Game Mess Mornings 11/06/23

He'll be bad. It's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this for
November six, twenty twenty three. For the next hour or so, let
me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game Mess Mornings Live with
me Jeff Grubb. Today, Call of Duty's campaigns seems real bad. But
how about that? Like a dragon? Guidan? What first? Please join
me and welcoming today's co host the Game Mess Mornings. It's Lex Luddy.
Everybody, Lexi, how are you doing well? I'm not doing too bad.
My two teams at top of the league in the European Rugby, so
I'm not going to complain despite neither of them playing particularly well top of the
league. I love leagues. Yeah, it's Red Wings. We're doing pretty
okay coming out of the season. They had like a five game win streak
there and they're actually much better than I was expecting. But I'm getting my
hopes up in a bad way and I don't think it's gonna last. We'll
see. Oh yeah, the team I support most monster who I like the
team for Cork and the surrounding areas, and they won the league last year
with no light to win the league that that are good? Was like.
It was like, Oh, they're gonna do it again, They're gonna use
the double. I was like, fucking no, no chance in fucking hell.
Can you do You want to upset a sports fan base with me?
Yeah, sure, I love doing that. Uh so rugby rugby, uh
and look and uh hockey and and all in soccer. Like I get these
sports. I don't know if I get lacrosse because it seems like you could
put the ball in the stick and just walk. They can just walk hurts
the goal and who's gonna I mean, they can try to stop you,
but it looks like they mostly don't try to stop you. I don't get
it. It's just it's a sport for rich people. They don't like challenges
being put in the away. Come explain this to me. Yeah, take
time off your honeymoon, mic, We have some important questions ask you.
We should call him right now. We got my party, Okay. My
other thing is Octo in Chad says that he hates daylight savings. Well,
I got great news for you. It's over. And that's Jeff Grubb's pedantic
moment of the day. I'm sorry, it's I don't know why it's a
pet peeve. I'm a terrible person. It is probably why it's my pet
peeve. It's over Daylight Savings is over so Happy. It really fucked me
up last week. This show was on an hour earlier. For me.
That was fucking That was not okay. I ruined my schedule massively. And
I will also say before we go any further into the news and I just
want to shout out SAP menu my website. We're doing our annual Winter Spectacular.
Just announced this on Twitter two hours ago and it's kind of a thing
that was inspired by a lot of giant bombs winter festivities. It's a writing
jam designed to get a bunch of people in the community into writing things for
the end of the Year, Game of the Year, list, retrospectives,
basically anything you want, but we try to get as many people tried it
stuff as possible. And to do that, we get guests involved and we
try to you know, put people's work up next to people who have been
in the industry for a long time and everyone gets to have their work on
the front page of the site and shown off. So I'll definitely be hidden
up some people around the gb community over the next few days about if they'd
be interested and interested in giving some advice or anything, because we have stuff
like advice pieces, game of the Year list, loads of stuff. But
yeah, go check that out on the Twitter at the start menu, not
start menu. That is a random woman from Middle America who I was linking
to as my employer for several months. Well, that's fine, know it's
going to check. You're all right, Yeah, it's a website. Okay,
cool, then we're good. Uh startmanu dot co dot UK. That's
where people go. Yes, yes, excellent. All right, you know
what, let's explain what we do here most weekdays, I, Jeff grobhelp
piece your gaming life back together. That includes breaking news and maybe even some
of our own original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the input
of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart. If you are
watching live on Twitch, welcome. You can always listen to the show later
on podcast feeds by searching for game Mes Mornings, or find the RSS on
giant bomb dot com. You can also catch the show later with chapters and
timestamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube. All right, we have a lot to
get into, so let's start the morning mess with Call of Duty Modern Warfare
three campaign review roundup. Leah Jay Williams over at game Hub did the rounding
up for us. I appreciate that this is another ten bang. Yeah,
let's I mean, let's find out. I don't know. Let's let's find
out together. The single player campaign for Call of Duty Modern Warfare three has
seemingly failed to live up to player expectations, with early reviews for the adventure
notably trending negative. It appears much of the criticism stems from its short length.
Well, that sounds like a bonus to me. It reportedly takes around
three to six hours to complete, but the conversation also includes talk of doll
missions and thin storytelling. I've heard people be like, yeah, short,
but it's also a soog how still, so it's like okay. Ign gave
it a four out of ten. Simon Cardy over there wrote that it's shallow,
dull in place, less like the greatest hits and more like underbaked cover
versions of missions past. It's too busy looking back at former glories rather than
focusing on making any new moments worth remembering, Wrapped up in a borderline incoherent
story with nothing to say, the only part we haven't seen in a campaign
before fall flat, bizarrely cobbling together pieces of the Warzone mode into actively bad
sandbox missions, abandoning all of what made Call of Duty so great at its
peak, and instead delivery a dull string adull string emissions that amount to a
thoroughly disappointing handful of hours. I haven't been paying too close attention to this
campaign. I've mostly just been like, oh, well, they've got a
campaign again. I thought they were gonna have anything this year. So that's
interesting, Like this explains it. They're doing open zone gameplay. They're stealing
Sonic Frontiers thing, and they're taking the war Zone map and using those as
these like sandbox open thing. Really just like what can we make happen in
this space so we don't have to make a whole new level. One side
of me says it's pretty clever. The other side says me, this is
the biggest media property in the fucking world. What are you doing? We
got more reviews here, but let's just real quick, LEXI, what's your
initial reaction here? So I think that happens sometimes when a game is being
reviewed, is you'll get like messages from people who are trying to hash out
their thoughts processes before they get them into like actual order, and they put
them eloquently. I won't say who it is, but someone who is reviewing
the game sent me a message just saying, MW three campaign complete dog shish,
like unbelievably bad. What on earth were they cooking? So I'm sure
that will be nicer by time they actually figure out. But yeah, this
this seems like something that was scrapped together in a cave with a box of
scraps. Yes it was, And I like it's one of those times where
like, yes, like reusing assets is fucking great. That's amazing if you
can do it. Yeah, yeah, it's very clever. It saves a
lot of money. We'll talk about a game that does it fantastically in a
little dish, yes, and maybe the best ever. Yeah. Yeah,
But like if it's if you're just sending people into these open areas that are
designed for multiplayer matches to fight AI bots and putting some story wrappings around it,
and those story wrappings aren't particularly interesting, and it's very clear that this
is just here to tread water until the next actual mainline game. Because This
wasn't meant to be Moundern Warfare three. This was meant to be DLC for
two likes of video games, and people who play video games even casually can
sniff that bullshit out, like people know when they're being had. And it
doesn't even seem particularly convincing that this was ever meant to be anything other than
a map pack that was all of the old maps. Like that's all this
seems like Modern Warfare three was originally planned to be. Was Hey, what
if we took a year off and instead took it easy and did all the
old maps that you are like which probably would have been a great fucking hit
for them, because people love that old shit and they're putting that old ship
up. But like now there's this narrative around this game of it being a
lazy like cashing. Doesn't matter how much they've changed the movement, doesn't matter
how much they've like improved things on the multiplayer end, Lexi, we might
have lost year, Lexie. If you need to restart, go ahead.
