Invincible VS Cover + Monster Hunter Stories 3 w/ Nicole Carpenter

<v Speaker 1>Hello, and welcome to the Game Informer Show, a weekly
<v Speaker 1>podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Friday
<v Speaker 1>for a discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews, and
<v Speaker 1>exclusive reveals, alongside Game and Former staff and special guests
<v Speaker 1>from around the industry. I'm one of your hosts, Charles,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm kind of like the Yoshi of this podcast
<v Speaker 1>group because I know all the words to three thousand
<v Speaker 1>and five by Child Shcambino. I am joined today by Marcus,
<v Speaker 1>who's like the Mario of our group.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't even know if I should do a Mario
<v Speaker 2>impression or a Chris Pratts Mario impression.
<v Speaker 1>Like do one and we'll guess which it is.
<v Speaker 2>It's trash.
<v Speaker 1>I'm pretty sure's Chris.
<v Speaker 2>I'm pretty sure that's what he says in the trailer
<v Speaker 2>it's a thousand when he shows him as painting and
<v Speaker 2>he's just like y yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And Eric Van Allen, who's kind of like the La
<v Speaker 1>ky To of the Game of the Game of Former
<v Speaker 1>crew because he'd be flying around with that camera.
<v Speaker 3>I was like, maybe I'm going to get Charlie day Luigi.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe I'm going to get like the oas he does
<v Speaker 3>the pape. Sylvia he's no, but I just get laky too.
<v Speaker 1>I just.
<v Speaker 3>In Fantasy Mario World. I'm still working.
<v Speaker 2>A characteristic. I'm sorry, lak too. Did we not say
<v Speaker 2>lack it two?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what we say. It's a word I've
<v Speaker 1>only ever seen written.
<v Speaker 3>I like laky too. That's fun.
<v Speaker 1>That's that's my best guess. And finally, our special guest
<v Speaker 1>for today Nicole Carpenter, freelancer extraordinaire, who's kind of like
<v Speaker 1>the Rosalina of the Game of Former Crew because she's
<v Speaker 1>not usually here, but the stars have aligned and she's
<v Speaker 1>finally visiting us this week.
<v Speaker 4>Wow, that's beautiful.
<v Speaker 1>How do you feel, are you? Do you like Rosalina?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah? Yeah, And I also would have accepted Toad.
<v Speaker 1>And your tote impression real quick? Oh no, oh no,
<v Speaker 1>that is that is something today?
<v Speaker 2>Would you like to do? You like to do? Michael
<v Speaker 2>East Toad?
<v Speaker 3>I think the discord will automatically noise gate well noises
<v Speaker 3>Not that I know this from experience or anything, but
<v Speaker 3>I do think discord noise gates most of those.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, ma, well, I really was discorded noisegate at.
<v Speaker 2>That that was actually that was that was Captain Toad.
<v Speaker 3>Actually I think that was Marge Simpson walking by. That
<v Speaker 3>was crazy, but.
<v Speaker 2>Like later seasons March Simpson where her voice is just destroyed. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Uh well, anyways, but we got a we got a
<v Speaker 1>great show for you today this week. But before we
<v Speaker 1>get into all the specifics, I just want to do
<v Speaker 1>a quick plug for Game Informer dot com slash subscribe,
<v Speaker 1>where you can go to get our latest issue, which
<v Speaker 1>features Invincible on the cover. Invincible versus the game. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>Marcus and Eric, you were you were the duo that went?
<v Speaker 1>Is that correct?
<v Speaker 3>We were?
<v Speaker 2>We were. Yeah. I wrote this thing today and we'll.
<v Speaker 1>Be talking all about it today. If you want to
<v Speaker 1>sign up for future physical issues, go to Gameformer dot
<v Speaker 1>com slash subscribe anywhere in the US. You can also
<v Speaker 1>get a digital subscription at the same place, and we're
<v Speaker 1>on newsstands now in bookstores and other plays like that.
<v Speaker 1>So you go to Barnes and Noble will be there,
<v Speaker 1>and we're also popping up in countries around the world
<v Speaker 1>as always. If you see one there, please let us know,
<v Speaker 1>both because we're excited to be spoted in the wild,
<v Speaker 1>and also we don't know all the stores that we're at,
<v Speaker 1>so we would love to have a tally of knowing
<v Speaker 1>where to point people to go. As always Gameformer dot
<v Speaker 1>Com slash subscribe. Before we jump into our current issue,
<v Speaker 1>we're actually going to do a quick moon walk backwards
<v Speaker 1>into the back issue because Nicole, you wrote a fantastic
<v Speaker 1>feature on the game Love and Deep Space once't you
<v Speaker 1>tell us a little bit about like your relationship to
<v Speaker 1>that game and the formation of this.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, well, so I have been covering Love in Deep
<v Speaker 4>Space for a little bit and playing it for a
<v Speaker 4>little bit longer. But basically it's a I would say
<v Speaker 4>maybe like part visual novel asque like part action game.
<v Speaker 4>And the core premise is that there's these five guys,
<v Speaker 4>five very very adorable, you know, lovable cast of characters
<v Speaker 4>that you can choose a date to date and you
<v Speaker 4>fight alongside them. You know, you're part of this like
<v Speaker 4>crew of deep Space hunters. And you go out and
<v Speaker 4>you try to help, you know, get rid of the
<v Speaker 4>bad guys. Is you know, that's what you always do.
<v Speaker 4>But you get rid of the bad guys. But then
<v Speaker 4>you also come home and you have these five guys.
<v Speaker 4>You have five boyfriends you can choose from and get
<v Speaker 4>to know them. There's like the action part but then
<v Speaker 4>it Love and Deep says recently added a home, like
<v Speaker 4>you know, your own home, so you can also do
<v Speaker 4>stuff like cuddle on the couch with your boyfriend or
<v Speaker 4>like play music with him, or you know, he can
<v Speaker 4>take a shower.
<v Speaker 2>Why not?
<v Speaker 3>And you're also there, are you also like present in
<v Speaker 3>the room, like just hagging out like popcorn, Like he just.
<v Speaker 4>Comes out, so like I don't know if you I
<v Speaker 4>believe this was from this GDC. The Love and Deep
<v Speaker 4>Space people did a presentation and they showed some of
<v Speaker 4>the pictures of the guys, the five boyfriends wearing their
<v Speaker 4>towels after the shower, and it kind of is like
<v Speaker 4>it's like a way to demonstrate how much detail, attention
<v Speaker 4>to detail goes into these characters, because each of them
<v Speaker 4>like wears their towel in a different way, and that
<v Speaker 4>kind of like says something about the character. It's really cool,
<v Speaker 4>like they these developers care a lot about the game.
<v Speaker 2>How many different ways can you wear a towel?
<v Speaker 3>I was I was doing this, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>A three.
<v Speaker 4>They are large all around the waist too, like so
<v Speaker 4>these are like they're not like, you know, like doing this,
<v Speaker 4>but they're all tied different ways around their waist.
<v Speaker 1>Huh is the one that's not you said that's largely
<v Speaker 1>and this is not the most important, but this is
<v Speaker 1>pretty important. It's all around the Okay, Okay, if I.
<v Speaker 4>Do wish one of them just had it like over
<v Speaker 4>their head.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's sweatpants with like the towel wrapped around like
<v Speaker 3>you just got them working out. Yeah, yeah, I see
<v Speaker 3>the vision. So this is I've I've heard this described
<v Speaker 3>not as like necessarily in Atome game, so it's not.
<v Speaker 3>It has elements of dating sim but you are kind
<v Speaker 3>of in a not to cite the deep text, but
<v Speaker 3>you're in like a tenchi moyo situation where you are
<v Speaker 3>like staying at a place and there's a bunch of
<v Speaker 3>different and dudes that are all kind of are they
<v Speaker 3>vying for your character's attention or I don't know if I.
<v Speaker 4>Would say vying for their character's attention because like you,
<v Speaker 4>you know, they all have their own stories and part
<v Speaker 4>of this, and like there's so there's so much to
<v Speaker 4>this because not only are you like in this like
<v Speaker 4>active storyline, but there are also these alternate reality storylines
<v Speaker 4>and so there's so much variety, Like there's so much
<v Speaker 4>going on that like it's not just this current timeline,
<v Speaker 4>this current reality, so like there's just a lot going on,
<v Speaker 4>and all of these characters play a role into that
<v Speaker 4>main story as well, and so you can play, like,
<v Speaker 4>you know, you can do the romance storyline for it's
<v Speaker 4>getting caught. I won't go into the details of the gotcha,
<v Speaker 4>but like, so the gotcha is a big part of
<v Speaker 4>like what content you can see, so you to get
<v Speaker 4>some of those like alternate storylines, you have to like
<v Speaker 4>roll for the character stories and stuff, and like it's
<v Speaker 4>a that's an oversimplication of it, but like basically, like
<v Speaker 4>you can do what you want to do. You're not
<v Speaker 4>like locked in.
<v Speaker 3>So I was going to ask that's you know, I've
<v Speaker 3>played some mobile slash gotcha games before, like hon Kai
<v Speaker 3>and Szendless on zero and things like that. It's five
<v Speaker 3>dudes and they're kind of locked in. So I was wondering,
<v Speaker 3>So the gotcha you're rolling for kind of these alternate
<v Speaker 3>reality versions of them or just like variations on them,
<v Speaker 3>but they're kind of like the baseline is these five dudes.
<v Speaker 4>Yes, the baseline is there's no other like people to
<v Speaker 4>date other than these five guys. Okay, okay, and like
<v Speaker 4>the alternate the alternate reality stuff is like wild, it's wild.
<v Speaker 4>They have some different It's basically got like a theme
<v Speaker 4>and a story each time it happens, which I don't
<v Speaker 4>I don't know how long every update or whatever. And
<v Speaker 4>some of them are like insane.
<v Speaker 1>What is the what is the rate?
<v Speaker 2>Like?
<v Speaker 1>Are we talking like their cavemen in Dinosaur Times here?
<v Speaker 2>Or is it just like like superheroes?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, so it basically stays in like the fantasy realm,
<v Speaker 4>but like one since you're like a queen and like
<v Speaker 4>you know, oh, and then in this other instance, the
<v Speaker 4>five guys are like feral werewolfy type guys who are
<v Speaker 4>like locked in ages, and it's it's yeah, like yeah, no,
<v Speaker 4>they're locked in cages and literally like you're they're they're feral?
<v Speaker 3>Uh huh do they do?
<v Speaker 1>They can they talk? Yeah?
<v Speaker 4>No, they can talk. They can talk.
<v Speaker 2>Are you locked in the cage with them? Are you
<v Speaker 2>in charge of the cage?
<v Speaker 4>I don't. I don't actually don't know if you're locked
<v Speaker 4>in the cage with them, but I think that they're
<v Speaker 4>basically they're like, are you scared of me?
<v Speaker 3>M okay okay? So I was going to lead in
<v Speaker 3>to that because I was, like, the the thing with
<v Speaker 3>this game is that obviously is very loved by people
<v Speaker 3>who love this kind of content, super popular. It is
<v Speaker 3>like I feel like it veers into genres that you know,
<v Speaker 3>like romanticy and things like that. Like people want to
<v Speaker 3>see like this this kind of content, specifically having those
<v Speaker 3>encounters and stuff like that, and it has become extremely popular,
<v Speaker 3>as y'all were saying, and that's kind of like a
<v Speaker 3>large part of the piece was about like the popularity
<v Speaker 3>of Love and Deep Space.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, there's the fandom around Love and Deep Space is
<v Speaker 4>growing in the United States, but it's also huge overseas.
<v Speaker 4>And when I say huge, I mean like almost like
<v Speaker 4>k Poppy sort of huge. Like the people who love
<v Speaker 4>these characters, you know, and everyone has like their favorite
<v Speaker 4>and they sorry the dog. You probably heard that one.
<v Speaker 1>You heard that one right, barely?
<v Speaker 4>Okay, cool. Well, so they're like buying billboards to like
<v Speaker 4>celebrate their favorite character's birthday, or they are, you know,
<v Speaker 4>holding events to meet up with each other. Cosplayers are
<v Speaker 4>coming so that they can take pictures with them. Like
<v Speaker 4>it's huge, and these events aren't small, they're they're big events,
<v Speaker 4>like big stuff. It's big stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Have they Have they even any sense of if they're
<v Speaker 2>going to branch out to like wider multimedia stuff like
<v Speaker 2>like you mentioned kind of cosplayers I assume sort of
<v Speaker 2>performing as them. Have they like did they see themselves
<v Speaker 2>doing like any TV or animated or even movie stuff
<v Speaker 2>like with these with these guys.
<v Speaker 4>I haven't heard anything on that, but it does seem
<v Speaker 4>like it's a franchise that has so many different storylines
<v Speaker 4>that you can pull from, like they're you know, there's
<v Speaker 4>so many here and so many different worlds that they've
<v Speaker 4>built within like this main world. So it seems like
<v Speaker 4>that is something that is doable and like would be
<v Speaker 4>of interest to people. But I haven't heard anything anything
<v Speaker 4>on that end.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Yeah, that's it's fascinating. It almost reminds me vaguely
<v Speaker 2>of like when Infinity Niki started popping off, where at
<v Speaker 2>least for me personally, that was like a series I
<v Speaker 2>like the love nicky stuff I had no familiarity of
<v Speaker 2>prior to playing Infinity Nikki and then learning how massive
<v Speaker 2>like almost like I don't know if you say quietly massive,
<v Speaker 2>just because I haven't heard of it, but like it's
<v Speaker 2>like this, it's a giant thing and then Infinity Nikki
<v Speaker 2>comes down, and it's kind of like kind of like
<v Speaker 2>the glass ceiling, like mainstream kind of moment for it.
<v Speaker 2>I don't any sounds like this game is, like you said,
<v Speaker 2>it's kind of becoming more and more popular in the
<v Speaker 2>West in a way that maybe it hasn't before. And
<v Speaker 2>I assume this is the like Love and d Space,
<v Speaker 2>Like there's no other games in this series. Is it
<v Speaker 2>just this game that has just been around or well, well.
<v Speaker 4>One, it's nice you brought up Infinity Nikki because it's
<v Speaker 4>the same team they built this game. In fold Games
<v Speaker 4>yep O paper games. They kind of go both in
<v Speaker 4>some some instances. But so Love and Deep Space largely
<v Speaker 4>is this game, but there is like an early one
<v Speaker 4>I can't remember what it's called, but this is like
<v Speaker 4>this is the game.
<v Speaker 3>Interesting I to that point earlier. It feels like a
<v Speaker 3>lot of gotcha games are starting to reach that point
<v Speaker 3>of not just being a gotcha game and and kind
<v Speaker 3>of orienting towards that. But a lot of them have
<v Speaker 3>started to develop themselves as kind of like a lifestyle brand.
<v Speaker 3>I feel like Infinity Nikki and Love and Deep Space
<v Speaker 3>are two like really prominent examples of that, maybe genschin
<v Speaker 3>As like the third one where they obviously like Gotcha
<v Speaker 3>has kind of been looked at. There's always some new
<v Speaker 3>legislation or somebody like putting scrutiny on Gotcha, rolls, loop boxes,
<v Speaker 3>et cetera. It feels like a lot of mobile games
<v Speaker 3>that have reached a certain level of popularity are now
<v Speaker 3>eyeing like lifestyle brand stuff the same way that like
<v Speaker 3>Pokemon might and things like that. And obviously this is
<v Speaker 3>not going to hit the same massive wide demographic that
<v Speaker 3>Pokemon might, just by nature of some of the shower
<v Speaker 3>based content and all that, but it is it is
<v Speaker 3>really interesting to see these games evolve like that, because,
<v Speaker 3>I mean, this is there was like I've seen images
<v Speaker 3>of people like going to conventions for this stuff and
<v Speaker 3>all that sort of thing like this is I think
<v Speaker 3>a much bigger thing than some people obviously someone like
<v Speaker 3>me would like realize at a time. And it's kind
<v Speaker 3>of cool to see gaming evolve in that way, to
<v Speaker 3>see something become a lifestyle brand in that way.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, and like regarding the lifestyle brand like this app,
<v Speaker 4>you know it is more than the love and keepsa
<v Speaker 4>based game as well, like this app has stuff like
<v Speaker 4>a period tracker, so you know, oh yeah, so there's
<v Speaker 4>like different sort of functionalities in there. So this is
<v Speaker 4>a it has a pre detracker, and then you know,
<v Speaker 4>your boyfriend is like giving you updates like how you
<v Speaker 4>feel and buddy like what's you know kind of like
<v Speaker 4>sort of you know, it's giving you that helpful information,
<v Speaker 4>but also they're uh, you know, talking to you, comforting
<v Speaker 4>you that sort of thing as well. Like there's different
<v Speaker 4>functionalities in there for people, and it's really really cool,
<v Speaker 4>Like you don't see that, you know. I think there's
<v Speaker 4>probably some like hesitations like would I want to be
<v Speaker 4>putting my health information into like an app like that.
<v Speaker 4>I don't know where they're storing it. I don't know
<v Speaker 4>what they're doing it. I don't know, probably not, but
<v Speaker 4>like that's not a concern for everyone.
<v Speaker 3>It's I mean, we tell Pikachu when we're sleeping, so
<v Speaker 3>like and that's some more dangerous.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>I actually believe that in Love and Deep Space that
<v Speaker 4>there's a functionality where you can like fall asleep with
<v Speaker 4>the men too.
<v Speaker 1>Like I was going to say, I had no idea
<v Speaker 1>was that that stent of So there's is are there
<v Speaker 1>like like sleep trackers. Is that a part of it?
<v Speaker 1>Is it just like other stuff other like health information
<v Speaker 1>putting in I just I didn't.
<v Speaker 2>It's like can you can you treat this as like
<v Speaker 2>a fit bit that you can date.
<v Speaker 4>A little? I don't. I don't know if the sleep
<v Speaker 4>functionality like tracks your sleep. It does have like you know, sounds,
<v Speaker 4>it's got it kind of like helps you fall asleep,
<v Speaker 4>like soothing audio that sort of thing. I don't know
<v Speaker 4>if it tracks how you sleep, but it does have
<v Speaker 4>those sort of healthy features.
