker 1: whole thing. And then there's like an interesting thing with
[40:20] Speaker 1: Joe where he would he would say stuff and I
[40:25] Speaker 1: hear that he's like celebrity and then also board game person,
[40:28] Speaker 1: and I'm like that's fine, those two things can coexist.
[40:30] Speaker 1: I'm totally cool talking about the board game stuff, and
[40:33] Speaker 1: it was a funny thing where anytime he would mention
[40:35] Speaker 1: like doing Magic Mike, it would get like an enormous
[40:39] Speaker 1: uproar of laughter from the crowd. And it wasn't like
[40:43] Speaker 1: they were making fun of him or like a thing
[40:46] Speaker 1: he would. He kind of played it for comedic effect
[40:48] Speaker 1: where he's like, no one thought the guy from Magic
[40:50] Speaker 1: Mike would be into this stuff. And to me it
[40:52] Speaker 1: was a thing where I was like, I feel like
[40:53] Speaker 1: we're still like we can get I'm past that, I
[40:56] Speaker 1: get it those two things can exist. I want to
[40:58] Speaker 1: like hear what he thinks about games and instead its yes,
[41:02] Speaker 1: exactly has a bit obviously he's like playing the bid
[41:05] Speaker 1: a little too often. Yes, And I think I think
[41:08] Speaker 1: he knows like to be honest, and I'm like psychoanizing him.
[41:11] Speaker 1: I don't know him as a person, so this nother
[41:13] Speaker 1: thing I kind of read a level of kind of
[41:18] Speaker 1: an insecurity of him of being like because because uh,
[41:23] Speaker 1: you know, nerd culture is famously like gate keepy, So
[41:26] Speaker 1: I do think there is a thing of like, well
[41:28] Speaker 1: you want to come and like play that you're a
[41:30] Speaker 1: real nerd like us, but like we are the real
[41:33] Speaker 1: nerds that did this and do all this stuff all
[41:34] Speaker 1: the time you're off at your big Hollywood parties, And
[41:36] Speaker 1: I feel like, I don't know if he he thinks
[41:39] Speaker 1: he's perceived that way or he has been told that
[41:41] Speaker 1: he's perceived that way, but I did, I don't know.
[41:44] Speaker 1: I kind of picked up from him, but I got
[41:48] Speaker 1: I got uh two autographs from Elizabeth Hargrave, which was
[41:52] Speaker 1: very exciting. And then after that I went and I
[41:54] Speaker 1: played Hero Quest to Joe Magan Yellow because he wrote
[41:57] Speaker 1: an expansion to the game here requests, not a game
[42:00] Speaker 1: I had played before, and I was embarrassed about that,
[42:02] Speaker 1: but then found out knowing at the table like the request,
[42:05] Speaker 1: so I felt a lot better. And it's like a
[42:08] Speaker 1: it's like a dungeon crawler, and it comes with like
[42:11] Speaker 1: a big board and these like preset scenarios and basically
[42:14] Speaker 1: every time you open a door, like on this big
[42:17] Speaker 1: grid of board, the person that's behind like the DM screen,
[42:22] Speaker 1: which is what Joe is doing, they'll like place down
[42:24] Speaker 1: the items, or like, Okay, this is a hallway and
[42:26] Speaker 1: these are the doors on either side of the hallway,
[42:28] Speaker 1: or like this is what's in this room. It's like
[42:30] Speaker 1: a you know, alchemist shop or whatever. So it's like
[42:32] Speaker 1: an interesting dungeon crawling, exploring type thing. And I honestly
[42:39] Speaker 1: am not I'm not a judge for whether it was
[42:40] Speaker 1: a really good expansion or not because it was literally
[42:43] Speaker 1: my first ever exposure to the game. But we did
[42:46] Speaker 1: have fun and we liked it.
[42:48] Speaker 2: Did it take place in Las Vegas and like behind
[42:51] Speaker 2: this door was a scantily clad man, great ass.
[42:55] Speaker 3: It took place in.
[42:58] Speaker 1: Uh tavern and he he introduced a bunch of people
[43:02] Speaker 1: again he wrote it's like called Joe Manganiello's Crypt of
[43:05] Speaker 1: Perpetual Darkness, I think is the title, and he kept
[43:09] Speaker 1: introducing people that had Philadelphia accents, which I assume is
[43:12] Speaker 1: because he's from Philadelphia. I was I was like kind
[43:17] Speaker 1: of role playing as my character, but I had chose
[43:19] Speaker 1: a voice that was very similar to mine, and he
[43:21] Speaker 1: kept doing committing to voices no one else at the
[43:24] Speaker 1: table was. I was like, oh, man, I should have
[43:25] Speaker 1: like I should have really gone for it because I
[43:27] Speaker 1: don't want him to feel left out, and just my
[43:29] Speaker 1: uh every time he put a goblin down on the board,
[43:34] Speaker 1: he went ah. He was talking to his completely normal voice.
[43:37] Speaker 1: He never did a goblin voice, but anytime he placed
[43:40] Speaker 1: a goblin down as if it was like a soundboard
[43:42] Speaker 1: effect to go like, ah, if.
[43:44] Speaker 3: I thought that was you kind of have to. I
[43:45] Speaker 3: think if you're like putting down a funky little goblin guy,
[43:48] Speaker 3: you have to make like a noise with it. It's
[43:50] Speaker 3: like when the thing like you put a pair of
[43:53] Speaker 3: tongs out and you tell someone to pick them up,
[43:55] Speaker 3: and they always give them a little.
[43:56] Speaker 1: Like click click click click. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to,
[43:59] Speaker 1: you have to. I fully, yeah, I was like I
[44:01] Speaker 1: could tell he it was a thing where it's like
[44:03] Speaker 1: if I called him out on it, I think he
[44:05] Speaker 1: would not realize he was doing it every single time.
[44:09] Speaker 1: Lizard bring and also he had he also had a
[44:13] Speaker 1: little tiny chiuahua named Bubbles with him, which was very nice.
[44:16] Speaker 1: Bubbles was just limply sitting on his lap the whole time.
[44:21] Speaker 1: Great dog.
[44:22] Speaker 2: He's like really big into D and D right, like
[44:24] Speaker 2: that's his main thing. Like he spends a lot of
[44:26] Speaker 2: money on his basement and invites celebrities like Vin diesel
[44:30] Speaker 2: Over and they played celebrity D and D often.
[44:34] Speaker 1: Uh, I don't I don't know how often he plays
[44:36] Speaker 1: with like celebrities specifically, but I do know that's like
[44:38] Speaker 1: a whole thing with him. And he's like, there's a
[44:41] Speaker 1: D and D setting dragon Lance, and he's been he's
[44:44] Speaker 1: adapting dragon Lance into a TV series, and he was
[44:47] Speaker 1: talking about how he's like doing that right now. It
[44:50] Speaker 1: was funny in the panel hearing all the board game
[44:52] Speaker 1: designers talk about their inspirations, and he was like, yeah,
[44:57] Speaker 1: you know, I grew up and I playing D and
[45:00] Speaker 1: D and hero Quest and all these like epic fantasy stories,
[45:03] Speaker 1: and I just really liked this part of my life
[45:05] Speaker 1: and these things I was doing, and that's why I
[45:07] Speaker 1: wanted to make games. And Elizabeth Hargrave, who if you
[45:10] Speaker 1: don't if you don't know Wingspan. It's a game about
[45:13] Speaker 1: birds and has a lot of like really specific bird
[45:16] Speaker 1: art and they all have like bird facts on them.
[45:18] Speaker 1: And it's a thing that was like not really popular
[45:21] Speaker 1: around the pandemic because it was a board game. All
[45:24] Speaker 1: of a sudden, everyone's stuck inside playing board games that
[45:28] Speaker 1: people that didn't play strategy games or intense board games
[45:30] Speaker 1: would be like, oh I like birds, or like a
[45:32] Speaker 1: grandma would be like, oh this is interesting, I'll learn
[45:34] Speaker 1: the rules of this. It's all birds Her inspiration for
[45:37] Speaker 1: starting was, I was so sick of every game was
[45:39] Speaker 1: D and D. Every game was like castles and goblins
[45:42] Speaker 1: and swords and stuff, which jen CON's got room for
[45:47] Speaker 1: both of them.
[45:47] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's fair.
[45:50] Speaker 1: So that was my Thursday. I worked on Friday, and
[45:52] Speaker 1: then I went back on Saturday and that day. So
[45:56] Speaker 1: it takes place in the Indiana Convention Center, real big
[45:58] Speaker 1: convention center, obvious. It has like a lobby that kind
[46:03] Speaker 1: of like wraps around the main halls, and then the
[46:05] Speaker 1: halls are like this huge I think it was like
[46:07] Speaker 1: a big LA shaped or maybe even like C shaped,
[46:11] Speaker 1: like combined thing of all these halls of places to go.
[46:15] Speaker 1: But it's connected with an underground tunnel to Lucas Oil Stadium,
[46:20] Speaker 1: which is the stadium where the Colts play the NFL team.
[46:24] Speaker 1: It's an indoor stadium and because of that, during the
[46:28] Speaker 1: summer when the Colts aren't playing, they use it for
[46:31] Speaker 1: like conventions and stuff. So I went through this underground tunnel,
[46:36] Speaker 1: came out in Lucas Oil Stadium and the fields are
[46:39] Speaker 1: just covered in tables of people playing like magic. The gathering.
[46:43] Speaker 1: This was mostly where the magic stuff was.
[46:45] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's where the magic happens true.
[46:49] Speaker 1: There you go. I had a joke. I can't remember
[46:51] Speaker 1: if it made it into my gen Con piece in
[46:53] Speaker 1: the magazine or not, but I was laughing that, like
[46:56] Speaker 1: one of these guys be like, yeah, I've competed on
[46:59] Speaker 1: the an NFL field before, I've actually one of won
[47:03] Speaker 1: a few games. It was like wow, not not even
[47:05] Speaker 1: talking about magic. Yeah. Anyways, from there, I went into
[47:09] Speaker 1: they have like these a bunch of like meeting rooms
[47:12] Speaker 1: and suites in the stadium, and I went into this
[47:16] Speaker 1: like super fancy decorated room and I played the new
[47:20] Speaker 1: starter set for Dungeons and Dragons just called Here's the Borderlands.
[47:26] Speaker 1: And I'm a big D and D guy. I keep
[47:28] Speaker 1: trying to figure a way to get all my D
[47:29] Speaker 1: and D books on this shelf behind me, but I
[47:31] Speaker 1: can't make the shelves tall enough to fit the books.
[47:35] Speaker 1: But I have them all on this other side of me.
[47:39] Speaker 1: So I was interested to play this. I like the
[47:40] Speaker 1: twenty twenty four rules. It's kind of controversial online, but
[47:43] Speaker 1: I was just I don't know, I was interested to
[47:44] Speaker 1: see what this is. And it's like, well, quick pause break,
[47:48] Speaker 1: do you either of you guys play D and D? I think, Eric,
[47:50] Speaker 1: we've talked about D and D before.