I will handle it from here as an independent company just trying to last you
for a second. There is much money out of college. See, oh,
looks like we got a pretty big lag right now, are you how's
your connection? I can hear you? Fine? Oh no, no,
we're back. We're backing good now, okay, fantastic. Yeah you just
dropped out there for about five seconds. But I think I think we're back
in business real quick. Let's let's get to a kotakuho, said Claire Jackson
said. Call of Duty's Modern Warfare three campaign is a skeletal frame framework of
a game that could have and should have been much better than what it presently
is. Its attempts to divorce itself from the more linear traditions of Call Duty
campaigns, while interesting in concept, mostly fail in execution. The game flirts
with interesting, even promising concepts, but it fails to stick with the landing
with its narrative or gameplay, leading to a hollow feeling conclusion. Kodoku doesn't
have a score. Fair Games Radar also doesn't have a score yet, but
Leon Hurley over there says, I'm not entirely sure what the makeup Modern Warfare
threes campaign. It's not terrible, but it's also far from great, like
in any real big set pieces, and at times feeling like it's been assembled
from a war zone construction kit of pre made pieces. I think we can
assume that's exactly what did happen. Scraps, Yes, a box of scraps,
and then game spots five five out of ten from writer Si Doster says
Modern War for three sparks a hot opening with an early reveal of Makarov macarof
excuse me, but the introduction of the new open combat missions disrupts the story's
pace for a fizzled out ending. However, after this hyped opening mission,
Mordn War for three immediately stumbles as you're forced to play two of the game's
new open combat missions back to back. Yeah, so it just it just
sounds exactly what everyone said. It seems like there's not gonna be enough time.
And then what you said, you diagnosed it properly. I think they
just did the bare minim they could to sell a seventy dollars game, and
here we are, this game's probably not going to pay the price for this
too much, right, That's not usually how this works for a big massive
game. It would be the will sell, Yeah, it will sell grace,
it will sell just as well. And like they've done all their preorders
and this game has been pushing fucking hard on the preorders with the Maruction campaign.
They've been going like they're probably they've all probably already sold the amount of
copies they were going to sell, no matter wash, And you wonder what
next year's College Duty looks like. Does Microsoft come in and say, hey,
listen, we can't have a situation like this again, where your community
is this unhappy with the biggest media property we now own, and like you
have to take a year off. Do we see Microsoft like literally just put
the brakes on the whole thing. I also think it's super fucking unfair for
a team like Sledgehammer, who have been given the shorthand of the six several
times on the College dug train after making a really good couple of really good
Call of Duty games on their own. Yeah yeah, and now they're like,
we all know that these College Duty games are made by committee. They
may buy several development teams, but it's Sledgehammer's name on the splash screen here,
it's their reputation, and like that must feel fucking terrible. Yep,
it's for these studios. I mean, at this point they do they really
must just feel like a cog in the machine. There was a time when
there was like a huge amount of the studio's identity put into these games.
That's obviously over with, and I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised if
next year they they probably will have a game ready to go next year,
because just the way the scheduling's worked out and the way that they are have
these things going in parallel, they'll probably have the one next year ready to
go, and maybe even the year after that, I think a different franchise.
Yeah, I mean it's not going to be Modern Warfare again. They
won't do that again. But I mean I wouldn't be surprised if it's a
Black Ops, if they go back to that. I mean, I know,
Black Ops four or whatever whatever the last Black Ops one was was really
not liked by the community either, but said that name still has a lot
of sway and people still really like it and they're like, well, we're
doing Black Ops right. This time could really work. I don't know which
studios up next. So if this is so twenty, this is Modern Warfare
three, So two years ago would have been Infinity Ward and then was model
for two Infinity Ward again. I don't know. It feels like Treyarch.
I don't know where Treyarch is at in all this, so I bet I
bet the next one is Treyarch and that's that could easily be It's Toys Toys
for Bob's next Call of Duty game. So yeah, I think they'll probably
have it a Call of Duty for the next couple of years. But I
wouldn't be surprised if within the next three four years they do finally start taking
a year off here and there. I don't think it'll be in every other
year series for quite some time, but I think it could be, well,
we're gonna do two in a row, and then we'll take a break
and then we'll come back. That could happen, especially with war Zone continuing
continue to be so popular, and if they lean on that, that could
fill in the gap in a really strong way. Yeah, we'll see.
This is gonna be the best selling game of the year though, so five
out of ten from Game Spot, four out of ten from IgM Best Selling
Game of the Year like a Dragon guid In. Meanwhile, the Man who
Erased his Name We got a review round up here right now. It has
a seventy nine on on PS five on Metacritic, Josh Brot Broadwell at VG
twenty four to seven gave it a five out of five. I've said my
big takeaway from Like a Dragon Guiden is that I really hope RGG does more
side stories to the future, or at least takes a similar approach to new
mainline games. The chance to slow down an experiment with a character with character
growth, different storytelling styles, and a more focused approach to narrative building paid
off brilliantly with joy Us. Is that how I say that Joyu's tight tale.