<v Speaker 2>That's interesting that, I mean, the the sort of like
<v Speaker 2>concerns about in putting your health information aside, that is
<v Speaker 2>like pretty cool. It's like you don't, like you mentioned
<v Speaker 2>in your piece, like you don't you just don't see
<v Speaker 2>that with games or even a lot of tech, but
<v Speaker 2>sort of something that is so like women's centric. Ah,
<v Speaker 2>and to kind of have it wrapped around this really
<v Speaker 2>appealing package of just having these virtual kind of like
<v Speaker 2>dream guys sort of like help you with that stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Like in a perfect world, I could see this being
<v Speaker 2>a way to sort of help women that are I
<v Speaker 2>don't know if they're if they have any like health
<v Speaker 2>either concerns or just health trouble, Like if this somehow
<v Speaker 2>helps them keep track of their lifestyle in a way
<v Speaker 2>that maybe they wouldn't otherwise do with any other sort
<v Speaker 2>of like piece of tech. I could see like a
<v Speaker 2>like a neat sort of like benefit from that, assuming
<v Speaker 2>all that stuff is sort of above board whatever they
<v Speaker 2>do with the information you have. But yeah, that's that's fascinating.
<v Speaker 4>And part of that is that, you know, for this piece,
<v Speaker 4>I did an interview with some of the with the
<v Speaker 4>developers and part and the team is made up of women.
<v Speaker 4>You know. That's also some thing that's very very rare
<v Speaker 4>to see, is that a development team that is you know,
<v Speaker 4>has a lot of women on the team. And so
<v Speaker 4>that's something that I think you can see in the
<v Speaker 4>design of this game and the design of its story
<v Speaker 4>and its characters. It reminded me partly of the quote
<v Speaker 4>from one of the developers on Resident Evil Requiem who
<v Speaker 4>is saying about Hatley on Kennedy and that there was
<v Speaker 4>like so much detail paid even to like the Renkals
<v Speaker 4>in his neck, and that like it's that sort of
<v Speaker 4>like level of detail and care going into all of
<v Speaker 4>these characters.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I assumed the good part of his neck not
<v Speaker 2>the disease.
<v Speaker 4>Part, not the bad part of his neck. I forgot
<v Speaker 4>he has.
<v Speaker 2>That little.
<v Speaker 3>Part of it isn't a bad part of Leon Kennedy's.
<v Speaker 4>This is like a side note. But I did an
<v Speaker 4>interview with the Leon Kennedy voice factor Nick, and on
<v Speaker 4>the call, he did like the the like moaning and
<v Speaker 4>grew that he does unprompted. I was like, oh my god, like.
<v Speaker 1>He just does that. What was what was the content?
<v Speaker 4>It was a little prompted. I didn't say do this
<v Speaker 4>for me, but I said I was asking him about
<v Speaker 4>how he feels that, like everyone is hot for Leon
<v Speaker 4>Kennedy right now, and then he was like, yeah, like
<v Speaker 4>people like it. And then he was like he just
<v Speaker 4>he just.
<v Speaker 3>Offered that up and then he decided to move like
<v Speaker 3>a fifteen pound instrument next to him.
<v Speaker 2>Was like.
<v Speaker 4>No, exactly, And it was so good that I had
<v Speaker 4>to like figure out how to embed audio into this
<v Speaker 4>so I could just put the grunty the middle of
<v Speaker 4>the article.
<v Speaker 3>Give the people what they want.
<v Speaker 2>He should start doing cameos, just make grunts for people.
<v Speaker 2>Happy birthday, Steve, Happy birthday.
<v Speaker 3>Having to move on and move this really heavy rock.
<v Speaker 3>Now I'm going to chop some wood over here real quick, Wow,
<v Speaker 3>crush this watermelon?
<v Speaker 1>Uh well, I kind of all the danger there? Uh wonderful.
<v Speaker 1>Was there anything else about love and de space the
<v Speaker 1>cole you thought was a big enough you wanted to
<v Speaker 1>call out before we move on?
<v Speaker 4>Oh gosh, I mean I could say that my favorite
<v Speaker 4>guy is Silas.
<v Speaker 2>Like I was gonna ask, Yeah, I was gonna ask,
<v Speaker 2>like what are there? What are their names and sort
<v Speaker 2>of like their like elevator pitch, what are their personalities?
<v Speaker 2>Like baseline?
<v Speaker 4>Okay, I'll go their names their Xavier Yeah yeah, yep, Zane,
<v Speaker 4>Raphael Silas and Caleb Eric.
<v Speaker 2>There's a Raphael for you.
<v Speaker 3>I hate that. This is the worst running bit we've
<v Speaker 3>ever come up with.
<v Speaker 1>And can you can you say, like, uh, Xavier the
<v Speaker 1>blank one, like if you were if you were to
<v Speaker 1>give them to narrow them down a little.
<v Speaker 4>Bit, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, so they have like
<v Speaker 4>oh god, well I can I I honestly only really
<v Speaker 4>note a lot about one of them, and that's Silas.
<v Speaker 4>And he is like his red eyes, he is like
<v Speaker 4>super confident. He's like a little mean, very powerful, and
<v Speaker 4>that's like his elevator pitch. I don't know that much
<v Speaker 4>about the other guys. Honestly, I'm not like, you know,
<v Speaker 4>it's like I got, I got my dude, and.
<v Speaker 1>Like you're devoted.
<v Speaker 2>Is he a jerk? He kind of sounds like a jerk.
<v Speaker 4>Kind of mean, Yeah, I've.
<v Speaker 3>Heard things about this character, specifically that when you said,
<v Speaker 3>like my favorite stilast, I was like, uh.
<v Speaker 4>But like he also has a soft side, you know that.
<v Speaker 3>You of course, of course.
<v Speaker 4>He's got a little side. But yeah, he like you know, you.
<v Speaker 2>Know, a little brasive, but you gotta you gotta penetrate the.
<v Speaker 3>Is he also the one that does the one? So
<v Speaker 3>there was how I learned of this character In the
<v Speaker 3>first was I got like an Instagram reel or something
<v Speaker 3>where it was a cosplayer dresses this character who was
<v Speaker 3>just picking people up at cosplay conventions, because because it
<v Speaker 3>was like his gimme apparently that's the characters like gimmick
<v Speaker 3>is he can pick you up with one arm. And
<v Speaker 3>so this couse player was like it was a video
<v Speaker 3>of him training with like a sandbag doing like one
<v Speaker 3>arm lifts, and then him at the cosplay convention like
<v Speaker 3>just lifting people.
<v Speaker 4>Because like, yeah, and I actually think that that like
<v Speaker 4>TikTok trend went so much further to than just the
<v Speaker 4>love and Deep Space fandom. Like I saw one arm
<v Speaker 4>pickup challenge.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's his thing.
<v Speaker 1>Sick does what does I'm trying to picture just him
<v Speaker 1>being a little bit mean is very funny me trying
<v Speaker 1>to picture his like putting you to sleep dialogue, You're
<v Speaker 1>not asleep yet?
<v Speaker 2>Taking forever?
<v Speaker 3>Why is solid Snake angry that I won't go to sleep?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what his voice.
<v Speaker 2>Impression? Is he a grous.
<v Speaker 1>I'll just keep asking In one of these times you'll
<v Speaker 1>you'll have a perfect impression of one of these characters.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you're trying to say, like is he a gruff mean?
<v Speaker 2>Is he kind of like a snively like Draco Malfoy
<v Speaker 2>kind of voice?
<v Speaker 3>To s.
<v Speaker 4>Like they all have great like like very trigit like
<v Speaker 4>handsome man voice.
<v Speaker 2>If like they're all very Okay, they're only on Kennedy. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>they're only on Okay.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Well awesome, Well Love You Space. You can read
<v Speaker 1>about that in our last issue, which why am I Blanking?
<v Speaker 1>On the cover Double seven Double seven First Light. If
<v Speaker 1>you're a subscribing informer, you can check out the digital version.
<v Speaker 1>It also might still be a newsstands right now. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>and also if you are signed in you can see
<v Speaker 1>the article version of that on came from it to.
<v Speaker 2>Come as well. Yeah, no, fantastic piece by the way.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's really a really good article.
<v Speaker 1>Read it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And also I think next time, kind of like
<v Speaker 2>the way we did the one podcast where you signed
<v Speaker 2>ourselves Ninja Turtles, I think we have to learn more
<v Speaker 2>about the other boys in Love and deep Space, and
<v Speaker 2>we have to which one.
<v Speaker 1>Fantastic most Like, Yeah, we'll all take like a BuzzFeed quiz,
<v Speaker 1>which which love?
<v Speaker 4>And also there is a buzz feed quiz for that.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, there definitely is. Actually, wait, Nicole, you're you're a
<v Speaker 1>BuzzFeed quiz incarnate. Can you just assign us each a boy?
<v Speaker 4>Oh no, I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>I'll take whoever. I do think Eric. I think Eric
<v Speaker 2>automatically has to get Rafael, though I signed we signed
<v Speaker 2>Eric Rafael the Ninja Turtles, so I assume it's basically
<v Speaker 2>the same cart. So it sounds like Silas is like
<v Speaker 2>the Raphael of the roup, because he's like the the
<v Speaker 2>abrasive meme one.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I just pulled up Raphael's little profile pages so
<v Speaker 4>I can I can give you guys a little bit
<v Speaker 4>more detail. Let me take a look here. Okay, he's friendly, friendly,
<v Speaker 4>care free, He's oh let's see.
<v Speaker 2>He is.
<v Speaker 4>Oh yeah, Oh here's the thing. He's like the last
<v Speaker 4>members of this like ancient race.
<v Speaker 2>Whoa boys?
<v Speaker 1>Was that? The sentence said?
<v Speaker 4>It's not boys, it's not just boys. It's like in
<v Speaker 4>the sea, like a sea god sort of thing.
<v Speaker 2>And that's kind of it. You don't want to be
<v Speaker 2>a clingy seagull.
<v Speaker 3>I that just sounds like I'm becoming like a Greek god.
<v Speaker 3>Like that sounds like I'm setting myself up for like
<v Speaker 3>a three Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Like painting. He's like sensitive, you know, I kind of I.
<v Speaker 1>Kind of like Raphael's cool. Yeah, I'd fall asleep next
<v Speaker 1>to him. That's kind of my But not the Ninja turtle, No, no,
<v Speaker 1>of course not. Uh well, well, well I also sorry.
<v Speaker 1>The last thing I want to say, I really enjoyed
<v Speaker 1>you kept preferring to them as five guys, which is
<v Speaker 1>the burger restaurant. And every time I was thinking about
<v Speaker 1>the burger restaurant all from working there.
<v Speaker 2>He just got really hungry reading your piece.
<v Speaker 1>I got really hunger, Like I can't focus something about cheezburg.
<v Speaker 2>All right.
<v Speaker 1>Next second, we're going to talk about, uh, the new
<v Speaker 1>cover story, Invincible Versus. This is a fighting game, Nicole,
<v Speaker 1>you familiar with Invincible?
<v Speaker 4>Literally not even not even not you knowail.
<v Speaker 1>A little bit? All right, Well, luckily we have two
<v Speaker 1>Capital E experts here to explain not only why Invincible
<v Speaker 1>is worth your time, but why Invincible Versus is a
<v Speaker 1>big deal. Take it away, boys.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So Invincible, for those that don't know, it is
<v Speaker 2>a started as a comic series by Robert Kirkman and
<v Speaker 2>Corey Walker. The artist Robert Kirkman also known as the
<v Speaker 2>creator of The Walking Dead, so these are kind of
<v Speaker 2>his two big babies. And you know, the Invincible comic
<v Speaker 2>has been around. Started in two thousand and three, ran
<v Speaker 2>until twenty eighteen. It's a superhero comic about a kind
<v Speaker 2>of like the very brief brief is sort of synopsis
<v Speaker 2>is that it stars Mark Grayson, who is this teenage
<v Speaker 2>hero who is the son of this kind of like
<v Speaker 2>all powerful superman like alien named Omni Man, who's sort
<v Speaker 2>of Earth's protector. And without getting into crazy spoilers, because
<v Speaker 2>if you watch the Amazon Prime series, the first episode
<v Speaker 2>ends in a kind of wild way but essentially things
<v Speaker 2>Mark kind of finds himself betrayed in a certain way,
<v Speaker 2>and but like kind of the crux of the show
<v Speaker 2>is just kind of a coming of age story of
<v Speaker 2>him developing these incredible powers and joining a superhero team
<v Speaker 2>of other teenage heroes and him trying to just figure
<v Speaker 2>out how to be a hero while also juggling a
<v Speaker 2>lot of like very morally gray situations. Like he's he's
<v Speaker 2>kind of learning how to be a hero. He wants
<v Speaker 2>it to do a good or be a good person.
<v Speaker 2>He's very much in the sort of like I don't
<v Speaker 2>want to kill people, but kind of like one of
<v Speaker 2>the things that makes the comic in a show so
<v Speaker 2>good is that he has put in these situations where
<v Speaker 2>his beliefs are challenged on a regular basis, and the
<v Speaker 2>series dives a lot into sort of like how being
<v Speaker 2>a hero and dealing with some really traumatic stuff kind
<v Speaker 2>of affects his psyche and how he sort of like
<v Speaker 2>changes his kind of his viewpoint on what it means
<v Speaker 2>to be the safe for humanity. It's also very much like,
<v Speaker 2>in some ways a parody of the superhero genre, and
<v Speaker 2>in other ways it's it's like a very mature take
<v Speaker 2>on superheroes, especially around the time that it first came out,
<v Speaker 2>where it's like it's like, you know, it's very colorful
<v Speaker 2>in its presentation, but the dialogue is it's very grounded
<v Speaker 2>and realistic. Like the way characters speak to each other,
<v Speaker 2>it's very mature, it's vulgar, and it's also incredibly hyperfire.
<v Speaker 2>Like characters die in the show in like like Mortal
<v Speaker 2>Kombat esque fashion and oftentimes like you'll see characters that
<v Speaker 2>you really like get the absolute just crap kicked out
<v Speaker 2>of them, like Mark himself. Like the name Invincible is
<v Speaker 2>almost like in some ways, it's almost like a joke, we.
<v Speaker 3>Were making a joke while we were out there on
<v Speaker 3>this cover story. That's like invincible does not mean invulnerable, right,
<v Speaker 3>Like it does not necessarily mean that you can't take damage,
<v Speaker 3>you can't like get hit, and that is a recurring theme.
<v Speaker 3>And like Segus knee into the fighting game aspect of
<v Speaker 3>this is like this is it weirdly feels like a
<v Speaker 3>mixture of fighting game genres because it tries to incorporate
<v Speaker 3>so much of the not just different mechanics of games,
<v Speaker 3>but also the visual language of games that kind of
<v Speaker 3>feel in conversation with Invincible, your Mortal Kombats and obviously
<v Speaker 3>your killer instincts, because a lot of the team comes
<v Speaker 3>from killer instinct and things like that. So it is
<v Speaker 3>kind of interesting to see in that way, like Invincible
<v Speaker 3>ends up feeling like a natural fit for a fighting
<v Speaker 3>game in a lot of ways.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and that was one of the big things where
<v Speaker 2>like even Robert Kirkman when we interviewed him, he talked
<v Speaker 2>about because he grew up a video game fan and
<v Speaker 2>it's still a gamer to this day, but he grew
<v Speaker 2>up a fighting game fan in particular, and he talked
<v Speaker 2>about how much he loved Street Fighter, but especially how
<v Speaker 2>much he left Mortal Kombat, which he didn't really confirm this,
<v Speaker 2>but like seeing his work in Invincible and maybe even
<v Speaker 2>to some extent, The Walking Dead, it's almost hard not
<v Speaker 2>to think that Mortal Kombat has some sort of like
<v Speaker 2>just ubconscious influence on just the way he depicts graphic violence.
<v Speaker 2>But he was telling us back then that one of
<v Speaker 2>his like bucket list dreams was Invincible video game, but
<v Speaker 2>specifically an Invincible fighting game. So when he started Skybound Entertainment,
<v Speaker 2>which is the company that he's the chairman of, in
<v Speaker 2>the twenty tens kind of like their multimedia strategy was like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>we have these really promising properties. We have The Walking Dead,
<v Speaker 2>we have Invincible. I think these can be bigger than
<v Speaker 2>what they are. And then over time they started working
<v Speaker 2>on like, well, we can turn this into other forms
<v Speaker 2>of media. This could be TV shows, this could be movies,
<v Speaker 2>and then maybe one day this could be video games.
<v Speaker 2>And sort of The Walking Dead kind of became the
<v Speaker 2>first success story for that strategy. You know, they helped
<v Speaker 2>launch that show. Of course it becomes the biggest thing
<v Speaker 2>in the world. And then it also, maybe more crucially
<v Speaker 2>for Invincible verses, it led to the creation of The
<v Speaker 2>Walking Dead video games that Telltale made, and of course
<v Speaker 2>that first season in particular is still celebrated as one
<v Speaker 2>of the best narrative games of all time, and it
<v Speaker 2>spawned so many just video game spinoffs of The Walking
<v Speaker 2>Dead that it kind of it kind of laid the
<v Speaker 2>seed for hey, we can we've we've done this with
<v Speaker 2>The Walking Dead. Maybe now we can go back to
<v Speaker 2>Invincible and see if we can maybe make the fighting
<v Speaker 2>games of our dreams. And then on the other side
<v Speaker 2>of the Cohen you have quota up the developer of
<v Speaker 2>this game. As Eric mentioned, they are formed from the
<v Speaker 2>ashes of Double Helix, which was a team that made
<v Speaker 2>the twenty thirteen Killer Instinct kind of reboot that launched
<v Speaker 2>with the Xbox One, which was a really good fighting game.
<v Speaker 2>Some might even say underappreciated honestly, because it doesn't really
<v Speaker 2>get brought up very often when you're kind of talking
<v Speaker 2>about the best fighting games from that era. You hear
<v Speaker 2>your Street Fighter, hear your Mortal Kombats, you hear like
<v Speaker 2>Dragon Ball Fighters, and then Killer Instinct maye because it
<v Speaker 2>was so early, it tends to get buried a little bit.
<v Speaker 3>It was platform I will I will pretty much tell
<v Speaker 3>you with a lot of certainty that the reason why
<v Speaker 3>it didn't get like celebrated as much in the community.
<v Speaker 3>Certainly had a fervent following, a really competitive player base
<v Speaker 3>that would show up, that would put on great tournaments
<v Speaker 3>that had great action. They were consistently fun to watch.
