Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, And More

<v Speaker 1>Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Game and Former Show, a
<v Speaker 1>weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us each
<v Speaker 1>and every week for a discussion of the ladies, gaming news, reviews,
<v Speaker 1>and exclusive reveals with Game and Former staff and special
<v Speaker 1>guests from around the industry. I am your freshly aged host,
<v Speaker 1>Marcus Stewart. I say that because I had a birthday
<v Speaker 1>this past weekend. I'm still accepting birthday gifts. If you
<v Speaker 1>want to shower those on me, you know, feel free.
<v Speaker 1>Right now, I am joined by three. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>if it's just you guys's birthdays. I'm gonna guess. I'm
<v Speaker 1>gonna name the next everyone else based on who I
<v Speaker 1>think is the birthday order after me. I'm gonna say,
<v Speaker 1>next up is Eric van Allen. Your birthday's the next
<v Speaker 1>after me.
<v Speaker 2>It is not far from now. No, although I'm worried
<v Speaker 2>that you're like trying to probe me for security questions
<v Speaker 2>right now, So if you start asking, I'm will introduce
<v Speaker 2>you an order of mother's maiden names and last social
<v Speaker 2>security digits. Yeah no, I'm not January birthday, so.
<v Speaker 1>Oh okay, that's a good time. I'm gonna say, after
<v Speaker 1>you is the person that seems strangely worried and as
<v Speaker 1>Kyle Hilliard, I'm a December boy. Shut the podcast down.
<v Speaker 1>We've already blown.
<v Speaker 3>Us a couple. I'm a Christmas baby just twenty third,
<v Speaker 3>just a couple of days before Christmas.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow.
<v Speaker 1>Basically Jesus is what we call you.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's right, thank you.
<v Speaker 1>And then I guess, Wesley LeBlanc, I guess you know
<v Speaker 1>the order doesn't matter.
<v Speaker 3>Anymore July July.
<v Speaker 4>Alrighty close, kind of not really, but you know you
<v Speaker 4>got me.
<v Speaker 1>Right, thank you. I try. That's what I do here.
<v Speaker 1>I'm really good at guessing birthdays. As you can see,
<v Speaker 1>we've got a back show, folks. We're gonna be diving
<v Speaker 1>into our Dragon Quest seven reimagined a cover. Sorry, that's
<v Speaker 1>what wes Lee LeBlanc is here to talk about. We've
<v Speaker 1>also got some Metroid Prime for Beyond impressions from Eric
<v Speaker 1>who took a trip to up in New York correct.
<v Speaker 2>Playing game The Big Apple. That's where they hide all
<v Speaker 2>the power ups. That's where they go when Sam's loses
<v Speaker 2>all of them as Manhattan.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they call it the Big Morphball up there when
<v Speaker 1>she's around. And also we're gonna be talking about Luminous Arise.
<v Speaker 1>We've got possessors, we've got high re warriors. Like I said,
<v Speaker 1>it is a pack shows. We won't waste any time
<v Speaker 1>getting into it. But before we do, just some housekeeping
<v Speaker 1>of course, if you would like to support Game Informer,
<v Speaker 1>and the best way to do it is to get
<v Speaker 1>yourself a Game Informer of magazine subscription. As we mentioned before,
<v Speaker 1>Dragon Quest seven, reimagine our current or upcoming cover story.
<v Speaker 1>It's out now digitally and this beautiful physical addition that
<v Speaker 1>we are holding up right now, we'll be hitting mailbosses
<v Speaker 1>starting in December. If you would like to score yourself
<v Speaker 1>ten issues a year of Game Informer, you can go
<v Speaker 1>to gamiformer dot com slash subscribe. The subscription comes includes
<v Speaker 1>digital and physical. You can also get yourself a digital
<v Speaker 1>only subscription for a reduced price, and five percent of
<v Speaker 1>every subscription goes towards Saint Jude's children hospitals, supporting them.
<v Speaker 1>Probably the thing I'm most proud of, look at us,
<v Speaker 1>Kyle holding up the podcast add in this issue that
<v Speaker 1>just has us in podcasting. It's like inception, that's just
<v Speaker 1>a podcast. Yeah, within a you should have if we
<v Speaker 1>hadn't known that that was going to be that photo
<v Speaker 1>was gonna be taking. I would have held up another
<v Speaker 1>issue that held up age.
<v Speaker 3>Yes.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we got to keep taking pictures in each issue
<v Speaker 2>and go deeper and deeper.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, until it just breaks the podcast like algorithm or something,
<v Speaker 1>which I'm sure every other prodocast on Earth will be
<v Speaker 1>happy that we did. That'll be grateful. But without further ado,
<v Speaker 1>Wesley LeBlanc, you traveled to Tokyo, Japan recently and got
<v Speaker 1>to visit squar INEX to go watch or yeah watching,
<v Speaker 1>I believe you got to play as well Dragon Quest
<v Speaker 1>seven reimagine. Yes, yeah, the remake coming out February fifth.
<v Speaker 1>Tell us how was that? What would you like to
<v Speaker 1>share with us?
<v Speaker 5>It was fun? All right?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so.
<v Speaker 5>It was awesome.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it was my It's my first cover story in
<v Speaker 4>this new era of Game Reformer, so it was really
<v Speaker 4>cool to see my name and a byeline on our
<v Speaker 4>new beautiful, glossy print. I also, and maybe I'm biased,
<v Speaker 4>this is one of my favorite covers we've done.
<v Speaker 5>I like it.
<v Speaker 4>It helps that Akira Toriyama's art is foundational to it,
<v Speaker 4>and he's kind of the goat for a reason, and
<v Speaker 4>our designers did a really good job with the entire magazine,
<v Speaker 4>and I really love all the dragon stuff, dragon Quest
<v Speaker 4>stuff that came out, so make.
<v Speaker 5>Sure you subscribe.
<v Speaker 4>But yeah, I went to Squaringx's new offices, which are
<v Speaker 4>now located in the heart of Shibuyah. They used to
<v Speaker 4>be in Shinjuku and now it's that office is still there.
<v Speaker 4>We went to this fancy office that was kind of
<v Speaker 4>like getting into a spaceship. That's just the office tower
<v Speaker 4>that Square Inx happens to have an office, and it's not.
<v Speaker 4>They didn't make it look like a spaceship. But you know,
<v Speaker 4>Japan and I just when I go, I go to
<v Speaker 4>Tokyo and I'm and you know, I'm from northeast Florida,
<v Speaker 4>and uh, they just seem a little bit ahead of us,
<v Speaker 4>just a bit, just to scoach.
<v Speaker 3>They have bathroom doors like all the way to the floor.
<v Speaker 3>It's like they're living in the Yeah, it's nice and yeah.
<v Speaker 4>I played about two hours of the game and interviewed
<v Speaker 4>a ton of people from the team, Like we interviewed.
<v Speaker 4>We did more interviews than playing the game, which is
<v Speaker 4>kind of how I like to do cover stories because
<v Speaker 4>I don't want to spoil myself too much on the game.
<v Speaker 4>We actually record an n GT you New gameplay today
<v Speaker 4>today that you can go check out on YouTube. In that, myself,
<v Speaker 4>Alex and Eric kind of jump into the nitty gritty
<v Speaker 4>details of this remake and what it means to streamline
<v Speaker 4>a classic remaking this game a second time because this
<v Speaker 4>is not screen because his first time remaking Dragon Quest
<v Speaker 4>seven and some of the changes to combat, And I
<v Speaker 4>highly recommend you go watch that because not only can
<v Speaker 4>you see and or hear what we're saying, but you
<v Speaker 4>can also watch it in real time on the gameplay that
<v Speaker 4>we provide, which.
<v Speaker 5>Is really cool.
<v Speaker 4>But for here, I guess I'll talk about kind of
<v Speaker 4>the trip in general. So we spoke to Takeshi Chikawa,
<v Speaker 4>who's the producer, Masato Yagi the director, and oh my gosh,
<v Speaker 4>I'm blanking on her name. It is the lead scenario writer.
<v Speaker 4>Every time I write, I was just writing a story.
<v Speaker 5>What second, her.
<v Speaker 4>Name is, Sayaka Tagagi. Yes, when we were in the office,
<v Speaker 4>they all had different names. They went by like nicknames,
<v Speaker 4>and that's what we went by. So then writing the
<v Speaker 4>cover story, I had to like, I know their nicknames
<v Speaker 4>that they go by.
<v Speaker 1>Me, what are the names I'll give one.
<v Speaker 4>Ichikawa goes by Ichaitaki. I don't know why it's the
<v Speaker 4>same amount of syllables, and it was kind of just confusing.
<v Speaker 2>Does it have like a double entendre, Like does that
<v Speaker 2>have a different meaning or something?
<v Speaker 5>I don't know.
<v Speaker 4>I asked him, like what he prefers, and he was like,
<v Speaker 4>whichever is fine, very chill, very chill. Team there over
<v Speaker 4>at a Square Enix, So yes, but yes. I spoke
<v Speaker 4>to them, them three about reimagining this game and what
<v Speaker 4>it means to not only remake this game a second time,
<v Speaker 4>but also try to bring it to modern audiences because
<v Speaker 4>the first one was on PlayStation. The remake was on
<v Speaker 4>Nintendo three DS, which was a modern audience device. But
<v Speaker 4>like it's a handheld. This is the first time you're
<v Speaker 4>gonna be playing this on like a big I don't
<v Speaker 4>want to say big boy console, but big boy console.
<v Speaker 4>You know. Sorry, Nintendo three three DS. I love you,
<v Speaker 4>but I like I like watching and playing games on
<v Speaker 4>my TV. And basically it just means taking a game
<v Speaker 4>that takes one hundred hours to mainline and making it quicker.
<v Speaker 4>Because maybe it's because of their ages, they're similar in
<v Speaker 4>age to me, we we we we agreed collectively that
<v Speaker 4>it's hard to find times for games the older you
<v Speaker 4>get during this cover story and talking with them, and
<v Speaker 4>you know, some of us don't have the hundred hours
<v Speaker 4>to put into an RPG anymore, someone with a seven
<v Speaker 4>seven month old at home. I'm very grateful for not
<v Speaker 4>only the original is existing, but Reimagined coming because it
<v Speaker 4>means I can probably beat the game in half the time,
<v Speaker 4>and I do like seven a lot, and I'm excited
<v Speaker 4>to roll credits on Reimagined. But like I mentioned, go
<v Speaker 4>watch that NNGT for some more in depth details about
<v Speaker 4>the remake itself and to see some exclusive footage. I
<v Speaker 4>want to mention here because I haven't really gotten to
<v Speaker 4>talk about it anywhere. Alongside this cover story, we also
<v Speaker 4>myself and Alex got to interview Yugi Horri, the creator
<v Speaker 4>of Dragon Quest, for ninety minutes, which is something that
<v Speaker 4>kind of dawned on me after the interview, which is
<v Speaker 4>great because I didn't want to be stress during the interview.
<v Speaker 4>But he's like the creator of dragon Quest. This is
<v Speaker 4>a seventy one year old man who still has his
<v Speaker 4>hands deeply heavily involved in Dragon Quest. He's working on
<v Speaker 4>Dragon Quest twelve and writing the scenario for it like
<v Speaker 4>this is it's it's pretty high up for me. It's
<v Speaker 4>probably the most high up personnel interview is I'd love
<v Speaker 4>to interview Miamoto or something one day, but who knows.
<v Speaker 5>And it was a very.
<v Speaker 4>Terrifying in retrospect interview because it's just a big figure.
<v Speaker 4>It's a legendary figure. But the interview went really, really well.
<v Speaker 4>There was a room, it was a room full of people.
<v Speaker 4>I don't know if Uji Horri just has like an
<v Speaker 4>entourage that he brings with him.
<v Speaker 1>I think he called it a party.
<v Speaker 4>Actually yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, it's time for his interview,
<v Speaker 4>and like fifteen other people walk in, so it's like
<v Speaker 4>a room of twenty, which is already kind of stressful
<v Speaker 4>for an interview. It's also on camera, so that's an
<v Speaker 4>extra element of stress. And Ichikawa, the producer reimagined, was
<v Speaker 4>next to him, so I had to you know, obviously
<v Speaker 4>I want to talk to Youugi Horri a lot, but
<v Speaker 4>I can't just let Ichikawa sit there and for ninety
<v Speaker 4>minutes and be like, when's he gonna ask me a question?
<v Speaker 4>So it was fun kind of dribbling back and forth
<v Speaker 4>between them two, and we're gonna have a lot of
<v Speaker 4>videos and stuff from that interview. But Uji Horri is
<v Speaker 4>such a kind and humble and give being interviewee. He
<v Speaker 4>was just the most chill dude. And I think something
<v Speaker 4>that I realized like after the fact, with him being
<v Speaker 4>you know, he's seventy one, he's worked on this game
<v Speaker 4>since the nineteen eighties. He's still so heavily involved today.