Meanwhile, Willow rowe at inverse gave it a seven out of ten and
said, Like a Dragon Guidan, the Man who erased his name, goes
back on much of this forward momentum and seeks to latch onto what fans loved
about the previous era of the franchise. While it retains the wonderfully designed mini
games and impressively realized city streets of its fictionalized locales, the need to live
in the past holds it back. Kazuma Kuru's presence and the most is the
most concerning, as the story fails to justify why it needs to keep bringing
Cure You out every time. Kurio gets out, will he get pulled back
in? Maybe they'll finally stuff him out for real in like a dragon infinite
wealth. Okay, you are the most yako'sa pill person I know. And
you played this game. You reviewed it, right? Did you finish it
and review it? Okay? Sam, Yeah, tell people about that what
you're thinking. I reviewed it for Shack News. I gave it nine hour
ten. I went into this game actually with pretty tempered expectations. I previewed
Ith and the word that I was hearing from other people who had interviewed them
was that a lot of it was like repeatable content in a colosseum area.
I think this game super fucking works for what it is. It's a slightly
cheaper thing. It's about fifty dollars, and it tells a really tight,
cohesive story and it delves into Cure You in a way that we haven't seen
in these games in a long time. The franchise has had a really bad
habitsh ever since the very first game of basically like turning Cure You into the
Messiah, like she's untouchable, like nothing he can do is wrong, and
you know he's just stoic and is the hero is he a baby girl?
He is also a baby girl, okay, okay, to make sure,
and that's part of what makes a baby girl. But like a big part
of this game is looking at the consequences for Qu's actions and how they have
broken him in quite a fundamental way and just actually like sitting with his consequences
for a bit, because usually it's just like, oh, I sacrifice this
anyway, moving on, and it's never really delved on. And this is
one of the best performances from cus actor. I forget his name now off
the top of my head. There's some scene on where yeah, not the
English job is in there for the Infinite Wealth demo which I haven't played yet,
but yeah, yeah, no comment, get paid. But yeah,
I think the Japanese performances in this are are really fucking good. They're some
of the best in a game this year. And I also think that the
game does a great job at balancing its combat in a way that ORGG have
struggled for a long time. A lot of the time when they try to
do these faster combat styles, you just don't do enough damage and it never
feels great when you're fighting big swats enemies or enemies with big health bars.
In this game, they have a new style that really allows you to control
a crowd in a way that you can't in previous games, and it focuses
on these bigger encounters and the encounters where it will be like ten versus twenty
people and you're just fucking all slamming at each other, and it actually feels
really good. I also think that, like the is the side content that
is there is all really good. It's a shorter game, It's only about
ten hours if you be lining about. I did everything at about twenty five
hours, and like literally everything, like every side mission. If I play
this game, do you think it would be like I've played some Yakuza and
I played I don't know, five of Showers of Zero. I like what
I played. I wish I could get back to it and play more.
Do you think this would wet my appetite or do you think this would be
a misrepresentation of what is really good about the franchise. I think it's a
lot of the things that the franchise done in at its very best. Okay,
I think that there is a bit too much, and probably the main
thing that I have against it is there's a bit too much fan service.
There's a bit too much reliance on knowing what happened in games like five,
which not that many people in the West played, even though they've been remastered.
Here, the are characters who reappear who you're like, oh, shit,
that character if you've played those games, But if you haven't played those
games, you're like, oh, that's a big, tough looking guy,
okay, And those moments will be a bit lost on you if you haven't
played them. But then there's also some really good bits that sets up the
franchise in a way that it can move on from cureu Right. There's stuff
that focuses on the characters from the Judgment series, which is the detective spin
off, and there's a whole side quest with them, and that's a really
nice, like look into the future of the franchise. There's a lot of
times where you see where they hint at things of where the universe is going
with new factions and things like that. It does a good job about like
it's not necessarily a great introduction, but it's a great place to start for
the games going forward. It would have been really nice if there was a
recap on it. Sure that was something that even I was like, I
would have liked to recap because I haven't played six yet. Six is the
one one that I haven't played. Yeesh, So I was like, oh,
how did he wind up working with this political faction? And that's basically
all the ending of six And they do explain those, but it could do
with more in detail recaps. Let's read some of these other reviews here.
Michael Hyam says it's an eight out of ten, and so there were so
there. I was sitting in front of my TV watching Guidance ending, crying
like a damn baby over the hardships of a fictional man again. And I
know those who've also been on this ride over the years will feel me on
this Guided maybe a brief excursion that occasionally leaves the full potential of its supporting
cast on the table and often relies on remixing ideas from the series' past,
but with enough new features to make a combat exciting and a buffet of high
quality side content, it's still some of the most fun I've had with an
RGG game. Most importantly, I was just happy to be in Kuru's shoes
again for another emotional story and to brace myself for what lies ahead for the
beloved series. And then lex Ludi gives it a nine out of ten,
having now completed every side mission, substory, and an objective in a little
over twenty four hours. I can only hope that Rio Gagotoku learns from this
game and works on more bite sized spinoffs, flushing out the rest of the
universe roster of lovable weirdos, gallant heroes, and snarling villains. Lexi,
this is where I'm att Yeah, there's some really good characters in this game.
Yeah, and I like the characters that I've always encountered in these games.
A bite sized version to like again what my appetite sounds very appealing to
me right now, and I think, I mean clearly they have their path
forward right where the like a dragons Core series now is going to have this
cool turn based combat, a new a new hero they're probably gonna stick with
for several more games. And then you know, these are my assumptions as
someone who's not played a lot of these, And then they have the Judgment
games. Maybe they'll do some more stuff with Judgment. I have no idea.
And then they have these side stories, right, and then there's occasionally
some other stuff thrown in there, like the Eahan games where they're going back
and bringing stuff that never came out here. So they have a lot of
chances to do different things with these games. So if like one of them
is this smaller side story that does revel in the in the franchisees past,
to me, that seems not just acceptable, but like a really good way
to fill out this sphere of what of what Yakuza could be. Yeah,
I think in the context of there has there's going to be three Yakuza games
in the next or within the span of about eighteen months, with Dashing This
and Infinite Wealth, and like each of those offering very different things and feeling
like very different experiences. It feels like the series is quite varied in a
way that it wasn't in the past, where you would be waiting a year
or two years for a game that was very inferative, and they've done a
really good job at creating new niches. First, I think something that like
you will probably appreciate is some of the side content the Sega Arcade games that
are in there are very well emulated, which they're all done by M two.
It's just the one that has Yeah, that has the games that haven't
been emulated by Sega before, some of the like yes, okay, it
has what they call arcade racing classics. Yeah, basically, yeah, it's
Staytona two and that's really fun. It had another Motorbike Combat one which name
has lost I've lost now, and it has Fighting Vipers and Sonic the Fighters,
which I can now tell you as a fact is a bad game.