<v Speaker 3>But I do think being on Xbox for so long
<v Speaker 3>was a thing. It was at a time when a
<v Speaker 3>lot of PlayStation or a lot of fighting game fans
<v Speaker 3>were playing things on PlayStation specifically most games. PlayStation was
<v Speaker 3>the default, and that has started to shift in the
<v Speaker 3>past few years, but I think that did ultimately effect
<v Speaker 3>it maybe not reaching the widest coverage that it could
<v Speaker 3>have because fighting game fans kind of just they especially
<v Speaker 3>if you're a diehard, you buy the console to play
<v Speaker 3>where the players are, and that is what you do ultimately,
<v Speaker 3>And for a while that was I think the three
<v Speaker 3>sixty was pretty popular for the for Street Feighter four
<v Speaker 3>if I remember correctly, But then with the new generation,
<v Speaker 3>it was all PlayStation from then on.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, and it did helped that the Xbox One
<v Speaker 2>just as a whole, did not launch in the rate
<v Speaker 2>of state. Yeah, Like people were not enthused about that console,
<v Speaker 2>regardless of what killers think specifically.
<v Speaker 3>And Street five was like a PlayStation exclusive for a while.
<v Speaker 3>If I like a PlayStation console, it was I think
<v Speaker 3>it's I think it always was. I don't think it
<v Speaker 3>ever left that platform, they ever moved.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but but yeah, So when Double Helix was bought
<v Speaker 2>by Amazon, a few of the key members eventually found
<v Speaker 2>a way to quarter up, which was a Skybounds Like
<v Speaker 2>once they formed Skybyline Games, they formed a first in
<v Speaker 2>house studio because before they were just a publisher. They
<v Speaker 2>published a lot of some pretty good games like Before
<v Speaker 2>Your Eyes, which is one of my favorites. They published
<v Speaker 2>that again, they published Escape Academy, most recently A Good
<v Speaker 2>Night Universe last year. But then they decided, for like
<v Speaker 2>their if they want to do license games for their
<v Speaker 2>two babies, walking Down an Invincible, they wanted to bring
<v Speaker 2>that in house. Because something I thought was interesting I
<v Speaker 2>didn't expect them to talk about, was they were they
<v Speaker 2>felt kind of burned when Telltale shut down suddenly, because
<v Speaker 2>you know, they that studio was like just churning out
<v Speaker 2>these money making Walking Dead games. But then when they
<v Speaker 2>shut down out of nowhere in twenty eighteen. One thing
<v Speaker 2>that I think people forget was that that happened in
<v Speaker 2>the middle of them making the Walking Dead the final season. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and it threw that entire game into like disarray of
<v Speaker 2>because I think they had put out maybe one or
<v Speaker 2>two episodes before everything fell apart, So it's like, is
<v Speaker 2>this game gonna be finished? And that kind of sort
<v Speaker 2>of like scared them into being like, you know what,
<v Speaker 2>maybe for our stuff, we need to keep this kind
<v Speaker 2>of close to home. So sort of when the idea
<v Speaker 2>of doing anything when Invincible came up, they were like, well,
<v Speaker 2>we don't want to just we know, we want to
<v Speaker 2>make a fighting game. We don't want to just give
<v Speaker 2>this to any studio or just set up any studio.
<v Speaker 2>We want actual fighting game experts to make this. So
<v Speaker 2>they formed Quarter Up. They brought in several of the
<v Speaker 2>leagues that were at Double Helix, who turns out they
<v Speaker 2>wanted to make this game too, because a lot of
<v Speaker 2>them are Invincible fans just in general. So it's kind
<v Speaker 2>of just this perfect marriage. And so they've been working
<v Speaker 2>on this since. I think they said twenty twenty three
<v Speaker 2>was when they really started production on this game. And
<v Speaker 2>the kind of the pitch is, you know, three v
<v Speaker 2>three Tag Fighter, very much in the vein of Marvel
<v Speaker 2>versus Capcom or like name it Arc System tag Fighter,
<v Speaker 2>whether it's Dragon Ball Fighters or whatnot, with the Invincible license.
<v Speaker 2>And while we were over there, Eric and I got
<v Speaker 2>the fly out to sky Bound. We got to play
<v Speaker 2>probably like a combined ninety minutes of the game, and
<v Speaker 2>I think Eric and I, you know, you and I
<v Speaker 2>are both we both enjoy fighting games quite a bit,
<v Speaker 2>and I think we were both impressed with how much
<v Speaker 2>fun this game is. And again, on one hand, it
<v Speaker 2>shouldn't be that surprising because of the expertise involved. But
<v Speaker 2>I think all so, I don't know, maybe sometimes they're
<v Speaker 2>still at lingering. When you take a license game and
<v Speaker 2>apply it something you're just wonder like, is can is
<v Speaker 2>this gonna be as good as if it was an
<v Speaker 2>original project? And but I will say it's like, again,
<v Speaker 2>it's a fighting game fan, and as someone that I
<v Speaker 2>really love Invincible, like I'm excited for season four to
<v Speaker 2>start next week, this is like hitting all of the
<v Speaker 2>right notes, like the faithfulness that a source material is there,
<v Speaker 2>like in terms of just how the characters portrayed, the
<v Speaker 2>dialogue between them, and also just how referential the move
<v Speaker 2>sets are, like they were. We were talking to the
<v Speaker 2>combat designer and he talked about how pretty much ninety
<v Speaker 2>percent of everyone's moves is some reference to either of
<v Speaker 2>the comics or the show. So if you are a
<v Speaker 2>fan of either of these, you will see things and go, oh,
<v Speaker 2>I remember when that happened, and some of it's like
<v Speaker 2>it's like something that happened once and like a panel
<v Speaker 2>of a comic or like a scene in the show,
<v Speaker 2>and it'll be there. So it's like if you're just
<v Speaker 2>like an eagle eye view or you're just like it's
<v Speaker 2>like a constant broach, which is really cool Easter Rags,
<v Speaker 2>but also just the in terms of the gameplay, like
<v Speaker 2>it feels great to play, like you know, I'll pass
<v Speaker 2>to you for this. But like even one of the
<v Speaker 2>things that impressed I think both of us was just
<v Speaker 2>how easy it is to just pick up and play
<v Speaker 2>in general. Like there's a lot going on, but they've
<v Speaker 2>managed to kind of boil down a lot of seemingly
<v Speaker 2>advanced mechanics into some like really simple inputs.
<v Speaker 3>It's it's been a rising trend in fighting games, I
<v Speaker 3>think because the damn kind of finally broke. I mean,
<v Speaker 3>for years there had been the Persona four arena had
<v Speaker 3>auto combos and things like that, and people would freak
<v Speaker 3>out and be like, oh my gosh, we're simplifying fighting
<v Speaker 3>games too much. It's it's we're going to lose the
<v Speaker 3>magic and it yeah, yeah, it turns out that you
<v Speaker 3>don't need to freak out. Sure, like a player can
<v Speaker 3>make the Evo top a playing modern controls on Chunlee,
<v Speaker 3>but like ultimately that has not changed strategy of the game,
<v Speaker 3>and a lot of people playing modern controls. Scott Washington
<v Speaker 3>Pools that year, so it's fine, and I think when
<v Speaker 3>it comes to Invincible Versus it definitely has that sort
<v Speaker 3>of universal approach to the language of the fighting of
<v Speaker 3>We have universal launchers, so if an input does something
<v Speaker 3>on one character, it will do it on all those characters.
<v Speaker 3>So if you want to launch somebody in the air,
<v Speaker 3>it's down heavy and that, and then you hold heavy
<v Speaker 3>to follow into the air, and then you can do
<v Speaker 3>an auto combo in the air if you want, or
<v Speaker 3>you can do your own combo and you can try
<v Speaker 3>to link that together. Obviously, you might drop it if
<v Speaker 3>you do it that way, but you could potentially get
<v Speaker 3>more damage if you find interesting links and things like that.
<v Speaker 3>I think in that way, taking inspiration from Marvel Versus
<v Speaker 3>Capcom was maybe one of the smarter things they could
<v Speaker 3>have done, because when I think about fighting games as
<v Speaker 3>a whole, games like Teken or Street Fighter are very tense.
<v Speaker 3>They're very one on one. It's one combatant and you're
<v Speaker 3>playing this very tense back and forth. But Marvel Versus
<v Speaker 3>Capcom has always been the hype machine. It's been the
<v Speaker 3>thing that is there's so much stuff on the screen,
<v Speaker 3>and there's crazy moves and really long combos. It's where
<v Speaker 3>you get lightning loops. It's where you get storm putting
<v Speaker 3>constant barrages on the field. It's where you get sentinel,
<v Speaker 3>just like oppressive offense or Magneto doing crazy stuff doom
<v Speaker 3>dive kicks, like Marvel is the heype machine in the
<v Speaker 3>fighting game scene, and I think a lot of obviously
<v Speaker 3>the people at a quarter up play fighting games, and
<v Speaker 3>they watch fighting games, and they a lot of them
<v Speaker 3>were citing like Marvel is hype. This style of game,
<v Speaker 3>the three on three tag fighter, allows you to make
<v Speaker 3>characters more disposable and more powerful. So now you get
<v Speaker 3>to have these moments of it's okay if one character
<v Speaker 3>can get blown up because you have two more in reserve.
<v Speaker 3>So you didn't like just end the round in an
<v Speaker 3>unsatisfying way. And so the way that translates into invincible
<v Speaker 3>verses is that fits the tone of the show, where
<v Speaker 3>violence is rampant, it's sudden, it's aggressive. People like like
<v Speaker 3>I'll be playing as Cecil and then maybe Monster Girl
<v Speaker 3>tags in whax me around like Hulk did to Loki
<v Speaker 3>in that one Marvel movie, and then that's it. It's
<v Speaker 3>it's done, and and Cecil's toast and I got to
<v Speaker 3>bring in you know, Mark and and Adam and Adam
<v Speaker 3>Eve to to fight this out. Uh, And that's that's cool.
<v Speaker 3>It works, and that means that those characters can be
<v Speaker 3>really powerful to express that power and also express that
<v Speaker 3>that violence from the show. But there's like sprinklings of
<v Speaker 3>of killer instinct in there. There's a surprisingly complex, uh,
<v Speaker 3>give and take on the guard side with those sorts
<v Speaker 3>of like breakaway moments where you can try to hit
<v Speaker 3>somebody and then you can do like a not a perry,
<v Speaker 3>but it's like a power through it, kind of like
<v Speaker 3>a combo breaker, and you can also faint into those,
<v Speaker 3>so you can fake a combo breaker to bait an
<v Speaker 3>enemy out and then get them back with it. And
<v Speaker 3>there's there's a surprising amount, I think, especially for a
<v Speaker 3>tag fighter, of a focus on those very one on
<v Speaker 3>one mechanics that I think really does work and mixes
<v Speaker 3>in some really interesting flavor that you wouldn't get if
<v Speaker 3>this kind of just felt like they did Dragon Ball
<v Speaker 3>Fighters right. And overall, I walked away just thinking about
<v Speaker 3>that game constantly, like in my head, being like like
<v Speaker 3>there was some cecil stuff I wanted to try out.
<v Speaker 3>Still there was some Robot if you couldn't tell, Like
<v Speaker 3>my favorite characters were like Cecil Robot. I really like Bulletproof. Yeah, well,
<v Speaker 3>I mean Bulletproof. He had some like RecA stuff going
<v Speaker 3>on that was really fun. I want to get too
<v Speaker 3>deep into like fighting games, terminology and anything like that,
<v Speaker 3>but he had some cool kind of flow charty combat
<v Speaker 3>that made it seem like you could kind of condition
<v Speaker 3>your opponents to get used to one string of combos
<v Speaker 3>and then flip it on them when you think they
<v Speaker 3>figured out the flow chart. And I love stuff like
<v Speaker 3>that where you literally just played mind games with your opponent.
<v Speaker 3>They're used to like right right left, right, right left,
<v Speaker 3>and now you go right left, left and stuff like that,
<v Speaker 3>and it hits so good. So yeah, if if they
<v Speaker 3>have me on the plane home thinking about that, they've
<v Speaker 3>they've stumbled onto something, they figured something out.
<v Speaker 2>I think the other thing too, is that the characters
<v Speaker 2>feel distinct from each other, but they also, you know,
<v Speaker 2>they feel true to what the characters are, and maybe
<v Speaker 2>in terms of just making them feel individual, I think
<v Speaker 2>I was most impressed with how they made all the
<v Speaker 2>Veiltmites feel. Yes, Nicole in Invincible the Veltmites are they're
<v Speaker 2>basically are they're basically Kryptonians if they ripped, Yeah, Like
<v Speaker 2>I imagine if all Kryptonians and see we're evil. So
<v Speaker 2>they all have just superman like abilities and are like
<v Speaker 2>the most powerful threat in the in the Invincible universe.
<v Speaker 2>So there's there's four of them represented in a game
<v Speaker 2>between Omni Man, Thula and Nissa and Luken and I
<v Speaker 2>guess technically Invincible himself. So it was like I was
<v Speaker 2>wondering how to make them all feel different because it's like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>in the show there, since they all have the same
<v Speaker 2>abilities of just they can fly and it can punch
<v Speaker 2>really hard, how do you make that this think? But
<v Speaker 2>they found a way to sort of like tap into
<v Speaker 2>like again going back looking at the source material and
<v Speaker 2>finding moments with those characters saying, Oh, Thula, what's cool
<v Speaker 2>about her is that she has a long braid with
<v Speaker 2>a blade at the end, and she uses that, she
<v Speaker 2>incorporates that into her fighting style. Let's just really lean
<v Speaker 2>on that. And she actually became one of my favorite
<v Speaker 2>characters because of just like she's like good zoning because
<v Speaker 2>she can use the blade to like kind of like
<v Speaker 2>a scorpion like throw it at you and gang people
<v Speaker 2>towards you. She can like slice you up really fast
<v Speaker 2>with it. Like there's some like really sick combo stuff
<v Speaker 2>you can do with that braid.
<v Speaker 3>There was a lot of like visual language was reminding
<v Speaker 3>me both of like go tanks from Dragon Ball Fighters,
<v Speaker 3>but also Rashid from Street Fighter five, like the sort
<v Speaker 3>of whirlwind tornado hits and things like that. But then
<v Speaker 3>also yeah, throwing out the the dagger like like dagger
<v Speaker 3>of hair almost had like a little bit of Milia
<v Speaker 3>from Guilty Gear in there as well, Like there's there's
<v Speaker 3>some really cool just little bits where I don't think
<v Speaker 3>it was intentional to say like, hey, this is what
<v Speaker 3>you know, We're just going to take these characters and
<v Speaker 3>smash them all together. It was more like this, this
<v Speaker 3>style seems appropriate for this character, and we're going to
<v Speaker 3>really lean into some concepts that will make that character saying.
<v Speaker 3>I think my favorite one that they were telling us
<v Speaker 3>about was that Thulah has kind of a a dead
<v Speaker 3>angle attack where you can hit at just the right
<v Speaker 3>angle with the the air spike to really like do
<v Speaker 3>some damage and open up like long combo strings if
<v Speaker 3>you can get that right angle when you're throwing that
<v Speaker 3>hair spike out. Uh and and it makes for really
<v Speaker 3>interesting cast I think you we we talked a lot
<v Speaker 3>about the Viltremites and stuff, but even just some of
<v Speaker 3>the normal quote unquote characters like your your Marx and
<v Speaker 3>your Omni Man's and stuff like that do end up
<v Speaker 3>feeling widely different because of the way that they adapt
<v Speaker 3>those characters and specifically how they fight. Luken, he's the Zonggief, right,
<v Speaker 3>he was gonna say, he's pretty much very grappily He's
<v Speaker 3>he I wanted to make him work so bad because
<v Speaker 3>there's something so hype about a grappler in a fighting game,
<v Speaker 3>Like you watched. You watch somebody go off as like
<v Speaker 3>King or Zangief on somebody, and it's hard to even
<v Speaker 3>be mad. It feels bad to be the person getting
<v Speaker 3>destroyed by a zong Gief, but watching someone get destroyed
<v Speaker 3>by Zogie if you're like, do it again, do it again? Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it's just Kylo Rinnon at one meme, I I understand
<v Speaker 3>wrestling fans in that moment truly. I'm like, I get
<v Speaker 3>it now, I get it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but yeah, it's.
<v Speaker 1>Sorry real quick, Kylo Ren In that one meme, can
<v Speaker 1>we is this.
<v Speaker 2>Is it?
<v Speaker 3>The more are you talking about?
<v Speaker 2>The more about the more? Which one were you? Are
<v Speaker 2>you thinking of him with out his shirt off?
<v Speaker 3>Can you imagine Kylo Wren in those like high waisted shorts,
<v Speaker 3>but he's in like love and deep space.
<v Speaker 2>That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, actually yeah, yeah
<v Speaker 2>he should be Yeah, make it happen.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I need to continue.
<v Speaker 2>I mean ignites his lightsaber? Is he talking with the
<v Speaker 2>mask anyway? But yeah, yeah, I mean kind of like
<v Speaker 2>it's it's the significant fighting game is like it's as
<v Speaker 2>much fun to play as it is to watch. And
<v Speaker 2>I think this game has a great balance because like
<v Speaker 2>every match because of the number of defensive systems that
<v Speaker 2>you have, the number like the tagging in and out,
<v Speaker 2>and there's so many ways that you can turn the
<v Speaker 2>tide of battle where it just feels like a ping
<v Speaker 2>pong match constantly, like you're seeing like, okay, the tide
<v Speaker 2>shifting this way, now dependent's shifting the other way. Who's
<v Speaker 2>going to get the upper hand, who's going to maintain
<v Speaker 2>the momentum the most? And even with Eric and I
<v Speaker 2>when we were like, you know, we're learning the game
<v Speaker 2>on the spot, so we're far from like high level players.
<v Speaker 2>But I feel like most of our bouts it was
<v Speaker 2>like pretty back and forth, even though Eric beat me
<v Speaker 2>most of them ultimately in the end, but like it
<v Speaker 2>was like a lot of times he had to earn
<v Speaker 2>it a little bit, and there was other times where
<v Speaker 2>he absolutely annihilated me. But you know, who can say,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I'm learning the game. I'm too busy trying
<v Speaker 2>to figure out the systems and stuff. You know, I'm
<v Speaker 2>taking notes and whatever.
<v Speaker 3>Mental I did show up with a bit of chip
<v Speaker 3>on my shoulder where I was like, this is my
<v Speaker 3>first time covering a fighting game for GI, So I
<v Speaker 3>felt like I had to kind of like establish myself,
<v Speaker 3>like I know what I'm doing. Dominant, yeah, yeah, not
<v Speaker 3>dominant so well, because also this is maybe like inside baseball,
<v Speaker 3>but it's like you kind of show up and you
<v Speaker 3>want to show people that, like I speak the fighting
<v Speaker 3>game language, like let's let's talk about some some frame data,
<v Speaker 3>let's talk about like some some deeper stuff here. And
<v Speaker 3>it does kind of like ease in a little bit.