<v Speaker 4>It was really cool talking to him because I feel
<v Speaker 4>like most figures of his stature that you talked today
<v Speaker 4>aren't as involved, so like they speak a little bit
<v Speaker 4>more broadly, you know. I think about Miamoto, who's now
<v Speaker 4>like a Mario producer, and obviously he knows Mario in
<v Speaker 4>and out, but like he's not gonna be able to
<v Speaker 4>tell you exactly the same things that a director of
<v Speaker 4>a Mario game light because a producer role is just
<v Speaker 4>different in that regard. Yugi Horri, we went down like
<v Speaker 4>every mainline installment and talked about the decisions made on
<v Speaker 4>this sequel, why three was the last of the trilogy,
<v Speaker 4>and well three is always the last of a trilogy,
<v Speaker 4>why he decided to make the first three games of
<v Speaker 4>trilogy and so on why he's even okay with reimagined happening,
<v Speaker 4>Like why are they remaking seven another time? Even though
<v Speaker 4>there's other games people want to remade. And it's really
<v Speaker 4>really cool to talk to someone with so much knowledge
<v Speaker 4>about a franchise and his words, it's his baby. He
<v Speaker 4>wants to work on it till he dies. And I
<v Speaker 4>think it was like a really fascinating look at a
<v Speaker 4>game franchise that has growing popularity in the West, I
<v Speaker 4>think because of Dragon Quest eleven, but it's not just
<v Speaker 4>a different caliber. Yeah, in the Japan it has been
<v Speaker 4>big since the start. It is arguab I'd probably say
<v Speaker 4>bigger than Final Fantasy over there. Actually, like Final Fantasy
<v Speaker 4>is probably what you think of it SCREENIX and Japan
<v Speaker 4>it's dragon Quest. Dragon Quest is like their franchise, and
<v Speaker 4>I'm really excited to see the growth of dragon Quest
<v Speaker 4>over here in the West. Like Kyle mentioned, started with eleven,
<v Speaker 4>I think we've seen these remake projects, the one two
<v Speaker 4>three HD remakes. I think it's all culminating and reimagined
<v Speaker 4>in terms of taking and picking what they like best
<v Speaker 4>from eleven and one two three HD two D remakes
<v Speaker 4>and putting it all together and reimagined with this new
<v Speaker 4>doll like diorama aesthetic that really makes Toriyama's original art scene.
<v Speaker 1>I think that's a photo that I think is in
<v Speaker 1>this issue where you have a photo of the dolls,
<v Speaker 1>the physical dolls that they used for the characters, that
<v Speaker 1>I think is like super cool.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, they're like we say dolls, and you probably think
<v Speaker 4>of like a Barbie doll sized or figurine or something,
<v Speaker 4>but they're like two and a half feet tall. They
<v Speaker 4>stand like pretty big on a table, and they are
<v Speaker 4>so so in depth and detailed, like the materials on
<v Speaker 4>them they showed us like the little templates that everyone
<v Speaker 4>was using, and like the cloth designer and like the
<v Speaker 4>chain mail for Sir MERVN. Like it's all there and
<v Speaker 4>it's all finally detailed. And they took super high quality
<v Speaker 4>three D scans of these dolls and put them in
<v Speaker 4>the game, so like you're controlling the dolls on like
<v Speaker 4>a three D skeleton, but like it's the dolls that
<v Speaker 4>I saw in person that we see throughout the game,
<v Speaker 4>and I think it's really really cool. They spend a
<v Speaker 4>lot of money on the dolls. I won't say how
<v Speaker 4>much because I don't know if that was on the
<v Speaker 4>record out the record, but it was a shocking amount
<v Speaker 4>made locally in Japan. And something that was interesting is
<v Speaker 4>with the box art for Dragon Quest. That's where you
<v Speaker 4>really see Toriyama's art in the earlier entries, because obviously
<v Speaker 4>whatever he draws on a page is not going to
<v Speaker 4>translate to an eight bit or sixteen bit character. You know,
<v Speaker 4>the vibes are there and stuff, but it's just not
<v Speaker 4>it doesn't work. And I think around seven and eight
<v Speaker 4>is kind of where Torriyama's art really started to come
<v Speaker 4>through in the games. I think this is probably next
<v Speaker 4>to eleven, I'd say probably the most Torriyama's art has
<v Speaker 4>really come to life, and I think it's really cool.
<v Speaker 4>It's kind of a shame he's no longer around Rest
<v Speaker 4>in Peace. I think it'd be cool to see his
<v Speaker 4>thoughts on this game. But as for the dolls, it's
<v Speaker 4>because the box art for seven and Toriyama's original designs.
<v Speaker 4>For whatever reason, he drew everyone shorter than usual, like
<v Speaker 4>the monsters. The it's all kind of like this smaller
<v Speaker 4>world scale, and for whatever reason, it made Square Enix
<v Speaker 4>think of like dolls and playing in a dollhouse and
<v Speaker 4>if you go watch the MGT, you can see not
<v Speaker 4>only do these characters look like dolls, but the enemies
<v Speaker 4>that we fight they look like toys, almost as if
<v Speaker 4>you're bashing together your action figures in your backyard. And
<v Speaker 4>then the diorama map kind of looks like Exhibition thirty
<v Speaker 4>threes kind of adds to that more playful fantasy. You know,
<v Speaker 4>maybe I'm playing with some action figures in my backyard
<v Speaker 4>aesthetic and it all really works.
<v Speaker 5>Well for me.
<v Speaker 4>The game is a cozy, warm adventure with some dark moments,
<v Speaker 4>but ultimately it's about these kids coming of age on
<v Speaker 4>an island, hopping journey and maybe getting in over their
<v Speaker 4>heads and figuring out.
<v Speaker 5>How to prevail over evil.
<v Speaker 4>Very classic stuff, but I think what they're doing and
<v Speaker 4>Reimagine really hones in on that warmth and that coziness
<v Speaker 4>and just having just feeling like a joy inside of
<v Speaker 4>you when you play it, which I think is kind
<v Speaker 4>of where Dragon Quests, Bread and Butter is compared to
<v Speaker 4>other RPG series. It's about it's just it just feels
<v Speaker 4>good in the heart to play a dragon Quest, and
<v Speaker 4>I think Reimagined really sings.
<v Speaker 5>To that's it.
<v Speaker 1>When's it coming out?
<v Speaker 4>Yet next year February fifth, on PS five Xbox Series
<v Speaker 4>XS switch to which is cool? And Switch and PC.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, I don't.
<v Speaker 4>I don't know if Square is doing exclusives anymore.
<v Speaker 3>I just laughing how you phrase that, because you're like, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>switch to, which is cool, and then like and switch
<v Speaker 3>which is cool.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, I'm I'm sure it'll be fine. But now we
<v Speaker 5>know better. Yeah, we know.
<v Speaker 4>What what lies, what lies out there for us. But yeah,
<v Speaker 4>that's uh, there's the there's so much more to talk about,
<v Speaker 4>and like I said, our NGT gets into that. I
<v Speaker 4>have already like fifteen stories written for our online month
<v Speaker 4>of coverage. Some are up, some are not. If you
<v Speaker 4>are interested in this game, subscribe, check out the digital issue,
<v Speaker 4>get the physical issue in your mail, but also like
<v Speaker 4>keep an eye on game offormer dot com and our
<v Speaker 4>YouTube channel because we have a lot of content coming
<v Speaker 4>up that I think we'll get into the more niche
<v Speaker 4>and gritty details that I'm not gonna wax on about here.
<v Speaker 1>Nice, well awesome, that's dranged West seven. And also, it
<v Speaker 1>just dawned on me during your conversation that we've somehow
<v Speaker 1>managed to get this far and I don't think anyone
<v Speaker 1>has referred to you as Dragon Wes.
<v Speaker 4>Oh, I'll take it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, So that's gonna be my name for you for
<v Speaker 1>the rest for the rest of the month.
<v Speaker 4>So Dragon West seven. Reimagine I'll cut my hair one
<v Speaker 4>day and come back.
<v Speaker 5>Reimagine you ever had short hairs?
<v Speaker 4>I did my senior year of high school. My grandma
<v Speaker 4>paid me three hundred to cut it because she didn't
<v Speaker 4>like it. And what in high school three? I was like, yeah, sure,
<v Speaker 4>I'll take it. I threw it out again because I
<v Speaker 4>love it. Well, now my price tag is a little higher.
<v Speaker 4>I like my hair a lot, so you know, before
<v Speaker 4>passing a couple years agouse, she used to always be like,
<v Speaker 4>how much would I have to charge?
<v Speaker 5>Pay you now?
<v Speaker 4>And I'm like three thousand, Grandma, the bills have arrived.
<v Speaker 5>I need more money to be three.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah inflation yeah yeah. Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>She didn't go for it, So the long hair resides.
<v Speaker 4>I go to where graves don't ask if she can
<v Speaker 4>drop some bills every.
<v Speaker 5>Now and then, but nothing happens.
<v Speaker 1>Well you got to.
<v Speaker 3>You gotta like cut your hair over the gravestone.
<v Speaker 1>See what happens.
<v Speaker 3>That's what's gonna be.
<v Speaker 5>Some ritual.
<v Speaker 4>I don't know about on Lesha demon or something.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Good, you might get kicked out by security, but awesome.
<v Speaker 1>Moving on to uh to another long running Japanese franchise,
<v Speaker 1>Metroid Eric. As we mentioned at the top of the show,
<v Speaker 1>you went to New York City recently to play some
<v Speaker 1>Metroid Prime four Beyond as part of a big preview event,
<v Speaker 1>also the second one this year, because there was the
<v Speaker 1>switch to event where Metroid Prime four was also playable.
<v Speaker 1>Did you go to that one as well? Or is
<v Speaker 1>this your first time playing Metroid.
<v Speaker 2>I did not go to that one. The first demo
<v Speaker 2>that we played at this preview event was apparently the
<v Speaker 2>same content as that, so I did get to see
<v Speaker 2>that slice, granted on a more recent build of Metroid Prime.
<v Speaker 2>Obviously at this point, you know it's real close to
<v Speaker 2>the date. So but yeah, Metroid Prime four Beyond. I
<v Speaker 2>feel like with this series you always have to kind
<v Speaker 2>of drop your credentials a little bit. I was a
<v Speaker 2>Metroid Prime player from the get go. That was my
<v Speaker 2>introduction to the series on the GameCube was Metroid Prime
<v Speaker 2>one and two. I eventually played Super Metroid. I love
<v Speaker 2>that game. That's a really, really good game. I don't know,
<v Speaker 2>if y'all have heard about this little game called Super Metro,
<v Speaker 2>that's a good one, and you know, kind of dabbled
<v Speaker 2>in the spiritual successors of the franchise since so I
<v Speaker 2>went into Metroid Prime four kind of just curious.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>I was the one who pulled Excalibur from the stone
<v Speaker 2>on this one to go on the strip, and so
<v Speaker 2>I was like, I'm going to go in with an
<v Speaker 2>open mind, see what it's about, and just kind of
<v Speaker 2>get a sense of is this something that's I think
<v Speaker 2>going to appeal to a lot of people. And my
<v Speaker 2>resounding answer coming away from it is that game's really
<v Speaker 2>good and I really want to play more of it,
<v Speaker 2>like whenever soon possible, because it is very Metro Prime.
<v Speaker 2>It looks and plays about the same as you would
<v Speaker 2>expect from Metroid Primary Mastered. I mean, it looks really
<v Speaker 2>good on a switch to it runs smoothly on handheld
<v Speaker 2>and on docked. I saw maybe like a hitch or
<v Speaker 2>two in world transitions, and that's about it. It looks
<v Speaker 2>really gorgeous. The fauna and everything like you are on
<v Speaker 2>an alien planet. Everything's weird. The jungle biome that we
<v Speaker 2>got to explore was really really fascinating and obviously does
<v Speaker 2>the metroid thing introduces you to the game, gives you
<v Speaker 2>all the powers, takes them all away, start at square one.
<v Speaker 2>And the big thing this time around is the psychic
<v Speaker 2>powers that Samus has. So if you look on the box,
<v Speaker 2>you can see like a purple crystal embedded in Samus's helmet,
<v Speaker 2>like right above the visor, and that is how she yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>a little bit like you get these like this diamond there,
<v Speaker 2>and that is what controls these psychic powers. So at
<v Speaker 2>first you can just do some basic like telekinesis where
<v Speaker 2>you're solving puzzles by kind of grabbing a stone and
<v Speaker 2>moving it down, or like grabbing an orb and moving
<v Speaker 2>it somewhere else, and that stuff is interesting. I think
<v Speaker 2>that they do some interesting things with it, but it's
<v Speaker 2>not the most compelling new puzzle mechanic. The one that
<v Speaker 2>really got me is you get the ability to use
<v Speaker 2>a psychic charge shot, which means you charge up your
<v Speaker 2>blaster and then use your psychic powers to control the
<v Speaker 2>charge shot as it moves through the area. And so
<v Speaker 2>I literally in gameplay referenced wanted the curving the bullet
<v Speaker 2>around the room that they do. Everybody on the pod
<v Speaker 2>just nodded at the same time, like, yes, Wanted. That
<v Speaker 2>movie we've all seen, but you always remember that at
<v Speaker 2>that moment where they curve the bullet, and you do
<v Speaker 2>a lot of that in this game, where there's kind
<v Speaker 2>of you're on one side of a door and you
<v Speaker 2>shoot a charge shot up and through this little pipe
<v Speaker 2>system and down and hit the switch on the other
<v Speaker 2>side to open it up. And there's some really cool
<v Speaker 2>puzzles solving elements there that I really really liked already,
<v Speaker 2>a lot of hints of backtracking and things like that
<v Speaker 2>where I would run into a machine it would be like,
<v Speaker 2>you need to use a spark of electricity here, and
<v Speaker 2>I was like, oh, well, I can't do that yet,
<v Speaker 2>so I guess I'm coming back later.
<v Speaker 5>But it was real with the Wanted thing.
<v Speaker 4>Is it like slow down or do you like go
<v Speaker 4>into the perspective of the shot?
<v Speaker 2>It is you like zoom into the perspective and you
<v Speaker 2>kind of follow it like you're directing like a missile almost.
<v Speaker 2>It reminds me of I forget what maybe it was
<v Speaker 2>a Melgear Solid game where you can kind of direct
<v Speaker 2>the mile.