Yeah, yes, I mean to Sonic. Yeah. There's also a bunch
of Master System games, which I mean the Master System games. But it's
cool that they're there. Yeah, I mean, it just fills out,
It gives them game more character. I still that's like I'm not going to
sit down and play Flicky for any longer than I already have. But but
but but respect the Flicky. I mean, come on, yeah, yeah,
Model these are Model two games, and I don't think Sega has done
a lot with Model two so far. Boy, that is exciting. I
love Sega arcade games. That's just where they're at their best. And Daytona
two is fantastic. All right, you know what, we got a we
got a lot more to get to, so real, real quick. Just
to wrap up the facts here, Win is this out? This is out
tomorrow. I'm pretty sure game pass. It is on game Pass right SA
on game Pass, I think it is. Yes, Yes, if you
have game Pass, it's worth at least trying out. See if you enjoy
the combats fun and even just from pure like brainless, just get through the
main story, enjoy those combat set pieces that they have. It's it's a
good time. Yeah, I'm gonna this is what I'm throwing on the the
ally right, because that's easy to play game Pass games on there. And
of those games, yeah, most of those recent games have been steam Deck
verified, so yes, it should run well. I mean, those those
handhelds are always more powerful than I give them credit for, you even and
they even not use them a bunch. I'm like, man, this is
going to be fine on there. It's like, oh, this is better
than fine. This sometimes runs like well over thirty frames per second. So
yeah, I'll be checking this out on there. Excellent. Okay, We're
going to take a break. When we get back, there's some some news
about the Last of Us multiplayer that PS five Slim got broken down. We'll
talk about all of that right after this and we're back. We're talking the
Last of US multiplayer director confirms Yes, I'm still working on that game.
This comes from Vicky Blake at Eurogamer. Naughty Dog game director Venette Argawall has
confirmed that they are still working on that game, and that's a quote Ourgawall
has yet to follow up their message or respond to any of the dozens of
comments left on the posts, but it should be good news, nonetheless,
for any player worried that, as some purport, the multiplayer game has been
quietly canned. Earlier this year, naughty Dog shared an update on its Last
of US multiplayer titles, saying it has realized what was best for the game
is to give it more time. It also teased a new, brand new
single player experience currently in the works. This is just a tweet he talked
about. Hey, I beat I beat Mario. I got one hundred percent
of it, Mario, wonder that was awesome. I died three hundred times
and this is what a good game. And then somehow I think, because
you know, I don't know, he must not tweet very often. The
fact he popped his head up, you knw is gonna get asked about this
said, Uh, and I guess I'm still working on that game. I
would probably hesitate to get people people's hopes up too high with this Alexi right
where it's like, Hey, a director still being on a project, even
if that project is on the shelf or or on hold or paused in some
way, that still seems perfectly reasonable to me that that's how that would work.
Like, the director is not going to be like unless it is fully
fully canceled, which I know some people are saying it seems like it might
be, but we never got that confirmed or anything like that. It being
on hold and the director needing to still be like overseeing some elements of that
because if things pick up again, there needs to be someone in charge to
pick up, like to give direction. I don't know, I think that
this is likely the case. And at the same time, I'm not expecting
this game to be in full development at the moment either. How do you
read this? Yeah, I mean this is a thing that goes on a
lot with development. If you go and watch there's a good digital gaming video
that just went up about rares cancel games over the years, Yes, and
a lot of them. It's like, oh, we took them to Nintendo.
Nintendo looked at them and said no thanks, And then the person who
was leading that project was told, hey, you can still work on this
in the background. Like one of them was told, hey, you can
work on this on the background and if you can get it running on a
DS, we'll publish it ourselves. He couldn't, and that's why it never
came out. And like there's a lot of things in that in the games
industry where like it is hard to you know, kill your darlings. It's
yeah, you've put a lot of time and effort into a game like this
unless it is straight up canceled, Like why would you step away from all
that work that you have put into it. Also, it sounds like,
you know, that game was in a pretty not terrible space. It just
isn't coming together in the way that a live service needs, right exactly.
The word always was, you know, hey, this just doesn't have enough
content in it, and Bunge, you don't think that you'll be able to
support it in the way that you have to support a game like this if
you've basically made a full game, or you've made however much of a game,
and that's your only problem, Like even the most skeptical of CEOs would
be like, that's a big thing to cancel. That's a lot of work
to cancel. That's a lot of money down the drain, right, And
it's I think it's we always get hung up on things, oh, things
being canceled, and to us that sounds very diffinite. That sounds very much
like, Okay, well that's it. So now they've scrapped everything and they're
starting over working on something else, and that's just never how it works.
I mean, the thing to point to is, hey, yeah, Blizzard
canceled Titan, and all of that work got turned into Overwatch or most of
that work that transitioned over to a new project. So it's like, in
a way, no, it wasn't canceled. It just had a normal development
hiccup, and it was a pretty big one. But it's like a normal
thing to be like, hey, we're making this thing. It's not working.
Let's just carry forward our momentum, you know, be like water and
move around this stone in our way, and now we're going to be shaped
into this different thing. But we're still carrying forward all that work we did.
That's almost certainly what's happening here. I agree with you when he's like,
yeah, they're not going to abandon this work, and the game sounds
like it probably played very well. There's been a history of Naughty Dug making
very fun multiplayer modes that people really like. There is going to be a
spot for that work to turn into either a dedicated multiplayer mode for the next
you know, Last of Us, or turn into something else. And I
also like, I don't think Sony particularly like the idea of Nahee Dog being
a one game studio, of canceling a game and then just being like,
Okay, you're only allowed work on the Last of Us Part three or whatever.
You have to get this one game out. So I can totally see
them saying like, hey, listen, if this isn't working, this team
still has to figure something else out and they still have to remain as a
separate team because if not, why are we employing all these people for this
one project? Yes, and it's I think this It is definitely the kind
of thing where you can fall into a bunch of pits of like, hey,
we can't give up on this because we put all this work in there.
I mean, the sunk cost fallacy but but the reality is it's like,
well, I mean, you just you can abandon all this work if
it was good money after bad. But it's software and it's art, and
you can keep being creative and finding new solutions to these old problems, and
they it doesn't have to look like the solutions you set out with. You
could be more flexible, and that's been to a lot of games benefits.