[47:52] Speaker 3: I have looked into the idea of like dming before
[47:56] Speaker 3: because I think it would be fun, it would be enjoyable.
[47:59] Speaker 3: And I also learned that the fact way to get
[48:01] Speaker 3: your friends to play a tabletop game is to DM
[48:04] Speaker 3: the tabletop game, because that's It's like playing Jungle and
[48:08] Speaker 3: League of Legends. You know somebody's got to do it,
[48:10] Speaker 3: and usually you have to be the one to do it.
[48:13] Speaker 2: I know what we're talking about here was legal stuff.
[48:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a quick pivot here, No, it's it's
[48:20] Speaker 3: it's cool. I own a lot of books and I
[48:23] Speaker 3: like a lot of writing around it and about it,
[48:26] Speaker 3: but I have yet to do more than play like
[48:29] Speaker 3: a one shot just because getting it. Turns out, the
[48:31] Speaker 3: greatest challenge in D and D is getting people together
[48:34] Speaker 3: on a regular schedule to play.
[48:35] Speaker 2: It's literally impossible, impossible.
[48:40] Speaker 3: I love D and D.
[48:41] Speaker 2: I play it not as often as i'd like to,
[48:43] Speaker 2: just because I have friends that keep moving away to
[48:45] Speaker 2: different states and virtual D and D doesn't hit the
[48:48] Speaker 2: same as in person, although I probably just need to
[48:50] Speaker 2: get over that. But yeah, I love D and D
[48:53] Speaker 2: and I've been playing it for years cool.
[48:56] Speaker 1: Yeah, I play. I actually haven't played in the last
[48:59] Speaker 1: time I played D and D was for over at
[49:03] Speaker 1: min Max. They've got a podcast pp Bang and for
[49:06] Speaker 1: their big season finale, I ran a D and D
[49:08] Speaker 1: game for them. That's the last time I played, and
[49:10] Speaker 1: that was like a month or two ago. I used
[49:13] Speaker 1: to play very regularly, but then I moved an hour
[49:16] Speaker 1: north of my friend and now it's just way harder
[49:18] Speaker 1: for us to get together for a group. But we should.
[49:20] Speaker 2: We should do a game in Former one because we
[49:22] Speaker 2: have We also have Matt Miller, who is like, yeah,
[49:24] Speaker 2: I want him. I want him to DM and I
[49:26] Speaker 2: just want to see what that's like.
[49:28] Speaker 1: I'm so curious to see him.
[49:29] Speaker 2: He's been playing for like decades and he loves Matt.
[49:32] Speaker 1: Matt told me he he wrote a D and D
[49:37] Speaker 1: campaign setting for fun. He wrote and like just just
[49:44] Speaker 1: just like for his friends, wrote a setting for it,
[49:46] Speaker 1: like a continent of like this world for their next
[49:50] Speaker 1: campaign over like a series of months. I think he
[49:52] Speaker 1: told me. Rachel at Game Informers, she's the one that
[49:55] Speaker 1: like laid it out for him to make sure it
[49:57] Speaker 1: looked okay, and then had it like printed out in
[49:59] Speaker 1: Bounce and handed it to his players before they started
[50:02] Speaker 1: the campaign so they could like learn about the lore
[50:05] Speaker 1: of the world, and then they like ran that campaign
[50:07] Speaker 1: for several weeks. Rule.
[50:08] Speaker 2: That's so sick, Like, I want to get into that
[50:09] Speaker 2: part of Matt Miller's mind. He's such a nice, chill, professional,
[50:13] Speaker 2: professional boss. Even when like we're having a complete wreck
[50:16] Speaker 2: at work about something, he's still so calm headed. I
[50:19] Speaker 2: want to know. I want to hear his the goblin noises,
[50:21] Speaker 2: you know, the Matt Miller goblins.
[50:24] Speaker 1: I actually really have fascinating to know what Matt's goblin
[50:27] Speaker 1: noise was. This is going to be the next meeting
[50:29] Speaker 1: we have.
[50:30] Speaker 3: That's gonna be the first quest.
[50:31] Speaker 1: Stand up, Matt, can you make a make a goblin noise? Well? Anyways, uh,
[50:37] Speaker 1: Here's the Borderlands is a really interesting starter set. If
[50:43] Speaker 1: you haven't played D and D. There are books that
[50:45] Speaker 1: like have the rules of D and D and you
[50:46] Speaker 1: can print out character sheets and right stuff on that.
[50:48] Speaker 1: But they do sell like boxes, Like if you go
[50:50] Speaker 1: to Target, you can get a box that's like a
[50:52] Speaker 1: starter set and or essentials kit, which is basically just
[50:54] Speaker 1: like a smaller version of the rules some pre made characters.
[50:59] Speaker 1: If you want to use the and then like a
[51:00] Speaker 1: little adventure so you guys can play a few sessions.
[51:03] Speaker 1: It's got dice, it's got everything you need to get started.
[51:05] Speaker 1: And if you feel like graduating writing your own stuff,
[51:08] Speaker 1: or like getting a more proper campaign setting or something,
[51:10] Speaker 1: you can get some of the other books. Here's the
[51:13] Speaker 1: Borderlands is one step even further than this like easy
[51:17] Speaker 1: access thing, because they give you like physical boards, like
[51:22] Speaker 1: the way we mentioned Wingspan before, but there's a lot
[51:25] Speaker 1: of board games where like to start the game, you'll
[51:27] Speaker 1: have like a like a I don't know, I don't
[51:30] Speaker 1: know what the material is, but like a laminated cardboard
[51:32] Speaker 1: board where it's like this is my pieces where my
[51:35] Speaker 1: things are gonna go. It has like your stats and
[51:37] Speaker 1: your character pre made, and then there's those slots for
[51:41] Speaker 1: like equipment and spells, and you have like playing cards
[51:44] Speaker 1: that you put in those spots to be like I've
[51:46] Speaker 1: equipped a mace and you'll put it there and it
[51:48] Speaker 1: says this mace does this much damage plus whatever thing.
[51:52] Speaker 1: So it like streamlines it so much that they're always like, yeah,
[51:56] Speaker 1: you can pick this game up and start playing within
[51:58] Speaker 1: five minutes, and that's always like that's not true, because
[52:01] Speaker 1: no one, no one's gonn understand it. This is like
[52:04] Speaker 1: before exact exactly our minimum. This is genuinely something where
[52:08] Speaker 1: you could take people that haven't played D and D
[52:11] Speaker 1: and fifteen minutes after you sat down, you guys can
[52:14] Speaker 1: start the experience of it, probably assuming one of you's
[52:17] Speaker 1: played before. Though. The rules do have instructions for new dms,
[52:22] Speaker 1: and they specifically I was playing with Justice Ramon Armand
[52:27] Speaker 1: I think is his name. I'm probably pronouncing it wrong,
[52:29] Speaker 1: but he's he's one of the like managing game designers
[52:31] Speaker 1: over at Wizards of the Cost that on D and D,
[52:33] Speaker 1: and he helped design the set, and he said that
[52:36] Speaker 1: the way they wrote the book, they were trying to
[52:38] Speaker 1: emphasize that the dms and the characters are all players.
[52:43] Speaker 1: It's not players and dms. They're trying to say, it's
[52:45] Speaker 1: all that. And they actually wanted people to trade the
[52:48] Speaker 1: Dungeon Master role around the table for this, and they
[52:51] Speaker 1: were like specifically very like piecemeal quests and stuff like that.
[52:56] Speaker 1: So I played it. I played it with this D
[52:58] Speaker 1: and D influencer name Sean, who I think known online
[53:03] Speaker 1: is krit Hit the Giant. I want to say his
[53:06] Speaker 1: name and the pr person invited my partner because he
[53:11] Speaker 1: knew that she was going to be there, and she
[53:13] Speaker 1: decided not to do it at the end because she
[53:14] Speaker 1: saw she saw a stand that was selling a froggy
[53:18] Speaker 1: fanny pack, and she was like, I actually have to
[53:20] Speaker 1: do I left her alone for an hour and came
[53:22] Speaker 1: back and she had a froggy bucket, hat, a froggy
[53:25] Speaker 1: fanny pack and had already gone back to the car
[53:27] Speaker 1: to drop off a bunch of other stuff she bought.
[53:30] Speaker 1: As is her as is her right. I'll say it.
[53:35] Speaker 1: I love her, even though she's not Italian. You know.
[53:40] Speaker 2: Women, froggy women.
[53:43] Speaker 3: You know we're not.
[53:45] Speaker 1: We can opens Yeah, no, no, don't don't even show
[53:49] Speaker 1: me a picture of an Italian frog woman because I'm
[53:51] Speaker 1: not even going to know what.
[53:52] Speaker 3: To do with myself.
[53:56] Speaker 1: West you know how to say frog and Italian? Are
[54:03] Speaker 1: you thinking? Did you hear me?
[54:04] Speaker 3: Oh?
[54:04] Speaker 2: Sorry, no, I'm music. As I had to cough because
[54:08] Speaker 2: I laughed too much.
[54:09] Speaker 1: I said, do you know how to say frog in Italian?
[54:12] Speaker 5: Oh?
[54:12] Speaker 2: My god, no I don't. Actually I know a lot
[54:15] Speaker 2: of other animals, but not frog. It's probably I need.
[54:18] Speaker 1: I need you to find out and you'll have to
[54:20] Speaker 1: do this right now, but just for future purposes. One
[54:23] Speaker 1: how you say frog and Italian? And two what they
[54:27] Speaker 1: say that a frog makes the sound that makes because
[54:30] Speaker 1: it's always like animal sounds are different. Another thing. Anyways, Uh,
[54:36] Speaker 1: my partner didn't come, but I didn't realize that they
[54:38] Speaker 1: had like an empty seat basically that she was gonna fill.
[54:42] Speaker 1: She was just gonna watch, but she could have played.
[54:44] Speaker 1: So it was me. It was this influencer, Sean and
[54:47] Speaker 1: then Sewan's kid, Riley, and Riley's like.
[54:51] Speaker 2: Eleven.
[54:53] Speaker 1: You know that age where you're like you could be
[54:54] Speaker 1: eight or you could be twelve, and I can't really
[54:56] Speaker 1: place it just because people mature at different rates. So
[55:00] Speaker 1: I played. I played like an hour of D and
[55:02] Speaker 1: D with Sean and his kid and it was very plightful.
[55:06] Speaker 1: And Riley, the kid for the record was I was like, oh,
[55:10] Speaker 1: this is so perfect because I can see how like
[55:12] Speaker 1: a kid who's never played D and D or doesn't
[55:15] Speaker 1: know that well might be able to adapt it. Riley
[55:19] Speaker 1: was like such a pro, already knew everything. I think
[55:23] Speaker 1: they picked playing a rogue because it was just the
[55:26] Speaker 1: one class they hadn't played before. They showed us a
[55:30] Speaker 1: picture or they told us about it, and I found
[55:32] Speaker 1: on the Instagram later the two of them have a
[55:35] Speaker 1: picture like with Matt Mercer because they had gone to
[55:39] Speaker 1: like a meet and greet a year earlier or something
[55:41] Speaker 1: like that. So very funny. But yeah, and it was accessible.