<v Speaker 1>When you shoot arrows.
<v Speaker 2>I've never played Heavenly Swords, so I can't help you there.
<v Speaker 2>Kill of Duty, Okay, yeah, it's a predator own Yeah, sure,
<v Speaker 2>it's It is the quintessential video game. Like you are
<v Speaker 2>tracking the shot. It is a little bit in slow mo,
<v Speaker 2>though it is still in real time because there are
<v Speaker 2>things that will happen because there is a boss the
<v Speaker 2>Bosses that I fought in the demo where it has
<v Speaker 2>kind of shielded weak points and you need to knock
<v Speaker 2>the shields off and then hit all the weak points
<v Speaker 2>in one go because if you like, if you try
<v Speaker 2>to normally shoot them, they will regenerate too fast. So
<v Speaker 2>you need to kind of launch your charge shot and
<v Speaker 2>then do the wanted thing of hitting all the weak
<v Speaker 2>points in a row and then bam, you're you're good.
<v Speaker 2>You've you've opened the boss up two attacks. So but
<v Speaker 2>while it's doing that, it is still trying to throw
<v Speaker 2>attacks at you and things, and so there is an
<v Speaker 2>element of it is still kind of in like super
<v Speaker 2>hot time is what I would call it, where it's
<v Speaker 2>it's slow mode down, but it is still moving and
<v Speaker 2>so you need to be aware of where Samus is
<v Speaker 2>standing when you launch it before you do your big
<v Speaker 2>charge shot attack are equiptabilities or like a no, it's
<v Speaker 2>the way you Yeah, the way you do it is
<v Speaker 2>you just charge up your shot and then you kind
<v Speaker 2>of use I'm trying to remember the button combo you
<v Speaker 2>use basically your psychic vision. There's like a additional bumper
<v Speaker 2>press that you hit or something like that that does
<v Speaker 2>then say like, okay, I want this to be a
<v Speaker 2>psychic charge shot instead just a normal charge shot, and
<v Speaker 2>then you launch it didn't get there. There were psychic
<v Speaker 2>bombs for the morphball. Those were kind of interesting as well,
<v Speaker 2>because those were you could you know, a little boop
<v Speaker 2>them out as the morphball, but then when you go
<v Speaker 2>back out into full samus form, you could then pick
<v Speaker 2>them up with your psychic powers and kind of push
<v Speaker 2>them at things or put them in places. And I
<v Speaker 2>didn't get a lot of puzzles in the area I
<v Speaker 2>was in that use that, but it was kind of
<v Speaker 2>an interesting thing to say, like, hey, you probably do
<v Speaker 2>some interesting things with moving morphballs around the environment, like
<v Speaker 2>morph bombs around the environment. Just a lot of like
<v Speaker 2>kinetic moving and placing that I thought was a really
<v Speaker 2>interesting direction to take all of this. Compared to prime
<v Speaker 2>I normally associate with using your visor, and the visor's
<v Speaker 2>kind of your constant guide and your constant puzzle solving ability,
<v Speaker 2>and whenever you're stuck in a room, you pull the
<v Speaker 2>visor around and you start scanning everything. There's still a
<v Speaker 2>lot of that, but it felt like it added an
<v Speaker 2>extra dimension of interactivity with a lot of the elements
<v Speaker 2>in the area. Just being able to to do stuff
<v Speaker 2>that wasn't just shoot thing or morphball through tunnel or
<v Speaker 2>whatever or hit it with missile. Now you kind of
<v Speaker 2>have this psychic stuff that adds a different element of
<v Speaker 2>puzzle solving. You have to think about, sure.
<v Speaker 1>Pretty are you feeling pretty positive about the psychic power
<v Speaker 1>so far? Has an addition?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think I think so. Yeah, it's it's it's
<v Speaker 2>an interesting dynamic to take those those powers, and I
<v Speaker 2>think it adds a lot. I wasn't really missing any
<v Speaker 2>other like stand I'm sure there will be other standards
<v Speaker 2>of Metroid arsenal attacks throughout the game, you know, beams
<v Speaker 2>and the like, but I could see this with just
<v Speaker 2>the psychic power is doing some pretty good stuff.
<v Speaker 4>The other weirdop or the psychic powers like new to
<v Speaker 4>this preview, I feel like I'm being.
<v Speaker 1>Close.
<v Speaker 2>They showed some of it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, at the last nint I know Direc. I think
<v Speaker 1>the last time he was really features when they announced
<v Speaker 1>the Psychic Power stuff.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it was just get the hands on time and
<v Speaker 4>I'm like, is this a Berenstein thing? Because I swear
<v Speaker 4>that was not there.
<v Speaker 3>And now, remember they made this whole game like at
<v Speaker 3>a certain point, yeah, they kind of like yeah, but
<v Speaker 3>I don't think they really showed anything from it when
<v Speaker 3>Bandy Namco was still making it.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think it was like when the when DK Bonanza,
<v Speaker 1>when they first showed the box art and didn't have
<v Speaker 1>Pauline oh yeah, and then after they announced her they
<v Speaker 1>added her in there, like okay, I guess that's yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's it's I wanted to bring up one other thing, y'all.
<v Speaker 2>Did y'all play the campaign of Halo Infinite?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, you remember how they.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay, okay, well y'all play. I was not present
<v Speaker 2>for that.
<v Speaker 1>I was, I voted, thank you. I cannot take the
<v Speaker 1>heat for that year.
<v Speaker 3>I was Infinite. I actually had quite a good time
<v Speaker 3>with the campaign.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I like the Infinite too. Oh just getting into a
<v Speaker 1>let's not open work.
<v Speaker 2>But you know how Infinite was like, Hey, let's have
<v Speaker 2>a kookie, goofy engineer who piles around with master Chief,
<v Speaker 2>and so master Chief can be all stoic and kind
<v Speaker 2>of doing master Chief things, and then there's this other
<v Speaker 2>guy who's like, ah, master Chief, you're going to go
<v Speaker 2>give the Covenant another bomb on I like doing all
<v Speaker 2>the kind.
<v Speaker 5>Of die It's exactly what he sounded like. I remember
<v Speaker 5>they do.
<v Speaker 2>That with with Metroid Prime. For Beyond, there is a
<v Speaker 2>kooky engineer character who I almost I wanted to take
<v Speaker 2>a screenshot because there's there's a part where he's standing
<v Speaker 2>next to Samis and I wanted to put it in
<v Speaker 2>the preview with the caption me with the six foot
<v Speaker 2>five International or Intergalactic bounty Hunter Batty. I begged by
<v Speaker 2>being a little goofy because that it's like the energy
<v Speaker 2>they have is like Gomez and and Mortitia is like
<v Speaker 2>he's he's just kind of like this, I'm an engineer.
<v Speaker 1>I do funny things. Isn't that funny?
<v Speaker 2>Samus. Then Sam's just kind of stands there like it's
<v Speaker 2>like that, not saying anything, and he's like, okay.
<v Speaker 3>Image you know I'm talking about Eric.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's that energy.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, is this is this character a human? Yes?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you actually see his face. He is a member
<v Speaker 2>of the it was the Federation. Yeah, yeah, you see
<v Speaker 2>his face before he calls up, and it's it's not bad,
<v Speaker 2>but it was a strange choice because I was really
<v Speaker 2>when you first enter this area, this this like lush
<v Speaker 2>jungle biome, like the music is hitting. The music in
<v Speaker 2>this game is fantastic, by the way. It's it's really
<v Speaker 2>really like I love Metroid music already, and it's really
<v Speaker 2>good arrangements in this one. I was when I was
<v Speaker 2>working on the preview earlier, I was listening to some
<v Speaker 2>of the footage as I was kind of like working
<v Speaker 2>around on it. I was like, oh, the arrangements are
<v Speaker 2>so so good. But I was like in the zone
<v Speaker 2>and then all of a sudden, you just kind of
<v Speaker 2>have this this guy that's falling you around and you
<v Speaker 2>run into an alien and he's like, ah, watch your back,
<v Speaker 2>Sam's they're coming over the walls, and I was like,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if I needed that. I don't dislike
<v Speaker 2>his presence, but I kind of hope that that's a
<v Speaker 2>one off thing and not a recurring thing for the
<v Speaker 2>entire game, because I do think that has a chance
<v Speaker 2>to come grating.
<v Speaker 1>They didn't confirm either way, like this is your buddy
<v Speaker 1>for the.
<v Speaker 2>Game or no, no, there's once I found him, I did.
<v Speaker 2>There are moments where I had to leave him to
<v Speaker 2>kind of go scouting ahead, and that definitely did create
<v Speaker 2>a separation because sometimes he would calms you or something,
<v Speaker 2>but he was less talkative when I was not directly
<v Speaker 2>next to him. So that makes me think that maybe
<v Speaker 2>it's just something that they needed to have in this zone,
<v Speaker 2>in this area to kind of like push the story
<v Speaker 2>forward in a way. Because this is also I don't know,
<v Speaker 2>maybe it's been a while since I played Metroid Prime
<v Speaker 2>and the remaster that came out, but it is a
<v Speaker 2>surprisingly talkative game. There's there's dialogue, there's cut scenes. Samus
<v Speaker 2>is not really talking, but other characters like you'll you'll
<v Speaker 2>get into an area and then they'll like talk to
<v Speaker 2>Samu's and be like, oh, thank goodness you're here. There's
<v Speaker 2>space pirates out that way. We got to go stop them.
<v Speaker 3>If I remember correctly, three Metrood Prime three was the
<v Speaker 3>first one that yeah i'd spoken, yeah right.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, yeah, so I was just gonna bring it up.
<v Speaker 1>It sounds like Prime three.
<v Speaker 2>I never got around to Prime three, but I was
<v Speaker 2>talking to some other people who had done the preview
<v Speaker 2>and they were making comparisons to Metroid Prime three, So
<v Speaker 2>I would not be surprised if there's some influence from
<v Speaker 2>that side.
<v Speaker 5>I don't.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's really good in three market. I actually don't
<v Speaker 3>think she does.
<v Speaker 1>No, she doesn't. I don't believe. I think wasn't it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>she's yeah, doesn't shut up in that game. From what
<v Speaker 1>I remember, she doesn't talking through it. It's kind of
<v Speaker 1>like everyone's just talking to her.
<v Speaker 2>And under and she she does not talk in FORO either.
<v Speaker 2>I did not hear any Sam's dialogue, which is it's
<v Speaker 2>weird to be like does she talk? But that I
<v Speaker 2>do think they kind of play off that a little
<v Speaker 2>bit with the talkative guy of you know, her being
<v Speaker 2>you know, strong, silent type, and then and then him
<v Speaker 2>kind of being like tried to do jokes and them
<v Speaker 2>not really landing and stuff like that. So it's it's
<v Speaker 2>all right, but.
<v Speaker 1>It's gotta be the payoff for the end of the
<v Speaker 1>game where he says a joke that she actually chuckles at.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, you just you see her like kind of
<v Speaker 2>put her her hand up like she's doing a little
<v Speaker 2>old chuckle.
<v Speaker 1>And he's like yes, Like you can see her eyes
<v Speaker 1>for a second Indvisor just like yeah, but they're like
<v Speaker 1>happy eyes. Well.
<v Speaker 2>One other note I did. I played on as many
<v Speaker 2>different control schemes as I could, so I played handheld.
<v Speaker 2>It was really good. Handheld played pro controller obviously works
<v Speaker 2>great there mouse joy con arrangement surprisingly better than I
<v Speaker 2>thought it would be. OK. I know, I think that
<v Speaker 2>has already been demoed in the past too, but I
<v Speaker 2>went in as a skeptic who thought it would be
<v Speaker 2>kind of a novelty, and I came out of it
<v Speaker 2>like I can see valid reasons for why people would
<v Speaker 2>play that way. I'll probably still go pro controller because
<v Speaker 2>that felt the best for the locomotion kind of doing
<v Speaker 2>some of the morphball transforms and then pop outs and
<v Speaker 2>stuff like that. But for actually aiming and shooting, I
<v Speaker 2>really liked using the mouse controls. It felt really good.
<v Speaker 3>Are are you're still like locking on right or is it?
<v Speaker 2>Or you yeah, free aim? Now you are locking on.
<v Speaker 2>But there are several areas, and they show you this
<v Speaker 2>early on, where there's a door that you have to
<v Speaker 2>lock onto. You have to stay locked onto the center,
<v Speaker 2>but then kind of free aim out to different corners
<v Speaker 2>of the door to unlock it. So you kind of
<v Speaker 2>lock into the middle and then boom boom, boom boom.
<v Speaker 2>And there's a lot of that happening, especially when the
<v Speaker 2>action gets a little bit more frantic. You'll kind of
<v Speaker 2>end up in situations where you're locked onto something and
<v Speaker 2>then maybe you want to hit an enemy that's charging
<v Speaker 2>at you to the side. Instead of unlocking, you can
<v Speaker 2>kind of just quick flow over and shoot at it
<v Speaker 2>and then go back, And I actually I felt that
<v Speaker 2>was really smooth. It made the game feel really interesting.
<v Speaker 2>It's kind of weird to get used to because I
<v Speaker 2>had to stop I wanted to either just solely aim
<v Speaker 2>with the mouse or solely aim with lock on, and
<v Speaker 2>I had to kind of get my head around using
<v Speaker 2>lock on to generally aim at where I wanted to go,
<v Speaker 2>and then using the mouse or the right stick to
<v Speaker 2>kind of do precision stuff in the moment. But it
<v Speaker 2>reminded me of Splatoon in that way, if you'll ever
<v Speaker 2>played with motion controls and Splittoo, where you would kind
<v Speaker 2>of use the right stick for big movements of the
<v Speaker 2>camera and then kind of flick for for smaller adjustments,
<v Speaker 2>and I think it works cool.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I like that. Did you get to use the motorcycle? Oh?