I mean, the little things we've heard about, like how Yoshi's Island got
made, Like Yoshi's Island was a completely different game when they started making it,
with a completely different character, and you know, they just keep plugging
away at it and plugging away and coming up with these new things, and
they're like suddenly like, hey, this would be good as a Yoshi game,
And that's it was still when it came out, and it was still
and one of the best games ever made when it came out, exactly LEXI,
I think I heard you great, and then yeah, so we'll see.
I don't think we're gonna hear about this game anytime soon necessarily, though,
So even if it is good, I think they'll probably they'll probably take
their time spooling something up slowly as they figure out what it will turn into.
And I think that's probably this person's job our Gowall, yeah, Agwall.
They probably are the main person still working on this. They probably have
a small team, but you need a huge team to make this stuff happen.
And that like part of getting this done will be like having a project,
a vision that makes sense to put a bunch of people on. And
that's probably where that that project is at right now, all right. The
PS five five Slim is not that much smaller, according to first teardown videos.
This is from Jordan Miller at VGC. The first teardown videos of the
new PS five Slim model have been posted online. One video features content creator
Dave two d taking the system apart and comparing it to the base model.
Among the comparisons, perhaps the most surprising the pricing is his claim that the
Slim machine is not that much smaller than the original. Dave two D also
commented that the top panels feature a glossy finish in contrast to a disdrive portion
of the machine is a matt finish similar but not identical to that of the
original PS five. There's some specifications here about weight and stuff. Things that
we've heard before, and it's a kilogram, so who can even make sense
of that? But I missed it. This is the kind of thing where
I'm like, it still looks small enough to me that it will make a
difference if some if you're really bothered by the size of the PS five,
and so to the point where it's like, it looks normal now. I
don't think it doesn't look like some actual, real quote unquote slim console.
But the PS five SLIM looks like, oh yeah, you put that out.
That's just a normal system in terms of size and scale, where the
PS five was like, holy, that's a honk and motherfucker right there.
So I love the idea of you just looking at your PS five just going
like, why can't you be normal? And then it's doing that screeching thing
from the meme. It's like a, yes, my PS five will not
be normal. This doesn't I'm still not hung up on this. Again.
I like the PS five enough and I have no intention of getting a slim
to replace the one I have. But how do you feel about this?
Does this dampen any enthusiasm for this? I mean, as someone that likes
how ugly the current PS five is. The same. I don't give a
shit, Like, Okay, it's the exact same console, just like slightly
cheaper for them to manufacture. I'm sure that's all that this console actually is.
There's no real difference to the consumer, apart from the disk drive stuff,
which has been documented very well as why that's not a great thing for
certain bits of preservation. But even then that like the cill original PS five's
where you don't have the problem of it having to connect to the internet for
the disk drive verification. So like every time I hear about the PS five
slim, I'm like, oh, okay, why are we reporting on this
Like this is this is the most nothing news ever that it's not as small
as people want it to be, but like it's only it only exists because
Sony wanted to make a cheaper model anyway, the model that was cheaper for
them, And I think if people were actually going to get angry about anything,
it's the fact that they like up the price of the cheaper one by
fifty bucks and no one seemed to notice they're saving money and they're charging more.
It's kind of becoming a classic move recently, not just for Sony,
but like you know, Nintendo definitely saved money on the O LEDs in the
long term compared to what they were probably paying when they first launched the switch
in charge fifty dollars more for that than So Nintendo's doing it, Sony's doing
it. I know. The OLED screens are more expensive, but not that
much more expensive. So and it just that it speaks to the idea that,
hey, consoles are not going to go down in price all that much
going forward for these throughout these generations. So yeah, hey, I'll so
we'll see if we get our hands on a ps i've slim at some point
and talk about it and see what we think. But beyond that, it's
like, okay, fair enough, not that small. I think we could
tell early on it wasn't going to be some huge earth shaking revision in the
first place. Fortnite had its biggest day ever with forty four million players following
original Maps return. This is from Chris scullyon at VGC. Fortnite enjoyed its
biggest twenty four hour period history for twenty four hour period in history over the
weekend thanks to its Fortnite OG event. According to a tweet posted on the
game's official Twitter account. The game saw record player counts on Saturday, November
fourth, way to start things off with a big bang. Reads the tweet,
which was posted on Sunday, were blown away by the response to Fortnite
OG. Yesterday was the biggest day in Fortnite's history, with over forty four
point seven million players jumping in and one hundred and two million hours of play
to all Fortnite players OG and new Thank you. That's a lot. Apparently,
I peaked at six point one or nearly six point two million concurrent players.
That's a very big number. Boy, it's twenty eighteen again, all
of a sudden, and it's bigger than it was even back then. I
was gonna say that's roughly the population of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
combined, exactly everyone in the country playing the game at once. But like
this, this is presented as like, oh, we're doing so good.
But whenever I see this, I'm like, oh, they're so fucking cooked.
The only way they can get like their numbers back up is by doing
the old thing that people still like, and like what happens when this season
ends and they go back to modern stuff. It's like the wold classic thing
of like, hey, wow, isn't doing the numbers it was doing anymore?
What if we just gave you the old shit you liked and you got
nostalgic about it, and like that's how they get people in, and then
they don't stay around because why would you stay around for something that you had
plenty of before? Like you're gonna go back in to get that hit a
nostalgia, but once that wears off, you're like, Okay, I've seen
all this now, and they are going to end every season I guess at
least this is what someone mentioned this to me. They're going to end every
season going forward with this og event and where they're going to go back to
the old map and that's not going to have the same effect the second,
third, fourth time, I don't think. I mean, I'm sure it
will still be a very popular thing every time they do it, but this
is this feels like, oh, you shot your shot here, this was
something you can kind of do, you know, once and have this effect.
