Gears 6 News May Arrive This Summer

You don't be bait. It's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this
for April fourth, twenty twenty four. For the next hour or so,
let me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game Mess Mornings Live
with Me Jeff Grubb. Today, help a two is sounding more promising than
ever, but is there a problem with it? And some buffoon is making
headlines about the return of a major Xbox franchise. But first, please join
me and welcoming today's co host to Game Mess Mornings. It's Jesse Donka Basin
Norris, returning champion. Jesse. How are you doing. I am doing
quite well. I'm on a round trip this morning. I've got we just
did awing news show. Now I'm doing this new show. I gets something.
I can't talk about it all directly after this, but look up to
a lot of big, big fun news instead of well, I'm wake up
to a bunch of people being fired instead of just waking up to video games
stuff. So it was nice, It is right, Yeah, it's nice.
Video game news is kind of back. It seems like it's gonna keep
coming back to. We got some news about more showcases for the summer.
That's looking pretty cool. We'll get into get into all that and more.
But Jesse, how you how have you been? You were busy there for
a while, reviewing one game after another for a long time. Yeah,
it's been the first down period. I think twenty twenty three never really had
it down period, but we've actually had I had a whole week without having
anything to work on. That has now changed. I'm still nothing huge coming
house Flipper two and it's coming to console next week. If you like the
original house Flipper, it's been on PC for like four months. I can
talk about that version. It's great, it's more of a game now.
The other one is Araban Shadow Legacy. That one was originally coming to game
Pass in Xbox Day one, but they lost their publisher, Row Fury,
so now it's only PC. But I'll have that one next week. So
same old sam Old, just constantly doing news to pay the bills and then
I get to do the reviews for fun. Yeah sounds like a good time.
You do you have any plans to try to like make it out to
any of these Summer game Fest events anything like that. We got invited to
Summer game Fest, so I am in the I am in the process of
planning it out, wouldn't have really been able to afford it, except for
one of our community members who's a friend, is like, hey, you
can I live right there. You just want to crash at my place.
So we're going to do that. Yeah, and he works for an airline
company, so he's going to get me cheaper. Fair. But we're done
doing doing Summer games Fest this year, at least two of us and the
game day lay Days whatever they call him. Going through all that for the
first time be exciting. The big one that we're doing is myself, John
and Nick and maybe another person or two from the team are all going to
Games Calm this year because we are we're an international team. So John's in
the UK, Nix in Australia. He's the really get expensive once again anywhere,
right, But Australia doesn't exist. They have to come from some other
dimension. Well, I mean, they got shoot off by the UK as
far away as possible. Unless they can drill straight through the earth, they
can't get back quickly. But I got a passport for the first time.
Oh really, it was weird. Yeah, I mean I've you know,
the United States is very big I've driven twenty eight hours straight and not even
left a single coast going from Florida to Massachusetts. So it is not really
looking forward to a fifteen hour NonStop flight because I'm going to bounce to the
UK, hang out with John for a little while, then we'll bounce over
to Cologne. But it's exciting and that it is terrifying. Yeah, and
I'm looking forward to it. It'll be a good time. That'll just be
that'll just we'll be out of there before all the smelly people show up.
And that's the way to do it. That's the main thing I've heard about
games Com is, especially if you're from the US, you've got to get
used to body odor. And it's that europe funk. Yeah. Yeah,
listen a couple of things United State with tall our European friends. The United
States is very big. And where do you odor? Yeah? Hell yeah,
let's shower a lot too, show showersively. All right, let's explain
what we do here most weekdays. I've decided I'm gonna beef with Europe.
That's what we're gonna do. So come at me. Tell me all the
terrible things about America. I'm prepared. I'm not yeah. I mean we'll
be like, yeah, right, I know. Let's explain ye. Most
weekdays, I, Jeff Grubill, help piece your gaming life back together.
That includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own original reporting. For
all these topics, I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who will
make me look smart. If you were watching live on twitch welcome. You
can always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for Games Mornings,
or find the RSS on giant bomb dot com. You can also catch
the show later chapters and timestamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube reminds me of switch
over there. Here we go. All right, we have a lot to
get into, so let's start the morning mess with Gear six news will reportedly
be coming this summer. This is from Chris Scully in at VGC. The
first news on Gears of War six may be coming this summer, according to
new claims. During the latest episode of the Kind of Funny X Cast,
host Paris Lily made a prediction that Gear six news would arrive in the summer,
a prediction which was then seemingly verified by the episode's guests. Giant Bomb
foon I saw that in chat and that was pretty good. Jeff Grubb when
they showed the Marble that this is a Paris now. When they showed the
Marbles nineteen forty three trailer in Unreal Engine five during GDC, I jokingly tweeted,
imagine what Gears six would look like in Unreal five, Lily said,
because it looked so good, and then somebody from the Coalition made a cryptic
little subtweet under me about that, which perked my ears on that. So
my conspiracy theory is that you do tease it this year, and that's probably
a launch game for next gen. That seems to make sense to me.
And then I was like, like they kept talking for a little bit,
almost like should I say it? You can actually see me on the stream
going like should I say this? It's going to be annoying when I say
this, and then people kind of take it really far. But the reality
is, yeah, I've heard that, and I feel pretty good about it.
I feel pretty decent about it. There's no guarantees in this life,
as I've learned over and over, but I feel pretty good saying yeah,
I think there's a strong chance Gear six shows up at something like the Xbox
Showcase this summer. They tease it. The game is probably pretty far away.
I mean, you know what, let's just get into it. Jesse,
what do you think about this? When's the earliest that game could come
out? I don't think it's going to be super close, because you know
Nick, he's generally pretty good at his predictions. And if they're doing a
Gears collection, it would make sense to have that hit sooner and get people,
especially people on PC who maybe didn't get to play Gears one or two
ever, or Gears two or three ever one does have a terrible PC port,
but you get the Gears collection out that gets everyone hyped. And then
a couple years later, Gear six hit, because we do know they weren't.