<v Speaker 3>Please, that's a better question, Marcus, I like yours better.
<v Speaker 2>Oh did not get to see the motorcycle? I asked,
<v Speaker 2>and there there was no motorcycle gameplay for us to
<v Speaker 2>see that day, so no comment on the motorcycle I was.
<v Speaker 2>I was also bummed about that. I saw the giant
<v Speaker 2>standy they had of Samus on the motorcycle and the
<v Speaker 2>amibo that they I think is out now of Samus
<v Speaker 2>on the motorcycle. But I myself did not get too.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't get to drive it in the game, and
<v Speaker 2>honestly I didn't get to drive it in real life either.
<v Speaker 2>That would have been sick. Make the motorcycle real, Nintendo,
<v Speaker 2>What are you doing? Let me slot the switch into
<v Speaker 2>the motorcycle.
<v Speaker 1>The motorcycle itself isn't ambo.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, yeah, you just you dock it and it
<v Speaker 2>actually runs games a little bit faster, but you have
<v Speaker 2>to be driving. It's actually really dangerous. Don't do that.
<v Speaker 1>Listen. They made a Yukio season when it played on motorcycles,
<v Speaker 1>so why not?
<v Speaker 5>Oh?
<v Speaker 2>I was thinking of Atlantis the Lost Empire when they're
<v Speaker 2>kind of like tapping into those giant fish.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah, Kyle, what was your part question going
<v Speaker 1>to be? It wasn't even a question.
<v Speaker 3>It was just that I liked that Metro it retains
<v Speaker 3>the sort of lock on mechanics because it's like, I
<v Speaker 3>don't really want it to just be like a first
<v Speaker 3>person shoot. I like that it kind of has its
<v Speaker 3>own sort of feeling, you know, it.
<v Speaker 2>Does not feel a first person shooter. Even with the
<v Speaker 2>mouse controls, it still felt like a METROI game, which
<v Speaker 2>was really good. I think the only this is a
<v Speaker 2>weird thing I have. I wish Nintendo would look into
<v Speaker 2>making a thing that you could slot your joycn into
<v Speaker 2>that makes it feel more like a computer mouse, because ergonomically,
<v Speaker 2>I still don't love the way that holding that joy
<v Speaker 2>con sideways feels, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
<v Speaker 2>So I kind of hope that there's something somewhere in
<v Speaker 2>the pipeline, or you know, somebody out there with a
<v Speaker 2>three D printer is making something that you can just
<v Speaker 2>slot in for a more ergonomic mouse control. If that
<v Speaker 2>came out, I would probably like genuinely consider playing this game.
<v Speaker 1>With the mouse. Awesome. Yeah, December fourth for correct Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's not far away. Along after waiting an entire console generation,
<v Speaker 1>it's finally almost here. I can't wait. Ah. Well, you
<v Speaker 1>know it sounds like you know this game you want
<v Speaker 1>to lock in on, but there's been plenty of those
<v Speaker 1>this week, namely the game we're gonna talk about next,
<v Speaker 1>which is Luminous Arise. Kyle. Your review is now live
<v Speaker 1>on the site. I've been playing a lot of Luminis
<v Speaker 1>Arise myself. I'm actually about I'm like on the last
<v Speaker 1>like stage and the sort of the campaign right now.
<v Speaker 1>I'm been playing the crap out of it. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>talk to us about Luminous Arise, Kyle.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's good. I think I give an eight seven five.
<v Speaker 3>I really like Luminez a lot, Like it is second
<v Speaker 3>to Tetris, say in terms of like favorite puzzle games,
<v Speaker 3>I think I can't it's.
<v Speaker 1>The best PSP game.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean that was like I yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I mean that was that defined the PSP. I was
<v Speaker 3>an early adopter. I got one like day one and yeah,
<v Speaker 3>and it was it was Luminez. Like that's like I
<v Speaker 3>had a friend, a couple of friends I got PSPs
<v Speaker 3>as well, and it was all high score comparisons and
<v Speaker 3>stuff like that. And then when it when they re
<v Speaker 3>released it on Switch a couple of years ago, I
<v Speaker 3>fell right back into it and like played that a
<v Speaker 3>ton like that became my like stationary game is. I
<v Speaker 3>would just see how long I could go in Luminez,
<v Speaker 3>you know, and Luminez A rise is great, Like it's
<v Speaker 3>if you like Tetris effect, like if you like that
<v Speaker 3>style of gameplay, like that's what this is. But with
<v Speaker 3>Luminez mechanics, which are fun like that that basic idea
<v Speaker 3>like works really well. And all the different sort of
<v Speaker 3>visual visualizers I guess you could call them that they
<v Speaker 3>have are interesting and cool. There weren't any that like
<v Speaker 3>I was like annoyed by or didn't like, And even
<v Speaker 3>if there were ones that I was kind of like
<v Speaker 3>ready to move on, you do move on pretty quickly. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I mean it's it's really good. I broke out the
<v Speaker 3>PlayStation VR two and played a little bit there and
<v Speaker 3>like Tetris effect, it's like it's it's probably one of
<v Speaker 3>my favorite VR experiences because it is so it's it's
<v Speaker 3>not really so much that you're like moving your head
<v Speaker 3>you're not really moving your head around at all. It's
<v Speaker 3>just that playing in VR lets it like totally overtake everything,
<v Speaker 3>Like your peripheral vision is gone because you're just focused
<v Speaker 3>on Luminez and like you just crank that music up
<v Speaker 3>and you just can really lose yourself to it, like
<v Speaker 3>more than like you know, comparable like action VR games
<v Speaker 3>where you're you know, Razuo four or something like that,
<v Speaker 3>Like you don't you kind of have to sort of
<v Speaker 3>argue with the VR mechanics a little bit, but here
<v Speaker 3>you just sort of like, no, this is just an
<v Speaker 3>excuse to like let it fully take over my senses.
<v Speaker 3>So like it's a great way to play. It's not
<v Speaker 3>like I wouldn't ever be like, no, you have to
<v Speaker 3>play it in VR. That's the only way to get
<v Speaker 3>lumin as. It's like that's no, that's not the case.
<v Speaker 3>It's just probably it's just maybe the most interesting, coolest
<v Speaker 3>way to play it. But yeah, I mean I really
<v Speaker 3>like it a lot. It's it's good. I I had
<v Speaker 3>some like minor frustrations with some of like the online stuff,
<v Speaker 3>Like I don't really like the little avatars floating around
<v Speaker 3>and like, like especially later stages, they're kind of like
<v Speaker 3>there on the peripheral, and I mostly just kind of
<v Speaker 3>found them distracting, especially because their art style kind of
<v Speaker 3>clashes with like the visualizers and stuff like that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they're like weird little mes, but like cube heads.
<v Speaker 3>Like if you're waiting in the lobby to start an
<v Speaker 3>online game, it's like, Okay, this is kind of fun
<v Speaker 3>to have all these Carris. It's always nice to like
<v Speaker 3>that these are real people. That's nothing new, Like video
<v Speaker 3>games have been doing that since, you know, since we
<v Speaker 3>started doing online games. But it was just like not
<v Speaker 3>not like a like a I wasn't because I think
<v Speaker 3>what they're going forwards, like this sense of community. We're
<v Speaker 3>all here, we're all playing Luminez arises in this fun
<v Speaker 3>and I'm kind of like, it's like this is a
<v Speaker 3>place for me to completely lose myself and cut myself
<v Speaker 3>off from like humanity in a way, in a strange way,
<v Speaker 3>I just want to focus entirely on Luminez. I don't
<v Speaker 3>really care that other people are out and also playing.
<v Speaker 3>But that's not even really a complaint so much as
<v Speaker 3>it's just like just not something that really clicked with me.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, so much of the primary game is very good.
<v Speaker 3>Luminez Arise is fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they do some really cool stuff that I mentioned too.
<v Speaker 1>I'm a huge Luminis fan and I've always I've appreciated
<v Speaker 1>Kyle in your coverage of this game that you've gone
<v Speaker 1>out of your way to call out that like the
<v Speaker 1>Tetris effects style was in Luminus first in terms of
<v Speaker 1>like the shifting backgrounds and and like the way it
<v Speaker 1>plays with the soundtrack, and I think like like my
<v Speaker 1>favorite parts and kind of like the coolest reward of
<v Speaker 1>Luminas outside of just succeeding, was just reaching the different
<v Speaker 1>points and levels when in transition to like oh the
<v Speaker 1>blocks have changed, or here's like another new background element.
<v Speaker 1>Like there's some really cool stuff that happens in Luminaz
<v Speaker 1>just like the weird sort of like block designs, like
<v Speaker 1>like without spoiling too many of them, but there's like
<v Speaker 1>whole little scenes sometimes in the blocks, like oh, there's
<v Speaker 1>like a person in this block, Like what is happening here?
<v Speaker 1>Okay in this block and then it's screw to a
<v Speaker 1>bigger person when I added other blocks on top of it,
<v Speaker 1>what is going on here? And just like little videos
<v Speaker 1>like they they they do some really cool effects with
<v Speaker 1>the blocks itself that they I mean, I'm sure they
<v Speaker 1>couldn't have done in the original PSP game, so it's
<v Speaker 1>it's a cool like leverage of the hardware. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I've been playing it. It's been my like either my first
<v Speaker 1>like morning game of like wake helping me wake my
<v Speaker 1>brain up a bit before getting going, or like my
<v Speaker 1>evening game, like I'll just sit down and do like
<v Speaker 1>an entire like I guess chapter for lack of a
<v Speaker 1>better term, in the story campaign and I'm excited to
<v Speaker 1>get to the end, or I'm at the end. It's
<v Speaker 1>been hard because of how fast the move. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>do wish, and I maybe you can. I haven't checked
<v Speaker 1>the options, but I do wish you could use the
<v Speaker 1>shoulder triggers to flip the to flip the blocks instead
<v Speaker 1>of the facebooks, just because I think for me would
<v Speaker 1>I would, I'd be faster with the triggers. But maybe
<v Speaker 1>you can't. I haven't actually looked at the option to
<v Speaker 1>see if you can remap the controls.
<v Speaker 5>From the console side. I think you could. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 5>don't know if you can.
<v Speaker 1>I'm playing on P five.
<v Speaker 4>Luminous on P five. Yeah, I agree, because I only
<v Speaker 4>I just use X. I don't use same oh, because
<v Speaker 4>like I can just go faster rotating in one direction
<v Speaker 4>than both.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, let me tell you the glory of using
<v Speaker 2>a fight pad for these games, of using like a
<v Speaker 2>genuine fight stick to play these kind of rules, Like
<v Speaker 2>I highly yeah, yeah, a fight stick can work for
<v Speaker 2>any game you wanted to work for because it's just
<v Speaker 2>a controllers. So if you want to play Silk Song
<v Speaker 2>on a fight stick, you can do that theoretically.
<v Speaker 3>I guess. I just like I think I would struggle
<v Speaker 3>with it. I like I I've always played with face buttons,
<v Speaker 3>like so I don't think I could switch to shoulder
<v Speaker 3>buttons at this point. But like, I mean, the motion
<v Speaker 3>of like moving the block over, taking a whole elbow
<v Speaker 3>motion versus like a thumb motion, it just seems like
<v Speaker 3>it would slow me down.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, it's just you know, flick back and forth. Also,
<v Speaker 2>I have a I have a leaderless fight pad, so
<v Speaker 2>that has like actual fight buttons on the other side,
<v Speaker 2>like arrow keys. And that's it's it's the new wave.
<v Speaker 2>It's good, awesome.
<v Speaker 4>Were we gonna say, I was gonna say, I have I'm
<v Speaker 4>really enjoying them.
<v Speaker 5>Rise.
<v Speaker 4>It's my first wominess and I have a couple questions
<v Speaker 4>to ask amongst some people who know this series.
<v Speaker 5>Mostly just two questions.
<v Speaker 3>You can skip right to a rise.
<v Speaker 1>It's fine.
<v Speaker 5>There's That's what I was wondering.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, what the heck am I supposed to do with
<v Speaker 4>the block that is like red blue? Sorry, my dogs
<v Speaker 4>are barking red blue, red blue. It screws me every time.
<v Speaker 1>I kind of cross. Yes, yeah, if they fill in
<v Speaker 1>the gaps when you do have like an L shape
<v Speaker 1>and you need to fill in that last square, you
<v Speaker 1>want to kind of good for those that.
<v Speaker 2>Just drop it in, okay, because they cascade down right,
<v Speaker 2>so when you hit something and it's a block, it
<v Speaker 2>won't stay a block like the other side will kind
<v Speaker 2>of move down to fill empty space below it. So
<v Speaker 2>you can kind of use that to get some interesting
<v Speaker 2>angles on stuff.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, there's actually okay, good, I will look into that.
<v Speaker 3>There's actually a pretty I don't know if you've dug
<v Speaker 3>into it West, but there's a pretty thorough like tutorial.
<v Speaker 3>I don't remember where it is in the menus, but
<v Speaker 3>like they give missions.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, yeah, you've done some, but it wasn't as fun
<v Speaker 4>as a journey because it doesn't.
<v Speaker 5>Have all the fun it's not.
<v Speaker 4>But I'm I'm reading I need to go back into
<v Speaker 4>missions and like play through them because apparently it's the
<v Speaker 4>word missions does not evoke tutorial to me, but apparently
<v Speaker 4>it is the tutoris that's.
<v Speaker 5>What it is.
