Drafting Our Most Anticipated Games Of 2026

<v Speaker 1>Happy New Year, everybody, and welcome to the Game and
<v Speaker 1>Former Show, a weekly podcast covering the video game industry.
<v Speaker 1>Join us each and every week for a discussion of
<v Speaker 1>the latest gaming news, reviews, and exclusive reviews with Game
<v Speaker 1>and Former staff and special guests from around the industry.
<v Speaker 1>I am your host, Marcus Stewart. I am joined by
<v Speaker 1>Charles Hart. Hello.
<v Speaker 2>Hello, I'm back and better than ever. This is the
<v Speaker 2>best Charles You're ever gonna get.
<v Speaker 1>How So show your work.
<v Speaker 2>I've never been older, quite frankly, and that's and like Wine,
<v Speaker 2>I'm aging.
<v Speaker 1>So that's my intro.
<v Speaker 2>Have you ever wanted to be my I should make
<v Speaker 2>a tender account just so. That's my bio. Like Wine,
<v Speaker 2>I'm aging.
<v Speaker 1>I was gonna say, audience, if you ever wanted to
<v Speaker 1>see a bit fall apart before your very eyes? Not together?
<v Speaker 2>No, no, no, it was good.
<v Speaker 1>God.
<v Speaker 2>Eric will not be I'm sure.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, Eric van Allen is here. Hello.
<v Speaker 3>I am older than I once was, but younger than
<v Speaker 3>i'll be. That's not unusual. That's a that's a line
<v Speaker 3>from Simon and Garfuncle that you can use in the future. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I am also progressively aging, as is the nature of time.
<v Speaker 3>We are here, it's twenty twenty six, and apparently we're
<v Speaker 3>just getting even more unhinged. I am I am concerned
<v Speaker 3>that you said this is the best Charles You'll ever
<v Speaker 3>get or whatever, because that just sounds like it's all
<v Speaker 3>downhill from me.
<v Speaker 2>I think my initial statement was this is the best
<v Speaker 2>I've ever been. Oh, okay, okay, and then I might
<v Speaker 2>have accidentally flipped it and said the best I'll ever be. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it might be true, but I can't. I honestly can't
<v Speaker 2>definitively say that.
<v Speaker 1>You're like so close from Brett Hart's catchphrase of the
<v Speaker 1>best there was, the best there is and the bester
<v Speaker 1>ever will be. If you could if you added one
<v Speaker 1>more line, you would technically be infringing on him, and
<v Speaker 1>he's a famously grumpy man, and I don't think you
<v Speaker 1>want that if you could go, we.
<v Speaker 2>Got a similar last name too, So wow, is it?
<v Speaker 1>You are a heart brother? Officially? Well, okay, there's so
<v Speaker 1>many things I can get into there, but we got
<v Speaker 1>to move on. Joining us as our first special guests
<v Speaker 1>of the Game and former show in twenty twenty six,
<v Speaker 1>editor in large and Polygon mister Giovanni cal Antonio, how
<v Speaker 1>are you sir.
<v Speaker 4>I'm great.
<v Speaker 5>I'm aging like cheese, which like can be good or bad, right,
<v Speaker 5>like age cheese can be good or it can mean death,
<v Speaker 5>right like one or the other.
<v Speaker 1>I think you want to be like a hard cheese
<v Speaker 1>that kind of get better with time, like like a
<v Speaker 1>Parmesana reggiano.
<v Speaker 2>Like like I end a hangout with you and I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>it's kind of funky. What does that mean?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, not the good funky like like groovy, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like he.
<v Speaker 2>Means it's kind of clear which funky I mean? Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's like okay, yeah, yeah, it's.
<v Speaker 1>A funky spot between and there's like funky Kong like
<v Speaker 1>that kind of funky. I think we'd all aspire to
<v Speaker 1>be a funky.
<v Speaker 3>Kong level of funky, be the funky Kong you want
<v Speaker 3>to see in the universe.
<v Speaker 1>Well, thank you for having me, absolutely, thank you for
<v Speaker 1>joining us, GEO, and yes, for this first episode of
<v Speaker 1>twenty twenty six, we are gonna be This is gonna
<v Speaker 1>be pretty much a two segment show because we're first
<v Speaker 1>going to be diving into the games that we played
<v Speaker 1>over our nice holiday break whatever, we caught up on
<v Speaker 1>things that we started, and then the bulk of the show.
<v Speaker 1>Looking ahead to this year, we're gonna be doing what's
<v Speaker 1>kind of become almost like a game and former tradition,
<v Speaker 1>where we're going to be choosing our most anticipated games
<v Speaker 1>of twenty twenty six via the time honored Snake Draft,
<v Speaker 1>or if we want to tie it to video games.
<v Speaker 1>I wrote it down as the twenty twenty six Sawlid
<v Speaker 1>Snake Draft, because much like Solid Snake himself, he has
<v Speaker 1>always made great decisions. He always drafts a great team
<v Speaker 1>of people in his ear to take them on these missions.
<v Speaker 1>And I like to think that that is what we're doing.
<v Speaker 1>We're drafting the video games that are going to carry
<v Speaker 1>us along twenty twenty six, that maybe we'll call into
<v Speaker 1>to ask for advice and learn life lessons from, and
<v Speaker 1>maybe get random movie recommendations from, which is what I
<v Speaker 1>look for in my video games. I don't know about you, guys,
<v Speaker 1>but yes, the twenty twenty six Solid Snake Draft, where you,
<v Speaker 1>the listeners, will be able to choose which one of
<v Speaker 1>us have the maybe look the superior, the preferred lineup
<v Speaker 1>of twenty twenty six releases that we're all I'm sure
<v Speaker 1>we'll all come out this year. Nothing will get delayed this.
<v Speaker 3>Year, nothing ever gets delayed anymore. Where We're past that now, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>we left that behind. We made a pact in the
<v Speaker 3>industry to say that everything that comes out this year,
<v Speaker 3>because rand the thought of six has to be out
<v Speaker 3>this year, everything else has to to.
<v Speaker 1>Oh sure it was the last delay ever. Yeah, Oh
<v Speaker 1>my god, that'd be amazing. If Rockstar build it is
<v Speaker 1>like the last game delay of all time.
<v Speaker 4>They have to come out.
<v Speaker 2>Now, we're just gonna We're just gonna put them out
<v Speaker 2>from this point for Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they'd saved the industry. So yeah, before we get
<v Speaker 1>into that, of course, if you would like to support
<v Speaker 1>Game Reformer, the best way to do it, believe it
<v Speaker 1>or not, is what a Game Reformer magazine subscription? Yes
<v Speaker 1>we have are what a Warcraft Midnight issue, which is
<v Speaker 1>also our twenty twenty five end of Year issue. It's
<v Speaker 1>got our twenty twenty five game awards, including our Game
<v Speaker 1>of the Year, all of our genre picks. An extra
<v Speaker 1>thick issue available now, and we should be announcing our
<v Speaker 1>next cover story imminently in the coming weeks, so stay
<v Speaker 1>tuned for that. But if you would like to get
<v Speaker 1>tenish as a year, both physical and digital, sense. You
<v Speaker 1>can go to Gameformer dot com slash subscribe get your
<v Speaker 1>self a great, great piece of physical media delivered to
<v Speaker 1>you as well as you can go to physical stores
<v Speaker 1>now and pick up Game Informer because we're in bookstands
<v Speaker 1>and news stores across the country and internationally. If you're
<v Speaker 1>in the US, you can go to your Barns and Nobles,
<v Speaker 1>your books of millions, go to whatever news stands that
<v Speaker 1>you frequent when you're reading. When you're done reading the
<v Speaker 1>Daily Bugle, you can pick up an issue of Game
<v Speaker 1>Informer and show it up to all your friends. No
<v Speaker 1>yellow journalism in here, no slandering of Spider Man in here.
<v Speaker 1>It's all the good stuff right here, Former Magazine. I
<v Speaker 1>know we're all tied off that stuff, right Eric of
<v Speaker 1>slandering Spider Man?
<v Speaker 2>What yeah, really really want to write in April Fool's post.
<v Speaker 2>That's just just hating on Spider Man, just like God,
<v Speaker 2>I hate this guy, just I.
<v Speaker 1>Just disliked this this guy just like you just want
<v Speaker 1>to roleplay as Jajo to jameson Free I.
<v Speaker 2>Do, actually Jameson to be honest, yeah that's fair, but.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, Gameformer dot com slash subscribe, get yourself a magazine
<v Speaker 1>subscription as Sports Game Informer, and you will be getting
<v Speaker 1>a great product every month, if we do say so ourselves.
<v Speaker 1>But yes, holiday break, we had a nice what was
<v Speaker 1>it like, almost two weeks roughly off for Christmas and
<v Speaker 1>New Years, which I would wager a lot of us
<v Speaker 1>spent a great deal of that time release a significant
<v Speaker 1>junk of it either catching up on video games or
<v Speaker 1>starting games that maybe we miss throughout the year, or
<v Speaker 1>just stuff in our backlog. So I'm really curious. I
<v Speaker 1>haven't actually talked to anyone to see what they've been
<v Speaker 1>messing with, but I'll start with myself. So the game
<v Speaker 1>that I started that I actually intentionally saved specifically for
<v Speaker 1>my holiday break, I didn't. I kind of almost refused
<v Speaker 1>to touch it throughout the year, just in lieu of
<v Speaker 1>so many other things. Was I finally started metal Gear
<v Speaker 1>Solid Delta Snake Eater. Ah, Yeah, I love. I'm a
<v Speaker 1>huge metal Gear fan, and Medal Gear three kind of
<v Speaker 1>like goes back and forth, is like is it my
<v Speaker 1>favorite metal Gear between it and two? So this remake
<v Speaker 1>I've was super excited about, and when it came out,
<v Speaker 1>it came out, at least for me, like a really
<v Speaker 1>busy time. I think it was tied up with like
<v Speaker 1>a couple of review games in a row, and I
<v Speaker 1>just it was hard to make the time to sit
<v Speaker 1>down and play it, which I was kind of almost
<v Speaker 1>surprised by because of my hype for this game, But
<v Speaker 1>it just felt like there's something about it, maybe because
<v Speaker 1>it's like a known quantity of like, oh, this is
<v Speaker 1>such a faithful remake that maybe I don't need to
<v Speaker 1>rush out and play it right away. Especially talking to
<v Speaker 1>Kyle who reviewed it and it is a similar like
<v Speaker 1>Metal Gear die Hard, I was like, maybe I can't
<v Speaker 1>kind of like treat this as like a treat for
<v Speaker 1>me when I don't feel obligated to keep up with
<v Speaker 1>all the new stuff. So I finally started that I
<v Speaker 1>haven't finished it. I'm actually, as we're talking now, I'm
<v Speaker 1>at the very beginning of the end boss fight, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm probably gonna wind up beating that guy through old
<v Speaker 1>age at this point. It just because of that little
<v Speaker 1>trick we'll see. I haven't counted the days it's been.
<v Speaker 1>I think it takes like a week if I remember correctly,
<v Speaker 1>something like that. Yeah, which I've never done it that
<v Speaker 1>way before. When I first played the game. I just
<v Speaker 1>beat them the old fashion win. I didn't learn about
<v Speaker 1>that trick until way after, so I'm kind of hoping
<v Speaker 1>to just let that happen just for something different, But
<v Speaker 1>that's actually been one of my main games on top
<v Speaker 1>of Charles. For you, I finished Hades two finally.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, so you've played You've played the new ending then, and.
<v Speaker 1>I wanted to ask you as off air, like what
<v Speaker 1>the difference between the endings were, because I really liked
<v Speaker 1>I guess what is the new ending? It took me
<v Speaker 1>like a combined between playing on Switch and Steam. It
<v Speaker 1>took me like a combined, like ninety hours. It took
<v Speaker 1>me seventy runs to see credits.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it takes I think fifteen clear, no, twelve clears
<v Speaker 2>now because I think it's five up and seven down
<v Speaker 2>maybe eight down.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's a down for sure.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's five up. It's a lot,
<v Speaker 2>so I understand. My partner also finished it. I think
<v Speaker 2>it was before break, but it took her. I had
<v Speaker 2>to review it, so I went through faster and it
<v Speaker 2>was quicker back then because they added more clears I
<v Speaker 2>had to do. But I will I will tell you
<v Speaker 2>off Era but it's pretty similar. The main stuff that
<v Speaker 2>they change is they add some more context to like
<v Speaker 2>characters actions and decisions. So I'd say, like, the general
<v Speaker 2>structure is basically the same, but they added more stuff
<v Speaker 2>that people say were before you'd be like, wait, why
<v Speaker 2>did they do that? Why are people okay with this
<v Speaker 2>or acting this way or doing this thing. They've kind
<v Speaker 2>of smoothed some of those rough edges out, but it's
<v Speaker 2>not like completely different. I wouldn't say, oh so like
<v Speaker 2>a director's cut more than like a rewrite.
<v Speaker 1>Sure, And yeah, now I'm just been digging into the
<v Speaker 1>postgame stuff, like I've already done some postgame runs and
<v Speaker 1>I'm I'm going to be doing that for the foreseeable
<v Speaker 1>future because there's enough there and I love these characters
<v Speaker 1>and I'm not I'm not ready to leave that world yet.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, I still love these guys and I like
<v Speaker 1>that there's still more narrative stuff to dig into, So
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna and I got bonds to phill, I got
<v Speaker 1>to decide who I like. I still got to sell
<v Speaker 1>who I like the most. I gotta take bats with everybody.
<v Speaker 1>I've done it with most everybody to cross. There are
<v Speaker 1>still some people that have not I have not bathed
<v Speaker 1>with you.
<v Speaker 3>That is a fast way to get to know somebody
<v Speaker 3>for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is that historic fishing,
<v Speaker 3>I guess, but I think bathing probably means a little
<v Speaker 3>bit more.
<v Speaker 1>Than going to fish with somebody.
<v Speaker 2>The bathing I always go for, specifically because I was
<v Speaker 2>so caught off guard that characters have like unique bathing art.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and that's like a weird.
<v Speaker 2>Thing that I'm like too, even like it's they're like
<v Speaker 2>kind of naked, so it's like, well, putting the horny aside,
<v Speaker 2>the concept that it's like, oh, there's like a special
<v Speaker 2>alternate version of everyone that you can see if you
<v Speaker 2>do the specific thing. That's like the kind of thing
<v Speaker 2>where it's like I gotta freaking see what it is.
<v Speaker 1>I got to know the context. So yeah, wait, I
<v Speaker 1>thought you were going to lead to who you liked,
<v Speaker 1>like that you're going to point out it like specific
<v Speaker 1>character that.
<v Speaker 2>You I mean, I was always kind of always I
<v Speaker 2>was leaning Nemesis at the start of the game, and
<v Speaker 2>I kind of like finished that way. Specifically, I like
<v Speaker 2>seeing it when a character is like I don't like
<v Speaker 2>you at all, and I'm like and yet I can
<v Speaker 2>romance you interesting?
<v Speaker 1>How many nectors going to take to evolve? Yeah? Has
<v Speaker 1>this fifth nectar changed your mind?
<v Speaker 3>I like how you playted that trap card of being like, okay,
<v Speaker 3>now expose your deepest self to the podcast?
<v Speaker 1>Who did? Who would you bathe with? I was going
<v Speaker 1>to say, because mine was going to be Heckity, because
<v Speaker 1>I actually had Nemesis is on my It's weird to
<v Speaker 1>call it a bathe list, but I think that I
<v Speaker 1>think that is literally my next like milestone with her
<v Speaker 1>is because they tell you, like, okay, next time you
<v Speaker 1>bomb with them, it's going to be this activity, and
<v Speaker 1>I think that is what she's got teed up. But
<v Speaker 1>Hecky was my like, oh this is weird. I don't
<v Speaker 1>know how I feel about this is a good conversation
<v Speaker 1>that we're having, but it's just like, oh but the
<v Speaker 1>arts nice, but also it's weird. Yeah, but yeah, those
<v Speaker 1>have been kind of my two primarily, Like there's like
<v Speaker 1>little things I picked up here and there, like I
<v Speaker 1>fintished Citizens Sleeper two finally, which i'd kind of been
<v Speaker 1>playing throughout the year kind of off and on, which
<v Speaker 1>I liked. But yeah, outside that, those are kind of
<v Speaker 1>my main games. But what about you, geo, what have
<v Speaker 1>you been messing with over the last.
