God Of War: Sons Of Sparta Review And Spending $99 On Virtual Boy

<v Speaker 1>Welcome back, everyone to the Game Informer Show, a weekly
<v Speaker 1>podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Friday
<v Speaker 1>for a discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews, and
<v Speaker 1>exclusive reveals, alongside Game and Former staff and special guests
<v Speaker 1>from around the industry. I'm one of your hosts today,
<v Speaker 1>Alex van Aiken, and today I'm joined by Kyle Hilliard.
<v Speaker 2>How you doing, Kyle, Hey, sleepy, it's snowing again. We
<v Speaker 2>had a day of warmth and now it's snowing again.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, you know, we had our first false winter,
<v Speaker 1>which one Eric Van Allen will come to learn that
<v Speaker 1>we have multiple of those before spring. What are y'all
<v Speaker 1>doing up here? What do y'all? This is crazy? This
<v Speaker 1>is wild. This is I think last year I counted
<v Speaker 1>three false springs last year before we finally hit real spring.
<v Speaker 1>It's a false spring, like like for a moment, the
<v Speaker 1>weather's like, oh, you have tastes, you get like a
<v Speaker 1>little tea, you like sun?
<v Speaker 2>Well, back to Darles, you like going outside without a
<v Speaker 2>jacket on.
<v Speaker 1>You almost thought I'll do with vitamin D gummies and
<v Speaker 1>now right back to him. Yeah, you know it's it's
<v Speaker 1>a respite, so I'll take it.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, exactly. Yeah, that's what you do.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, we're gonna have a good show today. We're gonna
<v Speaker 1>be talking God of War Sons of Sparta, which is
<v Speaker 1>the new two D Metroidvana I believe set in that
<v Speaker 1>God of War universe. It's out now. Our Kyle's got
<v Speaker 1>the new Nintendo Switch Virtual Boy.
<v Speaker 2>We're gonna be checking that old Virtual Boy as well.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, as well as Eric's Paranormal site review, which is
<v Speaker 1>a very cool, very highly rated now mystery game. And
<v Speaker 1>then I want to talk about Cairen because I'm I
<v Speaker 1>love that game. So it's gonna be a fun show
<v Speaker 1>this week. Of course, before we get into it, I
<v Speaker 1>do just want to say, if you are wanting to
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<v Speaker 1>slash subscribe. Guys, let's get into it, Kyle, I want
<v Speaker 1>to hand it off to you. Tell us about God
<v Speaker 1>of War Sons of Sparta, a game that Shadow dropped
<v Speaker 1>during last week's PlayStation State of Play, and I actually
<v Speaker 1>haven't heard much about it online at all, which leads
<v Speaker 1>me to believe maybe it isn't the best. But I'll
<v Speaker 1>leave you to correct me if I'm wrong.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's it's mediocre, politely, all right, it's got it's
<v Speaker 2>got some it's got some pros, it's got some cons. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>it's I'm working on the review. Uh so I'll have
<v Speaker 2>a proper score review on site, hopefully before the end of week.
<v Speaker 2>Hopefully by the time you're listening to this. It's it's
<v Speaker 2>on gameforma dot com, but it's it's a Metroidvania and
<v Speaker 2>it in it it's Krados as like a teen. His
<v Speaker 2>brother's eleven, which is funny because demos.
<v Speaker 1>Amos is his brother. Right.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he feels older actually when you play the game,
<v Speaker 2>but they keep talking about how he's eleven years old.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know exactly how old Crados is.
<v Speaker 3>You know.
<v Speaker 1>I used to work with a youth group many many
<v Speaker 1>years ago, and there was an eleven year old that
<v Speaker 1>had a full fledged beard and was balding, and I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>what are you eating? That's that's it was crat no exaggeration,
<v Speaker 1>it was why Benjamin stuff right there. That's awesome. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I don't want to alarm you, Alex, but I think
<v Speaker 2>that was just an adult posing as an eleven year old.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, totally.
<v Speaker 2>Group is that's where the kids hang out? Yeah, no,
<v Speaker 2>but it's so Yeah, it shadow dropped. It was interesting
<v Speaker 2>they announced it was it was kind of an odd
<v Speaker 2>thing in the state of play, which we talked about
<v Speaker 2>last week, but it was like, Hey, we're remaking the
<v Speaker 2>God of War trilogy. Aren't you excited about that? Here's
<v Speaker 2>the original voice actor. We don't have any game to
<v Speaker 2>show you, but he's here.
<v Speaker 1>Oh.
<v Speaker 2>By the way, we did make a full fledged two
<v Speaker 2>D God of War prequel TC cars in his back
<v Speaker 2>is as as adult Credos, and it's like a full
<v Speaker 2>Metroidvania in here. You can have it right now. And
<v Speaker 2>that was that was shocking and surprising, and as as
<v Speaker 2>a long time God of War fan, like I was
<v Speaker 2>there day one for God of War one, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like I have played every game at launch, including the
<v Speaker 2>very underplayed pre smartphone God of War mobile game God
<v Speaker 2>of War Betrayal. I even played that one.
<v Speaker 1>You've been in the trenches.
<v Speaker 2>I've been in the trenches, man. But I love this
<v Speaker 2>sort of world and sort of fiction and narrative and
<v Speaker 2>story of God of War. I like seeing Credos' life.
<v Speaker 2>You know, this is he's had a really devastating, heartbreaking
<v Speaker 2>life and it's led him in a lot of interesting
<v Speaker 2>directions and you know, like encountering a lot of gods,
<v Speaker 2>and so I am quite enjoying the part of the
<v Speaker 2>game that is, Hey, here's Credos as a kid, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like a young Spartan trying to like you know, sort
<v Speaker 2>of be on track to become a leader at Sparta.
<v Speaker 2>And he's like and he's hanging out with his brother,
<v Speaker 2>and the dialogue is good because from what I understand,
<v Speaker 2>like the you know, the the Sony Santa Monica writers
<v Speaker 2>are involved with the game. They didn't fully hand over
<v Speaker 2>the game to a third party developer. But then the
<v Speaker 2>actual game is like just south of solid, Like it
<v Speaker 2>is a pretty underwhelming metroid Vania and just in terms
<v Speaker 2>of general design, and the combat is like just a
<v Speaker 2>lot of rolling behind enemies and hitting them with your
<v Speaker 2>spear as much as you can. I haven't really even
<v Speaker 2>had a lot of success of like diving into like
<v Speaker 2>you know, the sort of the strategies and the counters
<v Speaker 2>and stuff like that. It's just like it's not it's
<v Speaker 2>it's not great. I mean, yeah, this is this is
<v Speaker 2>really damning praise it's not even praise. This is really
<v Speaker 2>damning thing to say. But I think it is the
<v Speaker 2>weakest God of War game if you don't really count
<v Speaker 2>that sort of no ca a mobile game, which I
<v Speaker 2>think you kind of like can't count that, you know.