<v Speaker 3>And it also like gives you sort of high level
<v Speaker 3>like because like you have the little l blocks and
<v Speaker 3>then you that are like you know, three and then
<v Speaker 3>simple and you can there's like a strategy. I mean
<v Speaker 3>these strategy feels like such a big word for what
<v Speaker 3>is like a simple move, but like you get, like
<v Speaker 3>you get into the rhythm of using those to make
<v Speaker 3>squares if you have just like a single loose block
<v Speaker 3>and like you line up that and like that's the
<v Speaker 3>kind of stuff that those missions will sort of walk
<v Speaker 3>you through. And then you also get like points that
<v Speaker 3>you can use to unlock like avatar.
<v Speaker 5>Stuff, you know, loomy puns.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so like it's worth it. So I didn't do
<v Speaker 3>a ton of it because I was kind of like
<v Speaker 3>because I'm a because I'm like the best Luminez player
<v Speaker 3>in the world. I'm like a professional, That's what people
<v Speaker 3>are saying. I've been hearing it too. That is entirely
<v Speaker 3>not true, to be clear, But I do have history
<v Speaker 3>with the series. I've been playing it since PSP and
<v Speaker 3>I love it, So I didn't really you know, it
<v Speaker 3>was telling me a lot of stuff i'd figured out.
<v Speaker 3>But I'm sure even like the much later missions, I'm
<v Speaker 3>sure would have stuff then it would help.
<v Speaker 1>Me, you know.
<v Speaker 3>So yeah, good game. I give it an eight seventy five.
<v Speaker 5>And then.
<v Speaker 4>One more question. So whenever you go to the next stage,
<v Speaker 4>it just retains all your your the building you did
<v Speaker 4>from your previous stage. When you beat it, are you
<v Speaker 4>guys able to like get that down? I feel like
<v Speaker 4>I beat every mission almost at the top, and then
<v Speaker 4>it's like next mission and it just gives me my
<v Speaker 4>same board full of stuff, and it's just like an
<v Speaker 4>instant killing. I'm like, this feels bad. Every the game
<v Speaker 4>doesn't boo you, but when you fail, it's like.
<v Speaker 5>Oh, and I'm.
<v Speaker 4>Like, okay, I don't need this.
<v Speaker 1>It's just disappointed.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, there's usually an escalation and then a de escalation
<v Speaker 2>of it because, like I this is also my first
<v Speaker 2>Luminous but I played a lot of back in the
<v Speaker 2>day that tetris on Switch and there's a lot of
<v Speaker 2>that where you're kind of setting up because that's how
<v Speaker 2>I like to plays. I like to set up like
<v Speaker 2>cascading like scores, so that way, when I clear one block,
<v Speaker 2>everything falls, creates more blocks, creates more blocks, and that
<v Speaker 2>kind of thing. And so you can kind of get
<v Speaker 2>into a rhythm and you have that new mechanic that
<v Speaker 2>I forget what it's called, but it's like the the
<v Speaker 2>burst time, Yeah, where you can just do huge clears
<v Speaker 2>and then that'll really help with just reducing it all down.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, that's my get out of jail card when I Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>That's what it's for. That's like, that's the strategy for
<v Speaker 3>using it. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. But to answer your question, Wes, that has not
<v Speaker 1>happened to me because I'm really good at this game.
<v Speaker 1>I've always seen.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, so I just got to So what you guys
<v Speaker 4>are telling me is I just need to get good,
<v Speaker 4>as they say to understand them.
<v Speaker 5>It's I want to.
<v Speaker 4>I'm I love part of this game makes me just
<v Speaker 4>want to turn on to effect because I that's like
<v Speaker 4>one of my all time favorites and I know Tetris
<v Speaker 4>very well. But I'm also intrigued by learning Luminous because
<v Speaker 4>I know people love it and it's very fun.
<v Speaker 1>So far.
<v Speaker 5>I'm so bad at it though.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I mean what's nice is that if you do fail,
<v Speaker 1>like you start from the same board that you're at,
<v Speaker 1>but you get a fresh slate.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, kind of.
<v Speaker 4>This is my one nitpick with the game, and I
<v Speaker 4>had to learn the hard way. There's continue and there's restart.
<v Speaker 4>I hit restart because I just saw the restart and
<v Speaker 4>it just takes you to the very beginning and I
<v Speaker 4>was like, no.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, Wes it does tell you underneath it. I'm
<v Speaker 1>not reading there is a sent that says.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's funny seven rebirth all over again. It was
<v Speaker 2>like the worst offender with that where it was like
<v Speaker 2>would you like to continue, replay or retry?
<v Speaker 1>And you're like, what do you mean.
<v Speaker 3>When you do this game faster? That was my question exactly.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, awesome. Well some might say that to succeed in
<v Speaker 1>Luminous Arise, you gotta play like a man possessed, but
<v Speaker 1>there's another game that centers on possession. No, it's a
<v Speaker 1>good transition, dam it.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I totally that was good.
<v Speaker 1>I have played and beaten Possessors with the s at
<v Speaker 1>the end in a in a parenthesis, So I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if that changes the pronunciation of it at all. Yeah. Actually,
<v Speaker 1>now that I've put in twenty hours in the game,
<v Speaker 1>and I actually still don't understand why that's like that,
<v Speaker 1>I don't think I've gotten a narrative context to explain it.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's for SEO.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Is it like an esthetic thing, like like the Avangelian
<v Speaker 2>remakes did that you cannot reduce? This is like you
<v Speaker 2>cannot possess like that. It's just an aesthetic thing.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe because it's like usually when you do that, like
<v Speaker 1>when you say like like this could be singular or
<v Speaker 1>plural depending on the context. It's like, oh could there's
<v Speaker 1>one person possessed, the protagonist of this game, but there's
<v Speaker 1>also other people possessed, so we're just trying to denote
<v Speaker 1>both of them. I guess I don't know, But this
<v Speaker 1>is heart Machine's new game. Heart Machine probably best known
<v Speaker 1>as the developer of hyper Light Drifter, which is one
<v Speaker 1>of my favorite indie games of its time. They also
<v Speaker 1>did Solar Ash, which was a game I also reviewed
<v Speaker 1>for Game Informer that I really liked. And this is like,
<v Speaker 1>I suddenly this is their fourth game because they had
<v Speaker 1>the hyper Light Breakers, which was the early access kind
<v Speaker 1>of spiritual sequel to hyper Light Drifter, like three D
<v Speaker 1>multiplayer thing that they announced recently was going to be
<v Speaker 1>pretty much never coming out of early access, like they
<v Speaker 1>kind of cease development on it. That was kind of
<v Speaker 1>was fine but had issues. Like I played it when
<v Speaker 1>the launched, it was like eh, But they announced this
<v Speaker 1>game like not too long after, and it was kind
<v Speaker 1>of it was really surprising just to see them doing
<v Speaker 1>two games at once, though given recent things you heard
<v Speaker 1>about Heart Machine in terms, just like the rampant layoffs
<v Speaker 1>over there, maybe that might not have been the greatest move,
<v Speaker 1>which sucks har goes outside a studio, But Possessors is
<v Speaker 1>a I like it a lot. It's interesting. So the
<v Speaker 1>premise of the game is that it's set in this
<v Speaker 1>sort of like this metropolis that is owned by this
<v Speaker 1>very bad corporation who have been experimenting with harnessing the
<v Speaker 1>energy of demons from another dimension, like the capture two demons,
<v Speaker 1>one of which is who will wind up being your
<v Speaker 1>demonic partner, and in their meddling they have accidentally caused
<v Speaker 1>a giant tear in the fabric of reality. Has caused
<v Speaker 1>the demons of that world to just flood into the
<v Speaker 1>city and just run amock. So most of the populace
<v Speaker 1>has just been murdered and then others have been possessed
<v Speaker 1>because the demons can only survive in this world if
<v Speaker 1>they take a physical vessel. There's actually a lot of
<v Speaker 1>really cool like world building in this game that I
<v Speaker 1>really like when they like the way they flesh out
<v Speaker 1>how they're the rules of being a demon and what
<v Speaker 1>you can and can't possess and for how long. It's
<v Speaker 1>sort of the implications of possession is one of my
<v Speaker 1>favorite things about this game. I don't I can't remember
<v Speaker 1>the last bit of like Demon Lord that I've I've
<v Speaker 1>like consumed that really dived into the minutia of what
<v Speaker 1>goes into possession and in a really interesting way. But
<v Speaker 1>you let Eric.
<v Speaker 4>Over your grandma's gravestone and then extend the possess that.
<v Speaker 3>I was actually going to say, allow Wes and Eric
<v Speaker 3>and I to recommend a little thing called chainsaw Man
<v Speaker 3>to you if you want to think about.
<v Speaker 1>I excuse on a second, because I have it within
<v Speaker 1>arms reach you guys. Might I've recently joined the one
<v Speaker 1>down there. Yeah, it's good so far, but you can
<v Speaker 1>a sixteen year old named Luca who gets messed up
<v Speaker 1>during this invasion, like just loses both of her legs
<v Speaker 1>in the demonic attack and watches her best friend get
<v Speaker 1>killed by a demon, and right before she's about to
<v Speaker 1>bleed out and die, she encounters another demon named Rim
<v Speaker 1>who has also been just brutalized somehow, and he proposes
<v Speaker 1>a deal, saying, Hey, we're both basically about to die
<v Speaker 1>if you let me possess you because I need to
<v Speaker 1>inhabit something to survive here. Let me get inside of you,
<v Speaker 1>and I promise I won't like just hijack your body.
<v Speaker 1>I'll share my power with you and we can work
<v Speaker 1>together to kind of both get out of here, because
<v Speaker 1>he wants to go back to his world and she
<v Speaker 1>wants to get the city to try to find her
<v Speaker 1>her mother. So it's like, hey, this is a mutual thing.
<v Speaker 1>And also, i'll replace your legs. I'll give you these
<v Speaker 1>cool almost like kind of like peg legs looking things,
<v Speaker 1>and you know you're going to really really get around
<v Speaker 1>town real quick in these things. So she reluctantly agrees,
<v Speaker 1>and honestly, one of the best things about this game,
<v Speaker 1>We'll get into the gameplan a bit, but I was
<v Speaker 1>really into the story of this game, Like I think
<v Speaker 1>Luca and and Rem the Demon have like really good chemistry,
<v Speaker 1>Like there's some really good banter because they initially it
<v Speaker 1>starts where they are just at each other's throats constantly,
<v Speaker 1>like this is a very shaky alliance. Like Luca is
<v Speaker 1>a very like attitudinal girl, but it's also like got
<v Speaker 1>a big heart. She's encountering these other kind of survivors
<v Speaker 1>and wanting to help them, and m is very kind
<v Speaker 1>of like absolutist in his beliefs, where he's like, well, no,
<v Speaker 1>why should we help them, like, you knowing screwties guys,
<v Speaker 1>they're like useless or you know, he just has a
<v Speaker 1>very cynical viewpoint. But the story gets into why he's
<v Speaker 1>like that in a way that's you can understand and
<v Speaker 1>is justified. But I really like the dynamic that the
<v Speaker 1>two of them have in the way their relationship evolves
<v Speaker 1>throughout the game, especially as you get to learn their
<v Speaker 1>individual backstories, because it turns out that the sort of
<v Speaker 1>side effect of the possession is that they share each
<v Speaker 1>other's memories, so they can they both kind of become
<v Speaker 1>voyeurs for each other's past in ways that neither are
<v Speaker 1>happy with. Like you know, they'll be watching each other's
<v Speaker 1>kind of like past memories leading up to the invasion
<v Speaker 1>and just being like why you hear, like I don't
<v Speaker 1>want you to see this. I don't want you to
<v Speaker 1>know about this, and you know, I would rather this
<v Speaker 1>be secret, and then them kind of trying to establish
<v Speaker 1>like what is the line between what we are allowing
<v Speaker 1>the other to see? Like there's some really good stuff
<v Speaker 1>there that I think is pretty cool.
<v Speaker 2>There's there's something in the water, because I feel like
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot of games coming out with this kind
<v Speaker 2>of general concept where it's two people, one body, and
<v Speaker 2>I don't know where it started, but Bloodlines two had
<v Speaker 2>that setup, Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven had that setup, Batman
<v Speaker 2>Arkham Knight had that setup. Like there's something going on.
<v Speaker 2>What do we not know? What started all this? Was
<v Speaker 2>it Dragon Guard? Did Yoko Taro's Dragon Guard start this all?
<v Speaker 2>I think you're pitching a top five for a future
<v Speaker 2>top five two brains, one body video games that's actually
<v Speaker 2>pretty good time.
<v Speaker 1>And number one is you gi Oh. Of course, because
<v Speaker 1>the Pharaoh and Ugi share a.
<v Speaker 2>Body, it's not video game. Oh I was gonna say
<v Speaker 2>it's it's was it Mario and Luigi Bowser's inside story
<v Speaker 2>because they're both inside Bowser and controlling him. So I
<v Speaker 2>think that counts.
<v Speaker 1>All right, now we'll figure it out right now. It's funny.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, put a side on that topic. One of the
<v Speaker 3>games I was catching up from earlier this year with
<v Speaker 3>Blade Chimera, which is another uh search what do we
<v Speaker 3>call it? Search action? Search action, search action AKA, and
<v Speaker 3>it's it's also a demon like hanging out with a
<v Speaker 3>you know, protagonist and they strike a deal. No, they
<v Speaker 3>don't get along, but it's by the way, Blade Camera
<v Speaker 3>seems pretty cool. It's it seems pretty standard, but in
<v Speaker 3>a complimentary.