<v Speaker 4>A couple of weeks.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, So January is a great time of year for
<v Speaker 5>me because it's the one time of the year where
<v Speaker 5>I become my worst self and get back into Tetris
<v Speaker 5>ninety nine.
<v Speaker 4>For like a week, which is the only game where I.
<v Speaker 5>Allow myself to become toxic for like a week in
<v Speaker 5>a video game. Right, Like, I don't play I don't
<v Speaker 5>play a lot of like sweaty shooters that are gonna
<v Speaker 5>get me like swearing and angry. But like you put
<v Speaker 5>Tetris ninety nine in my hands, and suddenly I am
<v Speaker 5>like the worst person that you've ever experienced online. I
<v Speaker 5>don't know why. It just brings it out of me.
<v Speaker 5>Very competitive in that game. Love that game. So I'm
<v Speaker 5>GIF if you see me online in that just like
<v Speaker 5>leave the lobby, just get out for your own sake.
<v Speaker 1>I win, Oh I win.
<v Speaker 4>I'm like, oh I win. I'm trying to I've been
<v Speaker 4>trying for years.
<v Speaker 5>There's like a playlist that unlocks after you get your
<v Speaker 5>first win that's like a hey, like winners only mode,
<v Speaker 5>and there's so few people in it that like it's
<v Speaker 5>ninety percent bots that it gets filled with, and I've
<v Speaker 5>been trying for years to win in that mode and
<v Speaker 5>I've only ever gotten the second place, and the day
<v Speaker 5>that I like beat that for the first time, I'm
<v Speaker 5>going to retire. I've like decided this, I'm gonna be
<v Speaker 5>done with it. So I'm every year, I take a
<v Speaker 5>crack at it in January and then I'm like, I'm done.
<v Speaker 1>Until next year.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Nine, your main thing.
<v Speaker 5>That's my main thing. But the other thing I'll shout
<v Speaker 5>out really quick is there is a game that I've
<v Speaker 5>been playing called Soul Sesto. I don't know if y'all
<v Speaker 5>have heard of this. This is I'll tell you right now,
<v Speaker 5>dear listeners. If you want the kind of game where like,
<v Speaker 5>this game comes out of early access this year and
<v Speaker 5>everyone's like, well, this game is amazing, and you want
<v Speaker 5>to be like, oh, I knew about that before it
<v Speaker 5>was cool.
<v Speaker 4>I actually knew about it the whole time.
<v Speaker 5>Get on it now. It's an early access so unbelievably cool.
<v Speaker 5>It is a roguelike dungeon crawler, I guess you would
<v Speaker 5>call it, which I know probably doesn't sound cool. That
<v Speaker 5>probably sounds like every game. But the gimmick of it
<v Speaker 5>is that, like you, each floor of the dungeon is
<v Speaker 5>kind of like laid out as a grid where you
<v Speaker 5>see like an enemy or a treasure chest in each
<v Speaker 5>like square of the grid, and the way you interact
<v Speaker 5>with the game is you click on a row and
<v Speaker 5>then you have like a twenty five percent chance of
<v Speaker 5>landing on any of the like four squares in that row.
<v Speaker 5>So you could land on a monster, and if you
<v Speaker 5>have like the right attack stat you would defeat it
<v Speaker 5>or you would take damage. You could land on a
<v Speaker 5>treasure chest, you could land on something that heals you.
<v Speaker 5>And the entire game is like a risk reward of
<v Speaker 5>clicking into rows trying to like at the treasure and
<v Speaker 5>take risks about, you know, killing monsters, and you kind
<v Speaker 5>of like upgrade your stats as you go, and it
<v Speaker 5>has those kind of roguelike building elements to it, but
<v Speaker 5>the whole thing that you're upgrading is basically your odds
<v Speaker 5>of landing on a thing. So when you get like
<v Speaker 5>your relics or whatever that you're passive, it's like, hey,
<v Speaker 5>twenty five percent less chance to land on monsters and
<v Speaker 5>a twenty five percent more chance to like get strawberries,
<v Speaker 5>or something which heal you. So the entire thing is
<v Speaker 5>just like a numbers manipulation dungeon crawler that is sounds
<v Speaker 5>kind of like boring until you get into it and
<v Speaker 5>get the hook of it, and then it's like, this
<v Speaker 5>is the coolest video game that I think has ever
<v Speaker 5>been made, and the art style of it is like
<v Speaker 5>out of this world. The second you see it, you'll
<v Speaker 5>be like, oh, yeah, that's that's good stuff.
<v Speaker 4>I think it is.
<v Speaker 5>Supposed to get its final kind of like big update
<v Speaker 5>in early access this month, and then I think like
<v Speaker 5>they've kind of teased that like one point zero pretty
<v Speaker 5>shortly thereafter. So if you want to be cool, if
<v Speaker 5>you want to be the hipster who's like I knew
<v Speaker 5>about that game before everybody, Solssto. It's on Steam, I
<v Speaker 5>think currently, and it's.
<v Speaker 1>So cool awesome, Solsa. I need to look that up.
<v Speaker 2>I've not heard of that. I love your pitch for it. Well,
<v Speaker 2>first of all, you were like, it makes the percent
<v Speaker 2>go up. I'm like, and then you're like it sounds boring.
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, no, no, no, I had me there. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I love the numbers I had cause if it's like
<v Speaker 2>a high percentage and then it goes wrong. It's like,
<v Speaker 2>what what were the odds of that? And if it's
<v Speaker 2>a low percentage and it goes well, I'm like, whoa,
<v Speaker 2>what are the odds of that?
<v Speaker 1>It's just like I love that.
<v Speaker 5>It kind of like pulls apart what like every game
<v Speaker 5>is now, which is like, hey, they're hidden numbers and
<v Speaker 5>you don't know the odds, and it's like, what if
<v Speaker 5>we just put them in front of you. What if
<v Speaker 5>we just told you it was a seventeen percent chance
<v Speaker 5>that you're gonna mess up. It's like very x calm
<v Speaker 5>like code it in that way, and it's just the
<v Speaker 5>builds are all about like manipulating values and that's it.
<v Speaker 5>And it's like that's kind of what all games like
<v Speaker 5>this are, but they kind of pretend it's not. It's
<v Speaker 5>really really neat. You just click on things. That's it.
<v Speaker 5>Perfect amazing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Also, anything else you want to touch on, go
<v Speaker 1>before you move on. Uh No.
<v Speaker 5>The only other thing I've been playing is this really
<v Speaker 5>neat indie puzzle game called Cipher Zero that came out
<v Speaker 5>last year, a very kind of like the Witness esque
<v Speaker 5>like rule figuring out game without the like pretentious parts
<v Speaker 5>of the Witness where you're just kind of like looking
<v Speaker 5>at a grid with some symbols on it and trying
<v Speaker 5>to figure out, like, oh, how do you fill in
<v Speaker 5>the grid to match these symbols? And it teaches you
<v Speaker 5>on the fly. If you like a minimalist like level
<v Speaker 5>based puzzle game that is kind of like doesn't tell
<v Speaker 5>you what to do, but you figure it out on
<v Speaker 5>your own. That's also a really neat one that I've
<v Speaker 5>been working through that gets hard. It's hard. I'm in
<v Speaker 5>the late game and it's stuff. But if that's your thing,
<v Speaker 5>it's it's pretty rad awesome.
<v Speaker 1>Charles, What about you?
<v Speaker 2>What is it?
<v Speaker 1>What was the formally best version of yourself playing Over
<v Speaker 1>the Bird before I was good? Yeah, So I.
<v Speaker 2>Right before break, for whatever reason, I decided to purchase
<v Speaker 2>and play through Resident Evil seven and eight.
<v Speaker 1>Right, we were talking about this on the Residval Outbreak
<v Speaker 1>super replay.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so I beat I beat eight. I started playing four.
<v Speaker 2>So I'm like a few hours into four. Remake four right,
<v Speaker 2>remake four? Yeah, okay clarified, which I'm not gonna talk
<v Speaker 2>that much about it because I'm not that far in,
<v Speaker 2>but every time I play it, I people love that game.
<v Speaker 2>So much. I keep expecting to start it and then
<v Speaker 2>immediately be so hooked into it, and I just have
<v Speaker 2>not been every time that I've played it. I just
<v Speaker 2>finished the like boat Whale section relatively early on, so
<v Speaker 2>I'm on like chapter four or five. I haven't met
<v Speaker 2>Ashley yet.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, when anyway, that's when a game gets good, When.
<v Speaker 2>I believe it, I'm I keep going like, where's this girl?
<v Speaker 1>I've heard some you gotta gotta babysit this girl. That's
<v Speaker 1>when I really think.
<v Speaker 2>So.
<v Speaker 5>My girlfriend has started playing the Residevil games for the
<v Speaker 5>first time, and it's been like a great experience. She
<v Speaker 5>just did like the game Keep remake of the first one,
<v Speaker 5>and now she's doing two. And my favorite part of
<v Speaker 5>being there for that experience is that I just keeps
<v Speaker 5>playing on her Steam deck, so it's like not on
<v Speaker 5>the TV, so I'm know exactly where she is in
<v Speaker 5>the games based off her reaction to what's happening. And
<v Speaker 5>like last night I was sitting there. I was like
<v Speaker 5>I was in the other room, like on the computer,
<v Speaker 5>and all of a sudden I heard like, oh no,
<v Speaker 5>oh no, not the hat man, and I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 5>she met mister X finally.
<v Speaker 1>Or took you know, it's one or the other.
<v Speaker 4>As soon as she said that, I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 4>he is the hat man.
<v Speaker 1>She's so right.
<v Speaker 5>That's been a great one to experience by audio only.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's better than calling a mister hat I guess, yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>all it's all.
<v Speaker 2>It's all the same, all the same guy. What did
<v Speaker 2>you uh?
<v Speaker 1>Since you didn't feelish you were still working through Village
<v Speaker 1>when you told me you were playing them, what did
<v Speaker 1>you think of it? Cause did you like more or
<v Speaker 1>less than seven? And where'd you land with that?
<v Speaker 2>I really liked village. Village was like, I played seven
<v Speaker 2>so I could play a village because I'm kind of
<v Speaker 2>I'm more squeamish when it comes to horror stuff, and
<v Speaker 2>Village I found more fun scary then seven was like
<v Speaker 2>scary scary. Some people, like my my fiance Alyssa is
<v Speaker 2>like very into horror. She I think preferred seven because
<v Speaker 2>she just loves all that weirdness stuff.
<v Speaker 1>But I liked.
<v Speaker 2>I liked both of them. I don't want to I'm
<v Speaker 2>not gonna spoil it. There was parts. There was the
<v Speaker 2>there's sorry, there's there's a person like this isn't.
<v Speaker 1>Even a game?
<v Speaker 2>I want to talk about there's a person that gets
<v Speaker 2>shot so many times in the intro of village.
<v Speaker 5>I was like, Oh my god, what just happened.
<v Speaker 2>I'm so glad I played through all of seven so
<v Speaker 2>that I could I could feel the connection to that
<v Speaker 2>person gets shot one hundred thousand times. And then then
<v Speaker 2>later I understood the car like they explained it. I
<v Speaker 2>was like, okay, but I was like, it's crazy that
<v Speaker 2>saw that game opened. Then it takes a long time
<v Speaker 2>to be like.
<v Speaker 1>They robo copper did them?
<v Speaker 2>They robot them.
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy. It's so funny.
<v Speaker 5>Like the funniest part of that scene, which is like
<v Speaker 5>it is the funniest scene that's ever been in the
<v Speaker 5>video game, in my opinion, is like the main character
<v Speaker 5>of the game witnessing it. His reaction is like, actually,
<v Speaker 5>not that big a deal. He's like, oh, dang it,
<v Speaker 5>h crap.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, ah shucks. I mean that looks character. Yeah, is
<v Speaker 1>those reactions? Are you going to dive into the U
<v Speaker 1>the Shadow of Rose expansion?
<v Speaker 2>That?
<v Speaker 5>Uh?
<v Speaker 1>I might?
<v Speaker 2>I wasn't sure if it was like required reading or not.
<v Speaker 2>And it was also like the like at the time,
<v Speaker 2>it was like seven was on sale for like six dollars.
<v Speaker 2>Eight was on sale for like eight dollars, and then
<v Speaker 2>the DLC was like a full twenty Like the DLC
<v Speaker 2>wasn't on sale, and I was like, am I really
<v Speaker 2>gonna spend twenty bucks? Or so see what the Rose
<v Speaker 2>deal is?
<v Speaker 1>It's yeah, it's hard.
<v Speaker 2>So we don't know.
<v Speaker 1>We don't know if it's required to read because that
<v Speaker 1>was technically the last new resideval concept before Requiz. We
<v Speaker 1>have no idea how it factors into like the broader
<v Speaker 1>fiction going forward because on paper, it's like it's actually
<v Speaker 1>like a pretty big deal because it's a pretty big
<v Speaker 1>time jump in the future. Yeah, and we still don't
<v Speaker 1>know when Requiem takes place timeline wise, like is it
<v Speaker 1>set in that time like that future of Shadow of Rose?
<v Speaker 1>Is it before?
<v Speaker 2>Is it you know?
<v Speaker 1>Is it even like before or after the Ethan games?
<v Speaker 1>Like we don't even know. Uh so yeah, it's it's
<v Speaker 1>it's TB deal.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, I did like it for what it's worth.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's a fun little like the expansion.
<v Speaker 2>I think Kyle reviewed it and I read that review
<v Speaker 2>and he was like, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, the game
<v Speaker 2>I wanted to talk about, or should I say games.
<v Speaker 2>I was not catching up on required reading. I did
<v Speaker 2>not play any games. I finished my death Power review,
<v Speaker 2>which is up on the site and go read that.
<v Speaker 2>I spend most of my time playing Lego Batman one
<v Speaker 2>and I finished it and played Lego Batman two, and
<v Speaker 2>then I finished it and played Lego Marvel Superheroes. It
<v Speaker 2>was a very Lego Superhero it was. I was like
<v Speaker 2>I was playing two, and then I was like, well, chronologically,
<v Speaker 2>the next game that came out was like a Marvel
<v Speaker 2>Superheroes and then it was like.
<v Speaker 1>About Avengers Doomsday Teachers and they're like, oh, I got
<v Speaker 1>a fire.
<v Speaker 2>I actually watched the Fantastic four First Steps and I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>you know what game you can play is the Fantastic
<v Speaker 2>like a mar Superhero Anyways, Lego Batman one I had.
<v Speaker 2>Actually I don't think I had ever played the console
<v Speaker 2>version because I had the DS version as a kid,
<v Speaker 2>and that was like my thing was that that specifically
<v Speaker 2>that version of the game. So it's very odd to
<v Speaker 2>like play the console version and that's like old Lego.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, there's like different eras of Lego games, but
<v Speaker 2>that's like no one's talking still, so it's like they're
<v Speaker 2>like mining out, you know, the things that are happening.
<v Speaker 2>There's not really much in the way of story. Those
<v Speaker 2>games are fine. I have a lot of instag for them.
<v Speaker 2>They're kind of mid uh. It's funny how it's like
<v Speaker 2>Batman and Robin, which are like these iconic characters and
<v Speaker 2>the way they represent their abilities and like what if
<v Speaker 2>they could step on paan roles that give them different
<v Speaker 2>suits that have like wacky abilities, and it's like, that's
<v Speaker 2>not what I want. I play as Batman and Robin.
<v Speaker 2>I don't need him to be in like a diving
<v Speaker 2>suit and then go underwater. It's very like video gaming
<v Speaker 2>in that way. Lego Batman two is the first Lego
<v Speaker 2>game where they have voice acting and they like wrote
<v Speaker 2>a story for it, so it's like you're an original
<v Speaker 2>Batman story. It's called Lego Batman two. DC Superheroes. It
<v Speaker 2>should really be called Lego Batman two, also Superman, because
<v Speaker 2>the Justice League shows up in like literally the last
<v Speaker 2>level is the only level you plays anyone other than Batman,
<v Speaker 2>Robin or Superman. But I actually like like that story.
<v Speaker 2>I was kind of surprised that I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>Batman has like a perceptible character arc.
<v Speaker 1>In a way that like, I.