<v Speaker 1>I guess I'm curious. You know, this is a prequel
<v Speaker 1>and I am not as familiar with I didn't play
<v Speaker 1>the original God of Wars like I got in on
<v Speaker 1>the series with the remake or like the reboot or
<v Speaker 1>absorbs in twenty eighteen and really enjoyed that. But I
<v Speaker 1>you know, I I've watched cutscenes, I've I've been there
<v Speaker 1>for I know there's like, you know, some big cultural
<v Speaker 1>moments that have happened with God of War, and you know,
<v Speaker 1>I used to watch X playing that kind of thing,
<v Speaker 1>so I would like, you know, absorb like in general,
<v Speaker 1>you know what was happening with the series, But as
<v Speaker 1>somebody who doesn't know the whole story of how Kratis
<v Speaker 1>comes to become a god, what does that look like
<v Speaker 1>in this game? Like are you encountering deities and in
<v Speaker 1>gods and monsters or are you just fighting dudes?
<v Speaker 2>You are fighting monsters, like you're fighting cyclopses and gros
<v Speaker 2>and Greek monsters and things like that. Yeah, but the
<v Speaker 2>gods is interesting because you get kind of like gifts
<v Speaker 2>from the gods, like you get you know, your double
<v Speaker 2>jump is from Nike and stuff like that, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and it's and there are conversations, which is where the
<v Speaker 2>game is the strongest. Between Credos and Demos's brother, who Damas,
<v Speaker 2>is interesting because like he's always been in the fiction.
<v Speaker 2>He primarily appeared in one of the PSP games. But
<v Speaker 2>I mean this might shock you to learn that he
<v Speaker 2>has kind of a sort of a tragic relationship with
<v Speaker 2>his brother as well. Yeah, nothing in his life goes
<v Speaker 2>well for Credos, but yeah, like there's these conversations between
<v Speaker 2>Crotos and Demos where they're kind of discussing sometimes, like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, how do we feel about the gods, and
<v Speaker 2>Credos is like, well, I you know, I think I
<v Speaker 2>think they're helpful. I don't know. I don't really trust them,
<v Speaker 2>but I don't I don't know, I don't know what
<v Speaker 2>to think, you know. And then the God of War
<v Speaker 2>one is where you know, everything kind of goes to
<v Speaker 2>hell or Credos like literally.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like my understanding of the story is his family
<v Speaker 1>is killed, his ashes there, their ashes are bound to
<v Speaker 1>his skin, and that's why he's so pale, and maybe
<v Speaker 1>he somehow becomes a god from that.
<v Speaker 2>The tragic the tragedy of the original God of War
<v Speaker 2>is that the gods tricked Credos into killing his family. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>Creatos is the one who killed his wife and daughter
<v Speaker 2>because he was like on a mission from the gods,
<v Speaker 2>and he understandably was very upset by that and betrayed
<v Speaker 2>by the gods, and that's why he went on a
<v Speaker 2>rampage to start killing gods. And you kill Aris, the
<v Speaker 2>God of War at the end of the first God
<v Speaker 2>of War game, which is how you sort of earn
<v Speaker 2>that title. Like it was kind of a twist at
<v Speaker 2>the time the game was called God of War because
<v Speaker 2>you were going after the God of War. But then
<v Speaker 2>like at the end of the game, you realize, oh,
<v Speaker 2>that's me. I'm you know, dag yourself, I'm God of War,
<v Speaker 2>you know. Yeah, and uh, and then there's more to
<v Speaker 2>it than that, you know, in the second games that interesting,
<v Speaker 2>but yeah, I mean, so this is a period of time.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's weird because it's like the game is framed
<v Speaker 2>by Credos telling a story to his daughter Calliope about
<v Speaker 2>when he was a kid. So you have basically a
<v Speaker 2>version of the world that takes place well before God
<v Speaker 2>of War one, where he was a dad for the
<v Speaker 2>first time, he was a family man, and he was like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, here he is spending time with his daughter
<v Speaker 2>and telling a story about hey, here's here's when me
<v Speaker 2>and my brother got into some crazy shenanigans. And like,
<v Speaker 2>as someone who really enjoys the sort of narrative God
<v Speaker 2>of War and the characterization of Credos, I liked that
<v Speaker 2>part of the game. I like that story. I like
<v Speaker 2>seeing more from Calliope. Like Calliopes like appeared like in person,
<v Speaker 2>so to speak, in like in God of War, Chains
<v Speaker 2>of Olympus on PSP, Like he found a version of
<v Speaker 2>her in hell and had to like literally separate her
<v Speaker 2>himself from her, and it was actually really heartbreaking and
<v Speaker 2>well done. So it's like it's cool to see that
<v Speaker 2>version of Creatos again after spending so much time with
<v Speaker 2>what is ostensibly his new life, you know, like he
<v Speaker 2>had to leave that life behind. It didn't exist anymore,
<v Speaker 2>and that's where he you know, got into the North
<v Speaker 2>Norse pantheon and treys and stuff like that. So like
<v Speaker 2>it's as someone who's been investing in God of War
<v Speaker 2>since the beginning, it's it's fun to see that. But
<v Speaker 2>like it's the game is just is just south of okay.
<v Speaker 2>Like the like it's it's just like a really mediocre
<v Speaker 2>metroid vania game, which is tough in twenty twenty six
<v Speaker 2>when the genre is flourishing and there's so many amazing
<v Speaker 2>versions of it, like The Hollow Knights of the World
<v Speaker 2>and things like that in the recent Prince of Persia,
<v Speaker 2>which I love, Like it's hard not to play this
<v Speaker 2>game and be like, Prince of Persia did this better,
<v Speaker 2>which is funny because the Spartans are literally a war
<v Speaker 2>with the Persians in the sort of.
<v Speaker 1>Pess of the game. It feels like with with metroidvenas
<v Speaker 1>these days, you know, a lot of criticism for the
<v Speaker 1>most part is like you know, a more nitpicky, like
<v Speaker 1>does choices, you know, and and really you get into
<v Speaker 1>a lot of the like tackling of the themes because
<v Speaker 1>that's really where like the genre has kind of expanded into, like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, interesting themes like with you know, oppressive religion
<v Speaker 1>in Holly Night Silk Song and you know, stuff like that.
<v Speaker 1>And so it's interesting to hear from a a first
<v Speaker 1>party Triple A you know backed game kind.
<v Speaker 3>Of like with asterisks, right, like yeah, with an asterisk,
<v Speaker 3>but like funded by by Sony, not hitting like the
<v Speaker 3>fundamentals when you've got all of these indie teams that
<v Speaker 3>are kind of nailing it, which is very interesting to me.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah, But it's like it's it's cool for God
<v Speaker 2>of War fans. It's like a it's like a decent
<v Speaker 2>like like subdecent Metroidvania game in a world that I like,
<v Speaker 2>you know what I mean. It's like it's like, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I don't think those games shouldn't exist. I'm glad that
<v Speaker 2>they went after it and had this idea that they pursued,
<v Speaker 2>and and and it's cool in that way. And it's like,
<v Speaker 2>in that way, I would be like, yeah, if you
<v Speaker 2>like love God War and you've played them all, like,
<v Speaker 2>I don't think you should skip this one. But maybe
<v Speaker 2>if you're like a casual God of Orphan or you've
<v Speaker 2>only played the recent ones and you you know, aren't
<v Speaker 2>really like you have a higher standard for this genre,
<v Speaker 2>which which which we all do. You know, if we're
<v Speaker 2>like hardcore gamers, like, there's a good chance you've played
<v Speaker 2>and loved at least one really great Metroidvania and this
<v Speaker 2>isn't a great Metroidvania. It's just not.