<v Speaker 3>But also to that point, yeah, there's a lot of
<v Speaker 3>deep stuff to explore this game. There's there's been like
<v Speaker 3>open betas and stuff like that. That that I think
<v Speaker 3>already finding game players have been digging through it. I
<v Speaker 3>think the only reservation I had was when they were
<v Speaker 3>first describing this game teaching us how to play it.
<v Speaker 3>I was like, this is a lot of systems. There's
<v Speaker 3>a lot of things to keep track of, because already
<v Speaker 3>a tag fighter is on the more complex side of
<v Speaker 3>a fighting game, because you have three characters to think about.
<v Speaker 3>You have assists, you have tag tag in and tag out,
<v Speaker 3>you have snap back things like that, where you're kind
<v Speaker 3>of playing these games of who you have out and
<v Speaker 3>who you want out on the opponent side, who you
<v Speaker 3>want to be fighting, what the matchup is, and how
<v Speaker 3>you can push that in your favor, and adding in
<v Speaker 3>a lot of kind of guard breaking, combo breaking type
<v Speaker 3>stuff where you're playing these sorts of intense foot see
<v Speaker 3>games can get a little complex and can overwhelm a
<v Speaker 3>player at first blush And I think for maybe the
<v Speaker 3>first I was looking back at our B role and
<v Speaker 3>I was, you could tell in the first few matches
<v Speaker 3>we're trying to find our footing. And I remember they
<v Speaker 3>told us a few things like, hey, this is kind
<v Speaker 3>of like like this is the main way to do
<v Speaker 3>like a launcher combo. This is like the main way
<v Speaker 3>of like, oh you can do this, and this is
<v Speaker 3>kind of like how you see this, And then they
<v Speaker 3>told us about the feints and things like that where
<v Speaker 3>we could start incorporating kind of switch ups in what
<v Speaker 3>we were doing. And it hit a point where I
<v Speaker 3>felt like I could see everything, like like I was
<v Speaker 3>neo watching the matrix. I was like, I get it now,
<v Speaker 3>and suddenly like it shifts and I was like, okay,
<v Speaker 3>now I'm in geared. Now I'm going and suddenly the
<v Speaker 3>action just starts to take over. And I think that
<v Speaker 3>might be the case here where it seemed a little
<v Speaker 3>intimidating at first, but honestly it flows really well for
<v Speaker 3>anybody who just wants to like pick up the sticks
<v Speaker 3>and match some buttons.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's fun. And you know, there's other modes in
<v Speaker 2>there that we touched on the cover story. Mainly, the
<v Speaker 2>big one was the story mode that they're still being
<v Speaker 2>very cagey about, but there is like a story like
<v Speaker 2>a cinematic story mode. We actually have a written feature
<v Speaker 2>all about it on the website and a video feature
<v Speaker 2>that will.
<v Speaker 3>Dat by the time it will be live by this point.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well, we're kind of trying to pick their brains
<v Speaker 2>about it, but it's like kind of what we gleaned
<v Speaker 2>was like, okay, it's like a shorter story mode. They
<v Speaker 2>described it as very much like playing an episode of
<v Speaker 2>the show, and it takes roughly the same amount of
<v Speaker 2>time to get through. It's like an hour ishull no
<v Speaker 2>real idea of what the plot is. Unfortunately, we didn't
<v Speaker 2>get to see the story mode, so he was just
<v Speaker 2>kind of like grilling Mike Rogers, the narrative director. He
<v Speaker 2>was very good at sort of like keeping a lot
<v Speaker 2>of things close to the vest.
<v Speaker 3>There were some hints specifically, like he did gesture towards
<v Speaker 3>that there's a window in time. Obviously, if you've seen
<v Speaker 3>the show, certain events happen, certain characters and the state
<v Speaker 3>they are in and things like that, you will kind
<v Speaker 3>of see them in the cast of this game the
<v Speaker 3>way they are presented in this game, and you'll be like, oh, okay,
<v Speaker 3>so this is kind of like a rough window of
<v Speaker 3>where this probably falls, and and that that is kind
<v Speaker 3>of they they said they found like their window to
<v Speaker 3>kind of put the story in there and do this
<v Speaker 3>and still kind of get away with not worrying too
<v Speaker 3>much about canonicity and things like that. I would mostly
<v Speaker 3>say that this you know, they're they're big driver was
<v Speaker 3>they wanted it to feel like an episode of the show, right,
<v Speaker 3>and so that's that's kind of the takeaway. I don't
<v Speaker 3>know how that ends up incorporating so many different characters,
<v Speaker 3>especially on the viilt mind side, but I am like
<v Speaker 3>really curious about it now.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and it was also exciting to me at least
<v Speaker 2>maybe specifically is that so Skybound Animation, the studio that
<v Speaker 2>actually makes the show, helped work on the game, specifically
<v Speaker 2>in the cinematics department, kind of going back to how
<v Speaker 2>in house this game is, and they were talking about how,
<v Speaker 2>you know, why they went with the art direction because
<v Speaker 2>if you've seen the cinematics and needing the trailers, it's
<v Speaker 2>got that kind of Spider Verse style kind of like
<v Speaker 2>almost stop motion sort of look, which is not how
<v Speaker 2>the show looks at all, but it's kind of like
<v Speaker 2>a stylistic choice for this game, for the story. But
<v Speaker 2>then they mentioned how they got for the director of
<v Speaker 2>the scenes. They got a South Korean animator slash director
<v Speaker 2>named So I'm gonna if I mispronounce as I apologize,
<v Speaker 2>It's like sung On Kim, who is like really well
<v Speaker 2>known in a lot of like animation circles, because when
<v Speaker 2>I was looking up his credits, I was like, oh
<v Speaker 2>my god, he's like the animation director for all the
<v Speaker 2>animated shows that I like, Like, he was the guy
<v Speaker 2>that directed Jackie Chan Adventures and uh, the Batman if
<v Speaker 2>anyone remembers like that two thousand.
<v Speaker 1>That was that was? That was my Batman show.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that shows, yeah, which won awards for in that
<v Speaker 3>And the one that specifically got me was he's directed
<v Speaker 3>several episodes of The Boone Docks, a lot of ones
<v Speaker 3>that have like really good fight scenes in them, and
<v Speaker 3>so yeah, I was immediately like, oh.
<v Speaker 2>Same, he did like twenty seven episodes of The Boone Docks.
<v Speaker 2>So he was like, he's pretty much one of the
<v Speaker 2>main guys you can said responsible for like director more show.
<v Speaker 1>More recent stuff. You opened with Jackie chan Adventures, and
<v Speaker 1>I didn't know if there's something that like within the
<v Speaker 1>last five ten years.
<v Speaker 2>Nothing that I recognized, okay from yeah, but those are
<v Speaker 2>definitely yeah for my the things that I liked. I
<v Speaker 2>was like, oh, I'm a big fan of all these shows.
<v Speaker 2>That's pretty cool because I remember when we were talking
<v Speaker 2>to Margine as, the head of the Skyline Animation. She
<v Speaker 2>she didn't get it into what he did, but she
<v Speaker 2>was very much like if you're into no in terms
<v Speaker 2>of like if you follow animation, you know this guy,
<v Speaker 2>he's a pretty big deal, and you're like, okay, so
<v Speaker 2>excited to see kind of how that translates to something.
<v Speaker 2>If you watch some of the trailers that they've put
<v Speaker 2>out for like either the character reveals or even the
<v Speaker 2>initial reveal trailer, you do see some scenes from the
<v Speaker 2>story and get a sense of some of the fight scenes.
<v Speaker 2>So it's like, Okay, it seems like it's gonna be
<v Speaker 2>like fun to watch, but yeah, it was a good trip.
<v Speaker 2>Like you know, if you check out the full cover
<v Speaker 2>story in the magazine, we talk about you know, we
<v Speaker 2>go into greater depth about the fighting systems, about the
<v Speaker 2>game's development history, quarter ups sort of like hopes and
<v Speaker 2>dreams for the competitive scene like EVO, and even talk
<v Speaker 2>about Omni Man's appearance in Mortal Kombat one and how
<v Speaker 2>that kind of helped like what Nether Realm did for
<v Speaker 2>that character, because that's technically that characters first time in
<v Speaker 2>a fighting game, so how they kind of like looked
<v Speaker 2>at what a nether Realm did for him and how
<v Speaker 2>to help inform how they approached Omniman in their game.
<v Speaker 2>I thought was a fun little anecdote. But yeah, we
<v Speaker 2>mentioned the issue is not The issue is live now
<v Speaker 2>for digital subscribers. The print version will be coming into
<v Speaker 2>mail at the end of the month as well as
<v Speaker 2>hitting newsstands. If you've seen the magazine, we did a
<v Speaker 2>really cool I don't think we've ever done this specifically
<v Speaker 2>for a Game Informer, Like we've had alternate covers before,
<v Speaker 2>but I don't think we've ever had dual art on
<v Speaker 2>a cover. So if you see here, depending on which
<v Speaker 2>version you get. So we're holding up the subscriber version,
<v Speaker 2>so if you're a subscriber, this is the one you
<v Speaker 2>get in the mail, where the front cover is illustrated
<v Speaker 2>by Corey Walker, who is the co creator of Invincible
<v Speaker 2>and sort of the artist that designed all the characters,
<v Speaker 2>so he created this original piece for the cover, and
<v Speaker 2>then on the backside is the same image, but it's
<v Speaker 2>rendered in the quarter up style, So this was designed
<v Speaker 2>by Quarterups art director Dan Er, so it's a little
<v Speaker 2>closer to the endgame style. But if you go to
<v Speaker 2>stores and buy the new stand version. Be the order
<v Speaker 2>is flipped, so the quarter up version is front. Corey
<v Speaker 2>Walkers is on the back, and.
<v Speaker 3>The front will have kind of your more magazine styling
<v Speaker 3>on it, if I remember correctly, it'll have some of
<v Speaker 3>like the here's what's in this issue, and it'll look
<v Speaker 3>kind of what you expect like a traditional game informer
<v Speaker 3>to look like where's the subscriber? One is like a
<v Speaker 3>showcase piece, which is pretty cool.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I definitely want to buy both of them because
<v Speaker 2>they're both cool. But yeah, if you want to, and
<v Speaker 2>we we would love it if you did too. If
<v Speaker 2>you just if you subscribe the game and then also
<v Speaker 2>went out to your bookstore and bought the other one,
<v Speaker 2>that would be a great way.
<v Speaker 3>If you want to just go to your bookstore and
<v Speaker 3>start buying game informers, we would love that. The sick Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>the coolest person in your friend we need.
<v Speaker 1>We've seed a few whales that'll just go out the
<v Speaker 1>Barns and nobles and just hoard them. Nicole, I was
<v Speaker 1>going to ask of the two covers of the rendered
<v Speaker 1>game style and the comic style, which which of the
<v Speaker 1>two do you prefer?
<v Speaker 4>Well, comics, I think I like the stylized, like the
<v Speaker 4>comic book style.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, I like.
<v Speaker 4>I think they're both very lovely, and I do love
<v Speaker 4>that you have both, that they're the exact same image essentially. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>I like the comic style. I like like really stylized
<v Speaker 4>sort of sort of art.
<v Speaker 3>I think I do. Like A fun note for those
<v Speaker 3>of you at home is if you look on the
<v Speaker 3>on the front, it's obviously very stylized. I love just
<v Speaker 3>something about this. This look always looks good. But if
<v Speaker 3>you flip around, Elemental in the back actually has a
<v Speaker 3>lot more like elements and like action going on around
<v Speaker 3>her and stuff like that, and it looks pretty sick.
<v Speaker 1>So and I believe on the the news stand version,
<v Speaker 1>the Elementals fire is overlapping on the Game and Former logo.
<v Speaker 1>It's like a little bit of it.
<v Speaker 3>Tell we had a lot of fun with the design
<v Speaker 3>of this one.
<v Speaker 2>In the subscriber verse. I know Kyle Hilliard was a
<v Speaker 2>big fan of this. Omni Man's cape is over the
<v Speaker 2>Game in Former logo, which where yeah, sort of like
<v Speaker 2>an insight baseball thing. Whenever we look at cover art
<v Speaker 2>for for issues, like we're usually trying not to keep
<v Speaker 2>the logo obscure. But there are times where artistically there's
<v Speaker 2>some like cool thing, like when we when people either
<v Speaker 2>have ideas for how to touch the logo or cover
<v Speaker 2>it up in some way. We do tend to like that,
<v Speaker 2>but we always have to consider, like, you know, well
<v Speaker 2>people know what it is. But in the cases where
<v Speaker 2>we do sort of green light it, it usually winds up
<v Speaker 2>pretty cool. And this is when we were like, oh, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I think we have to keep it like that, Like
<v Speaker 2>I love that. You know, you guys know what you're getting.
<v Speaker 2>And you can call a Cape Informer too if you
<v Speaker 2>want yeah, or just armor yeah, or the hot new
<v Speaker 2>issue of Omer.
<v Speaker 1>Well awesome. Well that was our cover story again. You
<v Speaker 1>can subscribe now and read that digitally. Otherwise it should
<v Speaker 1>be on you stands and in nailbox soon. All right, now,
<v Speaker 1>we're going to take a quick break and then we're
<v Speaker 1>going to come back and discuss more of Nicole's legendary
<v Speaker 1>reporting about a certain game company that starts with nintend Well,
<v Speaker 1>be right back.
<v Speaker 2>And we're back.
<v Speaker 1>We're going to talk about Nicole's latest piece. I'll know
<v Speaker 1>it's a big cliffhanger or talking about Nintendo. And so
<v Speaker 1>recently you wrote on Aftermath. It's a great independent game site.
<v Speaker 1>They are suing the US government. What the heck?
<v Speaker 2>That's us kind of crucially, Charles, You're not the US government.
<v Speaker 1>No, I mean, I guess I'm kind of like, depending
<v Speaker 1>on who you ask, I'm kind of their boss. I guess,
<v Speaker 1>like I'm I tell them what I don't want them
<v Speaker 1>to do, like collectively, me and the other people with them. People.
<v Speaker 1>That's true anyways, Uh, Nicole tell us about this this story.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, well, so Nintendo is one of like maybe two
<v Speaker 4>thousand or so companies that are suing the US government
<v Speaker 4>to get refunds on the money that they spent on tariffs,
<v Speaker 4>the tariffs that were implemented last year. Yeah, yeah, it
<v Speaker 4>was last year.
<v Speaker 1>Right, it was last Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>I'm like, I've lost all track of.
<v Speaker 2>Time, Like, yeah, it was like a year ago. Now, yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's only a year ago.
<v Speaker 4>It's both like wild that it's a year ago, but
<v Speaker 4>also it's only a year ago. Anyways. So basically, the
<v Speaker 4>Supreme Court ruled that those tariffs were you know, we
<v Speaker 4>can't do that, and so all these companies are trying
<v Speaker 4>to get a refund. Now, Nintendo is one of those companies.
<v Speaker 4>The lawsuit is pretty basic. They don't say how much
<v Speaker 4>they spent on tariffs, but they are basically being like,
<v Speaker 4>but we deserve a refund, you know, as do any
<v Speaker 4>of these other companies, because the Supreme Court ruling was
<v Speaker 4>a little bit unclear on like what you do to
<v Speaker 4>get the refund at the point where it came out,
<v Speaker 4>so all these lawyers were like, yeah, you're gonna have
<v Speaker 4>to sue, and then all the companies started suing. However,
<v Speaker 4>the government, the Customs and Border Protection are working on
<v Speaker 4>a system I guess that will give refunds so that
<v Speaker 4>lawsuits won't be necessary. That's like in the works. There
<v Speaker 4>was a filing where they were like, I don't know,
<v Speaker 4>like maybe a month they couldn't do the refunds. Now,
<v Speaker 4>they were like, we need like a month to work
<v Speaker 4>this system because this is like I think it was
<v Speaker 4>like one hundred and sixty billion dollars worth of tariffs,
<v Speaker 4>like were tariffs from that time, like the extra tariffs
<v Speaker 4>were collected, and so like that's a lot of money
<v Speaker 4>to figure out how to give back to these companies.
<v Speaker 4>But the system is good because like smaller companies that
<v Speaker 4>were impacted by that, which is like every small company.
<v Speaker 4>They some of them, like you know, they don't have
<v Speaker 4>like a lawyer on hand, like Ninten, like Costco.
<v Speaker 2>Or FedEx, and some of them just went out of
<v Speaker 2>business because of.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah right, yeah, so they especially don't have like so
<v Speaker 4>many so many went out of business. Yeah, So it's
<v Speaker 4>very up in the air on like how the process
<v Speaker 4>is going to go, like whether this lawsuit like will
<v Speaker 4>even move forward, because if there's a system, there's like
<v Speaker 4>no point for that lawsuit. But I think one of
<v Speaker 4>the other things that people are talking about in regards
<v Speaker 4>to this with Nintendo and other companies is, you know,
<v Speaker 4>what are they going to do with the refund? Like
<v Speaker 4>what are these companies going to do with the refund?
<v Speaker 4>And largely they're probly just going to keep it, like.
<v Speaker 2>Because then FedEx came out and said publicly we are
<v Speaker 2>going to pass this back to consumers somehow. I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if they've elaborated since they announced it.
<v Speaker 2>I would imagine, not knowing how this works, it'd be
<v Speaker 2>like almost like a class action payout kind of a
<v Speaker 2>thing of like we have your data, we know how
<v Speaker 2>much you paid and what the difference would be from
<v Speaker 2>the tariffs. So we're just going to send you that
<v Speaker 2>amount and like a little check or something. But yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I I don't know.
<v Speaker 4>I don't I've been thinking about that, not a specially.
<v Speaker 1>What we all do. We all get like an e
<v Speaker 1>shop credit for everyone nso for a year. We already
<v Speaker 1>get a free copy of a Welcome Tour on the switch.
<v Speaker 2>To, everyone gets a Super Mario Galaxy movie ticket.
<v Speaker 1>That'd be good.