<v Speaker 2>Another game that also to brain one Body game.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I got it. They don't get into something. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it only works if they don't get along. They can't
<v Speaker 1>be on the same page. Yeah, they can't be agreeing
<v Speaker 1>on everything. Now you need the Johnny Silverhand dynamic in there, exactly.
<v Speaker 3>I'm glad to hear that you're liking it, Marcus. I
<v Speaker 3>like it rather because you did finish it, because I
<v Speaker 3>love hyper Light Drifters so much, and I like Solar
<v Speaker 3>ashalot and I didn't really like hyper Light Breaker, which
<v Speaker 3>I think a lot of people were sort of on
<v Speaker 3>that boat sadly. But even when they announced it, I
<v Speaker 3>was like, heart Machine Search Action. Great, that sounds like
<v Speaker 3>a great fit, you know.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And I will say, like, there are there are
<v Speaker 1>some problems with this game that I'll get into, and
<v Speaker 1>other reviewers have called out, probably I think a little
<v Speaker 1>bit more harshly than even I have, So, like you said,
<v Speaker 1>it's a Metroadvnea. But I love about this game the
<v Speaker 1>most outside of this storytelling stuff is the combat. It's
<v Speaker 1>got a kind of like two D take on sort
<v Speaker 1>of stylist action style combat. I've even heard people just
<v Speaker 1>it's kind of compared to Smash Brothers combat. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>guess in the sense that you can like knock people
<v Speaker 1>into walls and off of things, and a way to
<v Speaker 1>kind of fly and bounce is like reminiscent of when
<v Speaker 1>you smash people in Smash Bros. But you can do
<v Speaker 1>like these long combo strings and like air juggle people.
<v Speaker 1>And you've got so you have a main weapon, you
<v Speaker 1>have sub weapons, and what's cool about the weapons is
<v Speaker 1>that they're all just random ordinary objects that are just
<v Speaker 1>demonically supercharged. So you're finding stuff like kitchen knives and
<v Speaker 1>like a computer mouse on like a cord and a
<v Speaker 1>bowling ball and sunglasses, and they all have just specific
<v Speaker 1>attacks tied to them, like your main your main primary
<v Speaker 1>weapon is generally just a different type of melee attacks.
<v Speaker 1>So like the kitchen knives are kind of this fast
<v Speaker 1>paced weapon. You can find a baseball bat that's a
<v Speaker 1>little slower, but it maybe this is what the smash
<v Speaker 1>comparison come from, because you can do the kind of
<v Speaker 1>like smash bros. Just like yeah, like just because you
<v Speaker 1>are knock people and send them flying and it feels
<v Speaker 1>really good. You get a hockey stick that became my
<v Speaker 1>favorite weapon once I got it, where you just feel
<v Speaker 1>like Casey Jones just swinging this thing around and it's
<v Speaker 1>kind of almost functionally acts like a bowstaff. And then
<v Speaker 1>like you can have up to three of these sub weapons,
<v Speaker 1>which is like the more weird stuff of like oh,
<v Speaker 1>if you could equip these sunglasses. It basically allows you
<v Speaker 1>to do a like retaliatory attack if you time it right,
<v Speaker 1>where like if someone hits you, you just hit it
<v Speaker 1>and then you'll just like stop the attack and then
<v Speaker 1>do like a really quick strike. You can have a
<v Speaker 1>katana the bowling ball you just rolling the ground. It
<v Speaker 1>just like knocks over a bunch of characters and bounces
<v Speaker 1>off them. I liked using the The first one you
<v Speaker 1>get is the one I stuck with throughout the entirety
<v Speaker 1>of the game, which is the computer mouse, because it's
<v Speaker 1>basically just a launcher and that's what's you know, I
<v Speaker 1>would just use that just to initiate my air juggles
<v Speaker 1>and so like it's that's super fun to use. It
<v Speaker 1>kind of feels like almost almost like Cradles's Chains of Chaos,
<v Speaker 1>if you could just think of it just having this
<v Speaker 1>rain weapon that can just whip and hit like multiple
<v Speaker 1>enemies at once and send them flying up. Like the
<v Speaker 1>combat's cool, and you can equip by upgrading all the weapons.
<v Speaker 1>You can add these kind of passive augments to them.
<v Speaker 1>They all have like just little perks where you can
<v Speaker 1>do some like light class building and maybe change up
<v Speaker 1>your load outs depending on what you're fighting of like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>you know, of this one lets me gain health every
<v Speaker 1>time I do a dodge, or this one increases the
<v Speaker 1>attack speed of my weapons or whatever like stuff like that.
<v Speaker 1>Though I kinda like once I got like halfway through
<v Speaker 1>the game, I had enough stuff online. I kind of
<v Speaker 1>settled into my chosen load out and didn't find a
<v Speaker 1>ton of reason it changed it up just because you
<v Speaker 1>can kind of you can beat anything with anything if
<v Speaker 1>you're good enough, and i'd settle into something that kind
<v Speaker 1>of fit my place stout to where I never really
<v Speaker 1>had to tinker with much once I had enough to
<v Speaker 1>work with. The other big thing is the You've got
<v Speaker 1>this whip that I really like. Like I'm a sucker
<v Speaker 1>for games that let me have any sort of like
<v Speaker 1>Scorpions style get over here or move. It's one of
<v Speaker 1>the reasons why I love Devil Mycry for and DMC
<v Speaker 1>devil Mycry just because you had like the devil Bringer
<v Speaker 1>in those chains, like to just bring enemies to you.
<v Speaker 1>The whip is good for that, on top of being
<v Speaker 1>a good traversial like mcannon, because you can swing on
<v Speaker 1>these different points and the swinging in the game feels
<v Speaker 1>really good. You've also got this perry. Uh, that's great.
<v Speaker 1>It's just a little force field that pops up. It
<v Speaker 1>just works like every perry of the video game, just
<v Speaker 1>time at the last second. But it's really great for
<v Speaker 1>bouncing projectiles back, which this game is very very big on,
<v Speaker 1>so it kind of pushes you to master it. Like
<v Speaker 1>you'll get into rooms and you'll be surrounded by a
<v Speaker 1>bunch of ground enemies, but then they'll be like possessed
<v Speaker 1>security cameras that shoot fireballs at you, almost like mildly
<v Speaker 1>bullet hell style, Like some of them will just unleash
<v Speaker 1>it in a spread. So a lot of the focus
<v Speaker 1>is like in the midst of like doing these style
<v Speaker 1>as action combos, you're kind of watching to see who's
<v Speaker 1>gonna shoot where, so that you can hit your perry
<v Speaker 1>in the middle of a combo and then send it
<v Speaker 1>back to either the person that attack or maybe just
<v Speaker 1>haven't bounce around a room and hit everybody else. But
<v Speaker 1>I think the perry feels great, and the attacks feel
<v Speaker 1>smooth and have just like a really nice sense of
<v Speaker 1>impact to it. And on top of the cool character designs,
<v Speaker 1>it's just like fun to look at, like it's got
<v Speaker 1>a really slick art direction. I love the way the
<v Speaker 1>characters look. I love how the monsters all just are
<v Speaker 1>these really twisted like because all the monsters are just
<v Speaker 1>haunted objects. So it's got like a little shop of
<v Speaker 1>horrors or like a like a demonic, brave little toaster
<v Speaker 1>vibe to it of like oh, this is just an
<v Speaker 1>angry potted plant that's got like three eyeballs running at me,
<v Speaker 1>or like here's a book that's like flying and it's
<v Speaker 1>got these tentacles coming out of it. It's just like, oh, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>all the demons showed up and just possessed whatever they
<v Speaker 1>could and just rolled with it. So it's just like
<v Speaker 1>it's fun to just look at the enemies right before
<v Speaker 1>you cut them down. The kind of the biggest problem
<v Speaker 1>I have, sadly is heart machines approached to Metroid Venia exploration.
<v Speaker 1>And it's sad because I can see what going for.
<v Speaker 1>So the main objective you have to find these four
<v Speaker 1>special demonic eyeballs that are scattered across the four corners
<v Speaker 1>of the map. The map in this game is quite large,
<v Speaker 1>and the game allows you to go after every or
<v Speaker 1>any eyeball in whatever order you choose. And that's cool.
<v Speaker 1>But the problem is that and something I guess I
<v Speaker 1>think I took for granted until I played this game.
<v Speaker 1>It's sort of the skill that comes in knowing how
<v Speaker 1>to funnel players towards the necessary Metroidvania upgrades that you
<v Speaker 1>need to unlock other parts of the map, Like there's
<v Speaker 1>a real art form to letting it feel like you're
<v Speaker 1>free to explore, but also subtly pointing you to like, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>we need you to get the morphball now, like now
<v Speaker 1>this is going to open up, we need to get
<v Speaker 1>it at this time. And sometimes it doesn't even feel
<v Speaker 1>like it's like necessarily scripted, but you're like, oh, I
<v Speaker 1>guess I needed to get this now. I didn't realize
<v Speaker 1>that I really didn't have anywhere else to go until
<v Speaker 1>I until the game told me to get this. And
<v Speaker 1>because this game is a lot more open the core abilities,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's hard to find that. As weird as that sounds, like,
<v Speaker 1>you will go or I have spent long stretches of
<v Speaker 1>the map just exploring, and like you know, the first
<v Speaker 1>couple they kind of give you relatively upfront, but then
<v Speaker 1>the rest you're basically on your own, and so you
<v Speaker 1>will choose like I think I'm gonna go for like
<v Speaker 1>the North Eyeball and go through a very very very
<v Speaker 1>lengthy track to get there, only to hit a wall
<v Speaker 1>and you realize like, oh, I guess, I guess I'm
<v Speaker 1>not ready to be here, like I see like a
<v Speaker 1>weird crack, and it's like, I know I don't have
<v Speaker 1>an ability to deals with that, but I just kind
<v Speaker 1>of assumed it would give it to me along the
<v Speaker 1>way instead of letting me get this far. And so
<v Speaker 1>then you backtrack like, well, maybe I just missed it,
<v Speaker 1>maybe I'm wrong, And then you'll search around as best
<v Speaker 1>you can with what you have and realize like, no,
<v Speaker 1>I guess, I guess I'm not seeing it. And it
<v Speaker 1>also doesn't help that there's some paths are hitting behind
<v Speaker 1>like breakable objects. Like most of the times it's like
<v Speaker 1>these wooden planks that you can smash through. But the
<v Speaker 1>problem with those is that they're they're supposed to be hidden,
<v Speaker 1>but they're hidden too well, like they're they're a little
<v Speaker 1>they blend them with the environment too well, where you're
<v Speaker 1>like you've really got to look and I think, and
<v Speaker 1>then once you discover that you can break them, and
<v Speaker 1>makes you go like, oh my god, how many of
<v Speaker 1>these do I do? I think I've missed and the
<v Speaker 1>entrer is probably quite a few. And so it becomes
<v Speaker 1>a very tedious exercise of kind of like running around
<v Speaker 1>trying to figure out like, Okay, what what am I
<v Speaker 1>supposed to get next? Like what is the ability that
<v Speaker 1>the game wants me to get next? I'm not really
<v Speaker 1>sure and tackle on that. The kind of the stretches
<v Speaker 1>between checkpoints is pretty long, like they're like there's not
<v Speaker 1>as many checkpoints as I think the game needs, and
<v Speaker 1>there's even less fast travel points usually I think it's
<v Speaker 1>just like one per biome, and the biomes can be
<v Speaker 1>pretty big, and it looks bigger than it appears in
<v Speaker 1>the map, Like it's kind of like when you look
<v Speaker 1>at the map, it doesn't look as bad, but once
<v Speaker 1>you're running through, you're like, oh no, this is huge
<v Speaker 1>because the map is actually pretty. It's not like a
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't give you like a complete sort of like
<v Speaker 1>picture of how like the true structure of a zone.
<v Speaker 1>It kind of gives you like the bare miment of
<v Speaker 1>like here's just a square, but that square actually has
<v Speaker 1>like two floors of like enemy infested level or like,
<v Speaker 1>and then also like a tricky platforming segment. So the
<v Speaker 1>runbacks in this game can be pretty rough, especially because
<v Speaker 1>it has these souls like thing of oh, you died,
<v Speaker 1>you need to go get your currency from where you
<v Speaker 1>you know where you fell. So that was my biggest
<v Speaker 1>thing was just like I don't think I've ever been
<v Speaker 1>this lost playing a Metroid Vadia before, where it's like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, you want to feel like you're lost to
<v Speaker 1>an extent, but like a fun loss of like, man,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know where I am, like that sense of
<v Speaker 1>like Okay, I'm in this weird place. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>if I'm supposed to be here, but I kind of
<v Speaker 1>like that. But this gets and this crosses the line
<v Speaker 1>into like but no, seriously, guys, am I supposed to
<v Speaker 1>be here. You're letting me go further than you probably
<v Speaker 1>should if I'm not supposed to be And then I
<v Speaker 1>hit a point where it's like, no, you missed an
<v Speaker 1>ability that I think I'm supposed to have, And then
<v Speaker 1>you wonder. You start to wonder like maybe I'm just
<v Speaker 1>using the abilities I have already in the wrong way.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe I can get past this. I don't know. I
<v Speaker 1>feel like any other game would have just put me
<v Speaker 1>in front of the thing to get over this. So
<v Speaker 1>that's and I've seen other reviewers really take the game
<v Speaker 1>to task for that to where I think I'm on
<v Speaker 1>the higher end of my on the review scale right
<v Speaker 1>now from what I'm seeing, So yeah, that is you know,
<v Speaker 1>like if you don't if you don't want to deal
<v Speaker 1>with that, Like I don't know if anyone's ever had
<v Speaker 1>that problem in a metro vena. I never have, so
<v Speaker 1>it was a weird thing to run into. But I
<v Speaker 1>do think, like fair warning if you want to get
<v Speaker 1>into this. But as much of a.