They didn't jump right into Gear six after kind of finishing up on five
and twenty twenty ish when the series X version and Highbusters hit. They took
their time. They were looking at other stuff, getting used to Unreal Engine
five, which was not close to ready, but now it is. They're
probably in full production. They're also working now for a company in Xbox who
is kind of just moving away from that generational thing. Because everyone, every
rumor, everything, everyone seems to think about a potential Series S focused build
portable would make it be like, well, the generations don't matter, because
you are going to still be making games for the Series S profile for a
long time. Because they want to get a handheld that could only run that.
They couldn't run more than that. Like all the handhelds we have that
we love aren't a Series S. You can't actually get that that power inte
you need. Yeah, you need to get that TDP nice and shrunk down
and you're a fish and sees all in order. So it'll be nice to
have big things hit when you have new hardware hit, But what are those
big things? Like? They've got like sixty seventy friggin teams now they I
know people are always like, oh, we're always waiting on things to come
out. It's like, well, no, they've had a pretty steady cadence.
Twenty twenty two was the year where it was too small in scope,
but twenty twenty one really good, twenty twenty three really good for me.
But I'm the idiot who likes red Ball. They're in fifty hours in it
now. By the way, it's not just making it up. We'll be
streaming it tomorrow. I've done in these days. If you wanted sixty fps
on console and for the controls to feel better on console, perfect, great.
They get put FSR two in. It actually kind of looks four K.
It's one of it's oddly one of the better FSR implementations in any game
I've seen. It's like, no, no shimmering or ghosting. I don't
know how they did it, because FSR two normally was BADR one has issues
too, it would be fair f SR three is just FR two with frame
get Yes, yeah, I'm naming like always, But FSR three point one
or two is going to have better upscaling, I don't. Yeah, they're
they're getting closer to DLSS. They are Gears. So Gears six is the
kind of thing where uh yeah, you kind of like laid it out there
where when they were done with Gears five, they did not immediately go into
Gear six. What I was hearing for quite some time after after that was
they want to get up the speed with Unreal Engine five, and so they're
going to be experimenting and making some other games that are new and smaller and
more experimental. And they got two in the works at the very least and
I think what happened was, you know, they helped make that Matrix demo,
and they've been helping with other Unreal Engine games here and there, and
so the the learning curve seems to maybe have already happened, and I think
that got them thinking like, okay, well we were up the speed on
the Unreal Engined five. In fact, we might be the most up to
speed on Unreal Engine five outside of Epic, and really in a lot of
ways, we're like the key developer when it comes to taking advantage of what
Unreal Engine can do, because over an Epic they are working within the confines
of like what Fortnite's going to be doing. So I think that kind of
helped them when it came time to be like, hey, should we get
more serious about making gears. I think that was a pretty easy gear shift
now god lack of a better term, there, Yeah, I did not
mean that even and so I think, kay, yeah, they moved over
to gear six and they've been working on that for quite some time now.
I am like hesitant to like say the date I've heard for this because it's
way too early. There's no way it's coming out as fast as the date
I've heard, and really that's like when when when I hear the date,
the people that were telling me that, like, I don't believe this either,
So that's where that is. So I think I'll just hold off.
We'll just turn back down there. Thank you, Thank you guys. Yeah,
they're froming a party and so yeah, I think with Gear six,
I think we'll probably kind of have to wait a couple more years. But
that means if they think it's coming to like, you know, within the
next twenty four months, I'm teasing it now. Does still make a lot
of sense. I think, yeah, they're definitely in the one to two
years out when they're doing teases, because again, they have a boatload of
stuff coming already talked about things we now have a time frame for about in
the hell Blade, among others, Tower Born, which many people are playing
but no one can talk about because it's in their NDA insider thing. Very
pretty game. I haven't played it yet so I can talk. I've only
watched previews that we didn't get because oh no, John got to play it
a gd at a game Scott. I think I remember correctly. But like
they've got a lot of stuff they've had a lot of stuff come a slower
period earlier in the year, kind of saved for them by Powell World going
gookul o, Yeah, I'm true, because like it's always the weird thing,
and people want green PlayStation. They want that green Nintendo and there's only
one Nintendo who really do just sell a shit ton of first party games to
their fans. Were like, yes, that's one only did twenty million,
that's not nearly as big as one that did sixty yep, but like their
focus. So while PlayStation's focus is just it's the system for casuals along with
having their hardcore first party fans, the Xbox approach is very much the multi
headed hydra everywhere we can get anything, and they're all just making tons of
money, which is why it's always weird. People say, oh, there's
no games. It's like no, for the average person, there's way too
much. And that's what we're seeing, Like there are so many games that
something like year six, you can announce it, you can take your time,
and they can slot like they want a big game every quarter for how
many teams they have, Now that's pretty easy. They had a big game
this quarter, but it was call of duty. War Zone mobile, so
like it's not the way we are used to thinking. And to be fair,
like when I when I would when I was on the couch with with
Phil, I kind of like was like asking, like, hey, when
you say a game a quarter, do you mean stuff that could be mobile?
And do you mean stuff that could be DLC And they're like, no,
no, we don't. That's not what we mean when we say game
of quarter. So they will have those things, but they when they say
game of qord, they do mean pretty much the things that we're expecting.
Not always, it will be the occasional like you know, free to play
thing or maybe a partner game here and there, but the first party typically
is going to have a big what you think of it as a traditional video
game, And yeah, they'll get there. I think that. I think
I do believe they can get there. The thing I'm like continue to be
a little bit frustrated by is like, you know, I want I do
want the unequivocal success. I want the thing that it's like, you know,
the consensus game of the year candidate, and that's been elusive for them.
Take the first two days of Starfield's release, Yeah, exactly right.
It was an eighty eight. It was really up there. It was really
there. Then a lot of the later reviews we're very angry, yeah and
that and the right, but I think that's I think they need to get
a game out there that doesn't have that sort of roller coaster, which well,
in a game that that doesn't have that roller coaster in a genre people
will give game of the Year two flight sim and Forts Horizon being in the
nineties doesn't really matter, or being a ninety like even then it's a smaller
metroidvanea like somebody they want a hell Blade to which can yeah, just take
off a bit and it's like, you know, and we'll get to hell
Blay too. Actually hearing a couple of stories what there's plenty to talk about
there, but it does feel like, yeah, that's maybe the kind of
game that could do it. But they're also you know, setting expectations a
little bit lower for that, so I'm like, man, I can't.