<v Speaker 1>I know, I know you're still finishing the game and
<v Speaker 1>figuring out your score. I'm just curious for the sake
<v Speaker 1>of our conversation because people can go and probably read
<v Speaker 1>your actual review when they're listening to this. But like
<v Speaker 1>what currently today where you at score wise with this?
<v Speaker 1>If you had to, like, you know, boil it down
<v Speaker 1>to like a window, is it like five or six
<v Speaker 1>something like that?
<v Speaker 2>It is between that six and seven zone, like six
<v Speaker 2>five seven. It's kind of where I'm where I'm at
<v Speaker 2>right now, which could change, you know, go check out
<v Speaker 2>to you see where I landed.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting? And how long I'm curious have
<v Speaker 1>you spent playing it so far?
<v Speaker 2>I'm in?
<v Speaker 1>How far would you.
<v Speaker 2>Say, or you are I'm like nine or ten hours in,
<v Speaker 2>maybe even up to twelve I'm not I'm not sure exactly,
<v Speaker 2>but it doesn't feel like I'm sprinting towards the end,
<v Speaker 2>if that makes sense, right, Like if I had to guess,
<v Speaker 2>I would say I'm probably like seventy percent through, maybe
<v Speaker 2>sixty seventy percent through at like between ten to twelve hours.
<v Speaker 2>So I don't know how long it is, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know how substantial it is.
<v Speaker 1>Well, one final question for me, what has been the
<v Speaker 1>most fun enemy to defeat in this game.
<v Speaker 2>I mean the introductory ones, because you just kind of
<v Speaker 2>pull them and move on, you know, like there's not
<v Speaker 2>like that's the combat's kind of underwhelming.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not really Yeah, there's not a ball cool boss
<v Speaker 1>fights are that like do interesting things.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, there's been a couple of cool boss fights,
<v Speaker 2>but like, I mean not really. Man not to be rude,
<v Speaker 2>I'm sorry, you're being real.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Eric, I'm curious, like what your thoughts are. Interest
<v Speaker 1>level is on Sons of Sparta pretty low, to be honest,
<v Speaker 1>I feel like I'm a little burned out on the
<v Speaker 1>two D Metroidvania these days. There's kind of a high
<v Speaker 1>bar for it, just because there's so many of them around,
<v Speaker 1>and there's such a good variety and quality of them
<v Speaker 1>around that you got to do something really interesting to
<v Speaker 1>catch my attention. I've got a backlog of some really
<v Speaker 1>good ones, like ender Lilies and stuff like that that
<v Speaker 1>I like to get around to at some point, So
<v Speaker 1>I think for Sons of Sparta would have had to
<v Speaker 1>do something really novel and unique. And I'm already not
<v Speaker 1>a huge gout a war fan. I don't really have
<v Speaker 1>a lot of nostalgia for the series or anything I
<v Speaker 1>did like twenty eighteen, but that was about it. So yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I just don't think this is the one for me.
<v Speaker 1>I think this is one of the games that I'm
<v Speaker 1>trying to be better in the year twenty twenty six
<v Speaker 1>and be like I will let some things fall into
<v Speaker 1>the background and let other people who are more interested
<v Speaker 1>on gistaff the banner for it. So unless we get
<v Speaker 1>to this.
<v Speaker 2>I do with you guys for all multiplayer games.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, stay tuned for Paranormans, say discussion later in this
<v Speaker 1>podcast episode. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, Sons of Sparta. I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>it seems like it's for a very specific subset of people,
<v Speaker 1>people who like two D metroidvanias like God of War
<v Speaker 1>and just want something in that realm. But it also,
<v Speaker 1>from the sounds of it, is not really doing anything
<v Speaker 1>absolutely like you gotta see this. It's it's doing something amazing,
<v Speaker 1>and it's hard to say that in this day and
<v Speaker 1>age and this genre specifically, you do have to really
<v Speaker 1>like stand on the shoulders of giants in some ways
<v Speaker 1>to just stand out. So yeah, yeah, I have a
<v Speaker 1>theory that like when you shadow drop a game like this,
<v Speaker 1>you're on this shadow dropping it to really make a
<v Speaker 1>huge splash and like really take people by surprise or
<v Speaker 1>that you're like, hey, maybe let's not like throw this
<v Speaker 1>one out the previews and let's just like try to
<v Speaker 1>see if we can generate some excitement through a stealth
<v Speaker 1>drop to make some sales. Shadow drop is a marketing tactic.
<v Speaker 1>It is, and it is I think in a lot
<v Speaker 1>of ways it can help drive excitement for something, especially
<v Speaker 1>if you kind of want that rising tide of also
<v Speaker 1>announcing the God of War remakes and having everything out
<v Speaker 1>there ahead of time. But it is part of one
<v Speaker 1>of my larger favorite things that's happening in games right now,
<v Speaker 1>which is publishers being a little bit more lenient and
<v Speaker 1>lending out their ip to to third party studios to
<v Speaker 1>do cool things with and so in that realm, I
<v Speaker 1>support it, and I think it's cool.
<v Speaker 2>But I'm glad they try.
<v Speaker 1>This is a good well. I think it's just the
<v Speaker 1>subject matter is not really doing it for me. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's fair. Well, Kyle, I want to kind of toss
<v Speaker 1>it back to you to talk about the Virtual Boy,
<v Speaker 1>which is another, I think maybe more niche game that
<v Speaker 1>you have a lot of Fatisa generous, not a game
<v Speaker 1>a game system. Rather, Yeah, why why why the Virtual
<v Speaker 1>Boy in twenty twenty six. I have zero interest in
<v Speaker 1>this thing. I think it's silly that they are publishing this,
<v Speaker 1>but I want to hear it from somebody who is
<v Speaker 1>number one, played a lot of Virtual Boy and has
<v Speaker 1>an original Virtual Boy. Yeah one is this worth picking
<v Speaker 1>up if I don't care about Virtual Boy? Like, is
<v Speaker 1>it is it somehow like revelatory in nature or is
<v Speaker 1>it just a toy that is going after your nostalgia
<v Speaker 1>of people like you?
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely do? You do not need to purchase this thing
<v Speaker 2>or engage with it in any way. I Yeah, I'm
<v Speaker 2>kind of obsessed with the Virtual Boy, just as like
<v Speaker 2>a long time Nintendo fan and like being you know,
<v Speaker 2>the age that if I had like income as a
<v Speaker 2>kid and I could buy whatever I wanted, Like I
<v Speaker 2>bought a Virtual Boy, you know, because I was like, well,
<v Speaker 2>clearly this is the future, and I was, like I
<v Speaker 2>was young, and I've just kind of always been obsessed
<v Speaker 2>with it as like this. I mean, Nintendo is so
<v Speaker 2>interesting and creative. We all have our qualms with Nintendo.