<v Speaker 2>Don't know, I just wasn't I wasn't expecting to like
<v Speaker 2>it so much. This is the game I had the
<v Speaker 2>most nostalgia for as a kid, mainly because you can
<v Speaker 2>free roam Gotham City and you can do that co op.
<v Speaker 2>So my brother and I would like We played this
<v Speaker 2>game so much for no reason. We would like play
<v Speaker 2>tag in Lego Batman. We would play hide and seek
<v Speaker 2>in Lego Batman, where someone would like angle their camera
<v Speaker 2>at a weird spot and you have to guess on
<v Speaker 2>the split screen where they were in the town. We
<v Speaker 2>had a game where one person would stand on top
<v Speaker 2>of a tower as mister Freeze and the other person
<v Speaker 2>would be the Flash and you had to run up
<v Speaker 2>and punch mister Freeze before he could freeze you. It
<v Speaker 2>was great. We were inventive kids. And then I played
<v Speaker 2>Lego Marvel, which I'm still playing through, and I thought
<v Speaker 2>I would like it more because you're just playing is
<v Speaker 2>more characters, so like your abilities are more varied, but
<v Speaker 2>the story is so much weaker than Lego Batman two. Weirdly,
<v Speaker 2>probably because there's so many characters, there's just like no
<v Speaker 2>one to really latch onto and not that people really
<v Speaker 2>play Lego games for the story per se. But yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that's all I've been doing. I'm studying for Lego Batman
<v Speaker 2>Legacy of the Dark Eyed. If you couldn't tell, I've
<v Speaker 2>played all the Arkham games semi recently, so I'm trying
<v Speaker 2>to play all the Lego Batman games, and then I'll
<v Speaker 2>also play DC super Villains and then I'll probably go
<v Speaker 2>back to Skywroger Saga. Just so I'm like, I'm I'm
<v Speaker 2>the Lego guy. There's no disputing that. No one's allowed
<v Speaker 2>to question my.
<v Speaker 3>Like boxing out your territory right now? Are you like
<v Speaker 3>concerned moving into the new year.
<v Speaker 2>I just listen, here's the thing. We'll do a little
<v Speaker 2>peak behind the curtain. I'm I'm the youngest member staff
<v Speaker 2>on game Former. When you're the youngest, even if I
<v Speaker 2>like a game, I don't automatically get DIBs on it
<v Speaker 2>because like, as long as I've liked Zelda, for instance,
<v Speaker 2>Kyle is like Zeller for like ten fifteen years long
<v Speaker 2>he's played, he has had more time in his life
<v Speaker 2>to like have played the games. Literally. Yeah, so if
<v Speaker 2>I have an opportunity to be like no, no, no,
<v Speaker 2>I'm the lego guy. Then I'm like I might as
<v Speaker 2>well just like just like carve myself a litle box
<v Speaker 2>and myself in it. I was gonna say you, there's
<v Speaker 2>not a lot. I don't have a lot of spots
<v Speaker 2>like that in the It's like.
<v Speaker 1>Me, I'm like with wrestling, I guess like, oh, no
<v Speaker 1>one else in Staff. I don't have to really fight
<v Speaker 1>for that one. Like literally no one watches wrestling on Staff.
<v Speaker 1>So it's like it's more just automatically it falls to me,
<v Speaker 1>but I get it, which more.
<v Speaker 2>Like a like if there is a soul's game, like
<v Speaker 2>we'd probably give that reviewed to Wess or you. Like,
<v Speaker 2>there's there's just like buckets of people that like fit
<v Speaker 2>in different categories, and I just want to partially, I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>let me let me have a category. Let me let
<v Speaker 2>me build my own corner.
<v Speaker 3>In this in this house, yes more, you always got
<v Speaker 3>a box out a little bit because like y'all, y'all
<v Speaker 3>might be like, oh, we're younger. I'm the newest person.
<v Speaker 3>And I walked in and I was like, Okay, where
<v Speaker 3>where is everybody? What does everybody already kind of have
<v Speaker 3>DIBs on? And how am I gonna like carve out
<v Speaker 3>my niche within that, and RPGs are kind of a
<v Speaker 3>broad niche, so there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. There have been times in our meeting or Eric
<v Speaker 1>will express fandom for something and then another editor will
<v Speaker 1>shout hey, that's my territory, kid, Yeah yeah, get him.
<v Speaker 2>Gun shots on the other side of the mic. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>rolled up.
<v Speaker 5>I'm just the puzzle game cicho. That's that's and no
<v Speaker 5>one ever gets in that territory.
<v Speaker 1>It's just me. Actually, I really like puzzle games to Actually,
<v Speaker 1>it's just me.
<v Speaker 3>A surprising number of people on our staff really enjoyed
<v Speaker 3>Detective mystery puzzle games and stuff like that. Of us around,
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to have to really fight some people.
<v Speaker 1>The three of us are all the root Trees.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I love I also Lovetree.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, we're the reason they got in our top ten.
<v Speaker 1>Joyed it.
<v Speaker 2>It's us if you're mad, it's a thing where it's
<v Speaker 2>like I wish, I wish, I and I this is
<v Speaker 2>not my genre of game at all. I've never really
<v Speaker 2>liked the second one I've played. If I got really
<v Speaker 2>into RTS games, I would I would have Reign over
<v Speaker 2>whatever I wanted to play as soon as it came out.
<v Speaker 3>Let me tell you as the guy who plays a
<v Speaker 3>lot of RTS games. Okay, I was, and then RTS
<v Speaker 3>games kind of fell off a cliff and we just
<v Speaker 3>kind of do what I mean, Donald War four looks
<v Speaker 3>pretty good. I'm looking forward to that. But like, it's
<v Speaker 3>been eon since the last StarCraft, so like I've I've
<v Speaker 3>been starving. I had to adapt or die.
<v Speaker 1>So I thought you were going like I was into
<v Speaker 1>rts's until you said you were, and because of seniority,
<v Speaker 1>I can't be anymore.
<v Speaker 3>No, it would be funny to be performatively into genres
<v Speaker 3>just to box people out, but that would mean that
<v Speaker 3>you would have to play a lot.
<v Speaker 1>More video games. I don't have time for that.
<v Speaker 2>That is kind of what our draft is for today.
<v Speaker 3>Actually, yeah, here's here's a list of games I probably
<v Speaker 3>won't finish by the end of the e.
<v Speaker 1>And also, no one else is allowed to play. You
<v Speaker 1>guys can't play these now. Speaking of playing Eric real quick,
<v Speaker 1>what did you play over the break? Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>I was my best and worst self over the break.
<v Speaker 3>On the best side of things, I kept playing Octopath
<v Speaker 3>Traveler zero. That game just keeps getting better. It's really
<v Speaker 3>really long, but I really really like it. I think
<v Speaker 3>it's fantastic, and I like that they took everything that
<v Speaker 3>was bad about Gotcha and monetization and banners and polls
<v Speaker 3>and stuff like that and just extricated all that, And
<v Speaker 3>it was this miracle moment of like, hey, it turns
<v Speaker 3>out a lot of those games actually are really good
<v Speaker 3>video games that just have bad monetization practices around them,
<v Speaker 3>and when you strip that out, it's a really fun,
<v Speaker 3>enjoyable game that a lot of people should try out.
<v Speaker 1>It's a good time.
<v Speaker 3>And then I was my worst self because I was
<v Speaker 3>also like, well, I should probably play a Gotcha game
<v Speaker 3>over the break, So I got back into Uma Musume
<v Speaker 3>for like three days.
<v Speaker 1>What are you saying that name?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 1>Uma Musume pretty Derby Girls?
<v Speaker 2>Is that what it is?
<v Speaker 1>Jeff Keiley said it right.
<v Speaker 2>I.
<v Speaker 1>Don't actually know. That was actually the first time I'd
<v Speaker 1>ever heard it said out loud. Was and I was like,
<v Speaker 1>I assume they're saying it correctly, because I think they
<v Speaker 1>would practice this before saying it on public venue, but
<v Speaker 1>they're not.
<v Speaker 2>There was a funny thing over in the like min
<v Speaker 2>Max corner of things, because I guess Sarah Pozorski loves it.
<v Speaker 2>She says, I think it's where you put it. They
<v Speaker 2>said like Umama Sumi, yes, and she was she was
<v Speaker 2>to be clear, this was uh Sidney Goodman, is that
<v Speaker 2>her name was hosting the Yeah, I was hosting that section.
<v Speaker 2>She pronounced it wrong, and uh, they have like a
<v Speaker 2>they write the pronunciations out beforehand, so it wasn't on her,
<v Speaker 2>it was on whoever wrote that pronunciation for her to read.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, it's actually it's the Masamune and it's seph
<v Speaker 3>Roth's Swords.
<v Speaker 1>You should say right that that game.
<v Speaker 5>Will ever be as funny as Monkey to Loofy, which
<v Speaker 5>is still just like I think.
<v Speaker 3>About that every day. No, that that was incredible. Yeah, No,
<v Speaker 3>that game's still pretty good. I've always historically liked kind
<v Speaker 3>of raising slash stat distributed games like that Monster Rancher,
<v Speaker 3>Tokumeki Memorial, things like that, And since we're not getting
<v Speaker 3>the new Toka Meki remake over here anytime soon, I
<v Speaker 3>was like, oh, I'll dip into that for a couple
<v Speaker 3>of days, and then I was my best self again
<v Speaker 3>because I got back on my train of trying to
<v Speaker 3>gold medal every game in Clubhouse Games fifty one Worldwide
<v Speaker 3>Classics and I am so good at Ricci Majong Now,
<v Speaker 3>I like went into the hyperbolic Majon chamber and I
<v Speaker 3>can see through the matrix now, it's incredible.
<v Speaker 5>When that game came out, I got it, taught me
<v Speaker 5>Mencola and I had like it was like during the pandemic.
<v Speaker 5>I think that game came out and I was like,
<v Speaker 5>I should become a Mancla guy, and I like bought
<v Speaker 5>a Mancola board during the pandemic. It was like making
<v Speaker 5>my part at the time play it with me like
<v Speaker 5>every day and they were like can we can we stop?
<v Speaker 5>And I was no, We're doing another round of Mancala.
<v Speaker 5>There's nothing else to do.
<v Speaker 3>My family, genuinely, we tried Jackbox one night and the
<v Speaker 3>servers just weren't working or something like that. We just
<v Speaker 3>weren't getting a good connection. So we just put my
<v Speaker 3>switch to on the TV and would play Yacht Dice
<v Speaker 3>and Mancala and whatever their version of Connect four is,
<v Speaker 3>and Super Hexagon or whatever, the one where you like
<v Speaker 3>place the hexagons down dots and boxes is also in there.
<v Speaker 3>Like that game legitimately good and I promise you go
<v Speaker 3>to a social gathering and people are like, oh, we
<v Speaker 3>should play games. Put that on, You're gonna have a
<v Speaker 3>good time. I promise you. Everybody loves Yacht Dice, which
<v Speaker 3>is Yatzi. It's the knockout version of Yatzi. And then
<v Speaker 3>I was my worst version of myself and I played
<v Speaker 3>Doda two again, So I really just captured the full
<v Speaker 3>spectrum of all that I.
<v Speaker 1>In two weeks. It's DOA two is still fun. No,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's pretty rough out there. It was fun. No,
<v Speaker 1>not at all.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, like I, for those who don't know, before
<v Speaker 3>I got into games, I was like an esports person
<v Speaker 3>and stuff like that, and I covered Doda two pretty extensively.
<v Speaker 3>I probably have about over four thousand to five thousand
<v Speaker 3>hours in Doda two. Granted, like factor in maybe like
<v Speaker 3>five hundred of that is watching the International and things
<v Speaker 3>like that through the Doda client. Some idle time factored
<v Speaker 3>in there, but no, I've played a pretty significant amount
<v Speaker 3>of Doda two in my life.
<v Speaker 2>I've played so much Dota two that you said maybe
<v Speaker 2>five hundred hours of those doesn't count, and it didn't.
<v Speaker 1>Make it really didn't make it sense. It really didn't
<v Speaker 1>make it.
<v Speaker 2>Still so much it wasn't even like a quarter of
<v Speaker 2>the hours.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, No. Other people will be like,
<v Speaker 3>I've played so much Destiny. I played like one hundred
<v Speaker 3>hours and how I was like, you don't understand what
<v Speaker 3>it means to play a video game. So like, every
<v Speaker 3>once in a while, I just kind of go back.
<v Speaker 3>I have a week where I'll just play some DODA
<v Speaker 3>games and catch up on where the game is at,
<v Speaker 3>what it's been doing. They had a Monster Hunter collab
<v Speaker 3>going over the holiday break, and that was kind of
<v Speaker 3>fun because the old system where you hunt other characters.
<v Speaker 3>Once you do your draft, do you pick your characters,
<v Speaker 3>you go into the game, it's like which character do
<v Speaker 3>you want to hunt and if you kill them before
<v Speaker 3>they kill you, and then you also win the game.
<v Speaker 3>You get different components like you would in Monster Hunter
<v Speaker 3>to then craft into cosmetic sets for different characters that
<v Speaker 3>were based around monsters from Monster Hunter, like Rathlos Zanogre,
<v Speaker 3>stuff like that. So it was a really fun tie
<v Speaker 3>in to have for those characters. I made sure I
<v Speaker 3>got my wind Runner set because wind Runner is one
<v Speaker 3>of my favorite characters. Excuse me, Win Ranger because they
<v Speaker 3>had to change it because of the Blizzard situation.
<v Speaker 1>But it's a it's a vidame. It sure is a
<v Speaker 1>video game of all time. And I've said.
<v Speaker 3>Before that the only way I would ever review or
<v Speaker 3>give a critical consensus on Do to two is if
<v Speaker 3>you guaranteed me that for the rest of my life,
<v Speaker 3>I'm allowed to go into the CMS and change the
<v Speaker 3>score whenever I want, like I get to write my review,
<v Speaker 3>but then I always get to change the score depending
<v Speaker 3>on how I feel that day, and it can never
<v Speaker 3>be static. And because there are some days where do
<v Speaker 3>to two is like, ten out of ten, the greatest
<v Speaker 3>game of all time, and there are some days where
<v Speaker 3>I'm like, DODA two is a mistake and we should
<v Speaker 3>delete it from this earth.
<v Speaker 2>And in the moment after you finished your the most
<v Speaker 2>recent game of Do to two that you played, where's
<v Speaker 2>the score?
<v Speaker 1>Eight five? I get eight five?
<v Speaker 3>Okay, yeah, yeah, like generally positive, but probably lower than
<v Speaker 3>I would have put it in past years. I think
<v Speaker 3>it's just a little it's a little too much, a
<v Speaker 3>little too much these days. I find that happens with
<v Speaker 3>live service games as they go on, is they just
<v Speaker 3>keep adding things because the players who live and breed
<v Speaker 3>this game and read the reddit all day at work
<v Speaker 3>and then go watch the content creators and the content
<v Speaker 3>creators themselves who play the game for eight hours a day,
<v Speaker 3>five days a week just inhale it and live it,
<v Speaker 3>and so they always need more. But then it means
<v Speaker 3>when returning players come back or new players come in,
<v Speaker 3>they're like, oh my god, there's so much here. Well,
<v Speaker 3>how do you keep all this straight? Well, you've been
<v Speaker 3>playing for five or ten years if you have five
<v Speaker 3>thousand hours in the game. But even if you have
<v Speaker 3>five thousand hours in the game, you still come back
<v Speaker 3>and you're like, what do you mean? They drop neutral
<v Speaker 3>shards now, and you just craft an item that lives
<v Speaker 3>as a separate thing in your backpack. And there's weird
<v Speaker 3>new facets that you have to get used to, and
<v Speaker 3>everybody has a facet that you selected before that changes
<v Speaker 3>your gameplay.
<v Speaker 2>It's a lot.
<v Speaker 3>So, yeah, Dota two still exists.
<v Speaker 2>Is that is facet the term that they use.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's a facet every game when you pick your character,
<v Speaker 3>like you lock in your hero and the draft and
<v Speaker 3>then they most of them have two facets and it
<v Speaker 3>will be kind of like a background characteristic. So one
<v Speaker 3>will be like, oh, instead of shooting, so I'll use
<v Speaker 3>bristle back as an example, bristle Back. Instead of shooting
<v Speaker 3>quills when he procks his bristle back, he shoots his
<v Speaker 3>viscus nasal goo instead, so you like slow a lot
<v Speaker 3>more people than he normally would. Bristle Back is a
<v Speaker 3>great character, so sorry it is. It is called viscous naps.