I'm so curious to see how that's going to play out. But Lexi does
make a good point in chat, how about I still feel robbed on pentiment?
Definitely not God that was in my top job though, right exactly Yeah,
I I adore Pentiment and it really probably was one of the games of
that year. For it's one of those things. It's their their focus is
to just pill talk before. They hired people to make their dream games essentially
and not control what genre that's going to be, and a lot of that
stuff can be a little more experimental, it can be a little more niche.
They don't have a focus on big, open world, set piece action
games, which tend to dominate more of the awards stuff sometimes. And for
me, it's like, you know, I hope that Pentiment can inform what
happens with like their bigger games going forward. I'd like to have some Pentiment
energy in all of obsidy and stuff in the future. That would be great.
All right, Josh is working on there you go. I want to
know. I always want to know what Josh is working on. Yeah,
you know, it'll take a couple of years. Thanks kiddo. Inside of
ship posting on Twitter, which he is unbelievably good at a top tier ship
poster. Yes, absolutely, all right, let's get to this next story.
Hollow Night's Silksong has been rated in South Korea. This is from Tom
Ivan at VGC Hollow Knight's Silksong has been classified in South Korea, suggesting news
about the game's release could be on the way. As spotted by a Reset
user team Cherries, much anticipated Metro ADVNAS sequel was actually rated back in February,
when the game was classified as suitable for players age twelve and over.
The rating was discovered after Microsoft launched a Hollow Night silk Song store page on
Xbox this week, enabling players to wish list the game. This was publicized
on social media by Xbox president Sarah Bahd, who reminded players that the title
will be available on Xbox Game Pass on day one. Yeah. Okay,
so like when I heard this initially, I didn't realize it was that February
date. So then after hearing that, it was like, okay, that
puts things in a little bit different light. But what usually happens is,
and this is usually not one hundred percent of the time, something gets rated
in South Korea, and then you're looking about like a month and a half
to two and a half months before it actually comes out. Now, that
would put it right around now, and so the idea that this game could
launch it any second feels a bit absurd, and yet whenever you kind of
talk about this game, it's like the kind of thing where maybe it just
pop back up at the Summer Game Summer Game Fest or the Xbox Showcase and
it could maybe it could shadow drop. I feel like it's too big for
that. I feel like they would want to get the hype into that least
a couple of weeks of people being like, all right, here we go,
here, here it comes, let's everyone pre order it or get ready
to buy it. But at the very least, I think this thing is
lining up to finally launch and probably launching very soon. It feels like there's
no guarantee there. It could come out later this year, but it feels
like it's imminent. I don't know, what do you think? Yeah,
you never know sometimes that when things start hitting and you start seeing Steam databases
updating and whatnot. Like with Shadow of the Ur Tree, it was still
actually like four months away, so it could be very soon. It could
be just getting prepared to announce because it was at Xbox's essentially E three showcase
last year. So if Xbox has a lot of shows, they tend to
do their ID at Xbox stuff a lot. I don't know if that's going
to be an ideat Xbox game. I think it's self published, probably is,
yeah, but if you know, if it's maybe in spirit though,
it's like it's definitely bigger than that kind of game, right, So that
people mentioned that Triple I initiative that like so triple Indie, which that kind
of equivalent of like a triple A indie game is what they're trying to say
that, I think, yes, so that's coming up very soon and people
like, hey, we can show up there. The game is like kind
of too big for that. It is the kind of like it's so huge
that it feels like, now, no, that's the kind of thing that
could maybe not headline Xtbox Showcase clearly, but it's like one of the it
would be a big headline or like of its own. It would be on
the marquee somewhere. If you were to say, hey, you're here are
the four or five games that people really care about in the show, it
would be one of them. And so I think if you're that big and
you are trying to make a big splash at launch and a game that they
spend a lot of extra time on and probably spent more money on than they
intended to. Uh, they probably want to make sure that it's as big
as splash as possible. So I'm not expecting that the Triple Triple I initiative,
but who knows, Like it's the the indie games saying is a lot
of like it's networking, it's a lot of close people, maybe people but
responsible for Triple I have a good relationship with that studio, and you maybe,
yeah, we'll show up there and bring our game there and give it
give it some legitimacy. So yeah, it's possible. But the way I
feel about it right now is like I think we're gonna probably get a couple
of weeks from now, especially as we get into the summer game first time,
and we will hear about that game before we get through the end of
summer. In a real way, I wouldn't be surprised that that feels more
June ish. But you never know. Yep, you never know. And
then you have people like people are like a shadow drop would pop off.
I suppose it would. I guess I'm just like not sure these days.
It's like, I know, shadow drops work really well for smaller games on
the Switch. People love to watch a Nintendo Direct and then go get their
switch out and buy a fucking video game. They love that that. I
don't know if that necessarily translates across the board to every game, but I
mean, listen, Silk Song is going to be the kind of game that
maybe would fit that model pretty well. All Right, you can finally play
the real Sweeka game on iOS. This is Nicole Carpenter at Polygon. Goodbye
App Store, Sweak of game clones, The real thing has finally arrived on
iOS for players outside of Japan. Sweak A Game, the watermelon puzzle game
that went viral on Nintendo Switch last year, is available for download for two
dollars and ninety nine cents on Apple's app Store, making it playable on iPhone
and iPad. The title for the official version is Suweeka Game Dash Aladdin X
and it comes from ex Gimme is that I can never know how to say
this Studio X Gimme limited. Sweak A Game was quietly released on the App
Store for players outside of Japan last month. The game was released on iOS
for Japanese players in December. I only realized it was out on iOS because
I'm still way too into the game and periodically check the app store. I
love Sweak A game. I think it's really well made. It is one
of those ones where it feels like they stumbled across something really special in terms
of the way that the fruit like moves against one another and the friction and
the tension of all these piece is a fruit like stuck in this this tube.
For people that don't know, it's like you just you just drop fruit
down from the ceiling of the game randomly picks one of the like the number
of fruit in there, and you've got to connect to like apples and they
turn into another thing, and then you got to connect two of those and
until you get to a watermelon, and the game keeps track of your score.