<v Speaker 2>They're a ridiculous company that does silly things, but like
<v Speaker 2>they really do try to do weird things, and the
<v Speaker 2>Virtual Boy was like maybe the sort of apex of
<v Speaker 2>that of like we have this like crazy idea that
<v Speaker 2>we're going to go all in on and we're going
<v Speaker 2>to invest a ton in it, and it is I
<v Speaker 2>mean without a doubt. I mean Nintendo's biggest failure by
<v Speaker 2>like a wide margin, like they that thing was like
<v Speaker 2>off you know, the store shelves, like within like two
<v Speaker 2>or three months or something like that, like they canceled
<v Speaker 2>a whole slate of games because it was just like
<v Speaker 2>this did not work, oops, you know. And so I've
<v Speaker 2>always been obsessed with it as like what is otherwise
<v Speaker 2>a company with like a really great track record, like
<v Speaker 2>even though we you which is like maybe second place
<v Speaker 2>for like the worst you know, Nintendo console in terms
<v Speaker 2>of like you know, sales and things like that. And
<v Speaker 2>what I'm saying is like that we still like there's
<v Speaker 2>a great system with great games on it, like you know,
<v Speaker 2>like they they just some times it just doesn't work.
<v Speaker 2>And and so I I my wife bought me a
<v Speaker 2>Virtual Boy a couple of years ago because like I
<v Speaker 2>would always look at them on eBay. It's just this
<v Speaker 2>curio of like I can't believe this thing happened, and
<v Speaker 2>I and I got one. She got one for me,
<v Speaker 2>and I played through Virtual Boy Warrio Land, which is
<v Speaker 2>like a great two D side scrolling Warrio game. It's
<v Speaker 2>like genuinely a good game. Every other game I played
<v Speaker 2>on the Virtual Boy is like hot garbage that like
<v Speaker 2>has like a frame rate of like half. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it's like it's like hard to play, and like nothing
<v Speaker 2>really stands out to me other than Warrio. But all
<v Speaker 2>that to say is like the reason I'm like kind
<v Speaker 2>of in love with this thing is I like Nintendo
<v Speaker 2>sort of embracing their bizarre history in moments like this,
<v Speaker 2>And and also it's like this is such a unique, specific
<v Speaker 2>type of game that like only existed like truly for
<v Speaker 2>a matter of months. There was only this one bizarre
<v Speaker 2>way to play it to truly experience it, Like I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I think everyone's kind of upset that they just didn't
<v Speaker 2>port these games to three DS, Like that feels like
<v Speaker 2>the best, Like that would have been a better platform
<v Speaker 2>for it, frankly than the Switch. Honestly, I would have
<v Speaker 2>rather played those games on on.
<v Speaker 1>My Would the three DS be a better platform to
<v Speaker 1>play the games than a Virtual Boy? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>Oh, yeah, how absolutely, How.
<v Speaker 1>Would you do that? Would you book open the three
<v Speaker 1>DS and then just kind of like hold it up
<v Speaker 1>to your eyes to get like the split vision of it,
<v Speaker 1>like the just the three D?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah do you did? You forget that the three D
<v Speaker 2>S has stereoscope?
<v Speaker 1>It has stereoscopic three D? But then what do you
<v Speaker 1>put on the bottom screen? Does it just say like
<v Speaker 1>look up there? Stupid? Like the menus it's a black screen.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, look at whatever they did for the Game Boy
<v Speaker 2>Pokemon S. But but yeah, so, like I I'm fascinated
<v Speaker 2>by just like historically, like it is like my favorite
<v Speaker 2>that and the Phillips CDI like, you know, nint mash up,
<v Speaker 2>Like those are the two sort of things that I
<v Speaker 2>love about Nintendo history that I'm always like, like what
<v Speaker 2>happened there? And so for Nintendo to put in this
<v Speaker 2>colossal amount of effort to make Virtual Boy games playable
<v Speaker 2>in exactly the way that they were designed to be
<v Speaker 2>played is like I think, frankly kind of amazing. Now
<v Speaker 2>that being said, sitting down and playing a Virtual Boy
<v Speaker 2>game is an unpleasant experience that I don't recommend to people.
<v Speaker 2>Like It's like I played through a bunch of not
<v Speaker 2>through I booted up a bunch of the games, like
<v Speaker 2>I was excited to try, Like I played through Virtual
<v Speaker 2>Boy Warrior Land, which I contend is like easily the
<v Speaker 2>best Virtual Boy game and is like you could totally
<v Speaker 2>play that as a fun two D warrior as like
<v Speaker 2>it is a solid warrior game, and I'm and like
<v Speaker 2>if they if you played it outside a Virtual Boy,
<v Speaker 2>you'd have a great time. But like you know, booting
<v Speaker 2>up like Telerope Boxer, which is like you know, punch Out,
<v Speaker 2>but like with like stereoscopic three D and like there's
<v Speaker 2>like a red alert is kind of star Foxy, but
<v Speaker 2>it's like it's all wireframe and it's like a possible
<v Speaker 2>to parse. They have Tetris three D, which like seriously
<v Speaker 2>has a frame rate of like two. Like it's like
<v Speaker 2>it just it's like I kind of get what they
<v Speaker 2>were going for, but it's like it doesn't really work
<v Speaker 2>and it's but I just I just like it, man,
<v Speaker 2>I like that it exists.
<v Speaker 1>This is the sense Fit's like, I mean, it's the
<v Speaker 1>sort of thing you can only make when you have
<v Speaker 1>just made the switch and become like one of the
<v Speaker 1>most insanely profitable like video game companies like you're you're
<v Speaker 1>riding a high. You're doing very well, the Switch is selling,
<v Speaker 1>and you're you're coasting off the success. Why not make
<v Speaker 1>a virtual boy? Why not do this thing? So, I
<v Speaker 1>I know, Switch Online Expansion Pack is required to access
<v Speaker 1>the Virtual Boy catalog. There's also two skews for virtual Boys,
<v Speaker 1>the ninety nine dollars like real, real version of the
<v Speaker 1>you know, the new remake of the Virtual Boy, and
<v Speaker 1>then a cardboard version, right m that is. Yeah, it's
<v Speaker 1>a sensibly cheaper.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, which is very labo esque yeah, which which and
<v Speaker 2>it functions the same way LABOVR did, where it's like
<v Speaker 2>you actually put your system in there and there's like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, two mag basically two magnifying glasses in there
<v Speaker 2>that kind of like what you would have in a
<v Speaker 2>medical quest headset or something like that. Like you made
<v Speaker 2>it any kind of you literally hold it up to
<v Speaker 2>your face like this and play it. Yeah. I don't
<v Speaker 2>have the cardboard one. I actually I purchased because I'm
<v Speaker 2>part of the problem. I purchased the proper Virtual Boy,
<v Speaker 2>But I do I do actually think that the cardboard
<v Speaker 2>one might actually be the more comfortable way to play,
<v Speaker 2>because like you can just kind of like hold it
<v Speaker 2>up on your face and kind of be where you
<v Speaker 2>want where the If you're playing with the proper virtual boy,
<v Speaker 2>you kind of have to like sit at a table
<v Speaker 2>and it's really it's uncomfortable, you.
<v Speaker 1>Like really crouched down to Yeah, like what's the the
<v Speaker 1>Zelda enemy that's like is the red Heads or whatever?
<v Speaker 1>The kind of like hunch.
<v Speaker 2>Over and like, yeah, they were the that they were
<v Speaker 2>inspired by versus they.
<v Speaker 1>Need a monitor arm or something for this thing. I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure somebody's gonna make a mod so you can have
<v Speaker 1>like your monitors, your desk, your your podcast microphone, and
<v Speaker 1>then you could have your virtual boy mounted deer desk
<v Speaker 1>as well.
<v Speaker 2>I wouldn't mind. I wish they because they really were
<v Speaker 2>I pulled. There's a video on our social media channels
<v Speaker 2>where I kind of I put them side by side.