<v Speaker 3>Bristleback is a character who is kind of like a
<v Speaker 3>giant porcupine, and he's called bristle back because if you
<v Speaker 3>hit him and his back is facing towards you, he
<v Speaker 3>has a chance to I think, reduce or not take damage,
<v Speaker 3>and then proc and ability that shoots spines out everywhere,
<v Speaker 3>and those spines deal escalating damage the more you have
<v Speaker 3>taken within a window. And so his whole thing is
<v Speaker 3>he wants to like walk into your team and then
<v Speaker 3>turn his background and just run around and be a menace,
<v Speaker 3>and then everybody will try to hit him and he
<v Speaker 3>just sprays quills everywhere and kills you. He also has
<v Speaker 3>a thing where he shoots like snot rockets at you
<v Speaker 3>that slow you down, and that's like one of his
<v Speaker 3>his abilities is now you shoot more snot rockets, or
<v Speaker 3>you can take seeing red, which means you can activate
<v Speaker 3>your ultimate to get faster and get more stats, but
<v Speaker 3>your entire vision strengths down to like just around your
<v Speaker 3>character and you can't see the mini map or anything
<v Speaker 3>like that. So you literally just tunnel vision in a
<v Speaker 3>fit of rage and get incredible stats and stuff, but
<v Speaker 3>you can't see anything, which rules. I highly recommend playing
<v Speaker 3>the game that way.
<v Speaker 1>Awesome.
<v Speaker 2>Do two.
<v Speaker 1>Cool, We're going to change that score in about five minutes.
<v Speaker 2>What I think. I think whatever the score is. Eric's like,
<v Speaker 2>don't put the must play on there.
<v Speaker 1>Know that there can never be a badge on it.
<v Speaker 3>The best review of DODO two is somebody who had
<v Speaker 3>played three thousand hours and said, I don't recommend doing this,
<v Speaker 3>don't get so responsible.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah it really is. Yeah, well awesome. But yeah, So
<v Speaker 1>those are the games we've been playing over the break,
<v Speaker 1>and we'll probably continue to play into the future because
<v Speaker 1>January is kind of kind of sparse on releases, is customs,
<v Speaker 1>so it's kind of like a good time in general
<v Speaker 1>to sort of go back and play things that we
<v Speaker 1>just would not or will not have time to get
<v Speaker 1>to once the year really starts going in February. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>speaking of games coming up next, we're gonna take a
<v Speaker 1>quick break and when we come back, we are going
<v Speaker 1>to kick off our twenty twenty six Solid Snake Draft
<v Speaker 1>will be right back. Hey, we're back and it is
<v Speaker 1>signed for they twenty twenty six Solid Snake Draft. What
<v Speaker 1>is a Snake Draft, you ask, Well, basically, the way
<v Speaker 1>it's gonna work is that we're gonna do five rounds
<v Speaker 1>where we are each gonna take turns selecting a game
<v Speaker 1>that is confirmed to come out in twenty twenty six,
<v Speaker 1>whether it has a hard release date or is just
<v Speaker 1>has the year twenty twenty six confirmed. We're gonna pick
<v Speaker 1>one game each to sort of form our team, kind
<v Speaker 1>of like a sports draft, you know, we're building our
<v Speaker 1>teams of what we think are gonna be the the
<v Speaker 1>games that we are most excited about. And what it's
<v Speaker 1>gonna do is we're gonna go kind of one, two,
<v Speaker 1>three four in the first round, and then in round
<v Speaker 1>two we're gonna go in reverse order four three two one,
<v Speaker 1>round three one two, three four again, and so on
<v Speaker 1>and so forth. So it's kind of like a big
<v Speaker 1>old wavy snake making its way down the line. Kind
<v Speaker 1>of makes it a little bit more strategic. Knowing that
<v Speaker 1>if you start at number one, you're gonna be the
<v Speaker 1>last one to pick a game at in round two,
<v Speaker 1>so it kind of it just makes for a little
<v Speaker 1>bit more of an interesting draft selection, kind of having
<v Speaker 1>to keep that in mind. So, like I mentioned, we're
<v Speaker 1>gonna be doing five rounds, and to determine the turn order,
<v Speaker 1>we're gonna turn it to Charles Hart, who is going
<v Speaker 1>to determine that the only way that he knows how
<v Speaker 1>as a Dungeons and Dragons d m.
<v Speaker 2>Uh yes, okay, So first I want to ask do
<v Speaker 2>we want to get as a guest? Do we want
<v Speaker 2>to give Geo a positive handicap? So we don't have
<v Speaker 2>to I'm just saying, do we want to do you
<v Speaker 2>want to be courteous and gracious and be like give
<v Speaker 2>him the advantage, or we're just gonna let's just let's just.
<v Speaker 5>I got this.
<v Speaker 3>The DODA player in my heart says, no, you're gonna
<v Speaker 3>play this game?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah? No, My list goes deep.
<v Speaker 2>I'll be fine, Okay, awesome, you want to send me
<v Speaker 2>some bis. Then I got yellow, red, purple, and blue.
<v Speaker 2>Pick one of those colors.
<v Speaker 1>Purple, I want purple.
<v Speaker 2>I'll take red, okay, and then I'll be yellow. So
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna flip the camera around. Do you got a
<v Speaker 2>little pad here where I will be rolling dice? These
<v Speaker 2>are all twenty sided die. Oh my gosh, that's an
<v Speaker 2>amazing set of roles. So I don't know if it's
<v Speaker 2>gonna focus or not. But who is Red? That was me? Ge?
<v Speaker 2>You got a NAT twenty? Here?
<v Speaker 4>Here we go here it is next?
<v Speaker 1>Up? Is Blue?
<v Speaker 2>Gotten eighteen?
<v Speaker 1>All right? That's me?
<v Speaker 2>Purple got a seventeen wow, and then I got a sixteen. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>so it's amazing.
<v Speaker 3>Eric Marcus Charles sounds like, yeah, right, we will barring
<v Speaker 3>something that if it doesn't happen, I'll just edit this
<v Speaker 3>part out anyways. But we will have a graphic over
<v Speaker 3>here on the side to show who is selecting at
<v Speaker 3>the moment and then what games we have chosen.
<v Speaker 1>So we will have that theoretically. Do you have the
<v Speaker 1>order written down?
<v Speaker 2>Eric? Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I put it in the discord Okay, alrighty excuse
<v Speaker 3>me in our high tech GI recording suites.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's see. So I'm sorry, So so yeah, g O,
<v Speaker 1>you're first.
<v Speaker 5>Okay, well first, this is actually a tough situation to
<v Speaker 5>be in. This would have been easier to be in last,
<v Speaker 5>because there's so much to choose from at the top,
<v Speaker 5>and the smart thing to do would probably be to
<v Speaker 5>choose Grand Theft Auto six, But I'm not gonna do
<v Speaker 5>it because it's not coming out this year.
<v Speaker 2>I'll put money on it.
<v Speaker 4>It's not coming out, it's.
<v Speaker 5>Not gonna happen, and it doesn't ever it has a
<v Speaker 5>release date, I don't believe it. So instead I'm gonna
<v Speaker 5>I'm gonna start this off with a more reliable pick,
<v Speaker 5>which is a game I'm more excited about anyways, which
<v Speaker 5>we talked about, which is Resident Evil Requiem coming out
<v Speaker 5>on February twenty seven. Hey, Capcom Swinging Swing and Bangers
<v Speaker 5>Home Run Derby publishing output as of late, a lot
<v Speaker 5>of great games that are supposed to come out this
<v Speaker 5>year that will probably be on other lists here. But
<v Speaker 5>I think even Requiem, knowing like coming off of Village,
<v Speaker 5>coming off of seven, I really think that that game
<v Speaker 5>could be special, and especially them kind of splitting it
<v Speaker 5>up in the way that they are with Leon and
<v Speaker 5>the new character and how I'm hoping that kind of
<v Speaker 5>splits up the survival, horror and the action into distinct parts,
<v Speaker 5>like feels like it could fix a big problem with
<v Speaker 5>every single Resident Evil game that's ever been made. So
<v Speaker 5>I feel good about it. I feel like this is
<v Speaker 5>the one. This is the the job, the series defining
<v Speaker 5>Resident Evil game. I'll put money on it. And also,
<v Speaker 5>we just talked about it, so I got to get
<v Speaker 5>it while it's fresh.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm already upset because that was going to be
<v Speaker 1>one of mine. But it's the name of the game,
<v Speaker 1>all right, So.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, I believe I'm next. The Van Allen Foundation,
<v Speaker 3>We're really excited about our picks this year. We really
<v Speaker 3>think we're going to put together a strong lineup of
<v Speaker 3>up and coming talents, and we two will not be
<v Speaker 3>persuaded by the hype train. We don't believe in the hype.
<v Speaker 3>We believe in the system. We believe in the program,
<v Speaker 3>we believe in the vision. We will take the heart
<v Speaker 3>that drives this program. We will take Fire Emblem Fortunes
<v Speaker 3>Weave as our number one pick.
<v Speaker 5>Let's go.
<v Speaker 3>We love to see the return of an absolute king
<v Speaker 3>in Nintendo's lineup. I think hot off the heels of
<v Speaker 3>two very solid Fire Emblement entries and a series that
<v Speaker 3>really seems to thrive and it's newfound switch Home cannot
<v Speaker 3>wait to see what Fortune's weave does.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, that's not where I thought you were going to go.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm maybe I won't say the game even though
<v Speaker 1>I don't think anyone else would pick the game that
<v Speaker 1>I think thought you would pick. But I'll I'll let
<v Speaker 1>you sabotage yourself in case you for no, no, let
<v Speaker 1>me let me sabotage myself. That's all right.
<v Speaker 3>I'm feeling I'm feeling strong about this. This I mean,
<v Speaker 3>for me personally, this is my personal most anticipated games.
<v Speaker 3>There was no way I wasn't gonna take it number one.
<v Speaker 3>And while you're gonna like get to your turn and
<v Speaker 3>you're gonna say something, I'll be like, dang it. But
<v Speaker 3>I I this This has been what I would say
<v Speaker 3>is one of two of my most anticipated games going into.
<v Speaker 1>This next year. Hell yeah, I keep forgetting about it.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's NETO hasn't really talked about it since
<v Speaker 1>they revealed it, so I have the kind of remindsel, oh,
<v Speaker 1>there's a Fireable coming out this year.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so this is back for some reason. Don't know why.
<v Speaker 3>We'll find out. I guess somehow, somehow, So Thi's returned.
<v Speaker 1>In Fortnite alrighty, my number one draft pick, as tempting
<v Speaker 1>as it is to say grand theft thought was six.
<v Speaker 1>I feel like we're almost a real being hipsters. Why
<v Speaker 1>not just making out a number one draft pick? Can
<v Speaker 1>you can take GTA, You have to take g T A.
<v Speaker 1>But there's one game that I actually am like I'm
<v Speaker 1>more personally interested in, Like I do want to play
<v Speaker 1>GT six, and I'm a GTA fan, but this, you
<v Speaker 1>know what I'm just gonna I'm gonna go with my
<v Speaker 1>heart and my number one draft pick. It's to be
<v Speaker 1>Marvel's Wolverine.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Man, I was so confident you're gonna say this. I
<v Speaker 2>almost said it out loud and I was like, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Ok is because like I'm a huge Marvel fan. I
<v Speaker 1>love Marvel, and I'm also a huge Insomniac fan, like
<v Speaker 1>going all the way back to the original Spiral to Dragon,
<v Speaker 1>I've played damn near everything that studio in ZOMBNIAX has
<v Speaker 1>put out and is pretty much love the majority of
<v Speaker 1>their work, but especially like I love their Spider Man games,
<v Speaker 1>like they proven that they can craft a great original
<v Speaker 1>story in this like established universe and just the loving
<v Speaker 1>care that they put in the Spider man makes me
<v Speaker 1>incredibly hopeful for what they're gonna do with Wolverine, and
<v Speaker 1>that first trailer was a great indicator of like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>they like this. This is as violent as you kind
<v Speaker 1>of have to be with this character, because like, Wolverine
<v Speaker 1>is such a hard character to depict in like a
<v Speaker 1>non R rated setting because his powers are inherently like
<v Speaker 1>like it's like watching the old animated show where it's like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>he doesn't really ever stab anyone. It isn't like a
<v Speaker 1>yeah because you kind of can't where it's like that.
<v Speaker 1>Within seconds of that first trailer for the game, it's like, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they understood the assignment, they know the character that they're
<v Speaker 1>working with. So that makes me very excited. It's gonna
<v Speaker 1>be seemingly a big year for for X Men in
<v Speaker 1>media next year or this year, I guess I should say,
<v Speaker 1>with X Men ninety seven coming back and then Avengers
<v Speaker 1>Doomsday then playing a big role in it seems so Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I'm excited for Marvel's Wolverine sort of like helped leave
<v Speaker 1>the charge on some some good X Men stuff this year.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I'm up next. I I think it would be
<v Speaker 2>really funny nobody picked six do it.
<v Speaker 1>At least in the first round.
<v Speaker 3>Look, sports has a rich history of people who are
<v Speaker 3>expected first round draft picks, like falling to the third
<v Speaker 3>and fourth round and that's just cinema.
<v Speaker 1>That's just beautiful.
<v Speaker 5>Right then you get the snake here, right, don't you
<v Speaker 5>get did you get this?
<v Speaker 1>Do?
<v Speaker 3>We all want to write down the game that we
<v Speaker 3>think Charles is going to pick and then like hold
<v Speaker 3>it up to the camera because I I feel dead certain.
<v Speaker 1>I feel pretty certain.
<v Speaker 2>To well, what have I have I given away some
<v Speaker 2>key aspect of my personality?
<v Speaker 5>Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>Number one, we're going like.
<v Speaker 1>Yeahs. And then my second pick.
<v Speaker 5>Love that.
<v Speaker 1>Even justifying why Lego batmane, You're like, duh.
<v Speaker 2>I talked about it. It's also uh uh, I really
<v Speaker 2>like the real reason I'd be excited for it, regardless
<v Speaker 2>the fact that it's like a Lego Arkham game is like,
<v Speaker 2>those are like two of my favorite series. I think
<v Speaker 2>as a twelve year old, I got uh Lego Batman
<v Speaker 2>two and Batman Arkham City like the same birthday or something,
<v Speaker 2>and it was like, oh, these are the two as
<v Speaker 2>as a as a pre pubescent teen, these are the
<v Speaker 2>two sides. This is adulthood in childhood at the same
<v Speaker 2>time and melding them together to one pot is just
<v Speaker 2>like very very Charles inside you, there are two wolves.
<v Speaker 1>I like that leg I like like I have a
<v Speaker 1>long list of games that I kind of have in
<v Speaker 1>my pool, and I almost chuckled that I even wrote
<v Speaker 1>down Lego Batman, like as if I expected it to
<v Speaker 1>ever survive.
<v Speaker 3>I wrote it on my list and then put parentheses
<v Speaker 3>C H next to it because I was like, Charles
<v Speaker 3>is gonna take this.
<v Speaker 2>It was also think where I was like, I could
<v Speaker 2>wait because I don't think anyone else is gonna take it.
<v Speaker 2>But also I'd be so.
<v Speaker 1>Mad if I didn't get it, assuming we just didn't
<v Speaker 1>do it out of spite, because it'd be funny. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's true.
<v Speaker 2>And then I was gonna say, of GTA six, I've
<v Speaker 2>mentioned this on a podcast before, but I anticipate GTA
<v Speaker 2>six the way I anticipate a political election, where I'm
<v Speaker 2>just like, I'm not even like excited for it in
<v Speaker 2>the traditional sense. I just think it's gonna be such
<v Speaker 2>a big deal. I'm just so excited to see, like,
<v Speaker 2>what is the world even gonna do? You know, like,
<v Speaker 2>how are we even gonna how are we gonna re
<v Speaker 2>I've seen people that's like, dude, when GC six comes
<v Speaker 2>is coming out, no one's going to work that day.
<v Speaker 2>I think we're gonna see a massive, a massive wave
<v Speaker 2>of no one showing up at work. And I'm like, well,
<v Speaker 2>that can't happen, surely. The part of me is like, God.