It's threes with fruit. And really what makes it work is that really
excellent physics engine, right, And so all these clones don't get it exactly
right, and it's and it's like substantially worse. So like there's this sweek
of game on online that's like, yeah, it looks like it, but
it doesn't feel like it, and that's actually super important. So I've played
a ton of Sweak A game on my switch, really enjoy it. I'm
I don't know if it's on Android and under stand on iOS. I have
an Android. I'm gonna check it out, but at very least people at
iOS. Hey, here you go, here's a good time, wasyster.
Are you a sweet a game guy? You made buy it? And I
played quite a bit of it. Yes, you sold me on it,
I admit it. The switch is almost always up in the kids room,
so I haven't played too much of it, but yeah, when when I
played it, it was pretty darn addictive. Yes, I haven't had as
much time with it recently because the other kids are constantly playing Smash Brothers now
so which is happening right now right over there? Uh? Yeah, I
did see this announced Sean, this puzz mix from INTI Creates. This was
I think announced today, right is this? This is a sweek of game
clone with the Okay, yeah, some parents of sweak a game clone where
one of their anime characters like sits on the side and encourages you. So
okay, what if you know you know what that means? You can Yeah,
you can monitor not have any clones probably, Yeah, eventually, if
it's a good game, all right, we're gonna take a quick break when
we get back, a lot more headlines, including let's talk about what's happening
with hell Blade two. Some previews came out, uh and more right after
this. All right, we are back and Sinuous Saga hell Blade two's combat
looks beautiful and feel bad ass. This is from GameSpot. Check out the
preview. They have a number of previews about various features of this game,
but this one stuck out to me most because I'm like, hey, that
sounds enticing to me, someone who did not necessarily jive with hell Blade one.
About halfway through my conversation with Don Matthews, Head Ninja at Ninja Theory
and Melina Jurgens, lead actor for Sinua and video editor at Ninja Theory,
I broke. I had to ask why the format of sinuas Saga hel Blade
two's title is the inverse of the first game, hell Blade Sinuous Sacrifice.
Why is Sinua the part first? Now it's a small thing, sure,
but I had to know if there was anything to do anything to do with
it beyond the studio secret machinaitions to confuse me. Jurgens laughed and admitted that
the change trips her up to which made me feel a whole lot better,
while Matthew surprised me with a serious answer to my otherwise silly question. We
wanted to recognize the fact that the focus is on Sinua. Matthews told me
it's a sinuus saga, it's Sinua story. We wanted to be wanted that
to be front and center. This preview goes on to talk about, Hey,
the combat is is very interesting and has a lot more going on.
It's pretty deep, and so I'm like, oh, that that sounds pretty
enticing to me. Of course, there's also some caveats to this. I
guess we'll get into that in a second. How are you feeling about Helba
two right now, especially after these previews? Jesse, I would say odd,
odd confused that why so many people are surprised that it's only thirty fps,
Like, it's very clear the game has always been entirely focused on its
graphics to push the narrative further. It's gorgeous, it looks really good,
and it's not a game where you're constantly moving the camera. Like thirty fps
is a lot harder in a dual joystick game because you're constantly moving it.
And if it's jerky at all. Like if you've got the bad thirty fps
with poor emotions moving, it can just feel like shit. But in a
light one v one action game with probably some puzzle solving and walking around environments,
I don't It doesn't bother me. I was actually curious if they were
going to go twenty four because they're doing the big ass black bars or doing
the film. Just go full filmic. Yeah, twenty three point nine to
eighty seven, whatever the actual frame rate they use is. Now, after
reading everything, we didn't it's been funny. People kept asking on our discord
and on our forums, like why am they not talking about this yet?
And I couldn't say anything because we had actually asked and they were like,
oh, that's a very limited preview, just a few few things. You
don't make this one. You're too small. Essentially, It's like, yeah,
I get it, so excited I did. I quite enjoyed the first
one. I beat it once, I got through it mostly again in VR,
and then the VR version was literally just playing with a pad from a
VR view. It was kind of stupid, but I get not remaking the
whole game, but these previews is it's everything. I wanted. It's there.
The thing I always want with games from devs is I want them to
scope correctly. I want them to Okay, we want to make this.
We're making this, and this is something we can actually make and it's not
going to take forever. It's not going to cost insane amounts of money.
This is still an eight or so hour game. This is what we do.
It's a smaller, more intimate, one v one fighting system. It's
not some large, bloated open world now that has a bunch of shrubs you
can't get over because you're on a very linear path. Like, it is
exactly what we want to make at the highest fidelity we can. It's kind
of the thing that during the Insomnia Haack when I heard Insomniac being like,
oh, we've got to have this type of fidelity and the Wolverine when talking
about how Ncom's like, no, no, you shouldn't. Your game is
so much bigger in scope. Their game is very small in scope, which
is the only reason they can do this. Like, I like this type
of focus on something and everything I've heard about this one just gets me more
excited because it doesn't feel like the everything game. It feels like their game
and what they wanted to make. Yeah. I I when I was like
kind of going through some of these previews and seeing some of the reaction,
I read, hey, thirty frames per second, and you know, I
just like it was like, yeah, that makes sense. I looked at
the game. Of course, it's thirty frames per second. I don't always
I don't always do that. Yeah, go ahead, we know what these
these the hardware is. It's a it's a like load to mid range PC.
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. They're not consoles aren't expensive enough to
keep everything at sixty fps, right, That's part of It's like I know
this, I see this game. I know what they're going for, and
I know the hardware that they're targeting. And they have the Xbox Series S
as well. Now, of course it does seem like the emphasis is on
the visuals, so I bet it's GPU limited and so yeah, they'll be
able to like tune that stuff down and probably get that thing running just fine.
And if thirty frames per second on Xbox Series S, that's my expectations.
But yeah, I expected this game to be thirty frames per second.
So I was just like, not all that, Like, oh, man
up in arms, and I do get up in arms sometimes when I'm like,
I man, I wish I yeah, I wish Starfield would have ran
sixty frames per second. I played on PC so that I could have it
that way, and I was bummed out that was thirty frames per second on
console, even though I understood what was happening there here, it's even though
it was it was the good thirty. And even then it's like, right,
if you play it there and you're only on thirty, like, oh,
this isn't too bad. No, then you go to a PC and
you're like, oh god, oh yeah, I forgot what I was missing.