<v Speaker 2>I had my original one that I that I pulled
<v Speaker 2>out and like compared it to the new one and
<v Speaker 2>it's identical. Like it's like they I don't know how
<v Speaker 2>they do it. I don't know if they just keep
<v Speaker 2>those like blueprints around and they just like were able
<v Speaker 2>to send it back to the factory to like just
<v Speaker 2>refill the mold, so I don't I have no idea
<v Speaker 2>how that works, but it is like one to one
<v Speaker 2>the exact same, and I I do wish they had
<v Speaker 2>like set it up so you so you could strap
<v Speaker 2>it to your face. Honestly, like it would be more
<v Speaker 2>comfortable if you could just strap it to your face.
<v Speaker 1>That was going to be my thing was. I don't
<v Speaker 1>think the like Oculus Quest version of this is necessarily
<v Speaker 1>possible because pick up your switch to. If you're listening
<v Speaker 1>to this podcast and and you're at home and you're
<v Speaker 1>near your switch to, please lift it and then place
<v Speaker 1>it directly onto your face and feel the heft of
<v Speaker 1>that console, because like the switch to is heavier than
<v Speaker 1>the Switch one, and not by like massive degrees, but
<v Speaker 1>it is a heavier piece of hardware. And you can
<v Speaker 1>do that with to be fair to play Virtual Boy,
<v Speaker 1>you can you can do switch one as well.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but that doesn't but your point still absolutely stands out.
<v Speaker 2>It's like a little heavy, heavy pieces of tech. I
<v Speaker 2>do actually is it heavier than the Meta Quest. It
<v Speaker 2>must be.
<v Speaker 1>I've played for hours on the Oculus Rift s and
<v Speaker 1>that thing was heavy as hell. But they have like
<v Speaker 1>a lot of straps to like because there's always usually
<v Speaker 1>the back strap and then maybe like a top of
<v Speaker 1>head one the top head, Yeah, there is. I always
<v Speaker 1>thought they should have got like a chin strap in
<v Speaker 1>there that you could lock in to kind of like
<v Speaker 1>secure the jaw line, you know, and get like a
<v Speaker 1>real ergonomics support going there. You already look ridiculous. What's
<v Speaker 1>adding one more strap? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>Usually you look cool when you're playing v R right.
<v Speaker 2>Always once you get you got that strap there, that
<v Speaker 2>would it would be all out the window. Yeah yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but yeah, no, I'll the Virtual Boy is is weird
<v Speaker 2>because like I, I don't know, I can't recommend it
<v Speaker 2>to anybody. It's not fun to play. It's not like
<v Speaker 2>there's this crazy awesome video game here that like you
<v Speaker 2>missed out on because the Virtual Boy didn't take off.
<v Speaker 2>You know, though we'll say Warrio is very good, but
<v Speaker 2>like I, I just I'm a big fan of like
<v Speaker 2>you can only play this thing this one way. You know.
<v Speaker 2>It's like why I like the playdate with the with
<v Speaker 2>the crank, cause it's like we are designing around this
<v Speaker 2>specific thing. I was talking about it on mind Max.
<v Speaker 2>It's like it's the reason I was so adamant that
<v Speaker 2>I had to go see Avatar at an Imax three
<v Speaker 2>D with the high frame rate. You know, it's like
<v Speaker 2>there's it's like this the only place to do that.
<v Speaker 2>And like it's crazy to me that Nintendo figured out
<v Speaker 2>a way to make it so that, like you can
<v Speaker 2>play exactly how the Virtual Boy was back then, with
<v Speaker 2>all of its flaws, you know what I mean, Like
<v Speaker 2>like I'm I welcome that and and and to and
<v Speaker 2>potentially maybe on something positive here, like it does work,
<v Speaker 2>like it is stereoscopic three D well before that became
<v Speaker 2>something that you could have in the home truly, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like before there was that little stint of three D
<v Speaker 2>televisions in the three DS of course, like this was
<v Speaker 2>it ninety five or ninety eight or something like that,
<v Speaker 2>Like they had you there were stereoscopic three D video
<v Speaker 2>games and like that's that's cool. That's it didn't work
<v Speaker 2>very well and it gave you a headache, but like
<v Speaker 2>they were going for it, and it works again. It's
<v Speaker 2>it works exactly as it did, which is cool to me.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's neat you still get headaches.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't played enough to experiment, but I'm presuming, yes,
<v Speaker 2>every Virtual Boy game that you start up. The first
<v Speaker 2>thing that happens is it says, hey, do you want
<v Speaker 2>us to pause automatically for you every like ten minutes
<v Speaker 2>or so, Like they built that. That was a requirement
<v Speaker 2>for every Virtual Boy game that it was like, we're
<v Speaker 2>going to force you to pause playing this thing. And
<v Speaker 2>it's like, you can turn it off, but it always
<v Speaker 2>asks you every time, which is so tough.
<v Speaker 1>There's a message at the start of hit indie video
<v Speaker 1>game Mouthwashing that says, I hope this hurts, and I'm
<v Speaker 1>so happy that now Nintendo and Mouthwashing have something in common.
<v Speaker 2>It's so funny. Yeah, that's basically what it's asking. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so I like it, but it's like it is a
<v Speaker 2>flawed piece of history that is not like like it's
<v Speaker 2>it's less like look at this cool Nintendo thing we
<v Speaker 2>missed out on, and more this like, look at this
<v Speaker 2>kind of terrible thing this company did that usually has
<v Speaker 2>a pretty good track record. Don't you want to see
<v Speaker 2>what that looked like? Don't you want to see your
<v Speaker 2>favorite director's worst movie?
<v Speaker 3>You know?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, for ninety nine dollars for plus plus what another
<v Speaker 1>fifty or something for the expansion pass, you get the novel.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, the tile and all you know.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, man, hmm, well, let's take it quick.
<v Speaker 2>You're buying it now?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was me. That was being a
<v Speaker 1>quick break. They'll go buy the virtual car. Yeah, let's
<v Speaker 1>take a quick ad break. We'll come back and talk
<v Speaker 1>about games that we are really enjoying, including Paranorma Site
<v Speaker 1>and Cairen. We'll be right back right after this, and
<v Speaker 1>welcome back to the game and former show, Eric. I
<v Speaker 1>want to toss it over to you. What the hell
<v Speaker 1>is Paranorma Site? The mermaid the Mermaids Curse? I got it.
<v Speaker 2>This is one of these ad libs, mad libs, games
<v Speaker 2>words they're making up.
<v Speaker 1>And pretending experience on. Hold on, is the name Paranorma
<v Speaker 1>Site kind of goofy? Yes it is. However, every subtitle
<v Speaker 1>of the now duology of Paranorma Site does have significant
<v Speaker 1>relevance to the plot of the game. This is No. Three, five,
<v Speaker 1>eight for two days or whatever. Kingdom Hearts fans, calm down.
<v Speaker 2>But I actually, I know I'm being rude, but I
<v Speaker 2>actually think it's kind of a cool name.
<v Speaker 1>It is when you finish the game, like it's one
<v Speaker 1>of those ones that suddenly you have new appreciation for
<v Speaker 1>why it's a really good name for that game. It
<v Speaker 1>really does work. Parentorm Site is as I said my review.