<v Speaker 3>That'd be crazy if it's like a little domino like
<v Speaker 3>tariffs are implemented in the US and big domino like
<v Speaker 3>Welcome Toward costs ten dollars now, But I obviously this
<v Speaker 3>is like the tariffs we're hitting. Right around the time
<v Speaker 3>that Switched To was launching, and that was the hugest
<v Speaker 3>story for a long time, was like this is a
<v Speaker 3>major video game launch. There was a lot of speculation
<v Speaker 3>at the time, like what is Nintendo going to move
<v Speaker 3>the launch? Are they going to suddenly increase the price?
<v Speaker 3>Like what are they going to do? And I think
<v Speaker 3>it makes sense that this company is now being like, hey,
<v Speaker 3>we had to launch under this, and now you're saying
<v Speaker 3>like it shouldn't have been this way, Yes we would
<v Speaker 3>like that, and also like it's money on the table
<v Speaker 3>like they're going to pursue it. So, as you noted,
<v Speaker 3>this is a lot of companies are doing this right now.
<v Speaker 3>This is not like an individual. I think, because we're
<v Speaker 3>in a game's bubble, we sometimes go like, oh, Nintendo,
<v Speaker 3>assume the US government. A lot of companies are suing
<v Speaker 3>the US government right now because they're all to get
<v Speaker 3>their money back from that situation. But I do think
<v Speaker 3>with Nintendo, there is especially when they get involved in
<v Speaker 3>the legal realm, an era of like this is notable
<v Speaker 3>because Nintendo doesn't usually walk into legal situations that they
<v Speaker 3>don't feel very confident.
<v Speaker 2>And Nintendo's the only of the console makers that has
<v Speaker 2>declared like like Sony and Microsoft have not either, even
<v Speaker 2>though they also raised their console prices for the same reasons.
<v Speaker 2>I know they I don't think they ever explicitly said
<v Speaker 2>Mando's terrors, but they pretty much said without saying, and
<v Speaker 2>those messages of like, you know, the current economic environment,
<v Speaker 2>we got to jack this Xbox up a second time.
<v Speaker 4>I've been looking keeping on it, and I haven't seen
<v Speaker 4>any other game companies specifically. There were some tabletop companies
<v Speaker 4>that sued the government early on for different reasons. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>but I haven't seen any other like game companies that
<v Speaker 4>filed lawsuits recently against U's government.
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know, Nintendo set the trend with eighty dollars games,
<v Speaker 2>so they'll set the trend with suing the government. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, Yeah, I was gonna say. Also, yeah, the the
<v Speaker 1>Eric kind of mentioned it, but the idea of Nintendo
<v Speaker 1>getting involved and everything, like, oh oh, they're almost around,
<v Speaker 1>but it's kind of a lot of companies involved. Uh
<v Speaker 1>do you think does it does it feel significant like
<v Speaker 1>Nintendo being the one that's doing it. Does it feel
<v Speaker 1>like a Nintendo thing to you? Or do you think
<v Speaker 1>it's just like a they're they're just the ones that
<v Speaker 1>would jump on the opportunity to get the money back.
<v Speaker 4>I think that the lawsuit part is like a big
<v Speaker 4>company thing and that I wouldn't be surprised if we
<v Speaker 4>saw I wouldn't be surprised if like Microsoft and Sony
<v Speaker 4>were like considering this as well, now that the refund
<v Speaker 4>system is in the works, like maybe if that's not necessary,
<v Speaker 4>maybe like lawsuits are not necessary. So I think that
<v Speaker 4>maybe that's perhaps why we haven't seen any other game
<v Speaker 4>like big game companies doing this. But I do think
<v Speaker 4>it's significant because like, this is Nintendo and it is
<v Speaker 4>such an iconic brand, and you know, you think of
<v Speaker 4>like cost Co or FedEx and like, yes, those are
<v Speaker 4>part of our everyday lives, but Nintendo is part of
<v Speaker 4>our everyday lives, like as or a lot of people's
<v Speaker 4>everyday lives as like something that's like fun, you know, fun, exciting, bright, colorful, happy.
<v Speaker 4>And it does feel significant to see them suing the
<v Speaker 4>US government. And because one of the things I've had,
<v Speaker 4>you know, monitoring, like the response to this online and
<v Speaker 4>the thing that every person who responded to this story
<v Speaker 4>in the comments or on social media are like, this
<v Speaker 4>is the first time I've ever been on Nintendo's side
<v Speaker 4>on a law superfoork because Nintendo is a litigious company,
<v Speaker 4>famously ruthless in the court.
<v Speaker 2>Right, yes, but.
<v Speaker 4>They sue small they sue individuals for you know, ip reasons.
<v Speaker 4>So to see this big, big lawsuit is significant. It
<v Speaker 4>is significant to see people saying like, I'm on Nintendo's side.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>It was also right around I think it was also
<v Speaker 1>last week where they were the Pokemon company, I want
<v Speaker 1>to say, put up a statement being like, hey, we
<v Speaker 1>don't agree with these memes that are being made by
<v Speaker 1>the White House. Yeah, so I do think there is
<v Speaker 1>like a I can't imagine those things were coordinated, but
<v Speaker 1>it does create an appearance of like, uh, Nintendo's not
<v Speaker 1>happy with US government right now, and as is often
<v Speaker 1>the case, other people are not and they're like, hey, Nintendo,
<v Speaker 1>thanks for sticking up to me or for me.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yeah, the White House is gonna ooh sorry you go.
<v Speaker 2>I was gonna say they're gonna be a Nintendo jail
<v Speaker 2>for some They're not going to be getting zeldaco. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>they're not gonna get invited to many events. Yeah, yeah, god.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, uh well yeah, wild story. I'm glad you're here too,
<v Speaker 1>help us phill us in. And also it's a story
<v Speaker 1>that like, uh, you know, you get a different thing
<v Speaker 1>from reading the headline than you do for reading the
<v Speaker 1>actual story, as is often the case. But it's always
<v Speaker 1>nice to have someone come on and explain for people
<v Speaker 1>that have just seen something like that.
<v Speaker 4>When I saw it come through, like I monitor like
<v Speaker 4>the legal systems where lawsuits are uploaded, and when I
<v Speaker 4>saw that, I was like.
<v Speaker 3>What, Yeah, it's it's like a really important piece of
<v Speaker 3>like investigative reporting and all that, which is kind of
<v Speaker 3>like why I was excited to have you on the
<v Speaker 3>show in the first place, because I think a lot
<v Speaker 3>of games reporting sometimes we think of just leaks. We
<v Speaker 3>think of like, oh, it's it's just you got somebody
<v Speaker 3>on the inside to give you the scoop of it,
<v Speaker 3>like GTA six is sit on Mars or whatever, like
<v Speaker 3>like it's a it's there's a lot of video game
<v Speaker 3>reporting that happens in the trenches of just there's filings,
<v Speaker 3>there's loss dudes, there's quarterly reports, and you have to
<v Speaker 3>learn how to read the numbers and understand like sort
<v Speaker 3>of the moves that are happening within those and breaking
<v Speaker 3>them down for people. And I think it's really interesting
<v Speaker 3>because people see that and they're like, oh really, and
<v Speaker 3>then suddenly headlines like Nintendo is suing the US government
<v Speaker 3>comes out and they're like, well, it's like yeah, that's
<v Speaker 3>that's what reporting looks like sometimes, and it's it's really cool.
<v Speaker 3>So yeah, keep it up and go check out Nicole's
<v Speaker 3>work on on your You're on Aftermath a lot, obviously,
<v Speaker 3>you're you're in GI any other places you want to
<v Speaker 3>shout out, any pieces you want to shout out.
<v Speaker 4>I do have a cool piece. This is a print
<v Speaker 4>media thing. I have a really interesting piece about mountains
<v Speaker 4>and games coming to Trails Magazine, which is a magazine
<v Speaker 4>oh mountaineering, like alpinist things like class and it's about Karen.
<v Speaker 4>It's awesome and valley peaks and why climbing is a
<v Speaker 4>thing in games. Right now, I don't know when that
<v Speaker 4>will come out, Like I just filed the draft and
<v Speaker 4>so it will come out of a future print magazine
<v Speaker 4>thing whatever schedule that's on. But uh yeah, Like it's
<v Speaker 4>really cool to see come to see magazines, you know, websites,
<v Speaker 4>publishers who are interested in video game things who don't
<v Speaker 4>typically cover that sort of thing.
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome. That's like fun discussion points, you like, best
<v Speaker 2>thing like what are the best mountains and video games?
<v Speaker 1>That's gotta we gotta do that top five Yeah yeah yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I also want to say you're doing some writing for Mothership,
<v Speaker 1>right yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah. Mothership is great. So my previate my old my
<v Speaker 4>bosses at Polygon, Zoe and Maddie started Mothership, a feminist
<v Speaker 4>games media games video game site, and it's a really
<v Speaker 4>cool endeavor and I'm so happy that they have been
<v Speaker 4>so successful in like crowdfunding or you know, the subscription
<v Speaker 4>model has been like so exciting and it's working, Like
<v Speaker 4>that's cool, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, I love Mothership. I
<v Speaker 4>am working on a couple of stories. By the time
<v Speaker 4>this episode probably goes live, this story will be But
<v Speaker 4>I spoke to folks about uh, you know outer Loop,
<v Speaker 4>the or sorry Loop, the Interslos among us folks you know,
<v Speaker 4>released their contract, their like funding contract, and so I
<v Speaker 4>spoke to them and a lawyer to break down, like
<v Speaker 4>what is so uh poignant about a company just being
<v Speaker 4>so transparent about what's in their contract and like it's
<v Speaker 4>really good and how that could impact the industry.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, awesome.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I was gonna say. I don't know if we've
<v Speaker 1>gotten a chance to uh shout out Mothership on the
<v Speaker 1>podcast yet, but that is definitely define some of beautiful
<v Speaker 1>uh check out for interested more games writing specifically by
<v Speaker 1>women presenting people. Awesome. Well, we're gonna move on now.
<v Speaker 1>We got some reviews up this week. I'm gonna go first.
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna keep it relatively short because I don't think
<v Speaker 1>everyone here knows about Monster Hunter, and also I don't
<v Speaker 1>have a lot of strong feelings about this game. But
<v Speaker 1>I reviewed Monster Hunter stories three. If you're familiar with
<v Speaker 1>Monster Hunter, it's a game where you play a hunter
<v Speaker 1>and you hunt monsters.
<v Speaker 3>A lot of would not have would not have elicited that.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Yokovich did that once in a movie.
<v Speaker 1>I've heard. I've heard. I heard it was awesome. I
<v Speaker 1>heard everyone love.
<v Speaker 2>That's what I heard too.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Anyways, Uh, Monster Stories is a spin off where
<v Speaker 1>you play as a character who can tame monsters, and
<v Speaker 1>tamed monsters are known as monsters. I don't know why.
<v Speaker 1>They don't really explain it. M O N S T
<v Speaker 1>I E S for whatever. You like it, okay it
<v Speaker 1>it kind of gives me the ick. I think if
<v Speaker 1>they were cut I would like if the monsters themselves, like,
<v Speaker 1>there's a I have a canine, which is like a
<v Speaker 1>there are palamutes in a rise. They're like, you can
<v Speaker 1>you can tame them in this game. That's a monsty
<v Speaker 1>because that's a little guy. But then when it's like
<v Speaker 1>big bulky gorilla man and I'm like, oh, it's my
<v Speaker 1>little monsty, I'm like, Okay, well.
<v Speaker 2>I can't believe you're just gatekeeper for what It was
<v Speaker 2>not hot.
<v Speaker 3>Until I started talking. Firm position is anti monsty.
<v Speaker 1>That's crazy No anyways, Uh, it's it's an interesting game.
<v Speaker 2>Uh.
<v Speaker 1>So it's the core series for Monster Hunter is an
<v Speaker 1>action game, and they're usually these like big, long, drawn
<v Speaker 1>out fights between you and the monster, and it requires
<v Speaker 1>you to like there's a whole core loop of like
<v Speaker 1>you craft the art, resist the elemental type, and you'll
<v Speaker 1>get your weapon, and it's kind of got like a
<v Speaker 1>fighting game title move stets. You're gonna learn all your moves,
<v Speaker 1>You're gonna learn where to hit the monsters.
<v Speaker 2>Uh.
<v Speaker 1>And a lot of the newer games, you're you're teaming
<v Speaker 1>up with people online to like strategize and be these
<v Speaker 1>real difficult monsters.
<v Speaker 2>Uh.
<v Speaker 1>But it's very it's a lot to get into. It's
<v Speaker 1>a lot to learn, and the more recent games have
<v Speaker 1>been a lot better about tutorials and stuff, but it's
<v Speaker 1>a bit of an overwhelming experience of becoming in blind
<v Speaker 1>MONTA Stories takes that and they're like, what if it
<v Speaker 1>was a turn based game where you can kind of
<v Speaker 1>take your time and then you're like collecting these monsters.
<v Speaker 1>So I have a hole of the stables of all
<v Speaker 1>my different breeds of monsters, uh, and they all have
<v Speaker 1>different abilities. And this is the third in that series,
<v Speaker 1>but it has a different visual style, so it's less.
<v Speaker 1>They were kind of like Chibby before. Maybe if everyone
<v Speaker 1>was Chibby, I'd be like, yeah, monsters, but now these
<v Speaker 1>are like feels it's sells shape did, but it also
<v Speaker 1>feels breath of the wild specifically because the main character
<v Speaker 1>has a like champion tunic blue is like the default
<v Speaker 1>costume that.
<v Speaker 2>Should be a Crayola Crown Champion tunic.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>When I when I saw the trailers for this, the
<v Speaker 3>first thing that left to my mind was how to
<v Speaker 3>Train your Dragon specifically, Like it's the style of we
<v Speaker 3>have fantasy armor and things like that, and it's like
<v Speaker 3>kind of almost maybe more on the live action side
<v Speaker 3>of how to train your Dragon, which is not I'm
<v Speaker 3>sorry is not a compliment, but.
<v Speaker 2>Is there any point in this game where the main
<v Speaker 2>character holds their hand out to connect to the dragon?
<v Speaker 3>And is that a thing?
<v Speaker 2>That's what you do in these movies?
<v Speaker 3>You're like, never train your dragon.
<v Speaker 2>The New Jurassic World movies do that too. Were like
<v Speaker 2>all of Chris.
<v Speaker 3>Pratt, that's usually every monster's like whoa okay an avatar?
<v Speaker 1>Right?
<v Speaker 3>They like hair connect did with the dragons and then
<v Speaker 3>like bonded for life or something, is it?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? But it always it always starts with a hand.
<v Speaker 1>It's a very horse girl thing. It's the open palm
<v Speaker 1>to the horses.
<v Speaker 3>Now, because the next place I was gonna go is
<v Speaker 3>that that's what they do in Tarzan's just what you.
<v Speaker 2>Do to tame animals for some reason, and then they
<v Speaker 2>do like the hands together. How much Phil Collins is
<v Speaker 2>in this game, that's a great question.
<v Speaker 1>It would not be out of place. It's not. It's
<v Speaker 1>not the style of music that is in the game.
<v Speaker 1>But if it did start playing, I'd be like, honestly,
<v Speaker 1>I kind of I kind of like I would like
<v Speaker 1>the game if it had like a slightly more rustic edge,
<v Speaker 1>like that.
<v Speaker 3>Edge Phil Collins, rustic edge Phil Collins.
<v Speaker 1>A slight it would give the game a more rustic edge.
<v Speaker 1>It would feel a little more like never mind, never mind,
<v Speaker 1>we're most we're reading.
<v Speaker 3>So out back, Little Domino. Let's talk about monster hunter stories,
<v Speaker 3>Big Domino. We're slandering Phil Collins.
<v Speaker 2>Uh.
<v Speaker 1>The this game has a more adult kind of look
<v Speaker 1>to it. I wouldn't say adult, it's just a little
<v Speaker 1>more mature. You're playing as like clearly older characters. You
<v Speaker 1>are the prince or princess of a nation called Azuria,
<v Speaker 1>and you are also a ranger, So you are a
<v Speaker 1>monster rider. You tame monsters, but the rangers are like, uh,
<v Speaker 1>ecologically minded, so they're like not just taming monsters. They're
<v Speaker 1>like going out and they're like, we're gonna care for
<v Speaker 1>the environment. We're gonna get rid of these invasive species,
<v Speaker 1>and we're gonna raise monsters from eggs and release them
<v Speaker 1>back into the wild to like restore the population, which
<v Speaker 1>is always like a vibe in the Monster Hunter games,
<v Speaker 1>but I really appreciate in this game that it's like
<v Speaker 1>it's there's no in in Monster in our wilds. You're like,
<v Speaker 1>we're we're respecting the environment. We do that by killing
<v Speaker 1>monsters all the time, and they always have a good
<v Speaker 1>reason for it. They're like, oh, it's disrupting an ecosystem
<v Speaker 1>or doing that. But it is a weird disconnect between like, well,
<v Speaker 1>if I kill nine more of these big frogs, I
<v Speaker 1>can make new boots and that'll be good for the environment,
<v Speaker 1>whereas in this game it's a little more specific of like, no,
<v Speaker 1>if we have like you need a certain population to
<v Speaker 1>sustain this thing, and then you'll start discovering their eggs
<v Speaker 1>and wild and stuff. The story is kind of fire emblemy.
<v Speaker 1>So you're you're one nation. Uh, there's another nation called Vermail,
<v Speaker 1>and early on you have like a conference between your
<v Speaker 1>monarch and their monarch and then the Princess of Vermail.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's the princess. It's weird. It's kind of
<v Speaker 1>all the government systems are kind of weird in the game.
<v Speaker 1>But she's like, how about this instead of going to war,
<v Speaker 1>I'll volunteer to just stay in your kingdom kind of
<v Speaker 1>as like a what do they call it.
<v Speaker 2>It's like when you're captured, but like politically captured or yeah,
<v Speaker 2>what is that? Yes, we're loaning him out to you.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I don't think award means because like Robin is Batman.
<v Speaker 3>And I don't think, no, it is ward. You're right,
<v Speaker 3>but it is like used in this way, in a
<v Speaker 3>political man way. Yeah, it is like they have they
<v Speaker 3>have adopted or like traditionally you would marry into the family,
<v Speaker 3>so that way there was like a tie there. It's like, hey,
<v Speaker 3>don't lace each to this castle your kids inside, and
<v Speaker 3>just like in DC comics, it was the keep the
<v Speaker 3>Graysons and the Waynes from fighting.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah exactly, Yeah, but all all of those Graysons famously
<v Speaker 1>orphaned Dick Grayson.
<v Speaker 3>It's not like the Waynes are doing much better.
<v Speaker 1>Like okay, sorry, I need to actually stop some more.