I think we'll see, but it feels like this is like the one
time you could really pull this card, and now you've done it, and
what do you do with this momentum. It's fortunatee. It's going to be
fine, but we'll see the question is how do they retain people that have
come back to USh? Yeah, because that's the thing all these live services
have struggled with is people slowly dripping away. And it's something that like Destiny
has struggled with, is people slowly fall off and then getting them back into
the game is notion impossible because it's just so dense. So scaling things back
and making it easy to get back into it by saying like, oh,
this is just the bare bones version of it again, like that's a smart
move. But then the question is how do you get them to stay there
once you make everything super fucking complicated again and add web swinging and add attack
on Titan bullshit? Like how do you get those people that were there because
it was simpler again to stick around for the more complicated shit. Meanwhile,
the Embracer's COO confirms departure following rough year for the Games Giant. This is
from Andy Robinson at VGC and shout out to VGC today. I was running
behind and got most of my stories from there. They continue to do great
work. Embracer Group's chief operating officer has confirmed his departure from the company.
Iijil Strunk shared the news on Monday and claimed he'd left the holding company,
which owns a mini game developers such as Gearbox and Crystal Dynamics. Last week.
In June, Embracer announced the appointment of an interim COO, which would
be filled by Saber Interactive boss Matthew Karch. I don't know if that means
in June. You know, let's keep reading. The CEO is typically the
second command reporting to the CEO and handles the daily business of operations at of
a company. Last week I left Embracer Group as COO, and it's with
mixed feelings. I am partying ways with this global company phenomenon rooted in Carlstad,
Sweden, string K wrote on Monday. On one hand, I'm grateful
for having had the chance to work with the one of a kind CEO,
Lars Wingefirst and all the other amazing colleagues which are too many to mention,
which I will be sad to leave. On the other hand, I'm excited
about the opportunities that lie ahead starting and building my own company, Shrink Games.
Strength's history with Embracer spans two four year stints twenty eleven to twenty fourteen
and twenty nineteen to twenty twenty three. In a statement, the former COO
acknowledged his challenging final years at the firm. Yeah exactly. Oh yeah,
another four year stinting here in a couple of years. Hey, congratulations,
are starting your own thing, boy, that's wild. Then you're going to
start in it now, especially I guess getting while the getting's good, I
suppose, But are you going to be able to then be like, well,
you know, I did such a good job for Embracer, Come make
games with me. That seems challenging. But someone's giving him money to do
this. That's pretty wide. She has a knock for getting money out of
people. I suppose that's a good thing. Yeah. Maybe he doesn't even
need to like make any games from that studio. He just needs to get
the investment, like that's all. Yeah, And the story doesn't saything about
like where the investment came from. I don't think strew K's confirmed that,
you know, maybe investing some of his own money. But also I think
it's likely that getting investment from somewhere that money still is out there to some
effect, but it's just not like it was. So the idea that it's
going to string k here ip is he gonna is he gonna buy for for
his new company. He's gonna go back to Embracer and buy back the SpongeBob
and just make it a SpongeBob factory. There you go, that's the real
SpongeBob on Gex. Just a cross over there. Yes, that's the SpongeBob
Gex universe. Uh A, Embracer's still mess. How do you feel about
Like, do you think we're over the hump with Embras or do you think
there's more bad news to come? Oh, there's way more fucking bad that's
right. Yeah, that's always the vibe of always found from a Embraser and
it's pretty limited, but it mainly comes from games Calm, where they have
a big showing every year, and in twenty twenty two they basically took up
an entire floor of Games Calm in the business area, which like their big
fucking flaws in the halls, except each and every one of their publishing labels
were separate booths like you know what these press boods look like, you know,
like Activision will have one or Sega will have one and they're all set
up independently. But usually if for companies owned by another company, they'll put
them in the same place Embracer owned. You know, they had Deep Silver
separate, they had what's their other publishing labels, but they have them all
separately laid out, and you'd be going to them and you realize like,
oh, these are all are perising as separate enterities, and like it's it's
like looking at European medieval Europe and it being like, oh, these are
like fief thumbtains and everyone's operating independently and taking resources from each other, and
it's kind of a fucking mess, Like there's no actual stability around this whole
thing. And I think that like as soon as you the thing that tells
you everything you need to know about Embraser is they own a pure company that
doesn't do pre for all of their games. Yep, So why do they
own a pr company? It's wild. I've had situations where I've gone to
Embrace the meetings and it's like, oh, here's a person from one Pere
company, here's a person from another Pere company who is also there, and
I'm like, why do you have two Pere companies working on one booth,
Like, why would you hire out to this person is just here making coffee
when people come in. You know that sometimes happening when it's like oh,
this is for the your zone and this is for North America. But that's
not what was happening there, right, that was just no, it was
it was like the same the same European projects, the same games Calm event,
and it's like you have multiple people running these events, Like it's very
rare that you will have a situation where one company doesn't do all of it's
pure through the same pure outlish and the idea that like hey, Deep Silver
are going to a different team than Gearbox are to it. It makes it
a fucking mess, suppress because it makes getting in contact with people an absolute
nightmare. And sometimes you'll have a situation where you're like, oh, can
I see like the other embrasive group games and they're like, no, you
can't because we're not working on them. And it just creates this whole disorganization
at like a massive scale that like you can't like that's just a very simple
thing, but it scales up to the entire company And I have no idea.
How the fuck they're still operation in the way that they are. I've
always been baffled by Embraces the same way you have, And every time I
learned something new about them, I'm like, oh, it's like you know
that scene in a Succession where he's like, you're not serious people. It's
like that, but with the company, it's like, you're not a serious
company. Yes. Instead, it feels like there was a publisher in the
industry Ijeel stream k I got nothing. I was trying to do a SpongeBob
joke, but it's nothing. It's nothing. Uh, this is going to
end up being a real big mess. It feels like it's going to be
and it's going to well, not just the mess, but like a fire
where people are going to get a lot of strays because they just ended up
getting acquired by a publisher that does does not have a vision. And it
doesn't feel like they're bracing for it. It doesn't feel like they're trying to
enact any changes that would add some more organization to the organization itself. It
doesn't seem like there's any The cuts that they are making are baffling when you
look at stuff like Gearbox Publishing, which was putting out a bunch of really
solid India games that we're doing quite well on Steam charts, and then they
laid off almost the entire Gearbox Publishing team. Like that is a section that
is clearly growing. Why are those the people you are cushing? It just
seems like a bunch of people who run hedge funds but don't run video game
companies running a video game company, and they've managed to get away with it
for long enough, for this long because they've had all this money coming in.