<v Speaker 1>Check it out on game offormer dot com. I'll spoil
<v Speaker 1>you right now. It's a nine out of ten. Is
<v Speaker 1>this not quite seql? But it's the second game I
<v Speaker 1>never thought we would get because twenty twenty three Square
<v Speaker 1>nicks in what Over on Actable got I have described
<v Speaker 1>as the Blunderbuss of video games. It was launching out
<v Speaker 1>at the time. You had games like Triangle Strategy, Voice
<v Speaker 1>of Cards, doo Field Chronicles. There's an action RPG somewhere
<v Speaker 1>in there I can't remember. Harvest Stella is one of them.
<v Speaker 1>Square was trying a lot of new stuff, a lot
<v Speaker 1>of new IP, taking talented people and just giving them
<v Speaker 1>free rained to go try something and then blasting it
<v Speaker 1>out like an old sixteenth century blunderbuss across the bow.
<v Speaker 1>Paranorma site was kind of in this era of Square Enix,
<v Speaker 1>and it is made by a crew of people who
<v Speaker 1>I'm pulling up the director's name just so I don't
<v Speaker 1>get it wrong, because I definitely am prepared and bring
<v Speaker 1>my notes to everything, but a crew of people who
<v Speaker 1>have worked on past mystery games that really we have
<v Speaker 1>not had the opportunity to get a chance to experience.
<v Speaker 1>I love vamping as I'm searching for something. No I know,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I do want you to say the director's name,
<v Speaker 1>because then your review you said like taking Takenari Ishiyama,
<v Speaker 1>who has worked on multiple I'm not even going to
<v Speaker 1>try to get you into the history of where they
<v Speaker 1>have been with games in Japan, in mystery games specifically,
<v Speaker 1>but basically someone who's been making some really good stuff
<v Speaker 1>that we just haven't had good opportunities to experience over
<v Speaker 1>here in the West. With Paranorma site, the team undersquare
<v Speaker 1>Enix over there got a chance to just kind of
<v Speaker 1>do something wild, and what it created was what I
<v Speaker 1>can really only describe as a classically styled adventure game.
<v Speaker 1>If you've played Famicom Detective Clubmo The Smiling Man, you
<v Speaker 1>kind of have an idea of what this already looks like.
<v Speaker 1>You have a lot of moving between areas, talking to characters,
<v Speaker 1>investigating things. You might be looking at something like a landscape,
<v Speaker 1>a surrounding, or you might be talking to somebody and
<v Speaker 1>kind of questioning them in order on different topics or
<v Speaker 1>investigating things that seem interesting. That's like Layer one. It
<v Speaker 1>is functionally that and the gameplay mechanics, as I note
<v Speaker 1>in my review, are deceptively simple in that way. I
<v Speaker 1>think a lot of people look at a game like
<v Speaker 1>this and they say, well, don't you just go and
<v Speaker 1>talk to people? Don't you just click on things? And
<v Speaker 1>what paranorm Site does is it shows how incredibly powerful
<v Speaker 1>and malleable this format can be. Do you have a
<v Speaker 1>question or are you agreeing with my person? I question.
<v Speaker 1>I've just realized that paranorma site is a what do
<v Speaker 1>you call them? It's it's panorama site, but yes, there
<v Speaker 1>is also panorama is in there? Yeah, and that's like
<v Speaker 1>you're investigating like panoramas, aren't you.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>One of the really cool things that they do is
<v Speaker 1>they have these three hundred and sixty degree locations that
<v Speaker 1>you go to that you can kind of spin around,
<v Speaker 1>and they're gorgeous. The artwork in these games absolutely gorgeous,
<v Speaker 1>and the characters kind of stand out, like these two
<v Speaker 1>D cut out models of hand painted or hand drawn
<v Speaker 1>characters in these gorgeous vistas. It's a really cool look
<v Speaker 1>that looks even better in the new game. The old
<v Speaker 1>game Paranorma site. The first one in twenty twenty three
<v Speaker 1>seven Mysteries of Honjo was mostly set in a city
<v Speaker 1>at night, so you had a lot of brutalists like
<v Speaker 1>gray urban buildings and dark corridors and hallways and things
<v Speaker 1>like that, so you didn't really get to see a
<v Speaker 1>lot of like color or like vibrant stuff come through,
<v Speaker 1>and so it was really the characters that looked really good,
<v Speaker 1>but the environments were all very drab and but by necessity.
<v Speaker 1>In this one, it's set on a small island of
<v Speaker 1>Kamashima off the coast in Japan, where a lot of
<v Speaker 1>people make their living doing ama diving, which is free
<v Speaker 1>diving for shellfish and sea urchins, stuff like that, lobsters
<v Speaker 1>and pearls. And basically you wind up at the center
<v Speaker 1>point of a convergence of curses where a lot of
<v Speaker 1>weird things have all been happening that seem potentially related.
<v Speaker 1>A corpse is found that looks like a mermaid, a
<v Speaker 1>storm is off the coast. Kind of the main character,
<v Speaker 1>I would say, or at least your focal point character
<v Speaker 1>when you enter the story is a kid returning to
<v Speaker 1>the island five years after a tragedy, took the lives
<v Speaker 1>of his parents to try and understand what happened and why,
<v Speaker 1>because he believes there's some deeper meaning to it, and
<v Speaker 1>so he has started free diving to try and understand
<v Speaker 1>what happened. And as you progress through this story, eventually,
<v Speaker 1>at some point you will hit a moment where you
<v Speaker 1>get bounced back out and there's like a storyteller. If
<v Speaker 1>you've played the Dark Pictures games, you will kind of
<v Speaker 1>be familiar with this narrator, very horror anthology style, and
<v Speaker 1>he introduces you to the idea that there's a story chart.
<v Speaker 1>This has a flow chart. So if you've played games
<v Speaker 1>like nine nine nine Virtues Less Reward stuff like that,
<v Speaker 1>you'll Detroit Become Human uses the same model as well.
<v Speaker 1>Sure yeah. You can then jump to the different focal
<v Speaker 1>points of other characters and start exploring their stories, what
<v Speaker 1>they are seeing, what they are doing, and how they
<v Speaker 1>are kind of disparate, and then connect back together and
<v Speaker 1>overlap with each other in very interesting ways, all the
<v Speaker 1>while trying to solve the mystery of what is happening
<v Speaker 1>and can you stop it? And I think this game
<v Speaker 1>is fantastic. I think it's really, really good. Like I said,
<v Speaker 1>I think it shows the power of what an adventure
<v Speaker 1>game can do because within all those seemingly simple things
<v Speaker 1>of going into a flow chart, exploring the outcome of something,
<v Speaker 1>bouncing back out, going somewhere else, learning new information, it
<v Speaker 1>does so many cool little things that you don't expect
<v Speaker 1>a game like this could do. There are files that
<v Speaker 1>the game gives you, giant files about the traditions and
<v Speaker 1>culture that are all based on real things. I actually
<v Speaker 1>bought a book because of this game, because I wanted
<v Speaker 1>to learn more about the backstory and the culture that
<v Speaker 1>inform this game, about the Hiki, which is this classic
<v Speaker 1>tale of a family that falls on hard times. They
<v Speaker 1>were kind of like to fall on themselves, and a
<v Speaker 1>lot of that then presents in the game as this
<v Speaker 1>really interesting backdrop, and it gives you tons of information
<v Speaker 1>files that you can pour over and those become relevant,
<v Speaker 1>like it ties real world culture and real world history
<v Speaker 1>and fiction into solving the mysteries in the game, and
<v Speaker 1>you have to kind of think and apply knowledge and
<v Speaker 1>then it'll give you little fiddly puzzles. There's more of
<v Speaker 1>those in this game than there were in the preceding one,
<v Speaker 1>which I think is a really positive thing of having
<v Speaker 1>puzzle boxes or just little things you have to solve
<v Speaker 1>and figure out how to use the environment to do
<v Speaker 1>cool things in It's a very tactle game, and then
<v Speaker 1>the kind of last third of the game takes some
<v Speaker 1>massive swings that really pay off and culminates in like
<v Speaker 1>a very blue Prints puzzle where you have to suddenly
<v Speaker 1>examine the game from a metal level and start thinking
<v Speaker 1>about the broader picture and what is really going on here,
<v Speaker 1>and it's it's sublime, it's really good. I think the
<v Speaker 1>first game, Seven Mysteries of Home in twenty twenty three,
<v Speaker 1>was a really cool oddity. Like I said in my review,
<v Speaker 1>it felt like it was a flight of fancy from
<v Speaker 1>a publisher that was just trying a lot of new
<v Speaker 1>things and seeing what's stuck.