<v Speaker 2>Problem as that maybe kind of Yeah, I think honestly,
<v Speaker 2>I think of the direction of the game because you
<v Speaker 2>made me think of Animal Animal Well almost right away,
<v Speaker 2>where like Animal Well was about finding power ups and
<v Speaker 2>discovering the ways in which they would kind of move
<v Speaker 2>you through the environment. But that was like the I
<v Speaker 2>that was the main thrust behind Animal Well was like
<v Speaker 2>puzzling and discovering, and it was almost more of a
<v Speaker 2>puzzle vania, you know, to butcher the genre name further. Uh,
<v Speaker 2>And it sounds like here, it doesn't feel like that's
<v Speaker 2>the main driver, Like they don't kind of want you
<v Speaker 2>to be staring at puzzles and scratching your head but
<v Speaker 2>kind of moving forward at a cadence and it's it's
<v Speaker 2>hitting some friction there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Like there's no puzzles on this game, right, this
<v Speaker 1>is an action game. Yeah, so yeah, that's like I said,
<v Speaker 1>I love Animal well, but I think because it has that,
<v Speaker 1>like I said, the conceit was that, but yeah, that's
<v Speaker 1>not the case here. So it is an issue that
<v Speaker 1>I wish was better. And it's the reason that the
<v Speaker 1>score is what it is because I give it an
<v Speaker 1>eight point twenty five and I I really couldn't go
<v Speaker 1>higher than that because of it. As much as I
<v Speaker 1>love the other elements, I love the combat, I love
<v Speaker 1>the story. I think the art direction is very strong,
<v Speaker 1>but just the kind of messing up the core, like
<v Speaker 1>like the core blueprint of a Metroavenia, like having kind
<v Speaker 1>of messed it up that roughly like it still didn't
<v Speaker 1>damper my enjoying. Once I knew figured out where to go,
<v Speaker 1>I was having fun again. But the search for the
<v Speaker 1>thing to get you to that next fun thing, it
<v Speaker 1>really it wore me after a while, and even even
<v Speaker 1>when it wasn't just actively searching. I just think the
<v Speaker 1>runbacks are a little a little too much, Like I
<v Speaker 1>just I think it just needs like a few more
<v Speaker 1>checkpoints or fast travel points to try to expedite some
<v Speaker 1>of that stuff, especially when you want to revisit areas
<v Speaker 1>because you can't put Matt markers down, but you only
<v Speaker 1>get like four and they're really vague, so it's even
<v Speaker 1>hard to denote, like, Okay, I guess I'll use this
<v Speaker 1>exclamation marked and mark that I think I need like
<v Speaker 1>a jumping thing to get here. But I also still
<v Speaker 1>need to remember that this is even a platform, because
<v Speaker 1>the map doesn't show like you know, it doesn't show really,
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't just show that level of detail. It's just like,
<v Speaker 1>here's a giant rectangle and then put your marker maybe
<v Speaker 1>in the middle of the rectangle and that might roughly
<v Speaker 1>be where you think you were before.
<v Speaker 4>It's no, Princes the Lost Crown is what you're.
<v Speaker 1>Saying, Absolutely not none of that.
<v Speaker 3>You know how Prince of Persia added the screenshot thing
<v Speaker 3>that was like I think we all everyone in the
<v Speaker 3>industry was like, this should be in every Metroid sort
<v Speaker 3>of inspired game. Blade Kimera, which is funny to recall
<v Speaker 3>this because I think this game came out earlier this year,
<v Speaker 3>has the feature where pretty early on you could just
<v Speaker 3>unlock the ability to fast travel anywhere you want, anytime
<v Speaker 3>you want, And I'm.
<v Speaker 5>Like, I don't know, that's amazing.
<v Speaker 3>I don't think I want to play more search action
<v Speaker 3>games without this idea. It's like it's like that Breath
<v Speaker 3>of the Loud moment where you're like, well, I can
<v Speaker 3>just fast travel anytime wherever I want, as long as
<v Speaker 3>I found the place, I can just like go there,
<v Speaker 3>Like you know, it's not Breath of Wild still has
<v Speaker 3>like points you had to unlock. But yeah, nice thing
<v Speaker 3>about Blade Kimera, which is good, and I quite like
<v Speaker 3>it's like pretty early on, did you just select a
<v Speaker 3>spot on the map and you could just go there
<v Speaker 3>anytime you want?
<v Speaker 2>You know, that's it?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Yeah, there are a lot of times I was
<v Speaker 1>like begging for that when I was like, okay, I
<v Speaker 1>need to go back over here. Man, I got a
<v Speaker 1>trip ahead of me, I guess. But yeah, like I
<v Speaker 1>said everything else though, I think it's done well enough
<v Speaker 1>for me that it carried the rest of the score.
<v Speaker 1>Like I said, I the story, like the stuff gets
<v Speaker 1>into especially in the nature of like a lot of
<v Speaker 1>a story revolves around relationships and like toxic relationships and
<v Speaker 1>what does it mean to be in one? And when
<v Speaker 1>do you realize that you are in one? And when
<v Speaker 1>should you get out? Like that was like a surprise.
<v Speaker 1>I did not think this game was going in that direction,
<v Speaker 1>but it handles it really well. So, like I said,
<v Speaker 1>I think the if the exploration was better, this would
<v Speaker 1>probably be closer to a nine for me.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I love Heart Machine much so I do want
<v Speaker 3>to spend some time with it despite your frustrations.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, but yeah, Like I said, overall, I think
<v Speaker 1>it's a fun game, and I think, especially if you're
<v Speaker 1>a heart Machine fan or if you're in the mood
<v Speaker 1>for like a overall good metroidvany, I think you should
<v Speaker 1>give possessors a shot and hopefully you know, I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if they're going to like patch or whatever. I
<v Speaker 1>know there's a big Day one patch that addressed some things.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if they're going to do anything beyond
<v Speaker 1>that in terms of addressing some of the criticisms that
<v Speaker 1>are coming out from the reviews. We'll see. But I think,
<v Speaker 1>like I said, as it is now, it is a
<v Speaker 1>it is a good game, like kind of like point
<v Speaker 1>blank cool. But yeah, it's out as of the now,
<v Speaker 1>November eleventh, it's go check it out, so I think.
<v Speaker 1>So it's only on PS five and PC though, just
<v Speaker 1>for just as the heads up all right, Kyle. Last
<v Speaker 1>game on our list is High Rule Warriors. I know
<v Speaker 1>this subtitle. There's only been three of these. I actually
<v Speaker 1>a Cheven's Prison Men Age.
<v Speaker 3>Of Plaming one, right, I think?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I know, they both use age of And I
<v Speaker 1>was trying to like, was Calamity the second one or
<v Speaker 1>is it this one? Yeah? Okay, gotcha. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>At the time of this recording, I think I'm near
<v Speaker 3>the end. I was joking earlier though that these games
<v Speaker 3>do have a tendency to sort of drag on well
<v Speaker 3>beyond what you think is supposed to be the end,
<v Speaker 3>and I suspect that might happen here. But yeah, it's good.
<v Speaker 3>I do like it. I I High Rule Warriors, the original.
<v Speaker 3>I think I didn't review the second one. Actually the
<v Speaker 3>first one. The first one's super fun because it is
<v Speaker 3>just like just an excuse to bring in tons of
<v Speaker 3>Zelda characters from different Zelda timelines, and like, you know,
<v Speaker 3>it's a good format for the Musso sort of design
<v Speaker 3>because it's like, yeah, we're just going to bring an
<v Speaker 3>Ocarina characters and Majors of Mass characters, like you know,
<v Speaker 3>it's and it's it's fun. I like it. But then
<v Speaker 3>the Age of Calamity was like hugely disappointing for me,
<v Speaker 3>like narratively, because like the Zelda story is like I know,
<v Speaker 3>some people really don't care about it. I think like
<v Speaker 3>the joy of Zelda's like exploration and puzzle solving, but
<v Speaker 3>like I do, I really enjoy sort of the narrative,
<v Speaker 3>the fiction of Zelda. I really sort of get invested
<v Speaker 3>in it. And Age of Calamity was just like such
<v Speaker 3>a disappointment by the end, even if it was, like
<v Speaker 3>you know, even if it was like functionally pretty fun,
<v Speaker 3>I just was so bummed out by where that how
<v Speaker 3>that game concluded, and so far Age of Imprisonment it
<v Speaker 3>seems to be more sort of like we're treating being
<v Speaker 3>treated as like canonical Zelda stuff, which is like fun
<v Speaker 3>and I enjoy that, like I haven't beaten it yet,
<v Speaker 3>but like, and maybe this is a spoiler mys, so
<v Speaker 3>if you are care about it, you can, like you know,
<v Speaker 3>hit the fifteen second foard button now. But like, Link
<v Speaker 3>does not show up in this game as near as
<v Speaker 3>I can tell. There is a character that like plays
<v Speaker 3>like Link might play, but Link is not in this
<v Speaker 3>game unless something changes the list couple hours, which I like, like,
<v Speaker 3>I think that's a cool thing about this game. I
<v Speaker 3>like that they're not beholden to like, well, we got
<v Speaker 3>to have all the like important people, and like the
<v Speaker 3>majority of the characters in the game are completely original, uh,
<v Speaker 3>which which is cool. Like there's a couple characters that
<v Speaker 3>you'll recognize for Tears of the Kingdom. I don't want
<v Speaker 3>to dig too deep into why, because you know, maybe
<v Speaker 3>you want you don't want Tiers of the Kingdom spoilers,
<v Speaker 3>but I mean it's it's, it's it's kind of a prequel.
<v Speaker 3>And and then and like it's it's it's so nice
<v Speaker 3>to have this game on switch to because it runs well,
<v Speaker 3>you know, like Higher Warriors on WU is fine. And
<v Speaker 3>then like yeah, the switch Higher Warriors was like, oh boy,
<v Speaker 3>we're like we're we're hitting some frame rate issues here,
<v Speaker 3>but like this one has been smooth and it and
<v Speaker 3>it's and it's it's like it's a game that does
<v Speaker 3>benefit from like just being smooth because there's so much
<v Speaker 3>like insanity happening on screen all the time. It's basically
<v Speaker 3>like I look at this cool animation. Generator's kind of
<v Speaker 3>what these Musso games kind of feel like to a
<v Speaker 3>certain point.
<v Speaker 1>Because how many moblins are we seeing on screen?
<v Speaker 3>I mean hundreds, you know, like maybe up to like
<v Speaker 3>four or five hundred at a time or something like that.
<v Speaker 3>And it like and it and it runs well, and
<v Speaker 3>it looks good, and it's just the thing that like
<v Speaker 3>that this game just works for me. It's like I'm
<v Speaker 3>almost embarrassed to admit is just like having the Tiers
<v Speaker 3>of the Kingdom UI and sound effects and art direction,
<v Speaker 3>and it's like you can't explore like High Roll obviously,
<v Speaker 3>Like maybe not obviously if you're not familiar how the
<v Speaker 3>game works, but like you can't. It's not an open
<v Speaker 3>world game. You're not exploring High Rule, but like you're
<v Speaker 3>looking at the high Role map and you're like looking
<v Speaker 3>at icons and it's like I kind of feel like
<v Speaker 3>I am playing a Tiers of the Kingdom the sequel
<v Speaker 3>spinoff thing.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 3>It's like just close enough that it like it's like
<v Speaker 3>it reminds me, you know, it's like Pavlov's Dog of
<v Speaker 3>just like, oh yeah, those are the Tiers of the Kingdom.
<v Speaker 3>Sound I'm back in the world of Tears the Kingdom.
<v Speaker 3>This is wonderful, you know, but like overall, it's like
<v Speaker 3>if you if you know Muso games, you kind of
<v Speaker 3>know it to expect. There's some new little wrinkles that
<v Speaker 3>I like where it's like you are doing a little
<v Speaker 3>bit more on the battlefield than just sort of executing
<v Speaker 3>familiar combos. Like sometimes the you know, the big bosses
<v Speaker 3>that you come across will like jump in the air
<v Speaker 3>and you have to make sure you pause time and
<v Speaker 3>use the right like attack to take them out in
<v Speaker 3>the air, or if they're getting ready to sprint at you,
<v Speaker 3>there's like a different attack you should use and like,
<v Speaker 3>and you can use zone I items, Like a big
<v Speaker 3>strategy I've been using lately is like you can drop
<v Speaker 3>like a zone I uh, fire hydrant, and then you
<v Speaker 3>can draw and then you can throw out a zone
<v Speaker 3>I like freezing device and create like a big giant
<v Speaker 3>like you know, ice crystal thing that does a lot
<v Speaker 3>of damage. So it's like it's it's fun. It's fun
<v Speaker 3>in the way that it's like, you know, it's a
<v Speaker 3>Muso game that they do get repetitive. They you know,
<v Speaker 3>you are doing the same thing over and over, which
<v Speaker 3>I know you can say about a lot of video games,
<v Speaker 3>but you really feel it in a Musso game because
<v Speaker 3>it is just kind of like, right, go here and
<v Speaker 3>beat that boss. Okay, now go here and beat that boss. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>now go here and beat that boss. And it does
<v Speaker 3>kind of get redundant even if you're like switching characters
<v Speaker 3>and stuff like that. But there's there's there's enough here
<v Speaker 3>that's like kind of keeping you changing your strategies a
<v Speaker 3>little bit. That I'm feeling less of the grind than
<v Speaker 3>I did in the last Higher Warriors. I think, like
<v Speaker 3>I'm I'm less annoyed by like doing side quests and
<v Speaker 3>I actually do kind of like going and doing a
<v Speaker 3>bunch of extra little missions to get bonuses and stuff
<v Speaker 3>like that. Like overall, I'm I'm like it so far,
<v Speaker 3>but it could.