[55:45] Speaker 1: We found a secret door and behind that secret door
[55:48] Speaker 1: there was a young dragon and we were all level
[55:50] Speaker 1: one and it was like, give us your gold and
[55:52] Speaker 1: Riley was like, I'd rather die and the dragon was
[55:55] Speaker 1: like okay, and then we would have for sure died
[55:58] Speaker 1: if we hadn't run out of time. But I was like,
[56:01] Speaker 1: that's D and D man who knows? Who knows? I
[56:05] Speaker 1: was like, probably could have. There could have been a
[56:07] Speaker 1: lot of twenties and a lot of ones after that,
[56:08] Speaker 1: you know. Anyways, Yeah, so it was it was a
[56:13] Speaker 1: it was fun. I think it's an interesting idea. I'm
[56:16] Speaker 1: really curious of like how it'll be received because it's
[56:20] Speaker 1: it's one of the things where I'm I'm kind of
[56:22] Speaker 1: like hopelessly D and D pilled at this point, Like
[56:24] Speaker 1: I don't think there's a lot that would happen that
[56:27] Speaker 1: would make me stop playing the game, just because I
[56:32] Speaker 1: have all the books and stuff already that I would need,
[56:34] Speaker 1: Like I'm not buying every new book when it comes out,
[56:36] Speaker 1: but I don't need to be convinced to like the
[56:39] Speaker 1: game at all. And I'm curious if I brought this
[56:41] Speaker 1: to like my dad or something, and I'm like, this
[56:44] Speaker 1: is overwhelming. There's just these boards and these tokens and
[56:46] Speaker 1: these cards, and it'll it'll all make sense as we
[56:49] Speaker 1: go along. I Am just I'm curious as how it
[56:53] Speaker 1: will go.
[56:54] Speaker 3: It's interesting to think about because D and D did
[56:57] Speaker 3: have that explosion, right, you know, the combination of actual plays,
[57:02] Speaker 3: crit roles, stuff like that alongside stranger things is kind
[57:05] Speaker 3: of the one to point to of like D and
[57:07] Speaker 3: D being in pop culture mainstream Again, it did have
[57:11] Speaker 3: a giant explosion. Now it's very mainstream. A lot of
[57:15] Speaker 3: people play it casually, play it with their friends who
[57:18] Speaker 3: normally you might not expect to at the same time.
[57:23] Speaker 3: I do always then wonder are these tools actually getting
[57:28] Speaker 3: people in or is it the people getting people in?
[57:31] Speaker 3: And like, what is facilitating what here? Is it always
[57:35] Speaker 3: that you need a good format to get people in
[57:38] Speaker 3: or do you need good tools for other people to
[57:41] Speaker 3: get other people in? That's I think that's what changed
[57:43] Speaker 3: for me with Magic and why I'm suddenly like crazy
[57:47] Speaker 3: down the Magic rabbit hole is because I've played Magic before.
[57:50] Speaker 3: I played Duels with the planes Walker on three sixty.
[57:53] Speaker 3: I played bloom Borow back when that came out, because
[57:55] Speaker 3: I like to set a lot. But what got me
[57:57] Speaker 3: to stick this time was having a commander that I
[58:00] Speaker 3: like meet up with regularly, and having people that I
[58:03] Speaker 3: play with online, and having actual reason to play with
[58:06] Speaker 3: the cards I have and play the game Magic versus
[58:09] Speaker 3: just experience it as a collecting thing that I sometimes
[58:14] Speaker 3: play on an app every once in a while. And
[58:17] Speaker 3: that kind of like unlocked in my head that it
[58:19] Speaker 3: really is about having that setting around you that I
[58:22] Speaker 3: think is conducive to getting people to join it, not
[58:25] Speaker 3: just making the game itself super approachable. Commander and stuff
[58:28] Speaker 3: like that in Magic has also made that game super
[58:30] Speaker 3: approachable and sociable in a way. This fresh and interesting too,
[58:35] Speaker 3: But it's interesting to see these these hobbies kind of
[58:38] Speaker 3: adapt as they grow in popularity.
[58:41] Speaker 2: Yeah, it is cool to see them make moves like this,
[58:43] Speaker 2: but ultimately I think with D and D and Magic
[58:45] Speaker 2: like it really is and similar games, like the people
[58:49] Speaker 2: you're playing with are everything, especially like for D and D,
[58:52] Speaker 2: like if if one person is not like vibing or
[58:56] Speaker 2: is kind of like messing up the vibes, like it
[58:58] Speaker 2: can really take down the whole party, Like it needs
[59:01] Speaker 2: to be a pretty cohesive unit. And I've always found
[59:05] Speaker 2: that like, yeah, that kind of stuff. It just for
[59:08] Speaker 2: all the tools, for all the features, for all the
[59:10] Speaker 2: D and D beyond things you can do to make
[59:12] Speaker 2: D and D easier, Like none of it works unless
[59:15] Speaker 2: you have a party who is like active in buying
[59:19] Speaker 2: into it. So I am curious to see if like
[59:22] Speaker 2: this type of board game approach works because like ultimately
[59:25] Speaker 2: you still have to go to a board game shop
[59:27] Speaker 2: and like that even that's like a big step for
[59:29] Speaker 2: a lot of people out there, like they're stepping into
[59:32] Speaker 2: like a card shop or a board game shop is
[59:34] Speaker 2: like a crazy experience when you walk in, and if
[59:36] Speaker 2: you're not into that community, it's like, oh, whoa, this
[59:39] Speaker 2: is like something's going on here.
[59:41] Speaker 1: Yeah, they like ask you if you if you're looking
[59:43] Speaker 1: for something specific in a way that like like another
[59:48] Speaker 1: store wouldn't bother doing that where it's like you come
[59:50] Speaker 1: you often come to a board game or a card
[59:52] Speaker 1: game shop of like oh, I'm here for this game
[59:54] Speaker 1: or this specific thing.
[59:57] Speaker 3: I think a lot about when I was fighting games
[1:00:01] Speaker 3: a little bit more competitively than I do right now.
[1:00:04] Speaker 3: It would be that feeling of walking into a tournament
[1:00:06] Speaker 3: for the first time, or walking into a weekly for
[1:00:09] Speaker 3: the first time, and everybody's setting up, maybe they're playing casuals,
[1:00:13] Speaker 3: they're warming up and stuff like that, and you're like,
[1:00:17] Speaker 3: I don't know anyone here. I don't know what the
[1:00:19] Speaker 3: vibe here. I don't want to like disrupt the vibes,
[1:00:23] Speaker 3: you know, and so you kind of just like try
[1:00:26] Speaker 3: to figure some stuff out. Maybe you look for somebody
[1:00:28] Speaker 3: else who looks similarly lost, and you find companionship there.
[1:00:32] Speaker 3: But that really depends on just.
[1:00:33] Speaker 2: Through the record scratch moment, because when you will open
[1:00:35] Speaker 2: the door, everyone's like turns and looks you're walking in,
[1:00:39] Speaker 2: and you have to be like, Okay, they're just looking
[1:00:41] Speaker 2: because the door opened. They don't they don't hate me.
[1:00:43] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:00:44] Speaker 3: I've done weeklies for two games. I've done weeklies for
[1:00:48] Speaker 3: Smash back when Ultimate came out, and that was the
[1:00:51] Speaker 3: experience of walking in and being like, there's a giant,
[1:00:54] Speaker 3: thriving community here that I'm trying to enter into. And
[1:00:57] Speaker 3: play against full of a lot of personalities, let me
[1:01:00] Speaker 3: tell you what. And then I played Soule Caliber and
[1:01:06] Speaker 3: Soule Caliber was like, there's not a lot of people
[1:01:10] Speaker 3: here and they all know each other super well and
[1:01:12] Speaker 3: they've been playing together for ages and I'm just walking up,
[1:01:15] Speaker 3: like which one?
[1:01:16] Speaker 1: And when when were you playing?
[1:01:17] Speaker 3: This was six? When six first came out and I
[1:01:21] Speaker 3: was playing, I forgot his name. Now I feel bad
[1:01:23] Speaker 3: because I really I grow was his name with the
[1:01:25] Speaker 3: dual swords that could kind of do the stance changing
[1:01:27] Speaker 3: and stuff like that, and I got pretty decent at
[1:01:30] Speaker 3: him and could do a lot of the combos and
[1:01:32] Speaker 3: changeups and stuff like that, and it even won a
[1:01:35] Speaker 3: few games. But it was still that feeling of like
[1:01:39] Speaker 3: it was a really small community and you still feel
[1:01:42] Speaker 3: very alien at times, and it can be hard to
[1:01:46] Speaker 3: find that. And I think when you do find that
[1:01:48] Speaker 3: with a game, you end up latching to it because
[1:01:51] Speaker 3: it is a different feeling altogether. Like having a group
[1:01:55] Speaker 3: to play commander with regularly in Magic is huge because
[1:01:58] Speaker 3: now you have not just a game to play, but
[1:02:01] Speaker 3: people to play against. I've already started like crafting decks
[1:02:04] Speaker 3: in my mind that are like this will beat that.
[1:02:06] Speaker 3: This one person keeps running chatterfang squirrel tokens on me
[1:02:10] Speaker 3: and I'm sick of it. So I'm going to design
[1:02:13] Speaker 3: a deck to destroy this. And that gets really interesting.
[1:02:17] Speaker 3: But you have to overcome that initial pump. And that's
[1:02:21] Speaker 3: not easy for everybody to just walk into a place
[1:02:24] Speaker 3: and try and insert themselves. I mean, we're all fairly
[1:02:28] Speaker 3: personable people. We're on a podcast, for God's sake, and
[1:02:32] Speaker 3: still we might walk into a room and that's the bar. Yeah,
[1:02:35] Speaker 3: personable is having a podcast, we'll talk about our opinions
[1:02:38] Speaker 3: online for people down below to yell at us about.
[1:02:42] Speaker 3: And still, like you can walk into a place and
[1:02:45] Speaker 3: feel unsure about what the vibes are and stuff. I
[1:02:48] Speaker 3: think that's the biggest hurdle to overcome.
[1:02:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, there you go.
[1:02:53] Speaker 1: Yeah. I think also the uh there's a uh I
[1:02:59] Speaker 1: don't know she like knows a professor that I had
[1:03:02] Speaker 1: in college, but there's an online figure, doctor Friedman, and
[1:03:06] Speaker 1: she writes a lot about tabletop games and stuff, and
[1:03:09] Speaker 1: she recently, I think, was commenting on I want to
[1:03:12] Speaker 1: say it was an NPR piece that was kind of
[1:03:14] Speaker 1: about dungeons and dragons, and she was kind of pointing
[1:03:17] Speaker 1: out some like not like tearing to shreds, but kind
[1:03:20] Speaker 1: of pointing out some inconsistencies in like the conclusions it
[1:03:23] Speaker 1: was making, and one of it is a lot of
[1:03:25] Speaker 1: what you're saying, where it's like, yes, Dungeons Dragons is
[1:03:27] Speaker 1: doing really well, but Dungeons and Dragons didn't sell out
[1:03:30] Speaker 1: Madison Square Garden to mention twenty sold out Madison Square Garden.