It's one of those things in your brain, right. And in another
thing in my brain is you could see it on the screen with hell Blade
too. You really can. So I think that that helps to a certain
extent. And it is a very cinematic game, not to like be like,
oh, you know, thirty frames per second A second is more of
a filmic, which is something that's been said before. Whatever, I think
this kid's going to get away thirty frames per second, no problem. And
then if you really want sixty second and get a PC, you can use
filmic. Yeah, when you get those thick ass blast bars. You know
what they're going for. It's the order they are. They're pushing visual fidelity
as much as they can, to the point where they're squishing the screen so
they can even get more pixels in that little smaller aspect ratio. I would
say the thing that Xbox will always say is, yes, they want to
have a super strong hardware for their console unit, but they still don't want
to lose a ton of money on it. That's why everything they have is
on PC. So if you if you want to push frame rate, you
will have to go to PC. It doesn't matter if you're a it doesn't
matter who you like. If you like PlayStation Nintendo, especially Nintendo or Xbox,
if you want to push graphics and frame rate, you got to go
on PC. Yeah. It might be harder on Nintendo in the future.
Yeah, but the good news is like, hey, all these games are
on PC. So if you want the more powerful Xbox, it exists.
It is just an expensive PC. I will say, like this, here's
this little another passage from this game spot preview. This was most evident,
kind of like talking about like the the how epic it can get in the
combat. This was most evident in the final moments of the preview, which
saw Sinua attempting to free a prisoner from a group of vikings. Her actions
sparked a prison break and golfing the area and smoke, blood and screams.
I had to guide send you up through an on lot of foes, some
wielding traditional weapons like axes and swords, while others use torches to spute fire.
Much like the first game, Sinewa doesn't face more than one enemy at
a time, so huge battles are structured as a series of back to back
duels. You'd think a decision like this would make combat easier, but nothing
could be further from the truth. Hell Blade two is hard. It's not
as tricky to grasp as more action oriented games, but enemies are quick to
take advantage of your mistakes, perrying weak strikes and immediately counterattacking, for example,
or using wide sweeping attacks that are difficult to dodge without precise timing.
I'm like that game continues to sound more like my kind of game than I
was expecting. I mean, and it's not too long, which is great
for people in our positions. Yes, exactly, I mean right, that
the lower stakes of Yeah, they are promising an eight hour story. I'm
like, okay, so I'll probably be able to get through it like six.
Actually, yeah, that sounds real nice to me. So I'm going
to give this game a real shot. I'm not going to go back to
hul Blade one and try to like make that game work for me. I
kind of know what that is. You know it's not for me. Read
a synopsis of the story and you'll be fine, exactly, but help A
two. I'm not expecting the world from it. Honestly, if I just
go into it, I'm like that some of this stuff works better for me,
I will be happy. That's where I'm sending my own expectations. Very
curious. As someone who does a lot of reviews, Hell Blade one was
like high seventies, low eighties most of the time, I'm very curious where
this one ends up. I'm guessing mid eighties. Yeah, I like,
mid to low eighties is kind of where I'm thinking, Yes, that's where
I would go on to be a huge l We done nineties, We did
a we do a Metacritic prediction, Open Critic actually prediction episode. I wonder
what I thought for hell Blay too. Now my company, open critic is
much easier because it's just one Yes, it's one number. Yes, that's
that's where I have no idea. It's only people have said, oh,
you propped up are Field by giving it a high score, So I was
like, no, I don't count. Actually I'm not a top critic.
I actually have no idea why someone is or is not a top critics.
NAL just seems to be to have a big company behind them. That's a
sister company. I have no idea either. It's all secrets the black box.
They are very they're very quiet. Yes, one year later, you
be Soft Forward is back for another June showcase. This is from Darren Bonthus
at Game Spot. While E three is permanently canceled, that isn't stopping Ubisoft
from hosting its own dedicated live stream event in June that The company has announced
that a new UBI Soft Forward livestream will be broadcasted on June tenth, live
from Los Angeles Ubisoft joints Jeff Keeley's I was Gonna Say George Keeley Jeff Keeley's
Summer Game Fest during the period, which will be held a few days earlier
on June seventh this year. Over the last few years, June has become
informally known as a not E three month in the industry, as the trade
show and satellite events would take place that month. Ubisoft isn't revealing which games
will be shown at its event, but some of the titles of development at
the company includes Star Wars, Outlaws, a Splinter Cell remake, and Assassin's
Creed Code named Red, amongst others. That Outlaws game is still scheduled to
come out this year, Right, I asked this every time? Right,
that's real. Yeah, it's also I think it just got rated on one
ratings board too. As I was going to say, as a massive fan,
because I actually really like that Avatar game. You have to get in.
Once you get to the flying Mount, that game just takes off and
is legitimately fantastic. I hate Avatar. I hate the Avatar movies. There
gorgeous. There's so much incredible looked. I can't get into the story at
all, but that story I actually really liked. Like I like that.
Blue people, you can admit it. I'm not. I'm anti furry.
You got me, Okay, there you go. That'll do it, you
said, Blue people. They're blue cats. Yeah, well, well but
I think people applies to any sort of synthients being. I didn't say humans,
they're not humans. Okay, yeah, all right. People in my
Outlaws Outlaws super excited for because I really love the Division one, love the
Division two. Eventually, once they made it more like the Division one,
that seems to be the thing. Destiny one. That's any two not it's
good until it became Destiny one. Diablo four becoming work at Diablo three.
Massive is just really good. Their their engine is like second to none.