<v Speaker 2>That someone snuck it out.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, someone managed to make this work.
<v Speaker 1>And so to see a new one announced in a
<v Speaker 1>partner direct and then released basically what two weeks later,
<v Speaker 1>I'm so happy that the forces that be at Square
<v Speaker 1>Nix realize that this is something worth continuing, and they've
<v Speaker 1>got a really good team in place to keep doing it.
<v Speaker 1>I hope there's more to come.
<v Speaker 2>From it.
<v Speaker 1>I cannot express enough I think if you have ever
<v Speaker 1>been curious about adventure games, about what they can do
<v Speaker 1>that makes them so interesting and not just a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of clicking on text and text bubbles and things like that.
<v Speaker 1>This is a game to play. This is the one
<v Speaker 1>you should check out. I really really like it interesting.
<v Speaker 1>About how long is it, I'd say it's probably about
<v Speaker 1>anywhere from ten to fourteen hours to get like to
<v Speaker 1>the ending. And I would I would stratify that out
<v Speaker 1>in that there's getting to what you would call kind
<v Speaker 1>of the normal ending, and that's going to be fairly straightforward.
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of mysteries and puzzles to solve and
<v Speaker 1>things like that. You will be neurologically stimulated along the way.
<v Speaker 1>And then and then you have they tell you the
<v Speaker 1>game tells you, hey, that was an ending, like you
<v Speaker 1>could stop there. But if you're like not cool with that,
<v Speaker 1>there's still some things you haven't really figured out yet, right,
<v Speaker 1>And that's the part that might take a little bit
<v Speaker 1>of extra time that I would encourage a lot of
<v Speaker 1>the people who've been playing early we kind of had
<v Speaker 1>to put our heads together to solve some of these puzzles.
<v Speaker 1>And we are also broadly encouraging you to do that.
<v Speaker 1>Guides are cool. Shout outs to guides writers. We love y'all.
<v Speaker 1>But maybe try to either solve it yourself or work
<v Speaker 1>with people who are also in the process of solving
<v Speaker 1>it and try to put it together. Because the way
<v Speaker 1>it crafts those things is so cool. I would not
<v Speaker 1>want you to miss out on the aha moments that
<v Speaker 1>you get in what could possibly be another anywhere from
<v Speaker 1>thirty to sixty minutes to like several hours. I know
<v Speaker 1>people who were on it for days who were just
<v Speaker 1>kind of like they would pick it up, they kind
<v Speaker 1>of poke at it. I'm frustrated, walk away, come back
<v Speaker 1>do that. So that part I would say is like
<v Speaker 1>your mileage may vary, but I think to just get
<v Speaker 1>to an ending point probably about ten to fourteen hours.
<v Speaker 2>The other really specific question I had was it's an
<v Speaker 2>M rated game. Yes it is? How it is it
<v Speaker 2>pretty like it embraces that M rating pretty hardcore?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, I mean it's not it's not gory, but
<v Speaker 1>it is. There is blood. There, there is people dying.
<v Speaker 1>It is a horror game, and I think that is
<v Speaker 1>maybe something I'm trying to stress a little less compared
<v Speaker 1>to the first game. The first game had a lot
<v Speaker 1>of there were multiple jump scares and things like that,
<v Speaker 1>and just a lot of like scary vibes. Like I said,
<v Speaker 1>first game was set in the city at night and
<v Speaker 1>stuff like that. This one, The Mermaid's Curse, mostly is
<v Speaker 1>kind of more on the thriller side. There's maybe like
<v Speaker 1>a couple things that could be argued to be I
<v Speaker 1>think there's one definitive jump scare, and then everything else
<v Speaker 1>is just kind of you will be creeped out by it.
<v Speaker 1>You will be in a sense of unease and kind
<v Speaker 1>of that feeling of you are in a dark room
<v Speaker 1>and you know that when you turn the lights on,
<v Speaker 1>it's not going to be a normal room. That feeling
<v Speaker 1>sits with you in a few places. I think one
<v Speaker 1>of my favorite mechanics in the game is there's a
<v Speaker 1>section where you have a hand mirror and your character
<v Speaker 1>thinks they're being followed. So everywhere you're going to all
<v Speaker 1>these different locations, you're pulling out a hand mirror and
<v Speaker 1>kind of panning around to see if there's somebody behind you,
<v Speaker 1>and it's it's really good. It's a really creepy it's
<v Speaker 1>it's spine tingling. It's it's very good in that way.
<v Speaker 1>But I would say there's not a lot of outright
<v Speaker 1>jump scares that are going to make you leap out
<v Speaker 1>of your seat or anything like that. Is much more
<v Speaker 1>about the vibes. But I will say emorated language. I
<v Speaker 1>think I remember there being a decent amount of language,
<v Speaker 1>and then a lot of like blood, death, mature topics.
<v Speaker 1>Not not outright getting into anything showing anything. But I
<v Speaker 1>would say this this is going to appeal to somebody
<v Speaker 1>who likes something like true Detective in a way, like
<v Speaker 1>I think, if if that's your sort of jam, if
<v Speaker 1>you like those kind of detective stories that have a
<v Speaker 1>hint of the supernatural or in this case, a very
<v Speaker 1>strong seasoning of the supernatural, because it is there's there's
<v Speaker 1>supernatural things a foot in this in this game, but
<v Speaker 1>also a really human center to it that's really you
<v Speaker 1>kind of build up and then bell curve back down
<v Speaker 1>to this very tight story about people and places and
<v Speaker 1>how those are affected by the events around them that
<v Speaker 1>are happening. It's going to hit a lot of those
<v Speaker 1>notes for you. All Right, you sold me. I really
<v Speaker 1>want to play this. Yeah, It's easily one of my like,
<v Speaker 1>I know, we're only in February, so it feels trivial
<v Speaker 1>to start to talk about, like what's your favorite game
<v Speaker 1>of the year so far, But this is easily my
<v Speaker 1>favorite thing that I've played so far in the first
<v Speaker 1>two months of twenty twenty six.