[1:03:33] Speaker 1: And it's like that the game is good and people
[1:03:36] Speaker 1: have liked the game, but it has a lot to
[1:03:38] Speaker 1: do with those performers and like the stuff that they
[1:03:40] Speaker 1: bring to it that's very interesting. I think too. Here's
[1:03:44] Speaker 1: of the Borderlands credit and why this specifically makes me
[1:03:47] Speaker 1: more curious than a lot of other stuff because like
[1:03:49] Speaker 1: the D and D twenty twenty four rules, I do
[1:03:52] Speaker 1: think simplified things and made it. I find it easier
[1:03:55] Speaker 1: to make a character with those rules than the twenty
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: fourteen rules. I think the thing that this does is
[1:04:03] Speaker 1: more more of a reach out towards confused people than
[1:04:07] Speaker 1: I feel like they've done before, where it's not just
[1:04:10] Speaker 1: like we've made your character sheet already you can look
[1:04:12] Speaker 1: at it. It's like we've redesigned the character sheet. We've
[1:04:15] Speaker 1: made these things like physical pieces you can hold.
[1:04:19] Speaker 2: It sounds like it makes it a more tangible thing.
[1:04:22] Speaker 2: I think that's one of the barriers that D and
[1:04:24] Speaker 2: D has is like it does require I mean, unless
[1:04:27] Speaker 2: you've got a lot of money and a lot of
[1:04:28] Speaker 2: sets in many figs, but like there is a level
[1:04:30] Speaker 2: of imagination there that can be uncomfortable as adults because
[1:04:32] Speaker 2: we don't really Yeah, yeah, that every day. So I
[1:04:34] Speaker 2: think board gaming it up a little bit where it's like, oh,
[1:04:36] Speaker 2: I'm holding this piece and I'm moving this here and there,
[1:04:39] Speaker 2: Like I think that that sounds like a smart.
[1:04:43] Speaker 1: Move for Yeah. It also it also comes with like
[1:04:45] Speaker 1: maps for all the areas you go to, and you
[1:04:47] Speaker 1: have like little standis for each of like the races
[1:04:49] Speaker 1: that you can pick or their species now. But yeah,
[1:04:53] Speaker 1: so but yeah, no, I think it's it's all an
[1:04:56] Speaker 1: interesting conversation and a matter of like is it D
[1:04:59] Speaker 1: and D, is it tabletop games? Is it Matt Mercer,
[1:05:02] Speaker 1: Brendan Lee Mulligan or is it just the idea that
[1:05:04] Speaker 1: you can be then? Yeah, that was wild. That was
[1:05:08] Speaker 1: another thing at gen Con I didn't get to go to.
[1:05:10] Speaker 1: Was they Yeah, they had a live show at gen Con,
[1:05:14] Speaker 1: and then Matt Mercer came out and was talking about
[1:05:17] Speaker 1: the I mean Dagger Heart and sorry for your game
[1:05:21] Speaker 1: to this podcast just for video games. We're getting real
[1:05:24] Speaker 1: deep in the world TTRPGs right now. But Dagger Heart
[1:05:27] Speaker 1: is a competitor to D and D created by the
[1:05:30] Speaker 1: people that made Critical Role. They have their own game
[1:05:33] Speaker 1: publishing arm now and they've made a D and D
[1:05:36] Speaker 1: like game that has a little bit lighter rules, different
[1:05:40] Speaker 1: rule set, has has physical cards for all your abilities,
[1:05:44] Speaker 1: just as when we're talking about like tangible things. That's
[1:05:46] Speaker 1: one of the things I like a lot about the game.
[1:05:48] Speaker 1: And then two of the head designers of fifth Edition
[1:05:52] Speaker 1: left Dungeons and Dragons and are now working for Dagger Heart.
[1:05:57] Speaker 1: And in this big show, like Matt Mercer came out,
[1:05:59] Speaker 1: he's talking the future of Critical Role, and then these
[1:06:01] Speaker 1: two guys came out like on the stage with him
[1:06:04] Speaker 1: months after they started there as like a show of
[1:06:07] Speaker 1: I mean, they were they were both wearing one shirt.
[1:06:10] Speaker 1: They were collectively wearing one shirt. The two of them
[1:06:12] Speaker 1: has a bit about they were all trying to be
[1:06:14] Speaker 1: Steve Jobs, so they all had different turtlenecks. Anyways, Yes,
[1:06:20] Speaker 1: and now Brendlee Mulligan, who's the DM Mention twenty, is
[1:06:22] Speaker 1: gonna DM campaign for Critical Role, which is big news.
[1:06:25] Speaker 2: And that's the kind of thing that which is also
[1:06:28] Speaker 2: crazy because he's always the DM.
[1:06:30] Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, that's kind of thing that if
[1:06:33] Speaker 1: I had learned about gen Con even earlier in the year,
[1:06:37] Speaker 1: if I had thought to do it, then I could
[1:06:39] Speaker 1: have gotten tickets to stuff like that. But that is
[1:06:41] Speaker 1: one interesting about the event that it's like there are
[1:06:43] Speaker 1: stuff to do if you don't have appointments and you
[1:06:46] Speaker 1: haven't signed up to play games. But kind of the
[1:06:48] Speaker 1: heart of it is in these are the board game
[1:06:51] Speaker 1: celebrities you can see and the anyways.
[1:06:55] Speaker 2: So as that was my thing just because they go
[1:06:57] Speaker 2: for excited about the Critical World. Season four, Yeah, not
[1:07:00] Speaker 2: set in Xandria, which is Matt Mercer's like own little
[1:07:03] Speaker 2: setting he created in D and D, but it's a
[1:07:05] Speaker 2: whole new world, whole new setting that I presume Brendan
[1:07:07] Speaker 2: is created, which is really cool. So like very if
[1:07:10] Speaker 2: you've ever been like I want to get into Critical Role,
[1:07:12] Speaker 2: I do think Season four. I mean, you can watch
[1:07:15] Speaker 2: all of them, they're all great, but Season four seems
[1:07:17] Speaker 2: like it's going to be a legitimately completely standalone like
[1:07:21] Speaker 2: New Fresh Start, and Brendan is if you Matt Mercer
[1:07:27] Speaker 2: is an incredible DM, but like secretly, Brendan might actually
[1:07:30] Speaker 2: be the best DM out there.
[1:07:31] Speaker 1: Dude. That's my take, is im Brendan spoiled me for
[1:07:34] Speaker 1: basically other DM.
[1:07:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not a huge actual play person. I'll sometimes
[1:07:39] Speaker 3: put him on to like Fall Asleep too, because they
[1:07:41] Speaker 3: have a pretty even volume. Yeah, that's fair, And that's
[1:07:45] Speaker 3: like a weird thing that I'm sure some random people
[1:07:48] Speaker 3: in the comments probably identify with and everybody else is like,
[1:07:50] Speaker 3: you're crazy. When I got eye surgery a while back,
[1:07:55] Speaker 3: I had to basically lie in a room to heal
[1:07:58] Speaker 3: and recover, like in a dark room and screens for
[1:08:01] Speaker 3: a couple of days, and I ended up listening to
[1:08:06] Speaker 3: Dimension twenty. They're they're like high school one where they're
[1:08:09] Speaker 3: all at the D and d H. Yes, yeah, I
[1:08:12] Speaker 3: listened to the first season of that because you know
[1:08:15] Speaker 3: that that worked. I didn't have to like see it
[1:08:18] Speaker 3: to understand what was going on. I could hear it
[1:08:20] Speaker 3: all and it worked. And uh, let me tell you
[1:08:22] Speaker 3: that's that's a good time. That's a real good time.
[1:08:25] Speaker 3: If you ever get eye surgery and have to line
[1:08:27] Speaker 3: in a dark room for a couple of days, that's
[1:08:29] Speaker 3: my recommendation to you.
[1:08:31] Speaker 1: Yeah and uh yeah, I was gonna say even the
[1:08:35] Speaker 1: the easier approachable thing from that is Brennan DM a
[1:08:39] Speaker 1: like prequel spin off mini series for Critical Role that's
[1:08:43] Speaker 1: like four or six episodes or something. Yeah, so if
[1:08:46] Speaker 1: you just want to taste of what he will be
[1:08:48] Speaker 1: like on Critical Role, that's a good u.
[1:08:52] Speaker 2: And then he's going to be damming and Matt will
[1:08:54] Speaker 2: be one of the characters like that is I cannot wait.
[1:08:58] Speaker 2: It's going to be so awesome.
[1:09:01] Speaker 1: Uh. My last shout out is Brennan has a podcast
[1:09:04] Speaker 1: with Lou Wilson, Erica who's the ghost of Yota uh
[1:09:08] Speaker 1: and Abria Engar called Worlds Beyond Number. That is my
[1:09:11] Speaker 1: pinnacle of D and D show. And they're almost done with
[1:09:14] Speaker 1: their like big first season, which is very cool. You
[1:09:18] Speaker 1: shoul watch that too. Cool. Okay, let's move on past
[1:09:23] Speaker 1: tabletop games. If you are sick of that, then good
[1:09:27] Speaker 1: are not good? Good for you because it's done. Now
[1:09:29] Speaker 1: we'll go back to Italian Women or whatever. Talking.
[1:09:31] Speaker 2: We're video, We're a game informer. We are not video
[1:09:34] Speaker 2: That's true. That's we're talking games here, like get informed people.
[1:09:39] Speaker 3: Yeah, wants to talk about.
[1:09:45] Speaker 1: It was funny to be at gen Con and there's
[1:09:47] Speaker 1: like a big wingspan booth and a big like clank
[1:09:50] Speaker 1: booth and all these board games I know, and then
[1:09:52] Speaker 1: also like a big Uno stand.
[1:09:54] Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, yeah, let's go, let's go.
[1:09:57] Speaker 1: Yeah, Mattel's Mattel represent.
[1:10:01] Speaker 3: Phase ten?
[1:10:02] Speaker 1: Is that?
[1:10:03] Speaker 3: What are they up to? What are they doing? Block
[1:10:07] Speaker 3: has got to be there.
[1:10:07] Speaker 2: They're on twenty now, phase twenty, I think.
[1:10:09] Speaker 3: Phase That's crazy, that's so many phases.
[1:10:15] Speaker 1: Anyways, wess you reviewed some games recently? You reviewed a
[1:10:21] Speaker 1: wheel World in Ninja Guiden, rage Bound. I'll let you.