That Snowball Remember Snowdrop, Snowdrop, it was gonna snow blind and like that's
a that's not that. Yes, Snowdrop engine is insanely good and it's using
that's the game. That's the first time we'll see tech from Beyond Good and
Evil two because when you go up to space, it's the Beyond Good and
Evil two tech yep. Uh So Joseph Gordon Levitt finally getting something into a
video game. Let's go. Yeah. I I am mostly just happy that
it feels like a summer game. Mess is coming together once again. Uh
so, so where does this put us? This puts it puts us at
Microsoft already confirmed Sony I continue to appear they're doing something in May. Uh,
the same around the same time frame that did something last year, could
you know, shift a couple of weeks here or there, But in May
they should have what what is sounding like a showcase, but no promises on
that could be a state of play still, but because right now showcase,
it's locked in every mind and it does. To be fair, it does
sound like it's going to be a showcase. I don't think that's too surprising,
especially considering the time and the timing. And then you know, Nintendo's
probably got to do something they don't have to. And then I was gone,
Man, that's the worst phrase in the English language language. Nintendo has
to Nintendo doesn't have to do anything. But there's a strong chance I think
Nintendo sets up the second half of it could be likely, but that's not
that's not that's not confirmed, and there haven't been any confirmed rumors on that
yet. So we have we have Sony, Microsoft, ub Soft, Uh,
I think what we could probably expect a few of these other companies to
step in. And then of course Jeff Qugh is saying, uh, you
know, Summer Game Fest itself. That sounds good enough. Listen, I'm
just glad we have a reason to go out to l a bb Soft.
Last year at a Summer Game Fest, they might have had I think they
had their forward thing. Oh yeah, this is the second year in the
row. I barely remember the forward thing, but they had it of them.
It was a pretty video, right. They had an event in person
which was pretty good. They had a stage demo for Avatar. That's where
I first got to play Prince of Persia, and that was like really solid.
So I'm like, hey, that's a good reason we got to LA
as well. So I'm feeling pretty good about Summer Game mess as it stands
right now. How are you feeling about it? It's nice for all the
making fun of Heey that people do for Jeff now that he's invited us.
I love him. He's the best. I can't wait to I can't wait
to go to LA for the first time in my life ever and hopefully not
die. Well, You'll be fine. LA is not that it's not as
scary as they make it out to be. It's I kind of like LA.
It's a driving of the world. I grew up in the car theft
Capital of the World for a little while. Yeah, yeah, you'll be
fine. And then then yeah, come hang out for for the Giant Bomb
at night. We'll be doing our couch thing. You know. We toenerally
talked about that, but that's really starting to come together now. People.
It'll be three days, might be more to and that's involving that soon.
But as it stands right now, expect what you always expect from Giant Bomb
at Night. God, I gotta start inviting people to them, all right,
yes, so you'd be soft showcase. I we'll probably get some stuff
they'll do like Star Wars Outlaws, big blowout there, and then they'll probably
be a handful of other things. God, I hope it's really good.
Yesssans great of course, yes all right. Hackers who got ps Portal to
run PSP games offline helped Sony to patch out the exploit. This is from
Chris Scullion at VGC. The Portal is a streaming only device which was designed
to let players stream their PS five console to the handheld via remote play so
they can be played away from the TV. As such, the stock version
of the hardware offers no options to save physical games. Offering offering streaming functionality,
and nothing else. However, in February, Google Cloud vulnerability researcher Andy
Neuwen revealed that he and a small team of other Google engineers had managed to
hack the device to play games locally running a PSP emulator offline. On Monday,
the PlayStation portal received a new firmware update to version two point zero six,
and to Win later confirmed on Twitter that it contained a fix for the
hack, one his team had helped Sony to identify. We responsibly reported the
issues to PlayStation to win route bugs are fixed as of two point zero six.
Yeah. I mean, listen, you work for Google. You're not
allowed to not do this. If you discover you kind of have to because
you don't want to be putting your parent company at risk of a lawsuit or
something which probably wouldn't happen. But this is the kind of the ethical thing
I think in most of these cases, or at least as far as these
companies are concerned. Stinks because that device would be way better if you could
play PSP games locally on it. That seems like an awesome thing. Imagine
if you could even do their own cloud service on it. How yeah,
that that would be well, let's not get crazy, Jesse. That's it
is crazy. It is crazy how locked down there the PS five cloud still
is it's only in certain areas for certain games on a PS five and that
is it yas like it looks better than next cloud and is like, yeah
it does. It looks really nice. Nice, so freaking it's so limited.
Yeah, I don't fully understand their strategy there. I it does always
feel like an after style scale. If they've sold the decent amount of these
maybe well if you're because these are just you're going to your PlayStation five directly,
so but if it also became well your PlayStation five and these portals can
all go to the cloud, maybe they run out of because the server space
is the real expensive part that like Xbox I think during the FTC trial,
Sarabahn's like, yeah, we lose money every time someone uses our cloud service,
like they want to keep their prices down as badly as they can.
It's in the beta phase, so even though it's really good when you use
it, it is also real limited for a reason. Yeah, and hey
Steam deck oh lad is better for this then the the PlayStation portal, which
is decent I have. I have nothing against the PlayStation portal, but my
Steam deck oh lead can stream these games in HDR and it looks fantastic,
and there's there's very little degradation in the signal, especially if you're using the
Wi Fi six eve, if you're using the six gigahertz connection, which I'm
lucky enough to have, so that that does make a huge difference. I
know Sean was talking about how he always does notice something when it's streaming and
you can see it. I'm not quite as bad as him. I'm not
quite as sensitive to him as that, but I've been sensitive to that in
the past. The six gigaherd signal does seem to deal with a lot of
those, at least as far as my eyes are concerned. And so it's
like, man, this just looks straight up like I'm playing on the TV,
and in a lot of ways looks better because the screen on the Steam
Deck O led is so damn good. Of course, the speakers are good.
It's it's a real solid way to play games on that device. So
I was streaming some Stellar Blade to that over the weekend and that was that
was pretty good. That game's pretty fun. Jesse Stellar Blade. I've been
pretty good things. Yep. I think it's I think as long as the
boss fights stay interesting and that game is going to have a pretty decent chance.
That was a big thing with Liza p It could be in it could
feel grindy on the little guys, but then you get to a boss and
be like, ah, I've reset. Now I'm back into it. Yep.
I mean it is funny with Wi Fi six and six e taking off
and finally getting home adoption and now Wi Fi seven comes and everyone's like,
oh, yeah, this is way better. Yeah damn it every time,
every time. But I mean, honestly, that just means sixty gets more
affordable, and I'll be And it was very exciting when i got like my
third or fourth sixty device and I'm like, man, look at this,
all these devices connected this. I'm on a T mobile home Internet right now
and just using their modem router Combo and it is six e and just streaming
streaming through the Quest three or Steam to play like Halfla Alex and stuff.