<v Speaker 1>Gonna shut down on the nineteenth, Like the streets are
<v Speaker 1>gonna be but it's gonna be like the pandemic, Like
<v Speaker 1>the streets are bare, no one's at their job.
<v Speaker 5>I like the way that, like the discourse is rolling
<v Speaker 5>in and you're like at the big map where they
<v Speaker 5>call like county by county and you're like a new
<v Speaker 5>tweet came in from Shroud and Trout says that this
<v Speaker 5>party games.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I I also like the other part of it is
<v Speaker 2>like it has such massive expectations when it comes out,
<v Speaker 2>it will just be a video game, Like it might
<v Speaker 2>be really good, but so it.
<v Speaker 1>Is just a game.
<v Speaker 3>GTA six comes out, Student loans Gone, wife came back,
<v Speaker 3>dog came back, tractor fixed.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So i I'm just yeah, that's that's how I feel
<v Speaker 2>with GTA six, Or it's like I'm excited for and
<v Speaker 2>it kind of has nothing to do with the specifics
<v Speaker 2>of the game. I'm sure it'll be fun.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of where met too, Like I'm
<v Speaker 1>a GTA fan. I'm anticipating the game itself, but you're
<v Speaker 1>just more like the cultural impact, like this is going
<v Speaker 1>to change everything when it comes out, for better or worse. Well, definitely, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>because back to me, I'm gonna go with something that
<v Speaker 1>I think I'm safe in that I don't think anyone
<v Speaker 1>would pick this, but it's a game I'm personally really
<v Speaker 1>excited about, and it is a resonance a platetail legacy
<v Speaker 1>forgot about. I am a big fan of those blaketail
<v Speaker 1>games or some of my like I don't get to
<v Speaker 1>talk about them in like a public form very often,
<v Speaker 1>maybe because there's only two and they don't come out
<v Speaker 1>all that often. But like when the first one came out,
<v Speaker 1>it was such a pleasant surprise, Like I played it
<v Speaker 1>and just was like enthralled with it and like the
<v Speaker 1>storytelling and the characters and just how dark it was,
<v Speaker 1>and I was like, I really like a Micio and
<v Speaker 1>Hugo and his story of just like if you just
<v Speaker 1>want to watch these sweet kids just get beat the
<v Speaker 1>hell for like twelve hours, it's like very compelling with
<v Speaker 1>these weird rats. And then the sequel I liked even more,
<v Speaker 1>and specifically I really liked who is now the protagonist
<v Speaker 1>of this game, Sophia, who is like this cool pirate
<v Speaker 1>that you meet kind of like part way through Requiem,
<v Speaker 1>who becomes kind of party your crew, and so like
<v Speaker 1>Resonance is like a prequel set fifteen years before Requiem,
<v Speaker 1>where you're playing like a young Sophia and it's her
<v Speaker 1>kind of traveling to this weird mythical island kind of
<v Speaker 1>searching for like some ancient secret. But like the trailer,
<v Speaker 1>like we haven't seen like too much gameplay of it,
<v Speaker 1>but it gives off like real heavy kind of prints
<v Speaker 1>of Persia vibes, at least in my mind, which I'm
<v Speaker 1>a giant Prince of Persia fans, and it's already like
<v Speaker 1>it's it's tickling up part of my brain that already
<v Speaker 1>makes me excited. But like with that combined with just
<v Speaker 1>just being back in that world but focusing on a
<v Speaker 1>new character who was like a really good one of
<v Speaker 1>the best parts of Requiem in my opinion, is like
<v Speaker 1>really exciting, and like they haven't even shown like a.
<v Speaker 1>I can't even remember if the trailer showed a single rat,
<v Speaker 1>It's been a while since I've watched it. But if
<v Speaker 1>there's no, it would be interesting.
<v Speaker 2>To mass departure for the series.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like literally the plague that the eponymous plague is
<v Speaker 1>like the rats itself, So you would have to think, like,
<v Speaker 1>maybe they'll make some sort of appearance, maybe they'll like
<v Speaker 1>they'll expand on sort of like the lore of that curse.
<v Speaker 1>What if we were the plague the whole time? Whoa, whoa.
<v Speaker 1>I mean a lot of those games is sort of
<v Speaker 1>the like as cliche, it sounds like, oh yeah, as
<v Speaker 1>a Mesi and Hugo travel titty cities, they encounter a
<v Speaker 1>lot of like really awful people that are just terrible
<v Speaker 1>to them in some way. So you're just like, oh, man,
<v Speaker 1>maybe the rats when they inevitably sweep through and kill
<v Speaker 1>everyone here, maybe that's not so bad. But yeah, I'm
<v Speaker 1>super psyched for this game. Like I said, I love
<v Speaker 1>this series and I'm glad that we're kind of taking
<v Speaker 1>like a cool direction with it. Yeah, I'm sorry, good pick.
<v Speaker 1>There we go.
<v Speaker 3>I believe the Van Allen Coalition is back up on
<v Speaker 3>the platform on the podium.
<v Speaker 1>We do.
<v Speaker 3>You know, we understand it's okay to let some of
<v Speaker 3>those those hype machines slide by, but we do got
<v Speaker 3>to acknowledge talent when talent has been asserted and shown
<v Speaker 3>across several titles. And so for our second round draft pick,
<v Speaker 3>we will be selecting Double seven first Light. This is
<v Speaker 3>I am a bit of a Bond fan. I've enjoyed
<v Speaker 3>Bond in my life, but I am a very big
<v Speaker 3>Io fan. I love the Hitman games. I think the
<v Speaker 3>Hitman World of Assassination trilogy is just absolutely incredible. It's
<v Speaker 3>secretly the best Looney Tunes game that isn't about Looney Tunes,
<v Speaker 3>but what if Bugs Bunny was a hit Man that
<v Speaker 3>was taking out people. I think the way they construct
<v Speaker 3>their sandboxes and the way their worlds function, and the
<v Speaker 3>way you kind of have to move as a virus
<v Speaker 3>within the machine is just so well done in ways
<v Speaker 3>that astonish me every time I go back to those games,
<v Speaker 3>and I cannot wait to see what they do with Bond,
<v Speaker 3>who is kind of that loose cog in the machine
<v Speaker 3>but has to be a little bit more present. Charismatic,
<v Speaker 3>is kind of a character with a capital C rather
<v Speaker 3>than Agent forty seven, who wants to fade into the background.
<v Speaker 3>A little bit curious to see what they do with that,
<v Speaker 3>But I really do think that if it nails the
<v Speaker 3>landing h This was a very inspired pick for a
<v Speaker 3>studio to make a Bond game, because traditionally, when you
<v Speaker 3>think of Bond games, they're action games, they're shooters. They're
<v Speaker 3>very driven by the actions that Bond does and not
<v Speaker 3>necessarily the character that Bond is. And I think, Io,
<v Speaker 3>could you know this, this side of doing a telltale
<v Speaker 3>Bond game is the closest thing we could get to
<v Speaker 3>having Bond feel like the character present in the virtual space.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm really excited for that. Hell yeah, all right,
<v Speaker 1>So I get to two picks here, Yeah, well do
<v Speaker 1>your I meant to do this last time, but do
<v Speaker 1>your round two pick and then we'll do a quick
<v Speaker 1>recap of everything that round and then it will jump
<v Speaker 1>to your round pack.
<v Speaker 5>Okay, for my round two pick, I want to I
<v Speaker 5>want to There's there's a lot of big stuff that
<v Speaker 5>I could pick here, a lot of a lot of
<v Speaker 5>big games, and maybe I'll pick pick one. In round three.
<v Speaker 5>I want to go with something that's honestly still pretty big,
<v Speaker 5>but I think maybe an unusual pick just because it's
<v Speaker 5>more of a genre game, and that is a game
<v Speaker 5>that I think is going to be killer this year,
<v Speaker 5>which is Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls, the new fighting game
<v Speaker 5>from our systems.
<v Speaker 4>ARC system Works, Right, is that is that?
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, that game looks fantastic, stylish. I'm I'm the kind
<v Speaker 5>of person who're like, I'm not good at fighting games.
<v Speaker 5>I can't. I'm terrible, terrible at them, absolutely terrible. But
<v Speaker 5>every once in a while, like every couple of years,
<v Speaker 5>one will come out that I'm like, this is too
<v Speaker 5>stylish or too like just satisfying to play to not
<v Speaker 5>just like get beat up online for a while and
<v Speaker 5>then go like, ah, wow, I'm not gonna play this anymore,
<v Speaker 5>but that was really fun to get beat up online
<v Speaker 5>a bunch. That game looks like it that that looks
<v Speaker 5>like it's going to be the next thing that kind
<v Speaker 5>of like you know, has has a big splash in
<v Speaker 5>the in the fighting game genre and has like a
<v Speaker 5>mainstream crossover moment. It looks incredible And as someone who
<v Speaker 5>is not a big fighting game had like, yeah, give
<v Speaker 5>it to me, I want it.
<v Speaker 1>That that looks great, awesome, did you play the was
<v Speaker 1>it the close betas they were doing. Have you gone
<v Speaker 1>into any of those No.
<v Speaker 5>No, not yet. I don't tell me they were bad,
<v Speaker 5>because then I'm gonna I haven't.
<v Speaker 1>Played them either. I haven't heard anything negative great fighting game,
<v Speaker 1>so I'd be surprised if they like Crap the Bed.
<v Speaker 5>It's guaranteed to win Best Fighting Game at the Game
<v Speaker 5>Awards when it is the only new fighting game nominated
<v Speaker 5>for the award, as is customary at the Game Awards.
<v Speaker 1>I would have disputed you on that.
<v Speaker 3>But they put through two x KO this last year,
<v Speaker 3>even though it was like an early access game quote unquote,
<v Speaker 3>I thought it would wait until the full access is.
<v Speaker 5>Going to be It's going to be nominated again. Multivers
<v Speaker 5>was up twice for that award. That game is going
<v Speaker 5>to be nominated again.
<v Speaker 1>Multiverses came out twice.
<v Speaker 4>That's true, it didn't come.
<v Speaker 3>There are no guardrails on some of the categories, is
<v Speaker 3>what we're learning.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, fighting is very much like listen. We're just trying
<v Speaker 1>to take what we can get.
<v Speaker 2>Man.
<v Speaker 1>Man, if if we got to say double seven is
<v Speaker 1>a fighting game to fill this category, well we'll find
<v Speaker 1>of just your seafood was in.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, Double O seven Fighting game would go crazy.
<v Speaker 1>There's enough characters in that franchise to do it, and
<v Speaker 1>you'd still have to do a no odd job rule
<v Speaker 1>because it would just be Yoda and so Caliber four
<v Speaker 1>all over again. Oh, I was gonna reference Serve bought
<v Speaker 1>from NVC two. But that oh yeah, I mean that
<v Speaker 1>is the odd job of fighting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, alrighty,
<v Speaker 1>So round I guess we'll do a round one and
<v Speaker 1>a round two weeks A round one? Eric, what is
<v Speaker 1>our what everyone's life? Around one?
<v Speaker 2>Are?
<v Speaker 3>Our picks were Marcus with Marvel's Wolverine, Geo with Resident
<v Speaker 3>Evil Requiem, Charles with Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight,
<v Speaker 3>and myself with Firemlum Fortunes Weave. For round two, Marcus
<v Speaker 3>selected Resonance a Plaguetail Legacy, and Geo selected marvel tocn
<v Speaker 3>Fighting Souls. Charles selected Grand Theft Auto six a surprise
<v Speaker 3>second round pick you know sometimes the talent does fall
<v Speaker 3>a little bit far down. And then I selected Double
<v Speaker 3>O seven first, like Geo is next up with the
<v Speaker 3>first selection of round three.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I'll do, I'll do.
<v Speaker 5>I guess a major one that has a release date confirmed,
<v Speaker 5>which is Sarah's the other big PlayStation five game of
<v Speaker 5>the year that we know about. I loved return a lot,
<v Speaker 5>and honestly, in my mind, Returnal might be the best
<v Speaker 5>game of the PS five generation. Still, I think it's debatable,
<v Speaker 5>but like, I really think that game does something special
<v Speaker 5>in the way that it thinks about, like what story
<v Speaker 5>you can tell with a roguelike, right, Like that game
<v Speaker 5>is about kind of PTSD and how you are kind
<v Speaker 5>of reliving the same things over and over again. I
<v Speaker 5>don't know if they're going to take that same approach
<v Speaker 5>with Saro's Housemark, which is great developer, done a lot
<v Speaker 5>of really cool stuff. No idea if they're going to
<v Speaker 5>do that same approach, but if they do, like I
<v Speaker 5>am so excited to see what other kind of story
<v Speaker 5>they can tell in that structure, and man, they just
<v Speaker 5>like get how to do a weird atmospheric third person
<v Speaker 5>shooter that's tough as but really rewarding high hopes for it,
<v Speaker 5>hopes and hard to imagine they won't deliver because it
<v Speaker 5>really does just kind of look like Returnal two with
<v Speaker 5>a different name. So I think that's a pretty safe bet.
<v Speaker 3>Next up on the draft order. I feel like a
<v Speaker 3>running theme here is the strength of the developer, the
<v Speaker 3>strength of the studio. As many have said, that is
<v Speaker 3>something that has been proven time and time again is
<v Speaker 3>a team that makes good games can probably keep making
<v Speaker 3>good games. And this next selection comes from a studio
<v Speaker 3>that made one very very good game and is now
<v Speaker 3>trying to make the second one of it. And I
<v Speaker 3>think there's a lot of question marks about what could
<v Speaker 3>happen there, But I say, if you nailed it in one,
<v Speaker 3>you can probably nail the second bucket too. We're going
<v Speaker 3>to take Slay the Spire two for our third round. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>in some ways, I and I was working on our
<v Speaker 3>entry for this game recently and I having that moment
<v Speaker 3>in the garden of saying, what do we really get
<v Speaker 3>out of getting a second Slay the Spire? And then
<v Speaker 3>I remembered that's like saying do I really want a
<v Speaker 3>second cookie?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you want a second cookie? Like that's it can
<v Speaker 3>only get better theoretically, plausibly, hopefully. But Slay the Spire
<v Speaker 3>one is maybe one of the most foundational pillars of
<v Speaker 3>the modern roguelike, and for good reason. I think it
<v Speaker 3>has stood the test of time years and years over
<v Speaker 3>that game went into early access in twenty seventeen, and
<v Speaker 3>it still feels fresh and lively and modern, and I
<v Speaker 3>cannot wait to see what they do with a second
<v Speaker 3>version of it that looks tuned, spruced up, gorgeous art,
<v Speaker 3>new cards, new characters, knew everything.
<v Speaker 1>Cannot wait for that. All right back to me, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm very happy that my next game survived because I
<v Speaker 1>was not sure they would make it to this point.
<v Speaker 1>I'm super excited for it. My around three draft pick
<v Speaker 1>is Control Resonant.
<v Speaker 5>I totally forgot that that's coming out.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, is this resonant or Resonance? I always forget that one.
<v Speaker 3>I think it's Resonance is resonant, Yeah, resonance.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I love Control. Control. It was almost my Goody
<v Speaker 1>twenty ide. I think it was my number two besides
<v Speaker 1>behind Resident Evil to remake. But that first Control is
<v Speaker 1>such a cool game, Like I just love the concept,
<v Speaker 1>I love the setting, I love the lore around it.
<v Speaker 2>It.
<v Speaker 1>Like I I it made Alan Wake better honestly just
<v Speaker 1>by existing, because like I like the first Alan Wake
<v Speaker 1>just fine. I wasn't like bowled over by Maybe some
<v Speaker 1>people were, but I was like, oh this is fine.
<v Speaker 1>And then Alan Wake two just because it like by
<v Speaker 1>establishing they shared the same universe and like this their
<v Speaker 1>their like lore starts bleeding together. It made Alan Wake
<v Speaker 1>two so much more interesting of a game, just because
<v Speaker 1>you know that there's like the Oldest House and like
<v Speaker 1>the just the Federal Bureau of Control, Like being involved
<v Speaker 1>in it for me enhanced that case. It's like it's
<v Speaker 1>so good that it made another existing ip better now
<v Speaker 1>that they're kind of interwoven. But like like also just
<v Speaker 1>the swing of making it basically a stylish action game,
<v Speaker 1>which as a stylish action Sicko is even better. Like
<v Speaker 1>that trailer looked absolutely nuts that they showed in the
<v Speaker 1>Game Awards. Just seeing Jesse's brother was just like weird, morephing,
<v Speaker 1>like basically like the service weapon, but as a as
<v Speaker 1>a melee weapon that sounds really cool. And even though
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna miss not being in the Oldest House, I
<v Speaker 1>also understand that you probably shouldn't just do that setting again.