[1:10:25] Speaker 1: I'll let you pick which one you talk want to
[1:10:26] Speaker 1: talk about first.
[1:10:28] Speaker 2: I'll probably start with rage Bound, just because I know
[1:10:30] Speaker 2: Marcus talked a lot about it last week, and I'll
[1:10:32] Speaker 2: just kind of ducktail and finished that convo. Yeah, the
[1:10:36] Speaker 2: past four weeks for me, I've I realized I've published
[1:10:38] Speaker 2: a review every week for four weeks now, and I've
[1:10:40] Speaker 2: been exploring the scale here at GI I published an eight,
[1:10:43] Speaker 2: then a five, then a nine point five, and now six,
[1:10:46] Speaker 2: and I'm currently working on my fifth review. I don't
[1:10:49] Speaker 2: know where that will land, but it's been fun opening
[1:10:52] Speaker 2: up our review skill and going up and down it.
[1:10:54] Speaker 2: Rage Bound is probably my top three games of the year.
[1:10:59] Speaker 2: It's just it's just fantastic for all the reasons, Marcus said,
[1:11:02] Speaker 2: And he hadn't even gotten to the real meat yet,
[1:11:04] Speaker 2: which is when you fully unlock both characters to use
[1:11:07] Speaker 2: at all times. And yeah, they are kind of like
[1:11:10] Speaker 2: a Nail and Piccolo situation, I believe is what I
[1:11:16] Speaker 2: remember reference last week, shout out to Nail, gets that happens,
[1:11:20] Speaker 2: and then I think he shows up. You hear about
[1:11:22] Speaker 2: Nail one more time near the end of Z and
[1:11:23] Speaker 2: then you're like, oh, yeah, that guy exists, and that's it.
[1:11:26] Speaker 3: A real MVP, an unsung hero of the series.
[1:11:29] Speaker 2: Truly, truly, but yeah, rage Bound, for everything Marcus said
[1:11:34] Speaker 2: about the first two ax he had, plays like the
[1:11:36] Speaker 2: rest of the game, it only gets better, it gets good.
[1:11:38] Speaker 2: It's just keeps ascending to new heights. I adored Rage Bound.
[1:11:44] Speaker 2: It is a hard, awesome, fast platformer with awesome combat,
[1:11:51] Speaker 2: and it does a really cool thing that he's kind
[1:11:53] Speaker 2: of mentioned, where like it becomes a rhythm game because
[1:11:56] Speaker 2: certain enemies need to be hit, like if they're pink,
[1:11:58] Speaker 2: they need to be hit with the girls range weapon,
[1:12:01] Speaker 2: if they are blue they need to hit by the
[1:12:03] Speaker 2: guy's melee attack. And as you continue through the game,
[1:12:07] Speaker 2: that just builds up to where you're like, pink blue,
[1:12:09] Speaker 2: pink blue, boom killing this, blah blah blah, and it
[1:12:11] Speaker 2: just goes crazy and it really tests your limits on
[1:12:13] Speaker 2: a controller, which I think is kind of Ninja Gaidan's
[1:12:16] Speaker 2: original appeal. Although I do think rage Bound is probably
[1:12:19] Speaker 2: easier than every other Ninja guiding game out there, which
[1:12:22] Speaker 2: is great. I just can't sing the praises of the
[1:12:25] Speaker 2: game Kitchen's work enough, like I mean, blasphemous games are great.
[1:12:29] Speaker 2: I love that they didn't make this a Metroidvania, because
[1:12:31] Speaker 2: I'm sure they would have crushed that. But I think
[1:12:33] Speaker 2: that rage Bound is works better as like a retro
[1:12:37] Speaker 2: throwback platformer. And yeah, I gave it a nine point five.
[1:12:40] Speaker 2: I don't really have any issues for me. I haven't
[1:12:43] Speaker 2: given a ten yet, and I'm kind of just maybe
[1:12:45] Speaker 2: waiting forever for the game that just screams ten at
[1:12:47] Speaker 2: me because I feel like it will and who knows,
[1:12:50] Speaker 2: but nine to five is like one of my highest score.
[1:12:53] Speaker 2: I was very happy to give that game a nine
[1:12:55] Speaker 2: to five. It truly rules, and I think it's like
[1:12:58] Speaker 2: I don't even know. I think it's like twenty bucks
[1:12:59] Speaker 2: maybe even less.
[1:13:01] Speaker 1: Oh wow.
[1:13:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a good little appetizer for Ninja Guid
[1:13:04] Speaker 2: in four, which is later this year, I think, right, So, yeah,
[1:13:09] Speaker 2: I Ninja Guid and Rage Abound is a must play
[1:13:12] Speaker 2: in my opinion. If you like platformers, if you like
[1:13:14] Speaker 2: retro gaming, if you like beautiful pixel art, if you
[1:13:17] Speaker 2: like the blasphemous games, give it a go. And some
[1:13:21] Speaker 2: people beat it in like four to five hours. I
[1:13:23] Speaker 2: beat it in like twelve. I kind of went syco
[1:13:25] Speaker 2: mode on it and tried to get like S rank
[1:13:27] Speaker 2: on everything and find every collectible. So if you want
[1:13:30] Speaker 2: a meati little platformer, that's there. But if you don't,
[1:13:34] Speaker 2: you can just mainpath it in three to four hours apparently,
[1:13:37] Speaker 2: which I know is like a big appeal for people.
[1:13:39] Speaker 3: What did you play it on? Because I would be
[1:13:42] Speaker 3: curious to know if there's a particular like platform preference
[1:13:46] Speaker 3: for this sort of thing.
[1:13:47] Speaker 2: I played it on PC. Also, if you hear my
[1:13:50] Speaker 2: daughter in the back, she's okay. She's just testing at
[1:13:52] Speaker 2: her vocal cords. I played it on PC primarily on
[1:13:57] Speaker 2: Steam Deck runs like a dream. It's perfect there. It's
[1:13:59] Speaker 2: perfect on PC. I've I've heard and read that it's
[1:14:02] Speaker 2: good on consoles as well, except with the exception of
[1:14:04] Speaker 2: Switch Too and Switch it's just a Switch one game,
[1:14:08] Speaker 2: and it is a capped at thirty fps, which is
[1:14:10] Speaker 2: kind of a bummer in my opinion, especially when it's
[1:14:13] Speaker 2: not capped at thirty fps elsewhere. So like, I'd probably
[1:14:16] Speaker 2: recommend it anywhere else. But again, I know it's you know,
[1:14:19] Speaker 2: Switch is really nice to carry and hold around. So
[1:14:21] Speaker 2: if you're fine with thirty fps, like, yeah, go for
[1:14:24] Speaker 2: It's not the game, it's not broken, it's just cap
[1:14:26] Speaker 2: to thirty And that's kind of a huge bummer for
[1:14:28] Speaker 2: me after playing on Steam Deck and PC. But yeah,
[1:14:31] Speaker 2: it's an excellent steam Deck game. It's not like one
[1:14:34] Speaker 2: of those ones that feels weird holding that gargantuan brick.
[1:14:37] Speaker 2: It feels at home there. Yeah, that's rage abound. I mean,
[1:14:42] Speaker 2: I just I just kind of wanted to tailcoat off
[1:14:46] Speaker 2: of Marcus's thoughts and just say, like the first half
[1:14:49] Speaker 2: of the game, he's loving. I suspect he's he hasn't already,
[1:14:52] Speaker 2: He's going to really love the second half. And I
[1:14:54] Speaker 2: would highly recommend that game too, pretty much anyone out there.
[1:14:58] Speaker 1: Oh there you go?
[1:14:59] Speaker 2: Was it real world? Oh go ahead.
[1:15:01] Speaker 1: I was gonna say, just in terms of the the difficulty,
[1:15:05] Speaker 1: do you think it's like hard enough that it'll be
[1:15:07] Speaker 1: off putting for some people? Like is it is it
[1:15:09] Speaker 1: like a I don't know, not to compare everything to
[1:15:13] Speaker 1: Dark Souls, but is it like a Dark Souls where
[1:15:15] Speaker 1: it's like it's really hard and that's the point to
[1:15:17] Speaker 1: frustrate you, or is it.
[1:15:17] Speaker 2: Like no, No, it's challenging, but not like brutally hard.
[1:15:21] Speaker 2: And there's really good accessibility options to like make things
[1:15:24] Speaker 2: easier or slow down timings or you know, change visuals
[1:15:29] Speaker 2: and stuff to make windows easier to see and stuff like.
[1:15:33] Speaker 2: You can make this game as easier as hard as
[1:15:35] Speaker 2: you want. And I think the baseline difficulty, like the
[1:15:38] Speaker 2: normal difficulty is, is really good. It's not it's going
[1:15:42] Speaker 2: to challenge you, but it's not going to like break you.
[1:15:46] Speaker 2: And you can also like some of the options include
[1:15:48] Speaker 2: like you don't take damage so you can enjoy the
[1:15:50] Speaker 2: platforming and fun and not worry about like dying. It's
[1:15:53] Speaker 2: got a lot of cool options like that.
[1:15:57] Speaker 1: I really like when when companies get like real, real
[1:16:00] Speaker 1: intense and specific with accessibility ones like that. I always
[1:16:04] Speaker 1: mention a game called Ike and Fell that came out
[1:16:07] Speaker 1: and like, oh, yeah, twenty nineteen, I don't remember exactly
[1:16:10] Speaker 1: the year, but they had a thing where when they
[1:16:12] Speaker 1: were developing the game, they created a button that just
[1:16:15] Speaker 1: let you skip combat encounters because they were trying to
[1:16:17] Speaker 1: just make sure it worked out. And then they're like, hey,
[1:16:19] Speaker 1: why don't we just put this in the menu. If
[1:16:21] Speaker 1: someone doesn't want they just want to play the game,
[1:16:23] Speaker 1: the don't want to fight people, we might as well
[1:16:24] Speaker 1: just have a skip combat en counters. But it's like, yeah,
[1:16:27] Speaker 1: why not, why not let people do whatever they want?
[1:16:29] Speaker 1: Why the ara of cheat codes is over? Just put
[1:16:33] Speaker 1: it in the menu, Let me toggle big heads, you know, South.
[1:16:36] Speaker 2: Of Mind, And I did that too. You can completely
[1:16:38] Speaker 2: skip the counter.
[1:16:40] Speaker 1: What a game?
[1:16:41] Speaker 2: Love A game that actually might if I reviewed it,
[1:16:45] Speaker 2: I wouldn't give it like a Game of the year's score.
[1:16:47] Speaker 2: But like, since I didn't have to review it, I
[1:16:50] Speaker 2: can just be like, I think that's my game of
[1:16:51] Speaker 2: the year because I loved. I can just ignore that.
[1:16:54] Speaker 2: I can ignore the parts that are bad and be like, no, yeah,
[1:16:57] Speaker 2: the Cajun culture, they nailed it. Love it perfect, excellent game.
[1:17:01] Speaker 2: Shout out South Them Midnight.