<v Speaker 2>Back.
<v Speaker 1>Toddy knows what it is, so she joins your side,
<v Speaker 1>and it's kind of a there's a big there's a
<v Speaker 1>thing called the encroachment, which is basically this big creeping
<v Speaker 1>like crystal effect that is giving people this like deadly
<v Speaker 1>disease crystalysis. It's making the monsters go crazy, and your
<v Speaker 1>nations need to unite to basically figure out what the
<v Speaker 1>issue is and go solve it. And that's kind of
<v Speaker 1>the core plot of the game. My general vibe on
<v Speaker 1>the game is that, like, it does everything totally fine.
<v Speaker 1>I think the story is engaging enough that I wasn't
<v Speaker 1>like bored by it, but I wouldn't say there was
<v Speaker 1>enough like big plot twists that I was like, whoa,
<v Speaker 1>this is a groundbreaking story. The combat I enjoyed. It's
<v Speaker 1>you and one of your monsters. You fight side by side,
<v Speaker 1>you fight monsters, monster versus monsters, and there's elemental advantages
<v Speaker 1>your weapons. You'll hit different parts of the monster's body
<v Speaker 1>to do stuff. And then there's also it has like
<v Speaker 1>a kind of type circle thing, so there's technical tax
<v Speaker 1>speed attacks, and power attacks, and the only reason I
<v Speaker 1>could keep track of them is because they're color coded,
<v Speaker 1>like firewater and grass in Pokemon. So if someone's gonna
<v Speaker 1>attack you with a power attack, that's red, so you
<v Speaker 1>have to use the blue attack and you'll do a
<v Speaker 1>head to head and then you'll win. And I yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I'm very glad they're color coded like that, because I
<v Speaker 1>would have I would have never remembered if it wasn't
<v Speaker 1>firewater Grass.
<v Speaker 3>I wonder if that was intentional in a way that
<v Speaker 3>they were like, well, we should probably color code these
<v Speaker 3>so that way people just cast media recognition.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, uh. It is kind of a fun
<v Speaker 1>little game. I don't think it was a groundbreaking I
<v Speaker 1>saw someone refer to this as like an early Game
<v Speaker 1>of the Year contender. I just don't. I don't think
<v Speaker 1>it left enough of an impression on me to feel
<v Speaker 1>that strongly about it. But it took me like sixty
<v Speaker 1>houts to get through, and there was plenty of sidecon.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't side content. I didn't do so if you're
<v Speaker 1>wanting like a big RPG. I think if you're a
<v Speaker 1>Monster Hunter fan and you're specifically like excited to see
<v Speaker 1>like you know, your Rathelos again, or there's some monsters
<v Speaker 1>in this game that I recognize hero Monster on a
<v Speaker 1>Wild so that I think are new to that game
<v Speaker 1>that are now in this game. And that's fun. So
<v Speaker 1>there's your new monsters in this new style. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I don't think it's like a must play by any means.
<v Speaker 1>But I didn't have a terrible time with it, and
<v Speaker 1>that's that's my verdict.
<v Speaker 4>So you said that this was an adult this was
<v Speaker 4>an adult game. Can you shower with any of the
<v Speaker 4>characters that are.
<v Speaker 2>In the like f.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>So uh no, Well you can kind of change your
<v Speaker 1>ally's clothes a little bit. But I think it's because
<v Speaker 1>they gave me like the deluxe version when they I
<v Speaker 1>got like my review code, I I will say, it's
<v Speaker 1>not Uh the men aren't the ones that seem like
<v Speaker 1>they're only wearing towels. If you want to see skin,
<v Speaker 1>definitely more of the alternate female character's skins. What it
<v Speaker 1>is always one of those things where I'm like, like,
<v Speaker 1>I the alternate skin for this guy Gowl, He's like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, scary guy, he's got like alternate dark colored skins.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, that's cool. Like what about eleanor can she
<v Speaker 1>have like some cool arts in armor? And like all
<v Speaker 1>the options are like two piece armor, where I'm like
<v Speaker 1>what I don't I don't know why we went to
<v Speaker 1>the two piece immediately, and I don't mind that that exists.
<v Speaker 1>I just wanted like some cool other options and instead
<v Speaker 1>it's just like nope, you get anyways. Uh No, it's
<v Speaker 1>not there there. I would say there are probably some
<v Speaker 1>hot guys here if you're like into anime kind of style, but.
<v Speaker 3>Or the monsters, I'm still saying, or the monsters, the monstie.
<v Speaker 1>I'm sorry, thank you, yeah, thank you so much.
<v Speaker 3>I assume you've got wraths. We've got uh Narga Kuga,
<v Speaker 3>We've got uh the Gaya Chris, We've got.
<v Speaker 2>Like some of the classes and Capcom should do a
<v Speaker 2>visual novel dating sim but they turn all the monsters
<v Speaker 2>into people, so like Howards don't represents into people like
<v Speaker 2>you know what would look like as a hot guy
<v Speaker 2>where he's like.
<v Speaker 3>This podcast don't monsers in the.
<v Speaker 2>People have com If you want some free money?
<v Speaker 1>What is that called this. There's a word for that, right,
<v Speaker 1>the Japanese.
<v Speaker 2>When you turn like an animal, I don't know, I
<v Speaker 2>want to be Japanese word.
<v Speaker 3>And I was so like making a mental note to
<v Speaker 3>like cut this if you say one of multiple words.
<v Speaker 1>All right, I am absolutely incorrect Japanese words.
<v Speaker 4>When they turned poke, I'm on, it's a human like humanoid.
<v Speaker 4>But I'm all for this. I don't know what these
<v Speaker 4>monsters look like, but I think they should turn into humans.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that chicken from Wild that the one that you
<v Speaker 2>ride around, What would that look like as a hot guy?
<v Speaker 1>I want to say gadjinka no one, no recognition. I
<v Speaker 1>looked it up and that exists. Now. The second length
<v Speaker 1>that came up is Kadjinka wiki fur the Furry Encyclopedia, which.
<v Speaker 3>Makes me feel like I'm going in the right direction.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, I mean, I mean all every monster has
<v Speaker 1>an armor set and you put it on, so that
<v Speaker 1>is kind of like, oh, I guess on that note,
<v Speaker 1>my one pet peeve about this game, not one pet
<v Speaker 1>eric so hard not to lose my mind. I'm pivoting slightly.
<v Speaker 1>I mean my character this game lets you put in
<v Speaker 1>put on glasses in the character creator, which I love
<v Speaker 1>because that's to me, that's like my main facial defining
<v Speaker 1>characteristic is like if I have glasses, then I can
<v Speaker 1>identify as that character.
<v Speaker 3>Are you a are you a self insert character? Your
<v Speaker 3>creator like, do you make characters that look like you?
<v Speaker 1>Do I generally speaking or in this game generally speak
<v Speaker 1>generally because I can't. I never get there's never a
<v Speaker 1>hair texture that's close enough to mine. And it's usually
<v Speaker 1>like if if you're doing any facial hair, I feel
<v Speaker 1>like I have a hard time getting this combo.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I feel yeah.
<v Speaker 1>This game, though, I was like, I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>I can put on glasses and I can have like
<v Speaker 1>a little beerd There's no mustache, but it was like
<v Speaker 1>close enough that I was like, yeah, okay that this
<v Speaker 1>guy kind of looks like Charles. I remember, like Dragon's
<v Speaker 1>Dogma two, you have to get like so far in
<v Speaker 1>the game to even find the glasses option. And I
<v Speaker 1>was always like, anyways, but my character was clearly a
<v Speaker 1>black guy, no, no debate about that. Both my parents
<v Speaker 1>were white, and it wasn't really addressed. And I don't
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if it's like just the genes of
<v Speaker 1>the world. It's just like I don't know, And there
<v Speaker 1>was a thing where at one point the king like
<v Speaker 1>puts me in charge of some you know, military thing,
<v Speaker 1>and someone's like, Oh, why are you so nervous to
<v Speaker 1>be in charge of it? And the guy's like, Oh,
<v Speaker 1>he's worried that everyone's going to look at him and
<v Speaker 1>think of his mother, the trader who betrayed the kingdom.
<v Speaker 1>And I was just like, I don't think anyone looks
<v Speaker 1>at me so and told looked like the trader exactly,
<v Speaker 1>And I was like, what did she cheat on the
<v Speaker 1>king with a black guy? And that's why I look
<v Speaker 1>like this? So that's why I'm the trader.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>And then also my hair.
<v Speaker 2>I can say so many things and I won't.
<v Speaker 3>As a as a kid this podcast on the Rail.
<v Speaker 1>It's like a kid model and no matter what your
<v Speaker 1>adult form looks like, the kid model has like a
<v Speaker 1>bowl cut. So I was just here, like, my I
<v Speaker 1>have clearly curly hair on this black character. I don't
<v Speaker 1>know how we went from bowl cut at age seven
<v Speaker 1>to like tight afro at age I think it was.
<v Speaker 2>The trauma of losing your mom that made your hair.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you can ask another, ask another question about this.
<v Speaker 3>This segment that was only supposed to be like five
<v Speaker 3>minutes trying to more things. So you have you have glasses?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>Does anyone else in the story have glasses?
<v Speaker 2>Oh?
<v Speaker 3>Because because everything you have said so far implies to
<v Speaker 3>me like a high fantasy fire emblem kingdom type thing.
<v Speaker 3>And all I can think is where did you get
<v Speaker 3>the glasses from?
<v Speaker 2>Like that the lenses?
<v Speaker 3>Like is Merlin running an optometry shop like down the street?
<v Speaker 3>Like is he how's he cutting the glass and making
<v Speaker 3>the frames? Like what's he doing?
<v Speaker 1>There is a guy that has goggles, but those aren't glass,
<v Speaker 1>that's not glasses.
<v Speaker 2>The glasses are probably crafted from monsters too, like everything
<v Speaker 2>else in that world.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm trying to think of the the I'm trying
<v Speaker 1>to think of like the limits of the technology in
<v Speaker 1>this game, because there's like sand chips, that's a thing.
<v Speaker 3>So they have machinery, they have, you know, the the
<v Speaker 3>ability to produce.
<v Speaker 1>Lookout points. So there is like binoculars, so they do
<v Speaker 1>have some kind of like lens making stuff in that sense.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, I don't think there's any other last first classes.
<v Speaker 4>Made home in the glasses factory exactly.
<v Speaker 1>Sand Monster, the heat Monster.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, you know what it turns out like the first
<v Speaker 3>glasses were made in like Italy and like the thirteenth
<v Speaker 3>century or something, So we're probably fine in terms of
<v Speaker 3>technological business.
<v Speaker 1>As a prince, I'm the only person that could afford.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's messed up.
<v Speaker 2>It's actually instead of a crown, you get glasses and
<v Speaker 2>it's the sign of royalty.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there's a thing to see in the D and D.
<v Speaker 1>In the player's handbook, which is also like you know,
<v Speaker 1>high fantasy medieval stuff. There's like prices for all these
<v Speaker 1>like regular items, and it's like one gold piece, two
<v Speaker 1>gold piece, a potion of healings like fifty gold pieces.
<v Speaker 1>A gold piece is like ten dollars. Also like a
<v Speaker 1>postion of healings like five hundred dollars, Like whoa, by far,
<v Speaker 1>I don't think anything goes over Like two or three
<v Speaker 1>hundred gold pieces. A thousand gold pieces is a spyglass.
<v Speaker 1>They're like, we gotta be realistic here. That's really hard
<v Speaker 1>to make with a technology that we have. It's gonna
<v Speaker 1>be way more expensive everything else.
<v Speaker 2>Can you not just do?
<v Speaker 3>Like Wizard Lasick? Like is that not a thing in
<v Speaker 3>D and D?
<v Speaker 2>A Wizard Lasick? I don't know, Like you can't just
<v Speaker 2>have like a magic spell that's just like prepare your
<v Speaker 2>eyes poof.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yeah, well I kind of like the idea that
<v Speaker 3>he's like above you with the wand and he's kind
<v Speaker 3>of like.
<v Speaker 2>Shooting into your eyes precise even though it's magic.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, no, Cale's doing it.
<v Speaker 4>Oh, it's just my magic. I use this to fix
<v Speaker 4>people's eyes.
<v Speaker 3>Would have been it would have been nice to have that,
<v Speaker 3>like a year and a half ago.
<v Speaker 4>I haven't done it to myself clearly.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, you don't trust it that much, Marcus. What's
<v Speaker 2>it like to be able to see? Well, I do
<v Speaker 2>wear contacts, so oh okay, okay, never mind, I'm in
<v Speaker 2>the same boat but cooler.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you'll be there.
<v Speaker 3>You'll be there for a while.
<v Speaker 1>The other the other games all have contact lenses, which
<v Speaker 1>is why you don't see.
<v Speaker 2>The glasses exactly. They figure that out.
<v Speaker 1>Anyways. If you want more detailed thoughts on all starting
<v Speaker 1>the stories three, or you know, more concrete things about anything,
<v Speaker 1>I want, I don't talk about race or glasses at
<v Speaker 1>all on that piece, just really really more of a
<v Speaker 1>supplementary discussion to that. But you can see that that's
<v Speaker 1>live on the site, right now I get a game
<v Speaker 1>a seven point five out of ten, I think that
<v Speaker 1>people it's always the worst way to end of review.
<v Speaker 1>So I didn't write this in the text, but it's
<v Speaker 1>always a thing of like, if you like Monster Hunter
<v Speaker 1>and you like the other Mashrner stories game, they'll probably
<v Speaker 1>have a fine time with this, but it's not It
<v Speaker 1>shouldn't be your introduction to turn based role playing games, right, yeah? Cool? Well,
<v Speaker 1>speaking of reviews, Marcus, you after doing a cool preview
<v Speaker 1>trip to go visit the studio or just talk to
<v Speaker 1>people that made the game?
<v Speaker 2>Quarters, what a what a manufacturer? The wrestling that's where
<v Speaker 2>wrestling comes from.
<v Speaker 1>There you go fast produced. You are now done with
<v Speaker 1>your review, presumably by the time this goes up of
<v Speaker 1>w W two K twenty six. How does it shape
<v Speaker 1>up against the past entries?
<v Speaker 2>Should I give Eric a heart attack and play another
<v Speaker 2>wrestling thing song to transition into the next segment? Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>John Cena, what do you want.
<v Speaker 4>There?
<v Speaker 2>It is? It's like covered it. Wow? You know the
<v Speaker 2>okay lyrics? Okay, and expect that.
<v Speaker 4>One day.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this game unfortunately, it's it's funny how much our
<v Speaker 2>reviews are kind of parallel charts because I At the
<v Speaker 2>time of writing, I have not scored the game, but
<v Speaker 2>I have largely finished my review. It'll be up by
<v Speaker 2>the time you're listening to this, though. But where I'm
<v Speaker 2>hovering at right now is around like a seven point five.
<v Speaker 2>Uh so the same score I like wrestling. I generally
<v Speaker 2>enjoyed the two K games. Even though there's a lot
<v Speaker 2>of criticism I have with them, I do still find
<v Speaker 2>fun with them. I you know this, I know some
<v Speaker 2>people don't like the same aspect of it, and then
<v Speaker 2>I get it, but I do have This is my
<v Speaker 2>probably my least favorite since they came back. So a
<v Speaker 2>lot of the same modes are there. And again, like
<v Speaker 2>you said, Charles, is hard to not just say like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>if you like those other games, so probably like this one.
<v Speaker 2>But that's even harder for like an annual franchise, like
<v Speaker 2>annual sports games. You're like, yeah, they did the thing again,
<v Speaker 2>what do you want? So yeah, it's like all the
<v Speaker 2>modes are there. You know, they add a few new
<v Speaker 2>match types that are generally fine, but they're not like,
<v Speaker 2>at least to me, they're not going to like blow
<v Speaker 2>your socks off, but they're like nice to have just
<v Speaker 2>the join the collection of them. I will say the
<v Speaker 2>big thing kind of with in terms of new stuff
<v Speaker 2>is like the Ringside Pass, which is their first four
<v Speaker 2>way into introducing a battle pass. So traditionally in these games,
<v Speaker 2>they're sort of like monetization strategy has been to release
<v Speaker 2>these post launch DLC packs or like hey, here's a
<v Speaker 2>pack with a few wrestlers and some cosmetics and other things,
<v Speaker 2>and you can buy those ala carte, or if you
<v Speaker 2>buy either of the like two or three special editions,
<v Speaker 2>you'll just have like instant access to it. And those
<v Speaker 2>packs dropped throughout the year. On one hand, and when
<v Speaker 2>you kind of like like look at those two, there's
<v Speaker 2>not much different because they're still paying extra money for
<v Speaker 2>post content, which is like not new in games. And
<v Speaker 2>I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it. And
<v Speaker 2>even with this battle Pass from what I've you know,
<v Speaker 2>played from it, I I I think if you if
<v Speaker 2>you have like a strong feelings about battle passes either way,
<v Speaker 2>I think you kind of know where we are stand
<v Speaker 2>with this game. Regardless of what this game does. I
<v Speaker 2>will say, to their credit, what I do like about
<v Speaker 2>there is is one none of the rewards expire, so
<v Speaker 2>there's no like none of that toxic fomo of like
<v Speaker 2>I need to log in now because yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 2>Booker T is gonna disappear in two days. They don't
<v Speaker 2>do that. Everything is always there all the time, So
<v Speaker 2>I do like that, and I do think like there's
<v Speaker 2>been some updates during the review here, it would have
<v Speaker 2>kind of tweaked the sort of like progression of like
<v Speaker 2>how long it takes, but even before the tweaks, And
<v Speaker 2>maybe I'm saying and I'm coming to this with a
<v Speaker 2>little bit of a I don't know, naivete. I don't
<v Speaker 2>know if that's the word I want to use. But
<v Speaker 2>I don't play multiplayer games generally. It's not really my thing.
<v Speaker 2>So I don't really deal with battle passes just in
<v Speaker 2>my daily life, like and even the ones when I
<v Speaker 2>do log into them, I never buy anycause I don't
<v Speaker 2>play enough to be like to feel enticed to pay
<v Speaker 2>for a premium tier, like usually the free tier is
<v Speaker 2>about as much engagement as I'm going to put into
<v Speaker 2>the game probably anyway. So I'm I'm generally pretty neutral
<v Speaker 2>on battle passing. I've never had a reason to hate
<v Speaker 2>them or love them either way. I guess I will
<v Speaker 2>say for this game once. I do think there's some
<v Speaker 2>negative sort of like side effects that affect the other
<v Speaker 2>modes because of the ringside pass being present. I think
<v Speaker 2>mainly My Rise, which is like the story driven mode.