<v Speaker 1>And having it spread throughout Manhattan is like like there's
<v Speaker 1>a lot of potential for just how insane like like
<v Speaker 1>they have so much to play with with having access
<v Speaker 1>to like the whole city being like warped by the
<v Speaker 1>Hiss and and everything going on, like it looks insane.
<v Speaker 1>I'm so excited for it.
<v Speaker 2>It's an interesting thing of like the doing control again.
<v Speaker 2>It's where you're saying, like some people might say, like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>doing it again means you would you would put it
<v Speaker 2>in the old house, you put it in the same location.
<v Speaker 1>But they're like, we're.
<v Speaker 2>Gonna do it again, as in, we're gonna take the
<v Speaker 2>like wild like spirit of we're gonna make this crazy
<v Speaker 2>abstract place and just do it in a different spot.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, but a different character too, Like like I
<v Speaker 1>appreciate that they're they're willing to be like we're gonna basically.
<v Speaker 4>Change laws risky.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, it's not. Yeah, it's like I see,
<v Speaker 1>it's almost like better that it's not just called control
<v Speaker 1>too technically, Like even if it is control too, is
<v Speaker 1>that my?
<v Speaker 2>Is it mine?
<v Speaker 3>I believe Charles is next? Yes, Okay, Uh, We're.
<v Speaker 2>At a point now where it's like, okay, I don't
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if any of these are gonn taken
<v Speaker 2>by anyone. So I'm just kind of gonna go with
<v Speaker 2>my heart my third pick, I'm gonna go mixtape.
<v Speaker 1>I'm just gonna take that.
<v Speaker 2>I take it I played a summer game Fest and
<v Speaker 2>I was like this, I love this so much, and
<v Speaker 2>it's just like, I don't know. Perfect example of Eric
<v Speaker 2>was talking about a game before the show that we'll
<v Speaker 2>talk about later, but he started a game like seven
<v Speaker 2>pm and just played it straight until two am. This
<v Speaker 2>is a game that when it comes out, it's just
<v Speaker 2>gonna be like me by myself, lights off, beer in hand,
<v Speaker 2>playing it all the way through one sitting, and I'm
<v Speaker 2>very excited for that. Yeah. So that's round three completed.
<v Speaker 3>That's that's a good round. We got Charles with mixtape,
<v Speaker 3>we had Marcus with control, Resonance, Geo with Saros, and
<v Speaker 3>myself with a sleeve the spire to Charles's backup in
<v Speaker 3>the snake ground. Coming back with our first pick of
<v Speaker 3>round four.
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna take this next one. I feel like I'm
<v Speaker 2>gonna take it away from Marcus. But that's okay because
<v Speaker 2>I do want to play it. We'll see, we'll see
<v Speaker 2>what my next pick is going to be. Phantom Blade zero.
<v Speaker 1>That is on my long list.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, it was in immedia. Okay, that's fine. I don't
<v Speaker 2>feel that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>It's a big, crazy action game. It's like, uh uh,
<v Speaker 2>there's another one I played this past summer and it's
<v Speaker 2>really good, and I remember thinking it looked really good,
<v Speaker 2>and we have like a really big feature on it
<v Speaker 2>in one of our past issues from last year, and
<v Speaker 2>I think the stuff they're doing motion capture is especially
<v Speaker 2>very cool of just like the extent of which the
<v Speaker 2>action looks cool because it's like, oh, a human could
<v Speaker 2>do these movements in a sense and looks good.
<v Speaker 1>Awesome. Yeah, it's a kind of piggyback off that I
<v Speaker 1>played it a couple of years ago in Games Calm,
<v Speaker 1>and like even like two years ago, it looked impressive
<v Speaker 1>and it played just as well. Like that, that game
<v Speaker 1>has potential to be like a like a sleeper hit
<v Speaker 1>for this year. Every time they've shown it, it looks impressive.
<v Speaker 1>And knowing that, like at least the gameplay that we've
<v Speaker 1>played has backed it up so far, like that's that
<v Speaker 1>game seems really exciting. My Round four pick is gonna be.
<v Speaker 1>I feel like I'm gonna go kind of take a
<v Speaker 1>leap of faith here because this is a game that
<v Speaker 1>we really don't know much about and I'm more going
<v Speaker 1>from just one trailer and just sort of like I'm
<v Speaker 1>going off potential more than anything, and also the developers
<v Speaker 1>like it's like a fascinating choice for the style of
<v Speaker 1>game that they're making. My pick is going to be
<v Speaker 1>Beast of Reincarnation. So I don't know this so long.
<v Speaker 1>So this is the This is the game Freak action
<v Speaker 1>like his like action game, like they're big tripa a
<v Speaker 1>fantasy kind of like almost like Asian looking action game.
<v Speaker 1>They announced it last summer. It's the one that was
<v Speaker 1>previously known as Project Bloom. And this is a game
<v Speaker 1>that I've actually known about for quite a while before
<v Speaker 1>it was actually announced, just from just conversations with different publishers.
<v Speaker 1>So it was exciting to kind of see it in action.
<v Speaker 1>But it's like, yeah, you're playing like a like is
<v Speaker 1>this Warriors kind of got like a like a straw hat.
<v Speaker 1>You're battling like these supernatural enemies and this cool kind
<v Speaker 1>of like lush fantasy force. But this is the people
<v Speaker 1>that make Pokemon. Like this, this is a Pokemon team
<v Speaker 1>making something that could not look like any like less
<v Speaker 1>than what you know they're primarily known for. But also
<v Speaker 1>game Freak has a I think they have a pretty
<v Speaker 1>solid history of their non Pokemon projects being pretty good
<v Speaker 1>because they've had like solid games like like Harmonite and
<v Speaker 1>like Timbo to Badass Elephant, I think is like a
<v Speaker 1>totally fine, like side scrolling action game. Like they they
<v Speaker 1>they do interesting things when they get away from their
<v Speaker 1>main bread and butter or Pokemon, but this is like
<v Speaker 1>by far they're like wildest and like most unrecognizable game
<v Speaker 1>because even the other games they made, they're still kind
<v Speaker 1>of like in that sort of like for all Ages
<v Speaker 1>sort of his static at least, whereas this and like
<v Speaker 1>you look at if you saw his trailer and I
<v Speaker 1>told you, like, yeah, that's the team, that's the guys
<v Speaker 1>that make Pokemon, you'd be like, what highly recommend if
<v Speaker 1>you have not seen the Beast of Reincarnation trailer to
<v Speaker 1>go look it up cause it looks awesome and it's
<v Speaker 1>allegedly supposed to come out this year. I'm not told.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like not completely sold on that. I know again,
<v Speaker 1>this has been coming together in the background for a
<v Speaker 1>long time. I know that for a fact. So maybe
<v Speaker 1>it's one of those games it's like further along than
<v Speaker 1>we think. But yeah, I'm I'm putting like my all
<v Speaker 1>my faith in that this is going to wind up
<v Speaker 1>being something really special. It looks super cool good.
<v Speaker 3>The Steam back end describes it as a one person,
<v Speaker 3>one dog action RPG, and I think we might need
<v Speaker 3>to update how we delete that in our back end now.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I forgot about that.
<v Speaker 3>You get a dog too, Yeah, which means they.
<v Speaker 1>There has to be. They're probably better than this. But
<v Speaker 1>if you had a trailer where there's like Texas says
<v Speaker 1>that the protagonist has that dog in her said to
<v Speaker 1>like a like a rap song montage of her like
<v Speaker 1>slicing through all these enemies, and they're like, you do
<v Speaker 1>you have that dog in you be? And reincarnation?
<v Speaker 2>There you go, There we go.
<v Speaker 1>I just did the games marketing for it. You can
<v Speaker 1>thank me later.
<v Speaker 3>For the next round draft pick for the Van Allen Coalition.
<v Speaker 3>You know, we need a lot of things in life
<v Speaker 3>to have a winning team. You need prestige, you need legacy,
<v Speaker 3>you need talent. You also need fifth generation fighters to
<v Speaker 3>control the skies, over the seas, over the land, to
<v Speaker 3>win combat. We are going Ace Combat eight Wings of Thieve.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe the biggest surprise for me in the game awards.
<v Speaker 5>Uh.
<v Speaker 3>I love Ace Combat over I forgot to mention over
<v Speaker 3>the Christmas break, I did boot up ace Combat seven
<v Speaker 3>and start piecing through that again. It was reminded that, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>Ace Combat games just absolutely rip.
<v Speaker 1>They're so good.
<v Speaker 3>It's it's kind of like, I know some people might hear, oh,
<v Speaker 3>it's just a fighter plane game. Yeah, it's a fighter
<v Speaker 3>plane game in the way that there's Microsoft Flight sim
<v Speaker 3>in one you know area, and that's like your car
<v Speaker 3>simulator game, and then over here is like the need
<v Speaker 3>for speed or the like. Honestly the burnout fighter jet games, uh,
<v Speaker 3>mixed with the the middle gear solid storytelling that ACE
<v Speaker 3>Combat always goes for. In ace Combat seven, there is
<v Speaker 3>a giant plane called Arsenal Bird that drops smaller planes
<v Speaker 3>out of its wings to attack you when you try
<v Speaker 3>to approach it. It's the coolest thing that I've ever seen.
<v Speaker 3>And I just love what this team does. I think
<v Speaker 3>they do a lot of really cool things, everything from
<v Speaker 3>amazing graphics and combat and tight ARCADI controls to JPEG
<v Speaker 3>dogs and cut scenes.
<v Speaker 1>I love all of it.
<v Speaker 3>Uh, It's it's all fantastic. Can't wait phrase combat et.
<v Speaker 1>Uh geo I believe Yeah, you.
<v Speaker 5>Know, I feel like I've drafted some pretty major games
<v Speaker 5>so far, big things so I, you know, I want
<v Speaker 5>to get some of the smaller stuff, right, some of
<v Speaker 5>the like the top prospects from from the colleges, you know,
<v Speaker 5>who are slinging incredible, incredible balls down the field and
<v Speaker 5>you're like, man, they're they're gonna they're gonna be a
<v Speaker 5>big thing, and they're.
<v Speaker 1>Gonna get a Juco pickup from the transfer portal.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. So I'm gonna go real
<v Speaker 5>left field here, even though there's some big games on
<v Speaker 5>the table, I'm picking Big Walk.
<v Speaker 2>Big Walk, Baby, I got it.
<v Speaker 5>That's a big deal for Big Walk, So Big Walk.
<v Speaker 5>It is the latest game from Househouse, the developer of
<v Speaker 5>untitled Goose game, and that I shouldn't have to say
<v Speaker 5>anything more for you to know that that should be
<v Speaker 5>something you're paying attention to. Uh.
<v Speaker 4>It is a It seems to be like.
<v Speaker 5>A cooperative hiking game, right, like a chill out hiking
<v Speaker 5>together game, but not in a peak way. It seems
<v Speaker 5>like it's a little bit more like low key and chill.
<v Speaker 5>I don't know a ton about it yet, and I've
<v Speaker 5>kind of tried to avoid learning too much about it
<v Speaker 5>because I just want to play the thing. But you know,
<v Speaker 5>House House really really smart developer. Uh makes very unusual games,
<v Speaker 5>and considering that, like we are in this age now
<v Speaker 5>of like co op games having a big comeback and
<v Speaker 5>people just wanting chill out games with their friends. Big walk, Baby,
<v Speaker 5>that's gonna that's gonna be the game. I'm hyped to
<v Speaker 5>have that on the squad. I'm putting up there at
<v Speaker 5>number four, ahead of some big games.
<v Speaker 3>I have immense respect for you for describing the entire
<v Speaker 3>game without using the word friend slop, because yeah, I
<v Speaker 3>think that's a term we have to leave in twenty
<v Speaker 3>twenty five, that has to remain in that year. Seal
<v Speaker 3>the way, Yeah, a cask of a month Lado style.
<v Speaker 5>This game was also announced like way before that trend
<v Speaker 5>became a thing last year, right, Like this game was
<v Speaker 5>Annaucht a couple years ago, and like I feel like
<v Speaker 5>it can't retroactively be called that, right, Like they're not
<v Speaker 5>cashing in on a trend, right, Like this was something
<v Speaker 5>they had planned for a long time. I feel like
<v Speaker 5>this is more similar to like Flock, which was like
<v Speaker 5>a good antip joint a few years ago. So yeah,
<v Speaker 5>I agree, no friend slop, it's leaving slop behind it.
<v Speaker 2>Looks no more slop.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so no more slop and no more game delays
<v Speaker 1>in twenty exactly.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, it seems like those two things are not going
<v Speaker 5>to line up super well, but will no.
<v Speaker 3>Big Walk looks absolutely delightful. There was a like breakdown
<v Speaker 3>trailer they did, I think at a recent day of
<v Speaker 3>the devs or something, where they just kind of win
<v Speaker 3>over all the stuff and none of it was like
<v Speaker 3>here's the big story and all that. It was just like,
<v Speaker 3>here are things you can do in our world. And
<v Speaker 3>it was absolutely delightful and I was just immediately sold
<v Speaker 3>by it. Cannot wait for this game that was That
<v Speaker 3>was going to be my my sneaky number five. It's
<v Speaker 3>gonna eak out.
<v Speaker 5>Gotcha?
<v Speaker 1>Oh gotcha.
<v Speaker 3>End of round four, Marcus chose Beast of Reincarnation. Geo
<v Speaker 3>took Big Walk, Charles took Fanom Blade zero. I took
<v Speaker 3>Ace Combat eight Wings the Thief. We are down to
<v Speaker 3>our final selection, the fifth pick, and Geo will lead
<v Speaker 3>us off. What are you rounding out your draft selection with?
<v Speaker 5>This is so hard. There's so many really really good
<v Speaker 5>games that I wish I could shout out here. Oh
<v Speaker 5>she had like room for ten, especially on the indie
<v Speaker 5>front like a lot of really great indie games, a
<v Speaker 5>lot of like weird, niche Nintendo games that are announced
<v Speaker 5>for this year that I think like are probably up
<v Speaker 5>my alley a lot more like major Triple A games
<v Speaker 5>that maybe we'll get drafted and maybe won't hear. The
<v Speaker 5>thing that I am going to pick is a pure
<v Speaker 5>me sicko pick. It is someone who I would want
<v Speaker 5>on my team no matter what, thick and thin, and
<v Speaker 5>that is our boy, Professor Layton Baby and the newest
<v Speaker 5>Professor Layton game, Professor Layton.
<v Speaker 2>Bay.
<v Speaker 1>I'm kidding wrong, Sorry, sucker.
<v Speaker 2>Yo.
<v Speaker 5>I've been waiting for this game for a really really
<v Speaker 5>long time. I really like the Professor Layton series. I'm
<v Speaker 5>a big puzzle sicko and it just like also the
<v Speaker 5>adventure game sicko in that way and happy to do
<v Speaker 5>one of these games just like a good little puzzle
<v Speaker 5>book mystery game. I've loved all of these games I've
<v Speaker 5>played mostly and I just have really high hopes for
<v Speaker 5>this one, so I gotta give it. I gotta give
<v Speaker 5>it to my board, Professor Layton. I really hope this
<v Speaker 5>thing like revitalizes this series, especially like being on switch
<v Speaker 5>to where like it has a much larger install base, right,
<v Speaker 5>I'm I'm really hoping that this one breaks out, but
<v Speaker 5>we'll see.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm a fellow Layton Layton stand here and realize
<v Speaker 1>ESP actually reading about the game recently and it got
<v Speaker 1>me wanting to replay Professor lay in the Unwound future.
<v Speaker 1>I think this is like a single to that it
<v Speaker 1>sounds like it sounds like, oh, it's been a very
<v Speaker 1>long time this night that was on the original DS.
<v Speaker 1>I was like, I might have the dust of my coffee.
<v Speaker 1>I just run through that again real quick, like enough
<v Speaker 1>time it's passed where I' probably forgotten the puzzles that
<v Speaker 1>it don't feel kind of do oh.
<v Speaker 3>I never got around to the second trilogy of Leyton.