[1:17:03] Speaker 1: Shout out South Them Midnight.
[1:17:06] Speaker 2: A game I cannot recommend highly compared to Rage Bound is, unfortunately,
[1:17:09] Speaker 2: wheel World, which is probably my biggest disappointment of the
[1:17:12] Speaker 2: year so far. Am I lowest score this year. I
[1:17:16] Speaker 2: think technically my casting a frank Stone review got a five,
[1:17:19] Speaker 2: but I played it last year, but we reviewed it
[1:17:22] Speaker 2: in our downtime, blah blah blah. I gave wheel World
[1:17:25] Speaker 2: a five. I really really wanted to like this game,
[1:17:27] Speaker 2: but it just didn't work for me. It's it's like
[1:17:32] Speaker 2: a tale of two games. There's a really cool vibe
[1:17:35] Speaker 2: bicycle game, and then there's like a really and then
[1:17:40] Speaker 2: there's like a racing game, a bicycle racing game in there,
[1:17:42] Speaker 2: and I don't think it commits to either one well
[1:17:44] Speaker 2: enough to work, and so you just have this like
[1:17:46] Speaker 2: disparate package that is a lot of boring and clunky
[1:17:50] Speaker 2: races in my opinion, a pretty boring world, like basically
[1:17:57] Speaker 2: non existent storytelling. For example, you have to like go
[1:18:00] Speaker 2: around and race these like legendary bikers to get these
[1:18:05] Speaker 2: legendary parts. There's a whole story, but like, honestly, it's
[1:18:09] Speaker 2: not even it's whatever. The game doesn't commit to it much,
[1:18:12] Speaker 2: so I'm not going to either. But like you, they
[1:18:15] Speaker 2: build up these legendary bikers and then you you race
[1:18:17] Speaker 2: them and you beat them and they're like, oh, you
[1:18:19] Speaker 2: beat me, good job, and that's it. And I'm like,
[1:18:22] Speaker 2: what this is?
[1:18:24] Speaker 1: What this is?
[1:18:24] Speaker 2: It? Like your rid this is like your this is
[1:18:27] Speaker 2: like I've read and Pokemon was like, ah, good job,
[1:18:29] Speaker 2: and then that's it. There's no built like it was
[1:18:31] Speaker 2: just it was bizarre. And I didn't particularly like the races.
[1:18:36] Speaker 2: And I never struggled in the races, and I'd be
[1:18:38] Speaker 2: finding all these bike parts that change how my bike
[1:18:40] Speaker 2: plays on the road or in bushes or on grassland,
[1:18:43] Speaker 2: and it just didn't matter. I just put the best
[1:18:45] Speaker 2: stats on my bike and go And I never struggled
[1:18:47] Speaker 2: in a race, and I never had a hard time
[1:18:49] Speaker 2: fighting to get first place. Even when the game's annoying
[1:18:53] Speaker 2: rubber banding put me way back into eighth place. It
[1:18:56] Speaker 2: took me like not long at all to get back
[1:18:58] Speaker 2: into first place. The only challenges I had during the races,
[1:19:01] Speaker 2: we're completing bonus objectives like finding hidden kat kat is
[1:19:05] Speaker 2: the protagonist's name letters throughout each race. But it's one
[1:19:08] Speaker 2: of those games where I was making my own fun,
[1:19:10] Speaker 2: which is not fun ultimately. That said, I like the
[1:19:15] Speaker 2: art style. It's weird. I don't know how to describe it.
[1:19:17] Speaker 2: It's very different, very cool. I don't want to say
[1:19:21] Speaker 2: like very indie looking, but like, I don't know. You
[1:19:23] Speaker 2: look at it and you're like, that's a cool endie game.
[1:19:25] Speaker 2: And the soundtrack is incredible. I really, actually, legitimately love
[1:19:28] Speaker 2: the soundtrack a lot. It's really really good and probably
[1:19:32] Speaker 2: one of my favorites of the year. But yeah, it
[1:19:36] Speaker 2: was just pretty much nothing worked for me. The world
[1:19:40] Speaker 2: is pretty boring to explore. There's only three types of
[1:19:44] Speaker 2: things you'll see on your map, and they're all the
[1:19:45] Speaker 2: same and they don't change. And then it does the
[1:19:48] Speaker 2: most annoying thing in games, which Charles I think you're
[1:19:51] Speaker 2: dealing with in Shadow Labyrinth, where like, oh we're at
[1:19:53] Speaker 2: the end, boom, pal Nope, a whole new thing just
[1:19:56] Speaker 2: opened up and now you've got to do all this,
[1:20:00] Speaker 2: and then the narrative that happens. There was just like blow,
[1:20:03] Speaker 2: like what are we doing? And then I'm at the
[1:20:05] Speaker 2: final part of the game and it was like, Okay,
[1:20:08] Speaker 2: here we go. I hope you did it all right.
[1:20:11] Speaker 2: Game's over. No built, like, no, no momentous, yeah no,
[1:20:16] Speaker 2: And it was just like it almost felt like I
[1:20:18] Speaker 2: don't know, I don't want to like speculate, but I
[1:20:20] Speaker 2: was like, what, like it just is this really done?
[1:20:22] Speaker 2: It's it's finished. What happened the heck just happened? And yeah,
[1:20:25] Speaker 2: Ultimately I gave it a five. It's just my biggest,
[1:20:28] Speaker 2: my biggest disappointment this year. I don't really know if
[1:20:31] Speaker 2: there's anything redeeming in it other than the soundtrack, which
[1:20:33] Speaker 2: I will be listening to throughout the year. But again,
[1:20:37] Speaker 2: it's a It's another smaller, cheaper title, so like, if
[1:20:41] Speaker 2: you want to play a biking game, there's not many
[1:20:42] Speaker 2: out there, Sure go for it. It'll do it as
[1:20:45] Speaker 2: you know, maybe you'll. I'm I'm on the lower end
[1:20:47] Speaker 2: of reviews I've found, so like, there are people out
[1:20:50] Speaker 2: there who actually really like this game and dig what
[1:20:52] Speaker 2: it's doing, and that might be you. It just uh,
[1:20:56] Speaker 2: it didn't work. It felt the ViBe's part of the
[1:20:58] Speaker 2: game weren't given enough attention. In the racing part of
[1:21:02] Speaker 2: the game, weren't giving enough attention and put together, it
[1:21:05] Speaker 2: was this package that didn't work at all for me,
[1:21:07] Speaker 2: which is unfortunate, but you know, that's how it goes.
[1:21:11] Speaker 2: Sometimes that's a that's wheel World. It's not happened in
[1:21:14] Speaker 2: the wheel World.
[1:21:14] Speaker 1: They said, that's life in the wheel World.
[1:21:16] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the name is terrible. Ghost Bike
[1:21:20] Speaker 2: was way cooler. Having played wheel World, I now know
[1:21:25] Speaker 2: why they called it wheel World because the ghost bike,
[1:21:27] Speaker 2: the whole ghost aspect basically non existing. All of that
[1:21:31] Speaker 2: is like it's mentioned and then it's kind of there
[1:21:34] Speaker 2: in the background. Like I get why they changed the name.
[1:21:36] Speaker 2: It is not very it's not a very ghostly or
[1:21:38] Speaker 2: ghost bike game. But I also don't know if it's
[1:21:41] Speaker 2: a wheel World game. There's there's a lot of people
[1:21:43] Speaker 2: that ride bikes, but there's still annoying cars that not
[1:21:46] Speaker 2: you to freaking files and wheels. That's true. Actually those
[1:21:50] Speaker 2: are tires wheels. Here's what we want to get into here.
[1:21:55] Speaker 1: We got it. We got to know it's tires are
[1:21:59] Speaker 1: wheel There's no debate there, it's that's that's.
[1:22:02] Speaker 3: I think tires are subset of wheel.
[1:22:06] Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but uh we should we should
[1:22:11] Speaker 1: rename Grand Theft Auto six to real World. I think
[1:22:14] Speaker 1: that's like a better name for that.
[1:22:17] Speaker 2: Just Florida World, Florida, Real World, Florida, Florida. Yes, yeah, yes, exactly.
[1:22:26] Speaker 1: General question for both of you. Uh, this is either
[1:22:29] Speaker 1: true for reviewing games or just in general. Would you
[1:22:32] Speaker 1: rather play a boring game or a frustrating game? Oh?
[1:22:37] Speaker 2: God, probably probably a boring game, because then I can
[1:22:40] Speaker 2: at least turn on a podcast frustrating at my current
[1:22:43] Speaker 2: state in life, which is with the four month old
[1:22:45] Speaker 2: at home and the ever never ending schedule of being
[1:22:49] Speaker 2: in games. Media, frustrating is like, can be really frustrating. Sometimes.
[1:22:55] Speaker 2: I hate when I'm like, I just want this section
[1:22:57] Speaker 2: to be done as boring, I'll turn on music, I'll
[1:23:00] Speaker 2: turn on a podcast. At least I'm accomplishing something for me.
[1:23:03] Speaker 3: I think, well, you, Eric, I think I'd rather play
[1:23:11] Speaker 3: frustrating right now, because boring just makes me fall asleep.
[1:23:16] Speaker 3: Like I have actually fallen to sleep while playing a
[1:23:19] Speaker 3: video game before because it was so boring, but like
[1:23:22] Speaker 3: the music was also so serene and relaxing that I
[1:23:26] Speaker 3: just kind of like dozed off. What was the game
[1:23:28] Speaker 3: playing it? It was? It was some random RPG. I
[1:23:34] Speaker 3: legitimately don't remember the name of it. That's how boring
[1:23:37] Speaker 3: was that. That's not for the bid. I'm not trying
[1:23:40] Speaker 3: to like dodge casting shade on somebody. I legitimately don't
[1:23:42] Speaker 3: remember the name of it. I just remember like the
[1:23:44] Speaker 3: little piano lulling me off to sleep, which gives me
[1:23:49] Speaker 3: a hint. I think in my head to what it was.
[1:23:50] Speaker 3: But that was a long time ago. But maybe it
[1:23:52] Speaker 3: was im sesnah, who's to say, but I I don't know.
[1:23:59] Speaker 3: Like frus can be its own reward in that way.
[1:24:03] Speaker 3: And also I find something fascinating in a frustrating game.
[1:24:06] Speaker 3: I don't think I would enjoy playing Lord of the
[1:24:09] Speaker 3: Rings Gollum, but I think I would find it an
[1:24:11] Speaker 3: interesting game to play because of the ways in which
[1:24:16] Speaker 3: it is frustrating actively, whereas boring is never going to
[1:24:20] Speaker 3: be textually interesting. It's just going to be wrote by
[1:24:25] Speaker 3: the numbers, you know. And you can put on a
[1:24:28] Speaker 3: podcast or something, but at that point I'd rather just
[1:24:30] Speaker 3: be watching something or listening to the pocket, like actively
[1:24:34] Speaker 3: listening to the podcast than like passively. Yeah, so I think,
[1:24:38] Speaker 3: I think frustrating for me, but it is an interesting question.