<v Speaker 2>So My Rise, it's usually like two campaigns. You create
<v Speaker 2>your own male or female wrestler, or in this game,
<v Speaker 2>as they like to call them, wrestlings.
<v Speaker 5>But right, you can't do that in a review. You
<v Speaker 5>can't just lie about the game.
<v Speaker 1>And then say if they were actually.
<v Speaker 2>Called like I, I mean, I guess you could call
<v Speaker 2>that if you want. But but in the previous games
<v Speaker 2>it was the same structure. Like you play, it's like
<v Speaker 2>a original storyline. You're talking to wrestlers that are voiced
<v Speaker 2>by the actual wrestlers, and you're like hanging out backstage,
<v Speaker 2>and usually those initiate matches in the ring, and then
<v Speaker 2>cinematics moments happened, like cutscenes, and it's choice driven, so
<v Speaker 2>depending on how you respond, you can make yourself a
<v Speaker 2>good guy wrestler or a bad guy wrestler. And generally
<v Speaker 2>they're like always corny and cheesy and dumb, but also
<v Speaker 2>wrestling can be corny and cheesy and dumb, so it
<v Speaker 2>kind of lines up and it's if you enjoy like
<v Speaker 2>dumb fun then I still get a kick out of them,
<v Speaker 2>even while acknowledging how silly the stories are. But in
<v Speaker 2>this case they change the structure where now instead of
<v Speaker 2>just playing kind of like constant story moments in between
<v Speaker 2>the big story milestones, you now have to play a
<v Speaker 2>bunch of random matches in a row to fill up
<v Speaker 2>a star quota. Because every time in the game, when
<v Speaker 2>you complete a match, you get a star rating, which
<v Speaker 2>is sort of like a real life thing from like
<v Speaker 2>wrestling journalists or critics that will assign star ratings to
<v Speaker 2>matches like, oh, that was a five star match. They
<v Speaker 2>kind of have that built into the game. That's been
<v Speaker 2>a thing for like ever, but now they're using it
<v Speaker 2>in My Rise, where if you like, you have to
<v Speaker 2>wrestle a bunch of matches and then if you want
<v Speaker 2>to unlock the next story thing, you have to have
<v Speaker 2>twelve stars across how many ever matches, So they're like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>I wrestled this guy that was a two star match,
<v Speaker 2>so I need ten more stars across how many of
<v Speaker 2>her matches that get to the next thing. And it
<v Speaker 2>sucks it is it creates such a grind now to
<v Speaker 2>get to the next like plot milestone, and none of
<v Speaker 2>these matches are really related to what you're doing. And
<v Speaker 2>a lot of times the pool is very shallow where
<v Speaker 2>it'll be like like you can decline matches and then
<v Speaker 2>they'll just match you up with somebody else. But there
<v Speaker 2>are multiple times, right decline, like three times in a row,
<v Speaker 2>and it was the same guy like just popped up
<v Speaker 2>and you're like, oh, it's the Miz, and like, well,
<v Speaker 2>I already wrestled the Miz. I would like to fight
<v Speaker 2>someone else, Like well, it's gonna be the Miss again,
<v Speaker 2>and like is there anyone else around that isn't the Miss?
<v Speaker 1>And it's like, I guess, Miss, can you describe the Miz?
<v Speaker 2>Did you ever? I had Charles, you might you might
<v Speaker 2>be young, and Nicole, I don't know how old you are,
<v Speaker 2>But are you guys familiar with the real world.
<v Speaker 4>That's the only reason I know the mis?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So he came from the real world and famously
<v Speaker 2>created the Miss persona there and he said he wanted
<v Speaker 2>to be a wrestler on the show and then he
<v Speaker 2>actually did it, and he has been in w since
<v Speaker 2>two thousand and six, and is he came in as like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>he's the reality show guy. It's a wrestler, what a
<v Speaker 2>you know? He thinks he's hot stuff. And he has
<v Speaker 2>evolved that character in different ways, especially when he got
<v Speaker 2>into acting he became more of a Hollywood character. But
<v Speaker 2>basically he's this like kind of like smarmye, kind of
<v Speaker 2>like cowardly villain who has somehow like who basically in
<v Speaker 2>real life has outlasted and overachieved given where he came from,
<v Speaker 2>Like every wrestling veteran thought he'd be gone within a year,
<v Speaker 2>and he has outlasted everyone. And he has had a
<v Speaker 2>genuine Hall of Fame caliber career. So it's to his credit.
<v Speaker 2>He's a very good talent.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, yeah, had gone because I think as that like
<v Speaker 4>kind of like he's a reality like what is he?
<v Speaker 2>He's a wild mouth guy.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I didn't realize he had such a successful wrestling career.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I was one of the guys at the time
<v Speaker 2>and he came in. I was like, I hated him.
<v Speaker 2>I thought he was grading and then I was very
<v Speaker 2>much like he didn't come from real wrestling. He'll be gone,
<v Speaker 2>he won't make it six months. And then fast forward
<v Speaker 2>twenty years later and he's won like every championship and
<v Speaker 2>main event at WrestleMania, and he deserves all the flowers
<v Speaker 2>that he's now.
<v Speaker 3>Getting, and you still don't want to wrestle him.
<v Speaker 2>But no, I don't want to wrestle him three times
<v Speaker 2>in a row. In my eyes, don't want to. Don't
<v Speaker 2>like Matt much. So yeah, and I don't notice for sure,
<v Speaker 2>but I suspect the reason that they change the structure
<v Speaker 2>is because of the Ringside Pass, because you earn experience
<v Speaker 2>points in the Ringside Pass for doing pretty much anything
<v Speaker 2>to gain, like engaging with any mode, but you get
<v Speaker 2>more points for winning matches, So I think they wanted
<v Speaker 2>you to use my Rise as a way to gain
<v Speaker 2>experience to fuel the Battle Pass. So it's like, if
<v Speaker 2>we give you a bunch of random matches that you're
<v Speaker 2>probably going to win, this will make you unlock more rewards,
<v Speaker 2>which on one hand is kind of admirable of like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>you're giving me more ways to unlock your rewards, but
<v Speaker 2>also you're doing it in a way that sucks, and
<v Speaker 2>it just completely derails the pacing of this usually pretty
<v Speaker 2>brisk and like to the point story mode. And I
<v Speaker 2>almost wonder IF's like I'm not insane because I don't
<v Speaker 2>always retain these story modes each year because they're not
<v Speaker 2>memorable generally. But I even fired up. I usually fire
<v Speaker 2>up the previous year's games when I'm doing a review
<v Speaker 2>of the new one, just to compare things, because sometimes
<v Speaker 2>there's so similar to at their mind myself like was
<v Speaker 2>this in the last your game? And so I actually
<v Speaker 2>fired up two K twenty five's My Rise just to
<v Speaker 2>remind myself of how quickly it moves. I remember liking
<v Speaker 2>it last year, and I played a few of the
<v Speaker 2>story matches and I was like, yeah, it's just moment
<v Speaker 2>the moment, just next thing, Like there's really no downtime,
<v Speaker 2>Like there's optional side quest that you can do to
<v Speaker 2>gain experience to pump up your character, but otherwise you're
<v Speaker 2>free to just go through it and none of that's here.
<v Speaker 2>And so it's my least favorite My Rise in a while.
<v Speaker 2>The other big thing is the Showcase mode, which is
<v Speaker 2>sort of like it's always it's like a playable documentary
<v Speaker 2>more or less. I usually centers on the cover star,
<v Speaker 2>so this year it's CM Punk and it's like half
<v Speaker 2>of a historical sort of retrospective where he's you know,
<v Speaker 2>They've shot all these vignettes with him where he's introducing
<v Speaker 2>each match and he's like, yeah, I wrestled this guy
<v Speaker 2>in two thousand and eight at SummerSlam. Man, what a
<v Speaker 2>crazy match. Let's let's play that. And then the other
<v Speaker 2>half is just like what IFFs because for Punk he left.
<v Speaker 2>He walked out on w B in twenty fourteen and
<v Speaker 2>didn't come back until twenty twenty three, so there's like
<v Speaker 2>that ten year gap where he's like, well, what if
<v Speaker 2>I stayed, who could I have wrestled? And that stuff
<v Speaker 2>is also hit and miss because for the historical half,
<v Speaker 2>it's really only focused largely on like one year, which
<v Speaker 2>is like twenty thirteen to twenty fourteen, so like the
<v Speaker 2>last year of his first run, and I think if
<v Speaker 2>you're a Punk fan you want it's much of like
<v Speaker 2>a wide breath because he came into W and six,
<v Speaker 2>so yeah, like a long run in his first time.
<v Speaker 2>And Grant I am ignoring the matches that they can't
<v Speaker 2>do because certain opponents wrestle in other companies that he's like, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>well we can't do Christiericho because he signed with AW
<v Speaker 2>and him and Christierigo had a big feud. We can't
<v Speaker 2>do Jeff Hardy because Jeff Hardy's in TNA, even though
<v Speaker 2>they have a working relationship with TNA, and I think
<v Speaker 2>they just announced the Hardy's are going to be DLC,
<v Speaker 2>so maybe no, I don't know what the excuses with
<v Speaker 2>that one. Maybe, But anyways, those are fine. That happens
<v Speaker 2>every year with Showcase. But even still, there's just so
<v Speaker 2>much of his career that is either touched on in
<v Speaker 2>the little videos or just isn't really mentioned. So like,
<v Speaker 2>if you wanted the ECW run of cmpunk get to
<v Speaker 2>play any of that. If you wanted the straight edge
<v Speaker 2>society era of punk, which is one of my favorite
<v Speaker 2>eras of punk, you don't get to play any of
<v Speaker 2>that stuff. Even maybe the biggest omission if it is
<v Speaker 2>Money in the Bank twenty eleven, famously one of his
<v Speaker 2>most famous matches, maybe his most famous match where he
<v Speaker 2>beat Johnston famously guys short story, Punk was Gonna leave
<v Speaker 2>WWA in twenty eleven challenged kind of promo that we
<v Speaker 2>call the pipe prom promo. He basically broke the fourth
<v Speaker 2>wall and criticized ww's creative, criticized Vince McMahon on live television,
<v Speaker 2>and it's kind of the thing that propelled him to
<v Speaker 2>superstart him because everyone's like, he's just say some wild
<v Speaker 2>stuff right now on TV. And then was going to
<v Speaker 2>walk out on w AT Money in the Bank twenty eleven,
<v Speaker 2>a pay per view that was in Chicago, which is
<v Speaker 2>his hometown, so everyone's one hundred percent behind him. He's
<v Speaker 2>fighting Johnson of the biggest baby face. He was getting
<v Speaker 2>booed out of the building and he threatened like, Hey,
<v Speaker 2>if I win this title, I'm going to leave the
<v Speaker 2>company with the title. I'm going to walk out with
<v Speaker 2>this and you're gonna not have a champion and one wow.
<v Speaker 2>And then he came back anyway a few weeks later,
<v Speaker 2>but it was a huge thing at the time.
<v Speaker 1>He didn't.
<v Speaker 4>Out of it.
<v Speaker 3>That zegues into something I was going to ask about
<v Speaker 3>this was just like I don't even know wrestling super well,
<v Speaker 3>but I know that CM Punk for years was kind
<v Speaker 3>of that person who was speaking out about things, was
<v Speaker 3>going on podcasts and talking about things that were happening
<v Speaker 3>in the WWE. Like he has been a vocal person
<v Speaker 3>about like the way that company conducts business. And I wonder, like,
<v Speaker 3>how much of that do you feel like this is
<v Speaker 3>still a WWE branded game, and in the same way
<v Speaker 3>that like Madden doesn't really touch on a lot of
<v Speaker 3>the bad stuff that happens in football, Like is the
<v Speaker 3>WWE game avoiding a lot of the stuff that would
<v Speaker 3>paint them in a bad light.
<v Speaker 2>Well, no, because they had money in a bank, Like
<v Speaker 2>the company worked with him on that storyline, Like he
<v Speaker 2>didn't just go out there with my phone and say
<v Speaker 2>what they wanted, Like they knew he was going to
<v Speaker 2>do that. They just let him do it because Vince McMahon,
<v Speaker 2>for better or worse, he'll do whatever it takes to
<v Speaker 2>sell tickets. So even if it's him going out there
<v Speaker 2>and punk literally saying that this company will be better
<v Speaker 2>off once he's dead, Vice was okay with that because
<v Speaker 2>he's a businessman. So it's you know, we're kidding into
<v Speaker 2>sort of like the more wilder real life sort of
<v Speaker 2>like psychology of wrestling, of yeah, go out there and
<v Speaker 2>say terrible things about me, I don't mind because we're
<v Speaker 2>trying to sell tickets, or yeah, go disparage the company.
<v Speaker 2>It's okay.
<v Speaker 3>Well, what I'm saying is like not to like pull
<v Speaker 3>the veil back, but there's like a degree of kfabe
<v Speaker 3>where it's like, Oh, this this guy sucks and I'm
<v Speaker 3>willing to beat him. And then it's like that's part
<v Speaker 3>of the act, that's part of putting on the show.
<v Speaker 3>And and obviously, like as social media is proliferated, those
<v Speaker 3>personas have had to expand or or like reality shows
<v Speaker 3>have had to encompass broader parts of their life than
<v Speaker 3>just when they're on the quote unquote stage when in
<v Speaker 3>like the Squared Circle and all that, so like they
<v Speaker 3>have had to be larger than life. And but with
<v Speaker 3>with Punk there was like very specific, like he was
<v Speaker 3>like the infamous moment where he was on like was
<v Speaker 3>it tranquilizers or something that that they were like do
<v Speaker 3>you not remember the the pooped his briches story, because
<v Speaker 3>this is the one I always think of with CM
<v Speaker 3>Punk specifically, I think I.
<v Speaker 2>Do remember him mentioning in a podcast that he craped
<v Speaker 2>himself in a ring, which is actually a pretty common thing.
<v Speaker 2>Like a lot of wrestler be like, yeah, I took
<v Speaker 2>a I took a fall so hard, I got slams
<v Speaker 2>so hard that I pooped my pants in a ring
<v Speaker 2>a little bit.
<v Speaker 3>There's there's a there's a podcast episode talking about this,
<v Speaker 3>but it was it was happening around the time that
<v Speaker 3>a lot of people were coming out about like the
<v Speaker 3>health ramifications of being a wrestler, and like how a
<v Speaker 3>lot of wrestlers were having to put up go fundmes
<v Speaker 3>to support themselves because of longstanding things that happened to
<v Speaker 3>them because of wrestling. And so that's what I'm saying
<v Speaker 3>is like, does it feel like there's a glossing over
<v Speaker 3>of that or does it more just feel like W's
<v Speaker 3>is putting on a vision of seem punk that is
<v Speaker 3>maybe their vision, but not the vision that fans would
<v Speaker 3>want of CM punk.
<v Speaker 2>No, because they've the real reason I think this match
<v Speaker 2>is an end because they talk about Money in the
<v Speaker 2>Bank twenty eleven all the time. They didn't when he
<v Speaker 2>was gone for ten years because he was persona non
<v Speaker 2>grata in general when he was gone, so they just
<v Speaker 2>did not talk about him. But even when he was
<v Speaker 2>there the first time, and since he's come back, they'll
<v Speaker 2>be like, yeah, it's went to Bank twenty eleven, one
<v Speaker 2>of his greatest matches. But I think the real reason
<v Speaker 2>it's not there is because Vince McMahon is involved in
<v Speaker 2>that match, and Vince McMahon is currently persona non grata
<v Speaker 2>and wuy for horrific reasons that you can look up
<v Speaker 2>on your own, but like, he is involved in the
<v Speaker 2>finish of that match because he in storyline, he tries
<v Speaker 2>to stop Punk from winning and fails. So like, when
<v Speaker 2>I think about, like, how do you recreate that match
<v Speaker 2>without the vins running, I guess and it's like, I
<v Speaker 2>think you could probably get around it, because it's like, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he's in the match, but he doesn't play, he doesn't
<v Speaker 2>really get involved physically. He just kind of comes out
<v Speaker 2>and stands on the stage. But he also sends another
<v Speaker 2>guy named John Lorenidis, who was also implicated in that
<v Speaker 2>same lawsuit, try to do something, but he also was
<v Speaker 2>like nullified pretty quickly. So it's like, I think you
<v Speaker 2>could just do a version of that match without him
<v Speaker 2>and it wouldn't change things. But I think maybe they're
<v Speaker 2>just like, no, we don't even want to go near
<v Speaker 2>it because because he is present in the match, which
<v Speaker 2>fair enough, but I that's all to say again, if
<v Speaker 2>you're a Punk fan and you expect because everyone would
<v Speaker 2>think like, well, that's match is going to be in
<v Speaker 2>there and that's like his defining match, and they're like, no,
<v Speaker 2>that's not in there, so that the show, the historical
<v Speaker 2>side is kind of lacking the dream match stuff, or
<v Speaker 2>it's just him finding opponents that he's never wrestled or
<v Speaker 2>or in paid, or like kind of like inserting himself
<v Speaker 2>in situations that involved other wrestlers where it's like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>WrestleMania thirty was the Daniel Bryan show. But if I'd stayed,
<v Speaker 2>maybe I would have been Daniel Bryan. I would have
<v Speaker 2>wrestled Triple Ah in the opener and then inserted myself
<v Speaker 2>in the three way main event. That stuff's fun, but
<v Speaker 2>it goes on for like a really long time, like
<v Speaker 2>a little too long honestly, where I was kind of
<v Speaker 2>like ready for it to be over. I do like
<v Speaker 2>that the matches don't have as many of the optional
<v Speaker 2>objectives anymore, where like because you're playing at least the
<v Speaker 2>historical matches, they'll be like, hey, there's a point in
<v Speaker 2>this match where Punk hit a DDT, So if you
<v Speaker 2>hit a DDT when we tell you you'll unlock a
<v Speaker 2>thing afterwards, there's like half of it. Feels like there's
<v Speaker 2>like half of that in these matches, so they're quicker,
<v Speaker 2>they get through, but now there's just like more matches,
<v Speaker 2>so it's longer in a different way. But they also added,
<v Speaker 2>for the first time at least that I can remember,
<v Speaker 2>like an alternative version where instead of playing kind of
<v Speaker 2>like the timeline version, you can do like a gauntlet
<v Speaker 2>match where it's like, okay, like straight up, there's a
<v Speaker 2>video punk saying listen, we all know not everyone has
<v Speaker 2>the time to get through this, but you want to
<v Speaker 2>get all the unlockables. So instead you're going to compete
<v Speaker 2>in one gauntlet match where it's one after the other.