<v Speaker 3>I only ever played the original trilogy, and so I'm
<v Speaker 3>like really excited for an excuse to just go play
<v Speaker 3>a bunch of Layton games once they lock in a date,
<v Speaker 3>because those are just the coziest chillist games and playing
<v Speaker 3>them on a three DS is like the best format
<v Speaker 3>for it. I hope there's some touchscreen stuff with the
<v Speaker 3>switch to. I think they have said mouse controls are
<v Speaker 3>in the switch to version of Layton, and so that's
<v Speaker 3>like really promising, but I want that sort of like
<v Speaker 3>tactle puzzly feel. That's that's important.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, this game was announced in February twenty twenty three,
<v Speaker 1>three years ago. Professor laon game let me bring in.
<v Speaker 3>Let me break this down for you because this was
<v Speaker 3>a fascination of mine for the longest time. Level five
<v Speaker 3>out of Nowhere held this announcement stream where they were like,
<v Speaker 3>we're back and we're making all these games, and there
<v Speaker 3>was even I think it was somewhat tied to a
<v Speaker 3>Nintendo Direct where a lot of them were getting shown
<v Speaker 3>for the first time, and they announced so many games.
<v Speaker 3>There was a Fantasy Life I, Decca Police Inazuma eleven, uh.
<v Speaker 1>Whatever.
<v Speaker 3>The the Mecca game that they had was Megaton Musashi.
<v Speaker 3>I think yea Police still has not come out also. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>so that the punchline of all this is then they
<v Speaker 3>had just they were like, they're all coming out, and
<v Speaker 3>then they had to start delaying and pushing back. And
<v Speaker 3>they have been pushing some of these games like Decca
<v Speaker 3>Police back for eons, even though I think there was
<v Speaker 3>a playable version at Tokyo Game Show at least a
<v Speaker 3>year ago. Uh, it's it's been wild. But that that
<v Speaker 3>is why Deca is not on my list, even though
<v Speaker 3>I would really like to play that game, I don't
<v Speaker 3>know when it will exist.
<v Speaker 1>Is Deca play? I know we're getting on a weird
<v Speaker 1>tangent Deca Place, but is Deca Place the one? Also, like,
<v Speaker 1>I think people are setting themselves up that think that
<v Speaker 1>it's basically like an astral Chain kind of game, Like
<v Speaker 1>I feel like the astral Chain fan base has kind
<v Speaker 1>of attached themselves to Deca Police a little bit and sposative.
<v Speaker 3>There's yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if there's hopes for that.
<v Speaker 3>It looks like a kind of a turn based RPG,
<v Speaker 3>which Level five has shown that they can do. Uh,
<v Speaker 3>And then also like a detective cop game where you're
<v Speaker 3>kind of solving crimes and things like that, which is
<v Speaker 3>a pretty novel concept. And then you add in there's
<v Speaker 3>like some digital world stuff going on that has a
<v Speaker 3>pretty strong air of digimon about it, and it all
<v Speaker 3>seems to like tie together really interestingly. But yeah, I
<v Speaker 3>mean Level five has been on a tear A Fantasy
<v Speaker 3>Life Eye was very good. It narrowly missed making my
<v Speaker 3>Top of the Year, and I heard really good things
<v Speaker 3>about the newest Inazuma eleven. But it's also like they
<v Speaker 3>they delayed a bunch of stuff, and you don't know
<v Speaker 3>if they're going to stick the landing on a lot
<v Speaker 3>of that stuff, So big question mark. But Layton is
<v Speaker 3>one of those ones that you would hope they land on.
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, good, Yeah, So final selection for for the
<v Speaker 3>Van Allen Coalition. Look, we had a lot taken out
<v Speaker 3>from under us. You know, it's everybody knows. First first
<v Speaker 3>picks of a draft are easy, but you get into
<v Speaker 3>the dog days of the draft and that's where the
<v Speaker 3>real picks shine. Uh And and you know, I'm looking
<v Speaker 3>down my list and there's a lot of stuff here
<v Speaker 3>that I think carries a degree of sentimental value. There's
<v Speaker 3>some expected winners as as could be pointed out. I
<v Speaker 3>think I got to go with my heart though, and
<v Speaker 3>I got to say Pocopia is pretty high on that
<v Speaker 3>list for me. I love Pokemon, Pokemon Poke Hopia, uh, Pokopeia.
<v Speaker 1>If you want to change have I even think it's.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, there is no topia because because there is no
<v Speaker 3>utopia yet, you have to build it. But that's the
<v Speaker 3>goal of the game, the objective. It's yeah, yeah, everyone
<v Speaker 3>knows that Pocopia precedes utopia.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>I so this is a roundabout way that I'm going
<v Speaker 3>to get here, because I will tell you that the
<v Speaker 3>Pokemon aspects certainly does lend a degree of me enjoying
<v Speaker 3>this idea. But the stronger pull for me is if
<v Speaker 3>y'all remember a little series called dragon Quest Builders, maybe
<v Speaker 3>one of the most underrated spin offs in history. Dragon
<v Speaker 3>Quat Builders incredibly good games, and Pocopia seems like the
<v Speaker 3>dragon Quest Builders three that we're not going to get.
<v Speaker 3>So I support the idea of taking a bunch of Pokemon,
<v Speaker 3>also a diddo that wants to be a human for
<v Speaker 3>some reason, and like the weird vibes around that and
<v Speaker 3>all these Pokemon kind of play acting as humans is
<v Speaker 3>kind of fun.
<v Speaker 1>And then having it be a town.
<v Speaker 3>Building sim and where you're placing all these things and
<v Speaker 3>different Pokemon are popping out because you've made the right
<v Speaker 3>biome for them and now they can thrive into your
<v Speaker 3>town and things like that just seems pleasant. It just
<v Speaker 3>seems nice. We should embrace the heart and the pleasantness
<v Speaker 3>in this new year. So that one is going to
<v Speaker 3>edge out a few others that I think are maybe
<v Speaker 3>sure bets, but I'm going to go with my heart here.
<v Speaker 1>Hell yeah, that's a good one. That was also on
<v Speaker 1>my short list purely because of how weird it is.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not even a huge Pokemon guy, but just the
<v Speaker 1>premise of the diddle with his dirty diddle face on
<v Speaker 1>a girl body, Yeah, there's like a weird understated creepy
<v Speaker 1>is that I kind of like my last one again
<v Speaker 1>hard so many games I'm gonna have to leave on
<v Speaker 1>the bench. But this is a more recent announcement that,
<v Speaker 1>again as a fellow puzzle game guy, speaks to me,
<v Speaker 1>and that is Order of the Sinking Star, the next
<v Speaker 1>game by Jonathan Blow and his team at THEKLA to
<v Speaker 1>the mind behind Braid and The Witness, two games that
<v Speaker 1>I enjoyed quite a bit, especially The Witness for how
<v Speaker 1>pretentions it can be, but it still was like a
<v Speaker 1>very brilliantly designed game that I put a crap tone
<v Speaker 1>of time into and never actually finish. And that this
<v Speaker 1>makes me want to go back and replay it and
<v Speaker 1>try to finish it. But this is a game that
<v Speaker 1>it was. It was shown at the Game Awards and
<v Speaker 1>I was lucky enough prior to that to do like
<v Speaker 1>a media pre brief where I got to interview Jonathan
<v Speaker 1>Blow and have him walk me through like live gameplay,
<v Speaker 1>like a demo where he could really break down like
<v Speaker 1>here's what this game is. Hear what makes it special?
<v Speaker 1>And I wish other people got to see it, because
<v Speaker 1>I don't think that trailer they showed really gets the
<v Speaker 1>point across of what really makes that game special, because
<v Speaker 1>on the surface, it's this like, yeah, it's a big
<v Speaker 1>open world game, and it's like you know, top down
<v Speaker 1>grid base, and the puzzles individually look like, oh, these
<v Speaker 1>are puzzles I've seen in like a gazillion different games.
<v Speaker 1>You're moving mirrors around, you're pushing blocks, like oh okay,
<v Speaker 1>But I guess the hook is that there's just like
<v Speaker 1>thousands of them. Is that Is that the big thing?
<v Speaker 1>But it's like, no, the cool thing about this game
<v Speaker 1>is that one each biome is basically a self contained
<v Speaker 1>game in itself, with its own characters and stories, and
<v Speaker 1>each character has its own like special ability and like
<v Speaker 1>bespoke puzzles designed around them. But then eventually the puzzle
<v Speaker 1>the world start bleeding into each other. We're like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>here's a character from this like island that has his
<v Speaker 1>own thing going on, He's gonna encounter this lady that
<v Speaker 1>also has like this other It's it's like like crossover
<v Speaker 1>episodes of like two different series like meeting it. It's
<v Speaker 1>like the Jetsons meets the Flintstones of puzzle games, where
<v Speaker 1>it's like, oh, well, now they got to combine their
<v Speaker 1>like unique quirks to like overcome what are now going
<v Speaker 1>to be like increasingly complex puzzles that continue to blend
<v Speaker 1>all the mechanics that we've introduced along the way, while
<v Speaker 1>also having a broader narrative that is really centered on
<v Speaker 1>this queen that escapes this kingdom, and she's like actually
<v Speaker 1>the protagonist, and she's the character you're navigating in the
<v Speaker 1>overworld before you go into these individual puzzles, but like
<v Speaker 1>she's gaining all the abilities of the individual characters that
<v Speaker 1>you're playing in near old little stories so that she
<v Speaker 1>can get further in the overworld and just the way
<v Speaker 1>that can expand. It sounds in insane on top of
<v Speaker 1>again the sheer number of puzzles that this game has.
<v Speaker 1>But just like like it was one of those presentations
<v Speaker 1>where like as Blow is showing me this and explaining
<v Speaker 1>it in my mind, I'm just like what, like how
<v Speaker 1>how what it's like, and also feeling intimidated for whoever,
<v Speaker 1>for all the people that are going to get assigned
<v Speaker 1>to review to this game.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I'm good. I don't like puzzles. Actually it's crazy.
<v Speaker 3>I hate solving things. I hate riddles. Yeah, it's really like, Oh, you.
<v Speaker 2>Like oreos, here's forty thousand oreos.
<v Speaker 1>Eat them all by next year day Oh, it would
<v Speaker 1>have fanned multiple flavors of oreos, and then those flavors
<v Speaker 1>started bleeding into different combination flavors.
<v Speaker 3>And some of these oreos have shards of glass in them,
<v Speaker 3>and you're not going to know which oreos have the
<v Speaker 3>shards of glass in them.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, just the ambition behind it, and just like
<v Speaker 1>it looks so good. This seems like as intimidating as
<v Speaker 1>the sheer number of puzzles, there's also something kind of
<v Speaker 1>like exciting and like relaxings. I am a person that
<v Speaker 1>finds relaxation and just like chipping away at little puzzles.
<v Speaker 1>So just knowing that, like, yeah, I got like nine
<v Speaker 1>hundred of these things. I'm just gonna sit down one evening,
<v Speaker 1>which is like a cup of coffee. I'm just gonna
<v Speaker 1>work my way through this, and you know, no rush,
<v Speaker 1>because there's no way I'm gonna get through this tonight.
<v Speaker 1>But I just kind of like being able to chip
<v Speaker 1>away at something. And I pray that this game comes
<v Speaker 1>out sooner than later, because the idea of like trying
<v Speaker 1>to get through something this apparently massive before the end
<v Speaker 1>of year for like discussions, the way that we're gonna
<v Speaker 1>have to do for GTA six in November is is daunting.
<v Speaker 1>So I pray Jonathan Blow released this before the summer,
<v Speaker 1>if possible. It's probably not gonna happen, but that'd be great.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah. And to be clear, when you're talking about GGA
<v Speaker 5>six November, you mean next November. You mean November twenty
<v Speaker 5>twenty seven, when it truly releases.
<v Speaker 1>Right right, right exactly.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's now I have to start thinking of twenty
<v Speaker 3>twenty seven as next year.
<v Speaker 5>Oh that's horrible.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and mass effects still won't exist.
<v Speaker 1>No, but yeah, that is my night. Pick Charles, pick
<v Speaker 1>number five. Round out the list.
<v Speaker 5>Still on the table.
<v Speaker 2>Come on, I think the more thing about it, I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot of good games. I might shout out
<v Speaker 2>some honorable mentions, but I'm I'm coming at this from
<v Speaker 2>the respective of like I really want to win this list,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I want I want the fans to love
<v Speaker 2>me so much because I picked the best games of
<v Speaker 2>the most popular game the other stuff I had on
<v Speaker 2>my list, witch Brook, I'm very excited for. End of
<v Speaker 2>Abyss is like a cool like horrory twin stick shooter
<v Speaker 2>scheme called Erosion that was revealed recently. That's like a
<v Speaker 2>time travel y roguelike that looks awesome. Find Your Words
<v Speaker 2>is a cool game from the Einstone developers about like
<v Speaker 2>nonverbal kids at summer camp. It's like, what a great game.
<v Speaker 2>It's gonna be free. That's very exciting, you.
<v Speaker 1>Know, it's also wild. There's that, and then there's Out
<v Speaker 1>of Words, which is I'm also very excited about it.
<v Speaker 1>Like I'm excited for both of the games about like
<v Speaker 1>kids not being able to speak kids.
<v Speaker 3>There's one called Too Many Words, which is crazy. One's
<v Speaker 3>hoarding all of them.
<v Speaker 2>That game took all the words and it's yeah, there's
<v Speaker 2>not a game called Too Many Words.
<v Speaker 1>By the way.
<v Speaker 2>My number five it's going to be The Dusk Bloods. Oh.
<v Speaker 1>That was also my short list.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I was like I almost forgot about this game.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not even like the biggest frum Soft guy in
<v Speaker 2>the world. I just haven't played a lot of the games.
<v Speaker 2>But like new original frum Software universe is awesome. I've
<v Speaker 2>switched to exclusive. It's just like it's just really interesting.
<v Speaker 2>I am anticipating it in the purest sense of the word. Also,
<v Speaker 2>I thought, Eric, you would think it's fun. I looked
<v Speaker 2>up the game, uh, just double checking, it was still
<v Speaker 2>slighted for twenty twenty six. If you go to the
<v Speaker 2>dust Blood's Wikipedia page, the first reference there is an
<v Speaker 2>article you wrote for I gen the number one reference
<v Speaker 2>for the dust Bloods, Eric Fanellen.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I get cited for a lot of weird stuff.
<v Speaker 1>I'm a I'm trying to think.
<v Speaker 3>There was one time when I found out I was
<v Speaker 3>sited on the Wikipedia page for Rainbow Mika for Street Fighter,
<v Speaker 3>specifically because I think I wrote an article about how
<v Speaker 3>like her costume was controversial and there were issues with
<v Speaker 3>like playing sports tournaments and stuff like that with Rainbow
<v Speaker 3>Mika's outfit all one. Yeah, Yeah, I'm like cited for
<v Speaker 3>weird things on Wikipedia.
<v Speaker 2>Page.
<v Speaker 5>I'm cited on the page for the Estelle song American
<v Speaker 5>Boy because I wrote about the Fortnite Chug Jug parody
<v Speaker 5>at something. Yeah, And there's a whole section jug Jug
<v Speaker 5>song and I'm on there.
<v Speaker 3>So that's the best reason to get sighted because there's
<v Speaker 3>like other aspects of that song that you don't want
<v Speaker 3>to go near with a ten.
<v Speaker 1>Foot home, but the chug Jug Yeah. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Do you want to do some some honorable mentions now
<v Speaker 3>that we don't have heart from under us?
<v Speaker 1>Were you done talking about the dust Bloods real quick?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Honestly, don't know. I don't know all that much
<v Speaker 2>about it. I just think people are you excited about?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like the PVB the PvP VE sort of structure.
<v Speaker 1>Does that do anything for you?
<v Speaker 5>Uh?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, in the sense that like uh i uh, the
<v Speaker 2>Night Rain wasn't as so PVPV are you And this
<v Speaker 2>is just proving how little I know about this game.
<v Speaker 2>Are you on like a squad in this game or
<v Speaker 2>can you play it solo?