But like now that the money stopped, they're like, oh shit,
we actually have to run this company. Now, what the fuck do we
do? Meanwhile, over at Blizzard, they say that they've been talking about
bringing World of Warcraft to consoles all the time. This is from Jordan miller
I f EGC. Blizzard has said that it considers bringing its seminal MMO World
of Warcraft to consoles all the time. Speaking to games Radar at Blizcon twenty
twenty three, Hollywongdale, the vice president and executive producer of World of Warcraft,
said that it talks about the prospect all the time. It's a complicated
question Longdale said for a console audience, the approachability is likely going to be
different. While in the past and this is no longer a quote. While
in the past momos of World of Warcraft size, we're more at home on
PC due to computing power. Some of the largest momo tommos today are extremely
popular on consoles, such as Final Fantasy four Team. Right now, we're
focused on the World on World Soul Saga, but if that comes up,
then we'll re examine things. But man, we've got enough to deal with
right now. We've got these three expansions, and we are so excited about
the whole that could be what you could label everything with activision a lot.
So I'm going to be busy that day. Uh yeah, but yeah,
of course, it would be very insincere to say that we're not like,
of course we're talking about that. She also mentioned that like, it's not
going to be a problem for controller. They say that they probably have a
good solution for that, so that they feel comfortable about making that jump,
and it's not about any of these other issues they might bring up. They're
like, no, we feel good about bringing to the console. It's just
a matter of like is now the right time and we haven't needed to do
that. Just real quick on this. If they do that, do you
think that there's any sort of link between a World of Warcraft subscription and game
pass subscriptions? Maybe, but like this just feels like the long time,
Like it feels like ten years too late. It feels like who is going
to get in to this game all these years later? Well? I think
that's why it makes some sense to me, because I here's I think the
reason not to make an Xbox game Pass subscription a World of Warcraft subscription is
you think, well, then you know you're getting all this money for World
of Warcraft subscriptions, There's still probably a million people subscribe to that game,
like even at it's lowest, like it's around that level, so it's say,
oh, you don't want to give up all that money. I just
don't think the Venn diagram of World of warcrafts subscribers overlaps too much with game
Pass subscribers. So the idea would be like, you're not actually, you're
just getting a bigger number overall. And now every game Pass subscriber can go
and try World of Warcraft without and feel like, oh I have a subscrip
subscription to this, I should use that. So oh, hello, turkey
gobble gobble gobble. There you go, bring it into the camera. So
yeah, But at the same time, I think you're right, then it's
not the it's not the right time. It's not the It probably wouldn't make
that much of a you know, a move on the needle. But I
don't know, what do you think? Yeah, I think this brings up
a larger thing with Blizzard. I kept an eye on a lot of blizz
colm this weekend and everything I saw out of that company seems like a fucking
mess. And to put it very politely, And you have the Overwatch League
or Overwatch itself doing a big like them being the first game they talk about
after the opening presentation and Mike Youbaua being up on stage talking about you know,
inclusion, diversity and how the game is for everyone, how they're working
on getting more people involved in the game, how much they love esports.
All the while they killed the over Watch League, and now apparently they're looking
at selling like the contract to the Saudi Arabian government and it's like, okay,
you're clearly just full of shith And there's no other way to put it.
And the team that won the overwatched League World Cup, which was Team
Saudi Arabia, had been shit talking a trans shoutcaster during their qualifiers and they
weren't particularly punished first and they were just allowed to continue in the brackets.
And then you look at stuff like how Diablo four's season is being received that
just seems like a game for no one other than the people who were really
mad about Diablo three having too much color in it, Like that's the only
type of person that that game seems designed around, and it seems like a
live service game that like just doesn't have any that game. When i played
it for more than any other game, and I've played like everything from Destiny
to a lot of other live service games, it was the quickest I've gotten
from like okay, this is interesting to like why the fuck am I bothering
making this number go up? Like what to watch? End? To?
What end am I doing anything here? And you look at World of Warcraft
and that's been dwindling for years. It's doing good expansions at the moment,
and people are in a good mood with it, but it's not growing like
the whole vibe that you get from Blizzard is that each and every one of
their games has stopped growing, and they currently don't have any other games on
the books, and they are trying desperately to find ways to monetize the games
that are left there. You see it in like the thirty five dollars Overwatch
skins. You see it in the way that they make everything a grind and
Diablo for so that you have to keep putting time and money into ash like
it. Those games don't seem sustainable or healthy because those franchises don't seem sustainable
or healthy. Yep. I mean, I think that we are going to
see a Wizard have to go through some I don't know, being treated well
by Microsoft for a few years before it can be go get some of its
confidence back a little bit. I think it's been. It feels a little
bit like, hey, under Activision, we couldn't just be Blizzard, and
in some ways you don't want to just be Blizzard because that was a toxic
workplace, so that had to change as well. And that's you know,
Microsoft has a reputation that's very strongly trying to maintain so that stuff won't be
tolerated but then when it comes to the making games side of stuff, do
you hope that Blizzard can regain some of that mode, Joe, And you
see them trying to do that in fits and starts. I think Diablo for
turned out better than it could have, and I still think I agree with
you that it seems like it hasn't fully reclaimed its place as like, well,
this is a this is one of the best games, and the people
who a gallow is totally a game when you look at it and you're like,
Oh, the team that came in here and finished it and made this
like quite technically sound, weren't the team that started finished, weren't the team
with the vision, but you're like, oh, this is the team.
This is the game that was fixed by a different team. Yep. Janser
said his partner told him about ninth Grader's talking about Wow. I do think
Wow seems like it might have like a Ruinscape Classics sort of pop here in
a little bit where it's like the new generation is going to discover Wow.
I think that could happen. We'll see, well, and we'll see a
Blizzard's able to capitalize on that. But I think a lot of like younger
streamers are playing it, and I think that's really helping the game. But
I will know that the kids on a holidays anyway. Oh no, definitely
not. I mean she like Sonic well, of course, Io Interactive wants
to make more than one Bond game. This is from Nicholas Wallin at Game
Reactor. Danish Hitman developer Io Interactive is working on a new James Bond game,
and it will not be based on any of the Ian Fleming books because
who can read, but will be a completely new story about the legendary agent's
background. It now also seems that they have plans to make more than one
game, and that it will be something of a sequel. In an interview
with Edge magazine, io Interactive ceocan A Brac suggests that they hope to do
just that. Hacana Brac said, I would love players to look back on
multiple Bond games by Io and go, wow, that was quite a journey.