<v Speaker 1>It could.
<v Speaker 3>It could screw up the landing because the last game
<v Speaker 3>certainly did. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I was gonna ask, like overall, it seems like
<v Speaker 1>you're a hotter on this one than the last one.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's kind of I mean,
<v Speaker 3>just maybe simplified unfairly. It's kind of the switch to
<v Speaker 3>benefit of like it just runs better. It just looks
<v Speaker 3>better and runs better, and that's kind of crucial for
<v Speaker 3>a game like this, which is just like an like
<v Speaker 3>a chaotic action game, you know, So I do. I
<v Speaker 3>do like this more, and I do like that it
<v Speaker 3>does seem to be treating the events of Tears of
<v Speaker 3>Them as like a cannon story, which the first two
<v Speaker 3>didn't really do to, which kind of annoyed me. The
<v Speaker 3>first one didn't annoy me, the second one annoyed me.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm in like a weird place with this game
<v Speaker 2>because I'm not nearly that far in, but obviously, like
<v Speaker 2>I'm also like a Muso sicco, And I think the
<v Speaker 2>mechanics introduces are really smart. It carries over some stuff
<v Speaker 2>from the extremely excellent Time Stee Warriors' Origins, which came
<v Speaker 2>out earlier this year twenty twenty five. Go play. It's
<v Speaker 2>really really good. Yeah, switch next year it does come
<v Speaker 2>to switch to I really I hope it can capture
<v Speaker 2>the scale of that game, because I think that is like,
<v Speaker 2>if you ever want to see a Musso game, really
<v Speaker 2>just go for scale. Oh my gosh. It's incredible. But
<v Speaker 2>I think it carries over so some of the kind
<v Speaker 2>of response attacks that you have in this game do
<v Speaker 2>feel like they're carried over from the origin system of
<v Speaker 2>having kind of responsive different attack types that can create
<v Speaker 2>stagger moments and break moments and things like that that
<v Speaker 2>really make a lot of sense for what they've been
<v Speaker 2>doing for a while.
<v Speaker 3>And enemies, you know, simple things, but it's like right,
<v Speaker 3>it's enough to keep you thinking, which is good.
<v Speaker 2>I think the big thing for me so far is
<v Speaker 2>actually that the story seems like it kind of has
<v Speaker 2>to spin its tires by necessity because it has to
<v Speaker 2>fit into the framework. And this is coming from somebody
<v Speaker 2>who also did not like that Age of Calamity kind
<v Speaker 2>of just threw a hail Mary and was like, whatever,
<v Speaker 2>we're doing this now, and it has a very bizarre
<v Speaker 2>change up in what its goal is, what it felt
<v Speaker 2>like its stated goal was. Here, it feels like Age
<v Speaker 2>of Imprisonment almost kind of has to color within the lines,
<v Speaker 2>and it almost feels like an over correction where it
<v Speaker 2>feels a little bit too safe at times, a little
<v Speaker 2>bit like they're going like, oh, we know what's coming.
<v Speaker 2>If you've played Tears of the Kingdom, you kind of
<v Speaker 2>know how all this plays out, so we're going to
<v Speaker 2>stick within that. And it's good for those slice of
<v Speaker 2>life moments between some of those characters. I really like
<v Speaker 2>seeing characters like Zelda and Minnru like hang out and
<v Speaker 2>interact and Rawru and all them. But I don't know
<v Speaker 2>that it's I almost kind of wish that it would
<v Speaker 2>just be the Higher Warriors one where it's like, oops,
<v Speaker 2>all Links, Oops, all Zelda's, here's Lincoln, Here's characters from
<v Speaker 2>Links Awakening, because we can do that because nobody cares.
<v Speaker 2>Here's Midna just thrown into there. There's like three different
<v Speaker 2>Gannan dwarfs or whatever, like just have fun and.
<v Speaker 1>I the moon.
<v Speaker 3>It's fine, you know, yes, which is I really like
<v Speaker 3>that stuff?
<v Speaker 1>I do.
<v Speaker 2>I do like when they do the story based ones
<v Speaker 2>every once in a while. I really like spark or
<v Speaker 2>not Sparks of Pope. I always call it that Three Hopes,
<v Speaker 2>the Fire Mull and the Three Houses one. I thought
<v Speaker 2>that one was really good, but.
<v Speaker 3>I like Three Hopes to I hear what you're saying,
<v Speaker 3>for sure, Eric like it. It is a little bit
<v Speaker 3>like they're not pushing outside of the story, but like if, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I think it works for me in this case right
<v Speaker 3>where it's like if you're gonna make like a Tears
<v Speaker 3>of the Kingdom spin off, like let's yeah, let's stay
<v Speaker 3>within the lines, because like because that fiction is important
<v Speaker 3>to me. But yeah, I would totally take just like
<v Speaker 3>a High Warriors, let's throw it. I would love that
<v Speaker 3>would be cool, Like as long as they're saying out
<v Speaker 3>of front, you know.
<v Speaker 2>My dream Nintendo, if you're listening Koe Techmo, if you're
<v Speaker 2>listening Mushroom Mushroom Kingdom Warriors, make it happen. It would work.
<v Speaker 2>It would be so good, Like I can picture it
<v Speaker 2>in my head right now. Come on, you don't want
<v Speaker 2>to be Mario running out into the field shooting fireballs
<v Speaker 2>everywhere and there's like Koopa troopas getting tossed up and
<v Speaker 2>juggled in their stuff. It would be fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>I don't think my ears are ready for the satisfact.
<v Speaker 1>Like it already sounds satisfying to stomp on one koopo,
<v Speaker 1>but to hear hundreds of the Koopa sounds.
<v Speaker 3>Imagine having an arms behind you. Imagine what that would
<v Speaker 3>sound like.
<v Speaker 1>It's aer Gorn charging in the battle with his toads.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, for for Riders, for Ruin, as Mario would say, yes, no,
<v Speaker 2>I I think.
<v Speaker 1>I rule Warriors.
<v Speaker 2>The New One Age of Imprisonment does do some really
<v Speaker 2>fun stuff, Like you're saying, the Zone Italie ins are
<v Speaker 2>great I love that one of Zelda's moves is literally
<v Speaker 2>her like doing the freeze time and swinging the baton
<v Speaker 2>around really fast to do a ton of damage, like
<v Speaker 2>people were doing in Tiers of the Kingdom videos almost
<v Speaker 2>immediately after that game came out. There's like some funny
<v Speaker 2>winking and nodding in that way. They do a lot
<v Speaker 2>with the source material and the themes and the aesthetics
<v Speaker 2>of Tears in the Kingdom that I think really work
<v Speaker 2>and are kind of pushing and yeah, this this being
<v Speaker 2>on switch to it runs so much better like that,
<v Speaker 2>that's already a massive boon for this game. Yeah, Like
<v Speaker 2>Minieru is basically that's the sister, that's Robber's sister, right
<v Speaker 2>minerru Right, Yes, they like they basically play as like
<v Speaker 2>a Tiers of the Kingdom speed Runner. It's kind of
<v Speaker 2>like almost what it feels like to play because like
<v Speaker 2>they're just whipping out like zone eye devices and you're
<v Speaker 2>all you're doing is like tapping why like six times,
<v Speaker 2>and they're just like like I built a tank and
<v Speaker 2>a gun like all this stuff.
<v Speaker 3>But you do it a lot. You're doing that like
<v Speaker 3>hundreds of time over the course of a fight. But yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I appreciate Musso games in general, and here that like
<v Speaker 3>it's when it comes to the combat, they're just like, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>we're gonna.
<v Speaker 1>Go huge like this.
<v Speaker 3>It's let's just be like let's just like it's these
<v Speaker 3>animations are gonna be are gonna be crazy. We want
<v Speaker 3>to reward you for like building up and like finally
<v Speaker 3>pressing a and they're always like pretty intense and cool,
<v Speaker 3>and then you can like do every you can do
<v Speaker 3>like cooperative attacks and stuff like that.
<v Speaker 2>The sink attacks are great.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's it's one of those kind of genre games
<v Speaker 3>where it's like, look, I if you've played a Musso
<v Speaker 3>in the past of any kind spinoff or Dinostaurs or whatever,
<v Speaker 3>and you're like, this is like this is too redundant
<v Speaker 3>for me. This is not gonna like change your mind.
<v Speaker 3>I don't think this isn't going to convince you that.
<v Speaker 3>It's like maybe you should take another look at the genre.
<v Speaker 3>But it is a I think a good one of those.
<v Speaker 3>And the chance to just hang out in the world
<v Speaker 3>of Tears in the Kingdom is really wonderful, especially for
<v Speaker 3>someone like me who just adores, you know, both Breadth
<v Speaker 3>of the Wild and Tears. The Kingdom and excuse to
<v Speaker 3>be back that world. I'm gonna I'm gonna take it.
<v Speaker 3>You know, nice, yeah, good ones.
<v Speaker 2>One of those.
<v Speaker 1>Hm, I'll say as a random Psychilie excited for that
<v Speaker 1>Animal Crossing update next year with all the Zelda stuff
<v Speaker 1>you get to have menu in your town and stuff.
<v Speaker 3>No I don't, I don't like I don't like Animal Crossing.
<v Speaker 1>Sorry, this is We're gonna do it. This is good
<v Speaker 1>enough to bring you back.
<v Speaker 3>My daughter animal and she'll show it to me and
<v Speaker 3>I'll be like, hey, that's cool. But man, Animal Crossing
<v Speaker 3>is one of those games you get every time there's
<v Speaker 3>a new one, Like the three D S one was like,
<v Speaker 3>you know, everyone in the game Former office is really
<v Speaker 3>into it. I was like, oh yeah, let me get
<v Speaker 3>into this. And I played it for like an hour.
<v Speaker 3>Was like oh right, I don't like this. And then
<v Speaker 3>and then and then the new one came out for
<v Speaker 3>Switch and everyone's like, we got the pandemic is killing
<v Speaker 3>all of us. We all have to get together and
<v Speaker 3>play Animal Crossing. And I'm like, you know what, you
<v Speaker 3>guys are right. This is really gonna this is gonna
<v Speaker 3>make me feel good about what And I bought it
<v Speaker 3>and I was like, I played it for an hour
<v Speaker 3>and I was like, oh, yeah, I don't. I don't
<v Speaker 3>get I don't get a lot of job.
<v Speaker 1>He said, yeah, you said I would rather get COVID
<v Speaker 1>than play this game. My mask outside.
<v Speaker 3>No, definitely one of those like like, I'm guys, I
<v Speaker 3>get that why you love it and why it's so
<v Speaker 3>like why people get into it. I watched my daughter
<v Speaker 3>like delete her save like three times to replay that
<v Speaker 3>game over and over. But I'm just like the act
<v Speaker 3>of like collecting things in a video game is like,
<v Speaker 3>is not something I like to do. I don't find
<v Speaker 3>that much anyway. Well, I don't even like looped, you know.
<v Speaker 1>All Right, And that concludes s Kyle's tet talk on
<v Speaker 1>animal crossing. Well, that will wrap up this week's episode
<v Speaker 1>of the Game and Former Show. Thank everyone for what
<v Speaker 1>listening or watching, whether it's on YouTube or Spotify, Apple Podcast,
<v Speaker 1>What That Good Stuff. Once again, subscribe to the magazine
<v Speaker 1>Gameformer dot Com slash subscribe ten ishes a year delivered
<v Speaker 1>straight to you, and got dry in Quest seven Reimagine
<v Speaker 1>physical issues hitting mailboxes next month. A new digital edition
<v Speaker 1>can be read right now. Otherwise, be sure to follow
<v Speaker 1>us all on social media. I can be found at
<v Speaker 1>Marcus Stewart seven. You can find Eric van Allen at
<v Speaker 1>c Moussy, you can find Kyle Hilliard at Kyle M.
<v Speaker 1>Hilliard and you can find a Wesley LeBlanc at Wesley
<v Speaker 1>What is your social media handle? West West Little Blank?
<v Speaker 1>Oh okay, well here you go, right.
<v Speaker 5>There, you nail this. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Also social media update or social media update streaming update.
<v Speaker 1>Taking the breaks on streams this week just because several
<v Speaker 1>of us are out of the office on trips, so
<v Speaker 1>super replay if you missed last week's episode, we won't
<v Speaker 1>be back till the following week. Same with our normal
<v Speaker 1>Wednesday stream, so stay tuned for that.
<v Speaker 2>And of course by the time you're hearing this, we'll
<v Speaker 2>have already not streamed. But just in case you were
<v Speaker 2>wondering why we were absent, we just didn't do streams
<v Speaker 2>this week. Was like, yeah, this is airing after we
<v Speaker 2>would have already not streamed for the week. But yes,
<v Speaker 2>this don't don't. It's the message.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, we're still alive. I know that.
<v Speaker 2>When you were wondering my grandma the show, I'll tell you.
<v Speaker 4>Cut your hair then that's my new bit is just
<v Speaker 4>reminding viewers about my Grandma.
<v Speaker 5>Time Terrible three years ago.
<v Speaker 3>Remember it does show all right.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I think it's time for this podcast to die.
<v Speaker 1>Thanks for everyone, Thank you for watching. Everybody. You got
<v Speaker 1>me giggling, all right. We will see you guys next
<v Speaker 1>week on the Game and former show. Bye.