[1:24:43] Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. I I would rather play a boring game,
[1:24:49] Speaker 1: but I do. I find frustrating games easier to like
[1:24:52] Speaker 1: review and talk about because I'm like, sure, finally I
[1:24:56] Speaker 1: can talk about this thing that's been I Wes brief
[1:25:00] Speaker 1: mentioned Shadow Labyrinth, which I've been trying to finish forever,
[1:25:02] Speaker 1: and I just keep having other things on my plate
[1:25:04] Speaker 1: and I'm at the final area. But it's a whole thing.
[1:25:07] Speaker 1: But one thing about that game that I don't like
[1:25:11] Speaker 1: is there's two types of collectibles. There's yellow collectibles and
[1:25:13] Speaker 1: there's red collectibles. And red collectibles can either be health
[1:25:17] Speaker 1: upgrades or like super important like character upgrades, or it's
[1:25:22] Speaker 1: map markers. It can just be more map markers. You
[1:25:25] Speaker 1: can do a whole like challenge section and get a
[1:25:27] Speaker 1: red collectible and then find out you have more markers
[1:25:29] Speaker 1: for your map, which, like I was never like I made.
[1:25:32] Speaker 2: An amount of markers for your map.
[1:25:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, you can place, which I didn't realize until I
[1:25:37] Speaker 1: got more. And I keep going to places and it's like, hey, man,
[1:25:41] Speaker 1: give us one hundred gold, we'll get you some more
[1:25:43] Speaker 1: map markers. It's like crazy be the first level of
[1:25:46] Speaker 1: this this boss rush mode, and you'll get some more
[1:25:49] Speaker 1: map markers, and I'm like, why is this a reward
[1:25:51] Speaker 1: to you? And then the yellow collectibles are either a
[1:25:57] Speaker 1: currency that I didn't figure out who I supposed to
[1:26:00] Speaker 1: give it to until literally like our thirty five of
[1:26:02] Speaker 1: the game, or text logs, and it's always that's one
[1:26:06] Speaker 1: where it's like always not fun to get.
[1:26:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought you're gonna say something like the ability
[1:26:11] Speaker 2: to pause, Like you've gained one pause.
[1:26:14] Speaker 1: I made fun of the game earlier that it's like
[1:26:17] Speaker 1: you gotta get five hours in and beat a boss
[1:26:19] Speaker 1: and then like your first big metro vanea thing, it's like, congrats,
[1:26:22] Speaker 1: you've unlocked the Perry button, Like why didn't I start
[1:26:25] Speaker 1: with the Perry button? And then after you get the
[1:26:27] Speaker 1: Perry button, you unlock the block button and it's like
[1:26:30] Speaker 1: you can't block in perry at the same time. They're
[1:26:32] Speaker 1: two different things.
[1:26:33] Speaker 3: Anyways, That's that's like a gaming cardinal sin to me
[1:26:37] Speaker 3: is when you take too long to give the player
[1:26:40] Speaker 3: the stuff that is just the fun parts of the game.
[1:26:44] Speaker 1: Like I get this exact conversation we were talking about Donkey Kong.
[1:26:47] Speaker 1: I feel so strongly about that. That's don Yunk's the
[1:26:53] Speaker 1: perfect example, perfect example of Donkey start off and you
[1:26:56] Speaker 1: can you can turf surf and you can jump, double jump,
[1:27:00] Speaker 1: and like you start off and it's like, oh, I
[1:27:01] Speaker 1: have so many things I can play with. It's just
[1:27:03] Speaker 1: fun to exist. There's a version of Donkey Kong where
[1:27:06] Speaker 1: you have a punch button and then eventually you do
[1:27:09] Speaker 1: a tutorial to learn how to punch down and punch
[1:27:11] Speaker 1: up and it takes like five hours to get the
[1:27:13] Speaker 1: like movement tech stuff.
[1:27:16] Speaker 3: Has to learn how to punch up.
[1:27:20] Speaker 1: Yeah, terrible.
[1:27:21] Speaker 2: Now my flip side, Prince of Perser Lost Crown, you
[1:27:24] Speaker 2: don't get the double jump. That's like one of the
[1:27:26] Speaker 2: last things you unlock. And they did so good with
[1:27:29] Speaker 2: the progression and the momentum of that game that, like,
[1:27:31] Speaker 2: it is one of the best feelings I've ever had.
[1:27:34] Speaker 2: So it sounds like Lost Crown is doing the opposite
[1:27:37] Speaker 2: of Shadow Labyrinth in the medic The.
[1:27:40] Speaker 1: Double jump is kind of like a whole thing in
[1:27:43] Speaker 1: a Metroid Venus specifically, where it's like any platform or
[1:27:48] Speaker 1: you want to double jump because it's just such a
[1:27:50] Speaker 1: common movement tool. I do like of all the abilities
[1:27:54] Speaker 1: to withhold. I like withholding the double jump because it's
[1:27:56] Speaker 1: something you know you're gonna get and you always want,
[1:27:58] Speaker 1: and there's something about not being able to jump quite
[1:28:01] Speaker 1: high enough that you're like, oh, I'm gonna get that,
[1:28:03] Speaker 1: but it prints. PUSH's a great example of like, you
[1:28:06] Speaker 1: do get other cool stuff before then, so it's not
[1:28:09] Speaker 1: like you're so disappointed you never get the double jump.
[1:28:11] Speaker 1: Shoutout Laborth. That did take me fifteen sixteen hours to
[1:28:14] Speaker 1: get the double jump, And when I finally did, I
[1:28:16] Speaker 1: was like, Ah, finally the base features of the game
[1:28:19] Speaker 1: are complete. Now I can move on to the rest
[1:28:21] Speaker 1: of it.
[1:28:21] Speaker 3: It depends if the game feels like it's been laid
[1:28:24] Speaker 3: out and designed it that way right. Does it feel
[1:28:26] Speaker 3: like you are kind of getting this tool to moment
[1:28:29] Speaker 3: that makes it feel like it opens the game up,
[1:28:31] Speaker 3: or does it feel like, oh, now I can play
[1:28:33] Speaker 3: the game more comfortably axiom verge. Weirdly enough, is when
[1:28:37] Speaker 3: I think of a lot where you start that game
[1:28:40] Speaker 3: as almost cumbersome, like you're just kind of plodding around
[1:28:44] Speaker 3: and you just have a gun. It's almost very metroidy.
[1:28:47] Speaker 3: I mean, it is extremely metroity, but it gives you
[1:28:51] Speaker 3: so many movement tech options to start to think about that.
[1:28:54] Speaker 3: By the time you start doing weird movement and weird stuff,
[1:28:57] Speaker 3: you kind of have the mind space to start thinking
[1:28:59] Speaker 3: about how all those things can combine together to do
[1:29:02] Speaker 3: some really cool stuff and then hunt some secrets with that.
[1:29:05] Speaker 3: And I think those are good examples of giving you
[1:29:09] Speaker 3: something later on that is kind of an expected upgrade
[1:29:12] Speaker 3: in a video game like that, but making you wait
[1:29:14] Speaker 3: and designing worlds around it so that it feels right
[1:29:18] Speaker 3: and timed and impactful, Whereas, yeah, I think there are
[1:29:21] Speaker 3: other games where it's just like, why'd you wait so
[1:29:24] Speaker 3: long to give me this? Man, that's the good stuff.
[1:29:27] Speaker 3: I liked Final Fantasy sixteen more than most, and I
[1:29:31] Speaker 3: think you spend too long in that game with too
[1:29:33] Speaker 3: limited of a skill set when it comes to the
[1:29:36] Speaker 3: icons that you can use, because by the time you
[1:29:38] Speaker 3: start to unlock more than like two icons, maybe two
[1:29:42] Speaker 3: or three that you start out with, then the game
[1:29:45] Speaker 3: starts to really open up and give you some really
[1:29:48] Speaker 3: cool stuff to work with. But up to that point,
[1:29:50] Speaker 3: you're kind of working with a very limited skill set,
[1:29:52] Speaker 3: and that can be frustrating because you're like, give me
[1:29:55] Speaker 3: the cool toys. I want to play with the cool
[1:29:56] Speaker 3: toys was so excited.
[1:30:00] Speaker 2: Review Charles also, yes, I love oh Sure sixty as well.
[1:30:04] Speaker 2: But your shadow out in the review is probably my
[1:30:06] Speaker 2: most anticipated of you to see. I've just I've just
[1:30:09] Speaker 2: seen and heard so much of the ups and downs
[1:30:11] Speaker 2: you've gone through a lot of times playing it in slacks,
[1:30:14] Speaker 2: so like, I can't wait to it.
[1:30:16] Speaker 1: It's one of those things where I sat down to
[1:30:19] Speaker 1: start drafting it and I blew way past the one
[1:30:24] Speaker 1: page limit, and now I'm like, I'm gonna have to Yeah,
[1:30:28] Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm gonna do two versions of
[1:30:30] Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a web version and a magazine version.
[1:30:32] Speaker 1: Listeners are our magazine. We go based on character count,
[1:30:36] Speaker 1: and like one page is like thirty six hundred characters,
[1:30:39] Speaker 1: which is not that many words, definitely less than you
[1:30:41] Speaker 1: would normally put in a review. So it's often hard
[1:30:44] Speaker 1: to like pare down your thoughts into something as concise
[1:30:47] Speaker 1: as that. But when you're writing something right at the
[1:30:50] Speaker 1: magazine deadline, it's like almost more work to write a
[1:30:52] Speaker 1: web version, and of almost it is more work to
[1:30:55] Speaker 1: write two versions of a thing versus one version of
[1:30:57] Speaker 1: a thing, but it's good.
[1:30:59] Speaker 2: Practice though I do that, like, yeah, the magazine version
[1:31:02] Speaker 2: really forces you to think about what needs to be
[1:31:04] Speaker 2: said in this review. There are I often sometimes I'm like,
[1:31:07] Speaker 2: if I had one more paragraph, that would be awesome. Yeah,
[1:31:10] Speaker 2: when I'm trimming, I'm like, I wish I didn't have
[1:31:12] Speaker 2: to trim this. But I think it's a unique thing
[1:31:15] Speaker 2: about writing and physical that really tests your brain in
[1:31:18] Speaker 2: a way that doesn't happen online elsewhere.
[1:31:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some There's a few points in my life
[1:31:24] Speaker 1: I can pinpoint as the most relief from stress I've
[1:31:28] Speaker 1: ever felt. And number three or four is my first
[1:31:33] Speaker 1: week at Game Informer. I found out that it was
[1:31:35] Speaker 1: a character count and not a word count, where I
[1:31:38] Speaker 1: thought I had to write like sixteen hundred words on
[1:31:43] Speaker 1: Path of Titans. Maybe it's called it's like a dinosaur
[1:31:47] Speaker 1: MMO game that I didn't really have all that much
[1:31:49] Speaker 1: of a thought about. And I was doing like a
[1:31:51] Speaker 1: half page preview on it, and I was like, I
[1:31:54] Speaker 1: can't write like an essay on the like hour or
[1:31:57] Speaker 1: two I played on this game. I don't want to
[1:31:59] Speaker 1: do that those character counts, And I like almost cried.