<v Speaker 2>It's you versus all twenty opponents that appear in Showcase,
<v Speaker 2>and you have to beat them one at a time,
<v Speaker 2>but you don't get it, like your health is the
<v Speaker 2>same throughout, so it's just an endurance run. But it's like,
<v Speaker 2>if you manage to win this, you will unlock everything
<v Speaker 2>that Showcase offers, so you can do it two ways,
<v Speaker 2>which is kind of neat. It's hard, and best of
<v Speaker 2>luck to anyone that pulls it off. I tried it,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, lost within like match five. But I
<v Speaker 2>like that as kind of like a fun little like
<v Speaker 2>endurance test. I do.
<v Speaker 1>I like that a lot. I wish more games were
<v Speaker 1>just like, hey, you're only level two. But here's the
<v Speaker 1>boss rush for the whole game, and do this the
<v Speaker 1>old luck the highest level spells good luck.
<v Speaker 2>The other big thing that I uh not a fan
<v Speaker 2>of is the Island. So this was the mode that
<v Speaker 2>was introduced last year, and it's basically if you played
<v Speaker 2>NBA two K, Like they've always had their version of
<v Speaker 2>this where I forget what they call it, like my career,
<v Speaker 2>but it's the thing where you make your own custom
<v Speaker 2>player or in this case, the custom wrestler, and they
<v Speaker 2>drop you in like a open hub with like you know,
<v Speaker 2>there's other characters online or people running around and you
<v Speaker 2>basically just go around do missions. But really what it
<v Speaker 2>is is that it's it's like a digital shopping mall
<v Speaker 2>where they want you to spend the VC to virtual
<v Speaker 2>currency to be like, hey, you could buy cosmetics for.
<v Speaker 1>Your rest are there like real world ads.
<v Speaker 2>There, there's realm of brands like you can buy Nike,
<v Speaker 2>you can buy an Jordan on top of just like
<v Speaker 2>the regular WWE stuff.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So like there's like in the open hub, like the
<v Speaker 2>center of it is just like store after store after
<v Speaker 2>store of these little clothing shops and you can only
<v Speaker 2>buy everything in here with the VC, which you can
<v Speaker 2>earn in game, but you know it takes a while.
<v Speaker 2>And it's also you have to spend VC to upgrade
<v Speaker 2>your character in this specific mode, so you have the
<v Speaker 2>ration in your money basically to be like, well, do
<v Speaker 2>I want to make my character stronger so I can
<v Speaker 2>get through these matches, or do I want to buy
<v Speaker 2>that shirt that looks really cool? And I said this
<v Speaker 2>last year in my review about this, and it stands
<v Speaker 2>now where it's like, that's like, it's not fun to
<v Speaker 2>feel like I have to budget, like potentially real money
<v Speaker 2>to be like, man, that's cool out for set, but
<v Speaker 2>I don't want to pay like ten bucks fifteen bucks
<v Speaker 2>to get like a full set of like shirt, sneakers,
<v Speaker 2>gear for my fake character when I could just make
<v Speaker 2>them stronger. And it also doesn't help that the missions
<v Speaker 2>in the mode are just not fun anyway. Like this
<v Speaker 2>year they're doing a thing where you join one of
<v Speaker 2>three factions led by either Cody Roads, CM Punk or
<v Speaker 2>Rhea Ripley, and they're all goofy and silly, like Rhea Ripley,
<v Speaker 2>who is like this goth looking chick and wrestling. She's
<v Speaker 2>like one of the most popular stars, but she has
<v Speaker 2>like a like basically like a goth group, Punk has
<v Speaker 2>an anarchist group, and Cody Rhodes, who is like an
<v Speaker 2>all American boy, has like the Order of Tradition. You know,
<v Speaker 2>we're very upstanding citizens here. And you join one of
<v Speaker 2>them and you just play all these missions, but then
<v Speaker 2>you wind up interacting with the other groups anyway and
<v Speaker 2>doing missions with them, so you're gonna get to to
<v Speaker 2>experience all three of them in some fashion anyway. But
<v Speaker 2>a lot of times it's either just the regular wrestling
<v Speaker 2>matches against you know, like a story opponent, or they
<v Speaker 2>have these, uh, these kind of like roguelike style towers
<v Speaker 2>where you compete in a tower and each group has
<v Speaker 2>their own like theme tower, and then you go down
<v Speaker 2>like a roguelike path of like you know, it's forks
<v Speaker 2>in the road. You get stops that are matches, and
<v Speaker 2>then there's some stops in the middle where it's like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>here's a health pickup or here's an item.
<v Speaker 1>And that's kind of items in this game.
<v Speaker 2>So they're in in in the island specifically, you can
<v Speaker 2>equip the wrestlers with like basically like little power ups
<v Speaker 2>or perks to help you during matches. Like, oh, this
<v Speaker 2>perk makes you lose stamina less often, or this one
<v Speaker 2>lets you do submissions better. It's like stuff like that.
<v Speaker 1>Weapons ever, No, it's just.
<v Speaker 2>Now there's plenty of those under the ring that you
<v Speaker 2>can pull out.
<v Speaker 1>I just didn't know if it was like with this
<v Speaker 1>one you spawned with a spiked bad.
<v Speaker 2>That'd be funny. Not that I've seen. Maybe maybe it's
<v Speaker 2>in there, but it's usually more like I guess, ability focused,
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, those just aren't that fun to get through.
<v Speaker 2>It just kind of like just feels like grinding. And
<v Speaker 2>so it's just like and again like just being in
<v Speaker 2>the island, Like the island looks cool visually because it
<v Speaker 2>just looks like a giant w B theme park and
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot of like visual easter eggs and references
<v Speaker 2>for like, if you're a hardcore wrestling fan, you'll see
<v Speaker 2>something and there's a lot of like inside jokes to
<v Speaker 2>just WB's history. But once you get beyond the theme
<v Speaker 2>park aspect, they're like, yeah, this just feels like a
<v Speaker 2>digital shopping mall with a bad roguelike mode in there.
<v Speaker 2>I don't really want to mess around with this, so
<v Speaker 2>h yeah, so it's not it's still it's a little
<v Speaker 2>bit better in a sense that they have voice acting
<v Speaker 2>this year, which last year they didn't, But it's still like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I played enough to get a sense of
<v Speaker 2>it and was like, yeah, I never really want to
<v Speaker 2>play this again.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>The other stuff like my GM, which is kind of
<v Speaker 2>like the General Management sim Like, that's still fun. That's
<v Speaker 2>still one of my favorite modes. They let you book
<v Speaker 2>intergender matches now, which is the thing they introduced last year,
<v Speaker 2>and now you can add more people to multi mid matches,
<v Speaker 2>so that's cool, but it's still very much the same mode.
<v Speaker 2>Same with My Universe, which is kind of like the
<v Speaker 2>living sim where it just simulates a w B calendar
<v Speaker 2>schedule so you can like run your own shows and stuff.
<v Speaker 2>I've never really been into that mode, but I know
<v Speaker 2>there's people that like love and really dig into that thing.
<v Speaker 2>Now you can do to w B draft this year.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I did it. You know, it's pretty much
<v Speaker 2>the draft plays of the same. It doesn't my in
<v Speaker 2>my GM, honestly, So it's like, yeah, I guess it's
<v Speaker 2>it's cool. I guess again.
<v Speaker 6>Level of enthusiasm, like and I did it, I mean
<v Speaker 6>I participated, Yeah, I mean when I review these When
<v Speaker 6>I review these games, like, because there's so many modes,
<v Speaker 6>it's like, not everything's going to be for you.
<v Speaker 2>And to their credit, if something's not for you, you
<v Speaker 2>don't have to engage with it. There's probably one or
<v Speaker 2>two other modes that will you know, we'll we'll find
<v Speaker 2>your you'll find your time in Uh. It's just that's
<v Speaker 2>not one of them. The one I is up there
<v Speaker 2>with the Island in terms of like, I never like this,
<v Speaker 2>and I don't think i'll ever like this is my Faction,
<v Speaker 2>which is the other VC heavy mode where it's like
<v Speaker 2>a digital card game where you buy card packs and
<v Speaker 2>you compete with players online, and that is also like very.
<v Speaker 3>Much like it's fun? Is it fun?
<v Speaker 2>What's fun?
<v Speaker 3>FIFA FIFA Ultimate Team?
<v Speaker 2>I probably I've never like, I know what Ultimate by.
<v Speaker 3>If I like packs, they have players in them and
<v Speaker 3>you play with them in the thing, and you're trying
<v Speaker 3>to crack packs for better versions of players to then
<v Speaker 3>slot into your team to go play online or whatever, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>then yeah, I guess so it's cool. We remade the
<v Speaker 3>most evil system in gaming. That's awesome.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this has been a thing for like years now.
<v Speaker 2>It's oh so in the priest modes. Yeah, so I mean, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I know Ultimate Team has been around even longer.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's more just interesting to me that you're like,
<v Speaker 3>and there's this mode which also has ways to spend money,
<v Speaker 3>and there's this mode which also has ways to spend
<v Speaker 3>money in this mode, which also has ways to spend money.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and it's like, yeah, they give you free cards
<v Speaker 2>from like the Battle Pass and stuff, but you know
<v Speaker 2>it's really just to be like, you know, should take
<v Speaker 2>this cool card, did you get into my Faction and
<v Speaker 2>put it in the work, And also like on top
<v Speaker 2>of it just being a little nefarious, the car game's
<v Speaker 2>not fun, I guess a TCG fan, I've never thought
<v Speaker 2>that the My Faction card game was fun and that's good.
<v Speaker 2>It's like it doesn't even have that going for it.
<v Speaker 2>So it's usually the mode I spend at least am
<v Speaker 2>I like it's the elephant graveyard of those games for me. Basically,
<v Speaker 2>I'll check in and play an obligatory match and go like, yep,
<v Speaker 2>still not fun. All right, never see you next year,
<v Speaker 2>I guess. But like it kind of like the whole package,
<v Speaker 2>like it's the the n Ring Wrestling is still what
<v Speaker 2>it is. There's been subtle tweaks made, but a lot
<v Speaker 2>of it's kind of imperceptible, honestly, which is maybe a
<v Speaker 2>little bit more damning than anything where it's like, I
<v Speaker 2>know you're telling me that, like we tweak the reversal system,
<v Speaker 2>and there's you know, there's like other new interactions where
<v Speaker 2>like oh, you can like lock up with someone and
<v Speaker 2>push them into the turnbuckle, Like okay, that's like that's cool.
<v Speaker 2>You know that wasn't there before and that could begically useful.
<v Speaker 2>But everything else is like I'm not really I know
<v Speaker 2>you're telling me it's her, but I don't really see it.
<v Speaker 2>I'm playing a lot of these matches. I feel like
<v Speaker 2>I'm not really having to adjust my muscle memory from
<v Speaker 2>these games, So I guess it doesn't ruin the game
<v Speaker 2>whatever you did, but it also doesn't make it marginally
<v Speaker 2>better either, as far as they can tell. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's so yeah. I'm kind of like with Showcase in
<v Speaker 2>my rise, especially being not as great as previous years
<v Speaker 2>and then the Island feeling like like Okay, this is
<v Speaker 2>just here to stay now. I think like this is
<v Speaker 2>like the NBA two kification of this franchise now, I
<v Speaker 2>guess yeah, it's it's made it the weakest entries since
<v Speaker 2>they came back with two K twenty two. Again, if
<v Speaker 2>you like the n ring stuff, like, if you just
<v Speaker 2>want to focus on just like the wrestling, it's still
<v Speaker 2>like enjoyable if you already like that stuff, and the
<v Speaker 2>new little like additions like the new weapons or whatever
<v Speaker 2>will be fun, but everything else is just a step
<v Speaker 2>below the previous year.
<v Speaker 1>Sang, well, there you go. I I always feel bad because,
<v Speaker 1>uh Nicole's joining us now also doesn't know all that
<v Speaker 1>much about wrestling, and I feel like you always go
<v Speaker 1>through the whole thing, and I'm like, for your sake,
<v Speaker 1>I always want to be more invested. And then you
<v Speaker 1>finish the review, I'm like, yeah, I don't want to
<v Speaker 1>play that game. It doesn't actually sounded all that fun.
<v Speaker 1>I mean maybe if I knew what it was, it
<v Speaker 1>might be fun, but it was what.
<v Speaker 3>Would you say, you're you're tapping out?
<v Speaker 1>I would say that I would, and and Marcus would
<v Speaker 1>be like hey, and I'd be like, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>That's the thing. I mean, I guess it's an MMA
<v Speaker 2>thing too, It's not exclusively wrestling, but yeah, yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>well don't you guys know about money and you know
<v Speaker 2>the lore behind money in the bank twenty eleven, So
<v Speaker 2>you're like educated on wrestling.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm slowly leveling up and eventually I'll be able to.
<v Speaker 3>We did a I'm not going to retain that knowledge.
<v Speaker 3>I'm just gonna I've already that was in my ram
<v Speaker 3>and I've already cycled it out.
<v Speaker 2>It's the next step is we all take a work trip.
<v Speaker 2>We'll expense this. We all go to Monday Night Raw Wow.
<v Speaker 1>I I, Marcus and I were on a podcast ninety
<v Speaker 1>nine questions. We had to answer questions about each other,
<v Speaker 1>and I got sounds aboub bule I got. I did
<v Speaker 1>so many of them wrong, and all of Marcus's answers
<v Speaker 1>were like wrestling focused. And afterwards I was like, I
<v Speaker 1>feel like I gotta just out of service to Marcus,
<v Speaker 1>I gotta learn some of these guys' names or just
<v Speaker 1>something I don't know. Uh well, uh, that'll mostly do
<v Speaker 1>for a show. I do want to end out with
<v Speaker 1>a just one little game for Nicole here, just to
<v Speaker 1>tie everything back together. So today we talked about emmenimal verses,
<v Speaker 1>talked about monster on a story three, talk about w
<v Speaker 1>W two K two six. You are now in charge
<v Speaker 1>of Love and Deep Space, and a boy from one
<v Speaker 1>of those games is going to be the sixth guy.
<v Speaker 1>What what's the game you're picking to be?
<v Speaker 4>Like?
<v Speaker 1>They're going to join Love and Deep Space.
<v Speaker 4>From the games we talked about today.
<v Speaker 7>M hmmm, Well the only man who name I can
<v Speaker 7>remember from CM Punk.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, there we go, d M Punk joining the cast.
<v Speaker 4>I have to say I did remember two of their names,
<v Speaker 4>and I lined and said one because I don't like.
<v Speaker 4>I don't want them missed. I don't want them.
<v Speaker 2>Yeahs start watching real world looks like, but.
<v Speaker 4>I don't want the moves to join Love and Deep Space.
<v Speaker 1>That's fair, that's fair.
<v Speaker 2>Can we do?
<v Speaker 3>Can we do Invincible and have Omni Man? But it's
<v Speaker 3>actually just JK Simmons. Just JK Simmons is in Love
<v Speaker 3>and Deep Space. Now that'd be that'd be kind of sick.
<v Speaker 2>That'd be nice, is it? JK Simmons wearing the Omni
<v Speaker 2>Man costume?
<v Speaker 1>He could be he could be well yeah, no, no
<v Speaker 1>reason not. I mean maybe that's maybe that's an alternate
<v Speaker 1>version of him. You just unlock all the JK. Simmons
<v Speaker 1>performances and all the other dimensions, I mean.
<v Speaker 2>Dimension. He's a gym rat, he's in shape, he is
<v Speaker 2>he's Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>He's just evil sometimes.
<v Speaker 2>So it's just I'd love evil sometimes.
<v Speaker 3>Is that not part of the allure? Have I misunderstood?
<v Speaker 3>I thought I thought we were going to the Faralel universe.
<v Speaker 2>I was still rather sleep next to Omniman JK than
<v Speaker 2>Whiplash JK.
<v Speaker 3>Are you sleeping or are you awake?
<v Speaker 2>That's your sleep.
<v Speaker 1>If omniymn doesn't like you, you don't have to worry
<v Speaker 1>about it for very long. If whiplash JA because it
<v Speaker 1>doesn't like you, he's gonna really torment you.
<v Speaker 2>Your la.
<v Speaker 1>I'll take tens in from the listener, Korra, it's my favorite.
<v Speaker 3>J Oh, that's a good JK.
<v Speaker 2>Simmons.
<v Speaker 1>Ye.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Anyways, Thanks so much everyone for joining us this week
<v Speaker 1>on the Game Reformer show. UH as always a good
<v Speaker 1>game for dot com slash subscribe subscribe to the physical
<v Speaker 1>issue where a newsstands bookstores. You can subscribe digitally as well.
<v Speaker 1>Thanks to our amazing guest Nicole Carpenter for joining us today.
<v Speaker 1>Your knowledge is invaluable.
<v Speaker 4>Thank you, it was really fun.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you for having y awesome and UH Nicole, is
<v Speaker 1>there anything you'd like to plug on your way out?
<v Speaker 1>Social media or recent articles?
<v Speaker 4>Maybe social media? Find me on Blue Sky. My name
<v Speaker 4>is Nicolecarpenter dot whatever, Blue sky on.
<v Speaker 3>Dot bisky dot social.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, oh that's what it is, bisky dot Social.
<v Speaker 1>Beautiful. There you go, and you can find me at
<v Speaker 1>Chuck Douck three sixty five. You can find Marcus at
<v Speaker 1>Marcus Stewart seven. You can find Eric at c moosey uh.
<v Speaker 1>And of course you can see all of us in
<v Speaker 1>the Supermaro Galaxy movie coming out early April. Roll Yoshi Mario. Uh. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>Eric filmed. Eric filmed the whole thing. So he was
<v Speaker 1>hanging out with Chris.
<v Speaker 3>I still can't get over. Even in Fantasy World. I
<v Speaker 3>have to do work. That's that's terrible. It's it's a
<v Speaker 3>it's a stunningly accurate dunk on me. But also he
<v Speaker 3>likes it. Just get going on the camera.
<v Speaker 1>Look at him.
<v Speaker 2>He's so happy.
<v Speaker 3>He loves stress.
<v Speaker 1>All right, thanks so much for joining us. Everyone. We'll
<v Speaker 1>see you next week.