<v Speaker 1>And you're fighting other It sounds like you're so so
<v Speaker 1>it's like you like the rounds or whatever you want
<v Speaker 1>to call them. It's like you and seven other human
<v Speaker 1>people's and not like a huge pool, are in this
<v Speaker 1>world individually and you are competitors like this is not
<v Speaker 1>a cooperative game, but there are AI enemies everywhere and
<v Speaker 1>bosses that maybe you might have to team up with
<v Speaker 1>people to take them down. So it seems like alliances
<v Speaker 1>are more circumstantial than anything of like we are out
<v Speaker 1>to compete, because this is like I think you're like
<v Speaker 1>fighting to be the last one standing, almost battle Royale ask.
<v Speaker 1>It sounds like, but like sometimes we might have to
<v Speaker 1>put down our swords because like, oh, this giant monster's
<v Speaker 1>here and it's gonna kill both of us.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Personally, to me, that is more appealing than Night
<v Speaker 2>Rain because I'm not as much of a like get
<v Speaker 2>a squad of people and go play a game together.
<v Speaker 2>I'm I just like to sit and play stuff by
<v Speaker 2>myself while other stuff is happening around me and my house.
<v Speaker 2>And also it's like, I don't know, from software, they'd
<v Speaker 2>have to screw up a lot of times for me
<v Speaker 2>to not just be like do what you want and
<v Speaker 2>I'll follow and it'll be fine, Like it'll be fun.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I would say. What gives me hope is Miazaki
<v Speaker 1>had a quote that he was basically because you know,
<v Speaker 1>some of the hardware fans were a little like I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if I want this to be like a
<v Speaker 1>multiplayer sort of focused thing, and even straight upset He's like,
<v Speaker 1>I'm not really a big PvP guy, so I designed
<v Speaker 1>this with people like me that just like solo experiences
<v Speaker 1>of mine. So that does give me hope of like
<v Speaker 1>that this will if you want to. I mean, you
<v Speaker 1>tend we are playing it by yourself if you're not
<v Speaker 1>in a squad. But I guess I think it is
<v Speaker 1>like you can treat this as a solo focused experience,
<v Speaker 1>like I guess if you just pretend that the other
<v Speaker 1>like players or just NPCs that play exceptionally well, I.
<v Speaker 3>Mean, like we had the Revolute because I think for
<v Speaker 3>the longest time people were worried about this genre being
<v Speaker 3>very aggressive and unwelcoming in a lot of ways. And
<v Speaker 3>the crazy thing that happened with our greaders was that
<v Speaker 3>game gets put out and everybody plays super passively and
<v Speaker 3>wants to help each other and doesn't want to get
<v Speaker 3>agro or anything. And like, surprisingly, the dynamic evolved naturally
<v Speaker 3>without really any pushing from the developer or anything. They
<v Speaker 3>just kind of put that realm out there and made
<v Speaker 3>the game what it was, and enough of the systems
<v Speaker 3>and stuff returning in Unison that people wanted to help
<v Speaker 3>each other and not hurt each other. And I find
<v Speaker 3>that fascinating in a vacuum and would love to see
<v Speaker 3>if the Dusk Bloods ends up being something that does
<v Speaker 3>encourage that sort of thing naturally, or you know, if
<v Speaker 3>it just turns into blood sport. You know, it could
<v Speaker 3>go either way. Arkov was kind of that way.
<v Speaker 5>So the other thing that I actually like. At first,
<v Speaker 5>when they announced this, I was like, no way, no way,
<v Speaker 5>it's not gonna work. This is gonna be their downfall.
<v Speaker 5>And then Night Rain when it came out, I remember
<v Speaker 5>reviewing it and being like, oh, this was like good.
<v Speaker 5>I'm not like too totally convinced that they were like
<v Speaker 5>a multiplayer studio, But the post launch support on that
<v Speaker 5>game has been really really strong on Night Rain, and
<v Speaker 5>I think really proved that, like, oh, they actually do
<v Speaker 5>know how to make like a multiplayer game. So like,
<v Speaker 5>I'm way more excited about Dusk Bloods than I was
<v Speaker 5>when it was announced. I truly at the beginning was like,
<v Speaker 5>everyone's gonna pretend this one's good because it's from Soft
<v Speaker 5>and we have to say that all their games are good.
<v Speaker 5>And now I'm like, no, they might be cooking.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Also, it's got vampires.
<v Speaker 5>Kind of what more do you want?
<v Speaker 1>It's the closest thing we're getting the blood Born too.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean this is basically a switch
<v Speaker 1>is blood board of like, hey, we have an exclusive
<v Speaker 1>from soft game. Mm hmm. You'll be begging us for
<v Speaker 1>a remaster in five years. But awesome. That that wraps
<v Speaker 1>it up. So what is our our Round five recap?
<v Speaker 3>Eric Our final lists? Marcus had Marvel's Wolverine Resonance, a Plaguetail, Legacy,
<v Speaker 3>Control Resonant, Beast of Reincarnation, and Order of the Sinking
<v Speaker 3>Star like that. Geo selected Resident Evil, Requiem, Marvel Tocon
<v Speaker 3>Fighting Souls, Sorrows, Big Walk, and Professor Layton in the
<v Speaker 3>New World of Steam. That's one of those lists that
<v Speaker 3>I read and I'm like, dang, that's a good list.
<v Speaker 3>I want to play, almost like you had the first pick.
<v Speaker 3>Charles had Lego, Batman, Legacy of the Dark Knight, Grand Theft,
<v Speaker 3>Auto six Mixtape, Phantom Blood Zero and the Dusk Bloods.
<v Speaker 3>That is the funniest thing to read in the world
<v Speaker 3>out Loud Legacy of the Dark Knight and also Grand
<v Speaker 3>Theft Autos in that order.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 5>Uh.
<v Speaker 3>And then I myself Eric selected Fire Emblem, Fortunes, Weave
<v Speaker 3>at Double O seven, First Light, Slay the Spire, to
<v Speaker 3>Ace Combat eight, Wings of Thieve, and Pokemon poc Opia.
<v Speaker 3>I told myself going into this year, I'm going to
<v Speaker 3>be firmly on my own brand, and I feel that
<v Speaker 3>this list reflects that I narrowly did not put Trails
<v Speaker 3>in the Sky Second Chapter or Adventures of Elliott the
<v Speaker 3>Millennium Tales on here. Those are two that were kind
<v Speaker 3>of runners up there, but I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>Those are just kind of.
<v Speaker 3>Feel like known quantities at this point out of yeah,
<v Speaker 3>want to get adventurous.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well awesome. It sounds like it's gonna be a
<v Speaker 1>good year. Hopefully if everything that we say, maybe none
<v Speaker 1>of our games come out. Maybe everything is still late
<v Speaker 1>into twenty seven.
<v Speaker 2>Don't even joke about Lego Batman.
<v Speaker 1>We're delaying everything now. Lego Batman already moved the moment
<v Speaker 1>GTA got pushed out of made. Lego Batman was the
<v Speaker 1>first game a slider right in what are you taking this?
<v Speaker 3>Every publisher says we're not going to release a game
<v Speaker 3>until Grand Theft Auto six comes out, like they.
<v Speaker 1>Just say, strike November is going to be one release.
<v Speaker 1>No one's yeah, schedule anything in November.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and three months after it, and they all released.
<v Speaker 1>Their games exactly. It's gonna be a busy January. But yeah, everyone,
<v Speaker 1>thanks for listening. Of course, let us know in the comments,
<v Speaker 1>whose draft list do you think is the best or
<v Speaker 1>your favorite? We'll keep an eye out. We should have
<v Speaker 1>put stakes on this, We should have bet, like we
<v Speaker 1>should have counted, like who who got the most votes
<v Speaker 1>from the community, and that's something on the line. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know, oh, I thought.
<v Speaker 3>I think the funnier thing would just be to revisit
<v Speaker 3>this list at the end of the year and be like, okay,
<v Speaker 3>whose games came out. Let's look at the Metacritic, like
<v Speaker 3>the combined. We're basically just doing Fantasy critic at that point.
<v Speaker 2>So, yeah, does a game, does a game that doesn't
<v Speaker 2>come out? What do we set that at for the
<v Speaker 2>numbers purposes?
<v Speaker 1>Is that is zero zero?
<v Speaker 3>I think that's a minus one hundred. I had a
<v Speaker 3>professor in journalism school who your papers started at one hundred,
<v Speaker 3>and you would lose points for things that you did wrong,
<v Speaker 3>and if you got a name date, place, or any
<v Speaker 3>sort of event that you could verify through readily available information. Wrong,
<v Speaker 3>it was minus fifty points. So if you wrote November
<v Speaker 3>eighteenth instead of seventeenth, it was minus fifty points.
<v Speaker 1>I mean that makes sense, that's within your I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if we should be penalized for other people's decision
<v Speaker 1>making on their release dates.
<v Speaker 3>No, that was that was a good class because you
<v Speaker 3>learned quick or you switched majors.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. We'll figure it out, but yes, everyone
<v Speaker 1>in the comments, let us know whose list you think
<v Speaker 1>is the best. And thank you for watching uh and
<v Speaker 1>listening to Game and Former show. We'll be back next
<v Speaker 1>week with another episode. Geo, thank you for coming on.
<v Speaker 2>Man.
<v Speaker 1>Feel free to plug anything that you're working on right now.
<v Speaker 1>If anything, you want to shout out yeah, Bill you can.
<v Speaker 5>You can find me on the Blue Sky at Mario
<v Speaker 5>Prime if you need to, and you can find my
<v Speaker 5>writing of a video games on polygon dot com currently.
<v Speaker 5>Thank you for having me.
<v Speaker 2>This was a lot of fun.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, absolutely, yes, feel free to come back anytime. We'd
<v Speaker 1>love to have you back again. Somehouse keeping real quick,
<v Speaker 1>of course. As I mentioned at the top of the show,
<v Speaker 1>Gameformer dot com Slash subscribe Get Yourself a Game and
<v Speaker 1>former magazine subscription. We got our current issue Border Warcraft
<v Speaker 1>Midnight already out in the wild, both for subscribers. It
<v Speaker 1>should be hitting mailboxes or has been hitting mailbox since
<v Speaker 1>we've seen. Got mine in the mail this week, which
<v Speaker 1>has been nice, and also when it should be coming
<v Speaker 1>into bookstores eminently Barnes and Nobles Books a million in
<v Speaker 1>the US newsstands and also internationally in stores we don't know.
<v Speaker 1>We still don't know what stores internationally yet. We're still
<v Speaker 1>waiting to get that information provided to us, so apologies
<v Speaker 1>for people that have been asking, We're still waiting to
<v Speaker 1>learn that ourselves, but trust us it will and actually
<v Speaker 1>has started popping up in certain countries. We've seen. We've
<v Speaker 1>seen the video evidence of the store we saw, we've
<v Speaker 1>seen the issue in Dubai. We've gotten video verification of
<v Speaker 1>game and our magazines in Dubai.
<v Speaker 2>Which is and if you see one, take a picture
<v Speaker 2>and send it to us so we can be like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>so when someone found one in XYZ country.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, absolutely, yeah, do that. It'd be great. Also, new
<v Speaker 1>Super Replay series. If you've been following our Super Replay
<v Speaker 1>right before we went to holiday break, Charles and I
<v Speaker 1>we completed Resident Evil Outbreak. It is in the books,
<v Speaker 1>and this week we have we will kick off or
<v Speaker 1>half kicked.
<v Speaker 3>Off as of the launch of this recording. Yeah, this
<v Speaker 3>will go live on the day that y'all are doing
<v Speaker 3>the super replay.
<v Speaker 1>So okay, well we are starting our next super replay series,
<v Speaker 1>which is Sonic and the Black Night a Charles heart
<v Speaker 1>pick Eric's face, just confusion.
<v Speaker 2>Why Eric, they gave Sonic the Hedgehog a sore? Isn't
<v Speaker 2>so like the coolest game ever?
<v Speaker 3>No, that sounds okay. In my life, I have played
<v Speaker 3>some total of four Sonic games. I have played Sonic one.
<v Speaker 3>I have played Sonic two. Okay, maybe it's more than four.
<v Speaker 3>I've played Sonic whatever the newest one was that was
<v Speaker 3>on the Switch and stuff that was also a two
<v Speaker 3>D Sonic Superstar Superstar. I played Sonic Adventure, which I
<v Speaker 3>didn't like. I'm sorry, uh. And then I played what
<v Speaker 3>was it, the Sonic Advance, which was good. Okay, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>what this taught me was that three D Sonic is
<v Speaker 3>not good. And then I finally got around to the
<v Speaker 3>bio where made Sonic RPG for Acts of the Blood
<v Speaker 3>God my RPG podcast, and that was maybe one of
<v Speaker 3>the worst games I've ever played in my entire life,
<v Speaker 3>bar none in acknowledgment of the total summation of games
<v Speaker 3>I've ever.
<v Speaker 1>Acted, man I was. I was always told that it
<v Speaker 1>was basically mass effect.
<v Speaker 2>But with Sonic, well, the thing in all of those
<v Speaker 2>games there because the Sonic doesn't have a sword given to.
<v Speaker 1>Him, so he gets weapons.
<v Speaker 3>In Sonic Brotherhood, I forgot what it was called Sonic
<v Speaker 3>Dark Brotherhood. Yeah, Dark, Yeah, something like that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, in this game, Like it's it's so.
<v Speaker 2>Crazy. I just really I the reason we're playing this game.
<v Speaker 2>If you're like have listened to the GI Show for
<v Speaker 2>a few years, whenever there's some question about like some
<v Speaker 2>game or like your least the worst game in your
<v Speaker 2>favorite series, or a game you like that no one
<v Speaker 2>else likes, or game from your childhood that no one
<v Speaker 2>else seems to remember. But every reason, I always mentioned
<v Speaker 2>Sonic in the Black Knight because it was I'm pretty
<v Speaker 2>sure my first Sonic game. It was literally my dad
<v Speaker 2>walking into the Toys r Us and is like, my
<v Speaker 2>son's birthdays next week, what games again? Toys r Us
<v Speaker 2>got was like, I don't know, We've got a lot
<v Speaker 2>of these Sonic and the Black Knights that just came
<v Speaker 2>in and no one's buying them. You want to take it?
<v Speaker 2>And I was like, yeah, sure, that sounds fun. And
<v Speaker 2>then I was like, oh my gosh, Sonic has a
<v Speaker 2>sword and it's just so weird that I am really
<v Speaker 2>excited to revisit it. Okay, okay with an audience.
<v Speaker 1>I'm excited to visit it because I've seen I know,
<v Speaker 1>I've seen the opening cut scenes that I game years
<v Speaker 1>and years ago and was like, this looks so dumb,
<v Speaker 1>I think, and I've just heard it's not a good game.
<v Speaker 1>So I'm excited to be in the passenger seat for
<v Speaker 1>this one because this will be Charles on the sticks,
<v Speaker 1>just just just watching just this weird sort of like
<v Speaker 1>because it was like the second and what was supposed
<v Speaker 1>to be like the Sonic Storybook trilogy that never actually
<v Speaker 1>got a third game, because the first two games, like
<v Speaker 1>the first one was Sonica in a Secret Rings, which
<v Speaker 1>is also not a well not a well received Sonic game,
<v Speaker 1>and then this Black Night too, so it's just like,
<v Speaker 1>let's see what is like now the final game and
<v Speaker 1>this failed trilogy of I'm so excited to start this series.
<v Speaker 1>So yes, like I said, at the time you're listening
<v Speaker 1>to it is the first episode. It's probably already available
<v Speaker 1>to watch on our Twitch channel on as well as
<v Speaker 1>our YouTube channel, and yeah, we'll be doing that every
<v Speaker 1>Friday super replay. You can also go to a Twitch
<v Speaker 1>channel every Wednesday. We also stream usually newer releases, and
<v Speaker 1>also you can follow us on social media of course.
<v Speaker 1>I'm at Marcus Stewart seven on basically just Blue Sky.
<v Speaker 1>I'm on Twitter still technically, Charles, you're at Chuck Duck
<v Speaker 1>three sixty five. You can find Eric at c Mousy
<v Speaker 1>and Gill One more time if you'd like to shout
<v Speaker 1>out your.
<v Speaker 5>Handle, I'm at Mario Prime.
<v Speaker 1>Hell such a good handle, Thank you, thank you.
<v Speaker 5>It's old.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Nintendo is going to pay you for it when
<v Speaker 1>we actually want to use that. Yeah yeah. But thanks
<v Speaker 1>for watching everyone. We'll be back next week when another
<v Speaker 1>episode the Game and Former show. Until then, have a
<v Speaker 1>good one.