I hope they can get to this point. I want the world for
Io Interactive. I think that'd be a good name for a Bond game,
by the way, but I want the world for them. I want them
just everything to work out, and I think they're the kind of studio that
can tell a story with a character over multiple games, because by the time,
like with hit Man two, after hit Man twenty sixteen, I was
like, man, they're actually doing some emotional stuff with Age A forty seven,
and I was mostly happy with where that went. In hit Man three,
it wasn't great, but it was like, this is pretty good.
They set out with that in mind and still have all the great gameplay on
top of that. That could be a real fun series. How do you
feel about multiple Bond games from Io Interactive? I was fucking awesome. I'll
play anything that they try, even if, like I don't stick with the
hit Man games as long as some people, I respect them and love them
so much from a technical point of view of just like, oh, these
are incredibly well designed video games, and I'm super excited to see them try
to do different things and if it makes some money and it lets them keep
doing weird shit, like, more power to him. Real quick. I
didn't put it down here, but there was that story that Insomniac Is confirmed
that going forward, Miles Morales is their main Spider Man, and of course
there was like a Spider Man weirdos who are like, I don't like the
sound of that, give me back my Peter Parker. I don't think that
means they're taking away You're Peter Parker. Let's be clear, Peter Parker is
going to be in the game. But the way that story wraps up,
it's like Miles Morales taking his place as the number one defender of New York
and sort of and someone who can like help Peter Parker when Peter Parker can't
handle all his shit either, And it's like, well, that's I think
it's an idea of like Past the Torch, and that doesn't mean that Peter
Parker has to go retire and we never see him again. I also think
it's unlikely a video game sequel does less than the game before it. Now,
maybe they do it Donkey Kong Country too thing where it's like, Okay,
this one had Peter Parker and Miles Morales, the next one will be
Miles Morales and someone else. But I think it's very likely that you'll still
play us both in the next games. It's just that Miles Morales will be
the main focus and then Peter Parker's story will be the b story as opposed
to the way it worked this last one, where it's like Miles Morouse was
kind of started as the B story and maybe by the end he had worked
his way up to the A story. But I don't know, how do
you to be fair? To be fair, it's totally unlike comic book fans
to use like something like this as a scapegoat to be shitty and racist about
something. And that's why I wouldn't give them benefit of the doubt. Of
course, yeah, and they'd never do that. And no, like fucking
Peter Parker is extremely well recognized as the face and name of Spider Man.
They will keep that character around. What the fuck you are about? It
doesn't matter how even if he fucking died, Peter Parker would be all over
the fucking next game, Like, I don't know what the fuck you're on
about. Yep, there's a lot of fucking Spider Man. You'll be fine.
This comment here says that Miles more and that Brian So I'm gonna make
a bad joke and I'm not gonna do it. I abandoned ship, abandoned
ship, all right, let's uh, let's go here, Let's get to
the poll. It's got johnsoled again, almost got janceled again. All right,
let's go which giant Bob staffer is most likely to earn a knighthood.
Let's see. Five percent said Jeff Jeff Backlar And that's my vote actually,
even though I vote for Dan Record, said Janachoa. Thirty three percent said
Lucy James. I think that's the British Lucy. Lucy is the smart money,
Like, yes, I think I think Lucy's actually the most likely.
But forty eight percent said Dan Record. I would be confident that Lucy would
turn it down. Yes, no, thanks, I'm good. Dan Riker
would absolutely take it down. Done would jump out, Yeah, I don't
care. Yeah, it does not care. Uh So sit in the tweet
about it and you're like, yeah, let's let's yeah, let let's find
out my free metal and that helps you on it of course. All right,
we got a new poll coming up here that we'll talk about on Wednesday's
Game Best Mornings. But first, Lexie, why you tell people where they
can find you what you have going on all that good stuff. Yeah,
you can find me on Twitter at basically Lexi, both words spelled with an
I. You can check out the website. And run sart Menu, which
is a website for young people or people trying to break into the games industry.
We're doing a winter spectacular, as I mentioned at the top of the
show. We're going to get some guests on. We'll have some fun,
we'll do some fun shot we'll do some advice pieces, we'll do some serious
things. It's always a good fun time of the year. You can read
some of my work at check News, most recently where I did my like
a Dragon Guide end review and I interviewed Sam Lake, which was a lot
of fun. I also reviewed Alan Wake two on start Menu itself. And
I'll be around a bit more every now and again. Yeah, excellent.
Let's see a couple of house clean things. Like I said, we'll have
the poll results on Wednesday. Owned Giant Bomb. Speaking a Giant Bomb,
I will probably try to wrap up Mortal Kombat one this week, maybe today.
Timing will get depend on what I have going on in my personal life
and I have to run kids around and stuff like that. We'll see,
but ideally that would happen today and maybe even finished it. We'll see,
and then for the rest of the week we should have a b Light club.
But we might mix something else in there. Depending it's a shorter week
on the back end. We're not working Friday because a Veterans Day, so
things will move around a little bit. But hey, BombCast tomorrow and then
BombCast Revengeance, which is on the same fee. The first episode went out
on Friday. That'll happen this week, might just happen on a on Friday.
Yeah, it was. It was a fun, good proof of concepts
and I feel really happy with it. It's one that it was like,
Okay, it's awesome to be able to get Lucy and tam on here.
It's uh, it's great to be able to have just a more freewheeling conversation
just kind of talk about games a little bit more, especially if everyone's like,
man, I wish I would have said that about Alan Wake when I
was on the BombCast. I just forgot and so well, now I have
another chance to do that. So just all around, we're really happy with
it. Definitely give that a listen and then vote. I think you can
vote tomorrow in the United States, so get out there do that. There's
a lot of issues that are worth voting on, especially in Ohio. Go
see vote yes on issue one, I think, and yes on issue too,
so we can get legal weed. Yay. So go check out Chris
Bot's new video way. He interviews Tom and that looks really good. I
haven't watched it yet. We're the best out the least. People make games
excellent. They interviewed to More and I think that is a really cool thing
to do. I do too. More is very rad so as people make
games. So check that out. All right, Lexie, thank you so
much for spending today talking with me, talking with me about video games,
and for helping me put the run down together. I really appreciate that.
Thank you all for watching. You're the best audience in gaming. Until next
time, have a good one, take care of yourself, and goodbye.