It is perfect. Do you still have the home internet connection wired for like
gaming or do you game over the T Mobile connection? T mobiles all I
have right now because we're in a We're in an h O way, so
I'm I'm frankly, I'm in a big city. If I go down the
street, it's eleven hundred down and one hundred and fifty up. It's like
you will give it with a good strong connection like nine, let's go.
I don't know how, okay, So I average. I average at my
house like five to six hundred down and anywhere from fifteen to thirty five up.
And it's freaking cellular. But the jitter really low, the ping really
low. I don't know how they do it. They start up at the
signal aggregation, so it's using five G and four G at the same time,
so you get the really stable four G up smart I think that holds
a lot. Yeah, they're they're good. It's fifty bucks flat, no
taxes anything, just fifty a month unlimited. I I did just upgrade my
my T mobile account so the bug for my phone so I could take advantage
of the actual five G. I was on like a grandfather plan for forever
ago, and they finally got me to get off that so I could get
the real five G. And I'm because I at my at my home.
I have like the you know the do you see the ultra capacity. I
think that's like the real real five and so I want to take advantage of
that and I want to see what that's like because there UC can hit insane
spice. Yeah, and I'm like my Comcast where where like you listen,
Mike, download is great. It's so anywhere from five hundred to eight hundred
on what is I think they advertised as their one terabyte down plan whatever.
I don't know. It's difference between five hundred it would be a lot or
ter bit yeah, tear a bit, yes, or gig a bit.
Excuse me, yes, yeah it was. But I uploaded on the not
real five G on T mobile and it was like one hundred and fifty up
and I'm getting forty up on on my wire connection and it's like, man,
that's such a limp, Like if you're in an artificial body. They're
they're upload is really good. The problem with Comcast all at times is it's
fiber on the road and then copper to your house. Yeah, so you'll
get the really good down, you do not get the really good up because
it's expensive to run fiber everywhere and they're cheap, So yeah, they're cheap,
that's for sure, all right. Last story here, Tech and Boss
says younger players prefer team games so they could shift responsibility if they lose Herada
coming after y'all. This is from Chris Scullying at VGC. Tecan series producer
Katsuhiro Harada has claimed younger players are more interested in team based games than one
on one fighting games because it gives them less responsibility if they lose. In
the latest edition of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Game Makers Notebook podcast,
which is a great podcast by the way, Harada discussed with PlayStations shoe
Hey Yoshita about the Techan series. At one point, you should have asked
Rata for his opinion on how the one on one fighting game can fall it
couldn't evolve in the future. Harada replied that the genre will have to find
ways to integrate more team based competition because that's what younger generation of players tend
to favor. I think this is a little unfair because mostly because I'm like
I tend to favorite team based things too, because of the same reason where
I don't, I don't it's nice to play a competitive and just be like,
I can focus on one aspect of this instead of having like in a
fighting game, where it's like, no, you need to have a comprehensive
understanding of everything this character could do and everything any of your opponents can do.
And that is a long process and it's appealing. If I had unlimited
time, I would really like that. But I can get a taste of
that by hopping into an online multiplayer team based game where it's like I could
just serve one function, or I can let a teammate tell me what to
do or something like that, and then if we're out there competing, I
still get those good feelings. And I think what this has done, what's
happened is people who would not want to be on under the pressure of a
one on one fighting game scenario are more likely to play multiplayer games because these
team based games. And it's not that they're younger or older, it's just
there's more of those games now, so more people are coming into that space.
And then you look at them and be like, oh, they don't
want to play fighting games because they've been coddal, and it's like, no,
they just they never would have done that in the first place. They
just have these games available to them now, so they are playing online in
a way they just wouldn't have if it was just one on one. So
I don't think HEROD is like incorrect here. I just I don't think it's
a generation thing. Not really. No, it's very much as people get
older, they always look at the next generation or two coming in and say
they're weaker than my generation. That's been going on for the entirety of history,
human history, the longest we've been able to write down words, We've
been looking at the new gen and saying they suck, and then the new
gen looks at the old gen and say, oh, they suck. And
then everyone's when they get older, like in my day it was better and
it'say, yeah, the lead paint and put hair on our ass. I
was going to make a joke about ancient Greece and how there was a shift
in what was deemed to be an appropriate partner for sexual activities and the new
gen versus the old gen a very weird ideas that we would look weird at.
But that's you can just find in every society throughout all of history.
It's just nostalgia, roast tinted glass is for your generation when you get older
pretty much and over generalization in all the time. Yeah, it's the kind
of thing where I think it's very easy just to do the US versus them
in group versus out group thing, and that just naturally happens with one generation.
Everything is a list war, yes, everything, everything, politics,
religion, sports, video games, anything always becomes a versus B, sometimes
a versus B versus C. But there's always my list in your list.
And this is why I win. Yep. And with that said, techn
eight rules, Man, what a good game. Tecona was so much fun.
You can kind of see it right there. Yeah, look they sent
me the collector's edition. I was very happy. They're very nice, planning
to give it away. I'll figure this out eventually, everybody. I don't
know how I meant to mention this. I would give mine away, but
the freakin wing doesn't light up anymore. I don't know why. I have
no idea if this wing is gonna light up. I meant to. I
meant to this way during the stream where we played techn eight. That would
have been too smart, that would have been way too smart. I'm gonna
blame Sean for not reminding me, even though I don't think I ever told
him to remind me. Still his fault. That's what That's what producers are
for, to get your ship together, Sean Jesus God damn. All right,
you know what, we have just one extra minute. And I saw
earlier so once that they wanted to ask a question, ny Lock and anyone
else a chance you want to hit to ask a question button. I will
answer questions here for about two minutes. You got you got your one chance
here at least for the time being, and then we'll get into the whole
question and all that stuff. I'm looking at the question button. No,
there we go. What is for Axis working on? I mean, Fraxis
is certainly working on Civilization seven? Right, I mean that's that's the big
thing, makes sense, and that feels like that is coming soon. I
bet we get to like this summer and we hear about civilization seven. Now
I don't know that that's just my too. Yeah, that's lost. That's
that's my guess. That feels like where we're at. And then it's like,
you know, what else are they working on? My guess there would
be after what happened with Marvel Midnight Suns was them, right? That was
for acxis. Yeah, I'm crazy, Mark. My guess would be after
that game was kind of a kind of fizzled on them that they probably pulled
back in terms of like, hey, all these other projects that aren't Civilization.