[1:32:01] Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, oh maybe I can
[1:32:03] Speaker 1: do this job longer.
[1:32:05] Speaker 2: My favorite is I don't want to say names, but
[1:32:07] Speaker 2: we are like freelancers, Like you know, help a freelancer
[1:32:11] Speaker 2: get a piece in and pitch and stuff, and then
[1:32:12] Speaker 2: they get it in and they're like, dog, these character
[1:32:15] Speaker 2: counts are you for real? And I'm like, welcome to
[1:32:17] Speaker 2: print man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:32:21] Speaker 1: That is a thing of I think it's also a
[1:32:25] Speaker 1: coming from a school environment where it's like the hit
[1:32:29] Speaker 1: the minimum, like minimum a thousand words and like you
[1:32:33] Speaker 1: would never write three thousand words for that thing, but
[1:32:34] Speaker 1: you get so used to being like I'm just gonna
[1:32:36] Speaker 1: fill as many thoughts as possible and get them out,
[1:32:39] Speaker 1: and there's like definitely an art to the magazine of
[1:32:41] Speaker 1: making it more concise. Yeah.
[1:32:43] Speaker 3: Forces you to talk about the game, though, And I
[1:32:46] Speaker 3: think that's what I like is I think too often
[1:32:49] Speaker 3: when I am given unlimited space, I'm like, oh well,
[1:32:52] Speaker 3: I really need to like write all of this almost
[1:32:55] Speaker 3: back of the box summary of like this is what
[1:32:58] Speaker 3: the game is, this is what you do, and having
[1:33:02] Speaker 3: a character limit forces you to just talk about what
[1:33:04] Speaker 3: you think about the game. Not this has a gun
[1:33:08] Speaker 3: in it, but the gun in this game is not
[1:33:10] Speaker 3: very good, or the gun in this game is very good.
[1:33:13] Speaker 3: Shout outs to the smart pistol. And that's a that's
[1:33:17] Speaker 3: a good thing to encourage, I think for writers, and
[1:33:20] Speaker 3: so I like it and.
[1:33:22] Speaker 1: That's that's why it's nice to have the podcast where
[1:33:24] Speaker 1: it's like I can give my unabridged thoughts.
[1:33:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:33:28] Speaker 1: My all time lowest review. Definitely least favorite game I
[1:33:32] Speaker 1: played was Super Bomberman R two. At least we have
[1:33:37] Speaker 1: a flavor work. I've probably played worse games otherwise, but
[1:33:40] Speaker 1: that game has like insane lore where it turns out
[1:33:43] Speaker 1: that like these little cute guys have been committing suicide
[1:33:46] Speaker 1: for you on like you get to never mind. It's
[1:33:51] Speaker 1: it's a level of weirdness and annoyingness that I'm like,
[1:33:54] Speaker 1: I literally I don't have the word count to explain
[1:33:57] Speaker 1: it in a written review. So I was glad I
[1:33:59] Speaker 1: got to come on here and they gave me like
[1:34:01] Speaker 1: a minute timer to just word vomit how much I
[1:34:06] Speaker 1: was baffled by the weird lore of this game, whereas
[1:34:08] Speaker 1: like the average person is like, I just don't know
[1:34:09] Speaker 1: if it's fun, Like I don't really need to get
[1:34:11] Speaker 1: I don't need, you know, twenty thousand characters on the
[1:34:14] Speaker 1: ins and outs of the Bomberman law as you've now
[1:34:17] Speaker 1: become familiar with it.
[1:34:18] Speaker 3: But that's a good segment. Idea is just here's a
[1:34:21] Speaker 3: minute to vent about something in a game you've been playing.
[1:34:24] Speaker 1: That's actually great my back pocket. My favorite thing about
[1:34:28] Speaker 1: Super Super Bomberman R. Two is I explained it it's
[1:34:32] Speaker 1: like an open world Bomberman game and Matt Miller, having
[1:34:34] Speaker 1: not played it, I don't think he ever played it.
[1:34:36] Speaker 1: I don't know he ever said a thing about other
[1:34:38] Speaker 1: than this, but he was like, that's like making open
[1:34:40] Speaker 1: world tennis. I was like, oh my gosh, that's genius.
[1:34:44] Speaker 1: What a bar that's gotta be the I don't think
[1:34:47] Speaker 1: I put it in my review, but I was like, Matt,
[1:34:49] Speaker 1: that's so good. All right. Uh well, thanks everyone for
[1:34:55] Speaker 1: tuning into this episode of the Game Former Show. As always,
[1:35:01] Speaker 1: you can subscribe to Game for a magazine, a Game
[1:35:03] Speaker 1: for when a com slash subscribe. We're working real hard
[1:35:07] Speaker 1: on our most recent issue or our upcoming issue, rather
[1:35:11] Speaker 1: hoping that all our scheduling stuff works out, but we
[1:35:16] Speaker 1: are excited about it, so that'll be fun. Yes, I
[1:35:20] Speaker 1: don't know your guys' social handles. Off the top of
[1:35:22] Speaker 1: my head, I'm I'm everywhere as that's a friendship. I'm
[1:35:29] Speaker 1: I'm member, where was Chuck Duck? Three sixty five West?
[1:35:31] Speaker 1: Where can people find you?
[1:35:33] Speaker 2: Mostly Blue Sky? I'm just Wesley LeBlanc there and then
[1:35:36] Speaker 2: on Instagram, I am annoyingly I underscore, am underscore, Wesley Underscore.
[1:35:42] Speaker 2: I've been trying to be more active there and like
[1:35:44] Speaker 2: posting about my work and travels because I'd like to
[1:35:47] Speaker 2: travel and do a lot of it and take pictures.
[1:35:49] Speaker 2: And I'm also trying to make TikTok thing, which I am.
[1:35:52] Speaker 2: I've been seeing those seven on TikTok. I'll talk about
[1:35:56] Speaker 2: my China trip that I returned from in a later
[1:35:58] Speaker 2: episode one day. I have a lot to say and
[1:36:00] Speaker 2: it was an awesome trip, but I was there with
[1:36:02] Speaker 2: a lot of people, like it was the biggest event
[1:36:04] Speaker 2: I've ever been to. At one point, like two thousand
[1:36:06] Speaker 2: people China shows up and a lot of them were influencers,
[1:36:11] Speaker 2: And to be frank, just hearing some of the numbers
[1:36:15] Speaker 2: they're throwing around, I was like, I gotta get on TikTok.
[1:36:18] Speaker 1: I gotta start.
[1:36:20] Speaker 2: I got to make my life content and it's a
[1:36:24] Speaker 2: struggle It's not easy and it's kind of embarrassing, but
[1:36:28] Speaker 2: it helped. Like filming in public is really hard, but
[1:36:31] Speaker 2: seeing these people are like professionals at it, like they
[1:36:34] Speaker 2: have no problem whipping out their phones and just doing whatever,
[1:36:38] Speaker 2: and I was like inspired. So I'm really trying to
[1:36:40] Speaker 2: give it a good go. We'll see if that continues.
[1:36:43] Speaker 2: But if you want to join me there in the
[1:36:44] Speaker 2: cringe and in the work travels and whatever else I post,
[1:36:47] Speaker 2: It's Wesley LeBlanc seven.
[1:36:51] Speaker 1: And Eric C.
[1:36:53] Speaker 3: Moussy on Old b St. Guy is about the only
[1:36:56] Speaker 3: place I'm on these days. I'm trying to disconnect myself
[1:36:59] Speaker 3: from social media as much as possible. So yeah, I've
[1:37:04] Speaker 3: got you know, I've got stuff for friends and family
[1:37:07] Speaker 3: to get signs of life every now and then. But
[1:37:09] Speaker 3: uh yeah, I especially when the Great Exodus happened and
[1:37:14] Speaker 3: all that, I was like, it's probably a good time
[1:37:16] Speaker 3: for me to just take a break from a lot.
[1:37:17] Speaker 1: Of social media.
[1:37:18] Speaker 2: It was connected.
[1:37:20] Speaker 3: Yeah, we should we have connected. Kajimo is so right
[1:37:23] Speaker 3: for that, And so I've been doing it less but
[1:37:27] Speaker 3: best guys where you'll find me most of the time.
[1:37:29] Speaker 3: So when I decide to post random thoughts that enter
[1:37:32] Speaker 3: my head.
[1:37:34] Speaker 1: Well, there you go. And if you want, if you
[1:37:36] Speaker 1: want someone that's gonna post consistently, you can find Game
[1:37:39] Speaker 1: Informer dot com, on Blue Sky, game Form magazine, on Instagram.
[1:37:43] Speaker 1: You can just search game for him anywhere. We'll probably
[1:37:45] Speaker 1: pop up before we go west. Did you find out
[1:37:51] Speaker 1: frog and Italian?
[1:37:53] Speaker 2: Yeah? Frog and Italian is ratza, no rana? But hey,
[1:38:00] Speaker 2: do you know what Italians? What frogs sound like in Italy?
[1:38:04] Speaker 2: Like the noise that they.
[1:38:09] Speaker 3: Ribb it an Italian?
[1:38:12] Speaker 1: What did they?
[1:38:12] Speaker 3: Does?
[1:38:12] Speaker 1: She say something?
[1:38:14] Speaker 2: She said that she just knows it's rhana, but doesn't
[1:38:17] Speaker 2: she says she knows it's rana an Italian like that's
[1:38:20] Speaker 2: the word for frog, and she's positive they do not
[1:38:22] Speaker 2: do ribbit. Like if you're a kid in Italy doing
[1:38:26] Speaker 2: a frog noise, you don't do a ribbon.
[1:38:27] Speaker 3: You don't do ribb it.
[1:38:29] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this this week instead of looking it.
[1:38:32] Speaker 3: Up to find out okay, okay.
[1:38:35] Speaker 1: This week after watching the podcast, instead of looking it up,
[1:38:38] Speaker 1: you guys can imagine whatever you want Italian frogs to say. Firstly,
[1:38:43] Speaker 1: I think they go rubato.
[1:38:46] Speaker 2: Oh hold on, but.
[1:38:47] Speaker 1: Yeah it's cra cra cra, oh cra.
[1:38:54] Speaker 3: Well Okay, Cra, cra.
[1:38:57] Speaker 2: Shout Italian women. Shout out frog, there we go. Shout out.
[1:39:01] Speaker 2: Women that like frogs, shout out women, shout out Italy.
[1:39:05] Speaker 2: Frogs are up, We up, we up.
[1:39:09] Speaker 1: Shout out Italy, shout out. Thank you so much for
[1:39:13] Speaker 1: listening to this absolutely insane episode The Game for Michelle.
[1:39:17] Speaker 1: We'll see you guys next week. Bye bye,

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