I bet they're like, let's just focus really hard on making sure Civilization
seven has a really strong launch. I bet everyone is mostly working on that,
and if they were to do something else after that, they probably would
return to Xcom or something safe. I don't know, but yeah, it's
it feels like all hands on deck for CIVI seven right now, because that's,
you know, as big as Grand Theft Auto is for Take to Civilization
is a massive franchise for that company, and it's always made them a ton
of money, and every entry has made them more more money than the last.
You know, those SIB games are continuously one of the some of the
most played games on Steam. Uh, so that's very important to them.
So, yeah, SIB seven, when we're in a we're in an era
of safe bets. Yes, oh yes, we definitely are from big Man
Finelli. Any Capcom rumors curious what's next for them now that dogwa two is
out. Yeah, it feels like the world's their oyster. It feels like
they could do whatever they want. You know, clearly they are. They've
got the Residentval cycle happening, and they got the Monster Hunter cycle happening,
and those will continue just as you would expect. I think that the team
that's working on Dragons Dogma will probably flip back and forth between Devil May Cry
and Dragon's Dogma for the next you know, ten years or so. Maybe
they'll mix in something else into there, but it seems like that's the direction
they would haved. I bet they do another Devil may Cry next though.
But yeah, in terms of rumors, nothing really. God, we got
past that Capcom hack from a couple of years ago and now we're on the
other side of that for the most part, so anything could happen. I
don't know. Do you have any expectations for Capcom Jesse, Well, their
next thing is can you too Gami paf of the Goddess Smaller Thing? Yes,
so getting a date on that, hopefully in June, because they'll do
stuff in June. But also it's a game pass game, so if they
dated I wouldn't be surprised dated at the Xbox Showcase and then show off more
on their own thing during the week. Outside of that, next thing seem
to be Hunter Monster Hunter World two, yes, and then Resident Evil nine
most likely. Outside of that, they always seem to have little things going
in the works, like hey, they're exo Primals and their paths of the
Goddesses the chances, Yes, yeah, I'm sure final one here from always
be clothing. I'll point this to you, Jesse. Would you say Bobby
Yet, to which tell me if you're familiar with that or not. It
deserves to be on the Mount Rushmore of video game music over the Legend of
Zelda. It's a tough one. It's close, but Bobby Yet, just
for just the memorable tune that so many No, not better, just more
memorable. Right. The problem is is that when you start doing the Mount
Rushmore of video game music, you could easily do like three Coachy Condo tracks
very easily. So like you're gonna put Super Mario Brothers music on there,
because that's like the defining that is George Washington to me, And then and
then then you go like, Okay, there's three spots left. Are we
really gonna do another Coachy condo and you could. But Bobba yet to Grammy
Award winning Baba yet to listen. If you're listening to me like what is
he even talking about Baba yet to spelled? Like it sounds, go listen
to it. It's the the the the opening theme for civilization for and it
rules. Yeah. The lyrics are the Lord's Prayer like Zimbabwe in all right
by sing yeah, that's right, all right. We got a pull question
from yesterday. I'll get to that right now. Why get set up,
Jeff, Yeah, Well, I'll give them the audience to pull here in
a second. Uh, while I'm get that said. Just want to tell
people where they can find you what you have going on, all that good
stuff. Well, I always it is xboxer dot com. You can find
all our stuff right there where legit press site in the minds of enough PR
companies now that I'll call us press, not journalists, not at all media
aiming press. Don't don't yell at me over the starfield to PlayStation five story.
That was John. Outside of that, we've got a h I got
yelled about that today. That was fun. Someone was like, oh you
said this, I didn't. That was John. Yeah, he he used
the wrong word. He used plan when he should have used discussion or you
know, considering and considering. Part of considering is having a plan on how
you would do it if you decide to do it. But outside of that,
it's just Xboxer dot com, YouTube dot com for SOS Xbox Era.
We do headlines every Tuesday and Thursday where we just break down some some news.
We have the podcast every set Saturday. We have a Bubaka Salim from
Urgent Studios on as a guest live this weekend to talk about Tales of Canzera
Zal, which is coming out later in the month in albert super viewing.
Yeah, coming to PlayStation Plus day one, which is really nice for them.
So yeah, well Xbox Era, we we focus on Xbox We end
up covering everything, especially because Nick loves Nindendo so much. All right,
pull a question if you played the Stellar Blade demo, did you like it?
Sixty one percent said yes, thirty nine percent said no, that's pretty
that's a pretty decent. Yeah. I think you know, that's a game
that is either going to be for you or not in a lot of ways.
And I think if you come at it and you have a certain expectation
for the way the combat is going to work. Are you an ass man?
Yeah, you're an ass man right. Then at the butt cheeks on
that lady sway like a pendulum. It's it's really wild. It's just really
bodily physics. And then of course she's got an outfit with the vagina heart
on it. Yeah. I'm looking forward to playing more of that game,
just see if it can maintain the high quality boss fights. So I enjoyed
that. All right, let's see here. I have a new poll question
for tomorrow. Are you getting excited for the summer game Mess? Your options
are yes, I'm already excited. The second one is I'll get excited when
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have all confirmed shows and No. E three
is dead. Those your options. We'll discuss that on Game Mess Mornings on
Giant Bomb tomorrow. Speaking to Giant Bomb later today is Voicemail Dump Truck.
I don't know if we'll stream anything before then. It's been kind of a
busy week, so maybe we'll see if you can fit something in. But
no promises, but Voicemail Dumpruck will happen later. I'll be set up for
that. Tune in should be a good time. Tomorrow we will have another
game mess Mornings in the morning of course, and then we'll have UPF where
we're playing content warning. I'm very much looking forward to that. That's the
very exciting smart them to make that free. Yes, just a really good
move. And then we'll have a BCR in the afternoon after that, so
tune in for all of that here on GiantBomb dot com. Thank you for
listening, everybody, Jesse, thank you for hanging out with me today and
talking about video games. I really appreciate it. It's always fun to be
here. Thank you for having me, and then thank you all. You're
the best audience in gaming. Until next time, have a good one,
take care of yourself, and goodbye.