<v Speaker 2>And listeners grain of Salt here. Eric has not tried
<v Speaker 2>Virtual Boy yet, So can.
<v Speaker 1>You imagine paranorma side in the Virtual Boy? The things
<v Speaker 1>we could do? Yeah? Wow, yeah, I really I like
<v Speaker 1>this game. I would highly recommend that people check it
<v Speaker 1>out if you like, if you like adventure games or
<v Speaker 1>you've always been curious about them, it's this is the one. Well,
<v Speaker 1>speaking of our favorite games of the year so far,
<v Speaker 1>I'm about to talk about mine. That is Cairn if
<v Speaker 1>you're if you're unfamiliar. This is a climbing like mountain
<v Speaker 1>climbing rock climbing simulation game in similar vibes to like
<v Speaker 1>a A Quop, not in like the comedic, you know,
<v Speaker 1>absurdist way, but in the way that you are moving
<v Speaker 1>while while climbing. You are moving one limb at a time,
<v Speaker 1>and it kind of like automatically sorts like which kind
<v Speaker 1>of limb you're you know, is going to move next.
<v Speaker 1>There is a way to manually do that for some
<v Speaker 1>of the more complex climbs, which I'd recommend. But this
<v Speaker 1>is a story about a prolific rock climber who is
<v Speaker 1>clearly trying to escape you know, relationships in life back
<v Speaker 1>home and kind of finds comfort in the isolation that
<v Speaker 1>comes from being on top of a mountain where you
<v Speaker 1>can't communicate with people. And Ava is the protagonist. She
<v Speaker 1>is trying to summit Mount Kami, which is a you know,
<v Speaker 1>fictitious ancient mountain in this in this game that was
<v Speaker 1>once kind of inhabited by by a people group that
<v Speaker 1>have you know, seemingly left to go back down to civilization.
<v Speaker 1>There are remnants of those that people group that you
<v Speaker 1>find and it's a really fascinating game in that way.
<v Speaker 1>But I think, you know, mechanically it is excellent. It
<v Speaker 1>is unique and feels fresh. I love the process of
<v Speaker 1>finding a line up a mountain and using my limited
<v Speaker 1>pitons to climb my way up. And one really cool
<v Speaker 1>feature in the game is that you can look back
<v Speaker 1>at your entire journey. You know, I'm close to the
<v Speaker 1>top of the mountain, now I've I have I chose
<v Speaker 1>not to finish the game last night and instead try
<v Speaker 1>to complete another challenge, and so with what I think
<v Speaker 1>is like the true ending. But no matter, I can
<v Speaker 1>go back and see my entire line of where I
<v Speaker 1>have climbed, my entire journey to the game, all the
<v Speaker 1>way back to the start of the game without e
<v Speaker 1>loading the screen, which is really cool. It's a really
<v Speaker 1>great way to kind of show like, you know, the
<v Speaker 1>cartography almost of this mountain, and it's really really eric
<v Speaker 1>looks at you're about Deskales. I was just gonna say,
<v Speaker 1>I've also I've been playing this one here and there.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if I'm going to get around to
<v Speaker 1>finishing it, but it's it's the physicality of it is
<v Speaker 1>something that really struck me because coming from a team
<v Speaker 1>this is the game Bakers who did Fury, the sort
<v Speaker 1>of top down boss rush Arcadie action game, and then Haven,
<v Speaker 1>which was a co op RPG about to run away
<v Speaker 1>Starcross lovers. They don't They take a lot of very
<v Speaker 1>conventional things and then do very interesting stories within those
<v Speaker 1>genre conventions, and so in some ways this is an
<v Speaker 1>oddity for them, and in some ways it makes a
<v Speaker 1>lot of sense for them to just tackle something like
<v Speaker 1>this head on, but I think this might be their
<v Speaker 1>strongest game.
<v Speaker 2>For me.
<v Speaker 1>I love Fury, so that's saying a lot. But like
<v Speaker 1>Karen has some really incredible moments of just like you said,
<v Speaker 1>when you're on that wall and you're trying to climb
<v Speaker 1>bit by bit, you're searching for handhold, you're searching for
<v Speaker 1>just the little indentations and grooves that your hands can
<v Speaker 1>reach out and just dig into to try and support
<v Speaker 1>your weight as you climb further, and you're looking I
<v Speaker 1>hate a moment when I'm just sitting there and I'm
<v Speaker 1>in a bad spot because I look over and I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>that is just sheer rock face all around me, and
<v Speaker 1>I don't know how I'm going to do this. And
<v Speaker 1>you have to find all these little ways to spider
<v Speaker 1>out and like grip in and climb up the spine
<v Speaker 1>of something and just do this. This really incredible work.
<v Speaker 1>I would love to talk to somebody who actually climbs
<v Speaker 1>to be like, is is this kind of the closest
<v Speaker 1>thing we have to a climbing sim because it's it's
<v Speaker 1>pretty intense, it's pretty serious. It is you know, you
<v Speaker 1>you have to really balance your character's weight and all
<v Speaker 1>of these, Like the stamina system is invisible. It is
<v Speaker 1>told through animation and sound, and you know if you're
<v Speaker 1>about to fall, there's like a vignette that starts to
<v Speaker 1>close in on Ava the character. And so you're wanting
<v Speaker 1>to like stretch as far as you can make it
<v Speaker 1>as high as you can without using your limited pitons.
<v Speaker 1>You know you will find as you explore, you'll find,
<v Speaker 1>you know, more pitons. You can find scraps, and a
<v Speaker 1>piton is like a body and jam into the mountain
<v Speaker 1>to add like a balaz so that way you fall,
<v Speaker 1>you can kind of like catch yourself out fall all
<v Speaker 1>the way down the rock. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, And there
<v Speaker 1>are times when you will fall and you'll fall far
<v Speaker 1>and you'll die and you have to reload a save.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, ah, why didn't I put a piton in there?
<v Speaker 1>You know. And so it's a lot of like mental
<v Speaker 1>fortitude required to climb some of these these walls. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>there is one climb in the game that took me
<v Speaker 1>fifty minutes to climb to get from one one saved
<v Speaker 1>the next, and it took me several tries because I
<v Speaker 1>ran out of pitons on the way up and so
<v Speaker 1>it's really about like pathing and studying the rock. And
<v Speaker 1>there's some really great camera tools they give you and
<v Speaker 1>maps that you can find that highlight certain routes, and
<v Speaker 1>the game does an incredible job at rewarding your curiosity
<v Speaker 1>and your your exploration. You will find, uh. You know.
<v Speaker 1>One thing that one key system is that you've got
<v Speaker 1>this backpack on and you're carrying you have to manage
<v Speaker 1>your your hunger, your thirst, and your warmth. So there
<v Speaker 1>are survival elements at play, and you're you're keeping those
<v Speaker 1>supplies in your backpack, and so in order to to
<v Speaker 1>access your backpack, you have to either be on solid
<v Speaker 1>ground standing. You can be at your camp site, which
<v Speaker 1>is kind of one of the systems at play with
<v Speaker 1>the save system, or you can if you like, belay
<v Speaker 1>off off of your your piton you kind of hang
<v Speaker 1>there secure. You can access what's in your backpack, but
<v Speaker 1>if you're actively mid climb, you cannot. And so it
<v Speaker 1>creates this this sort of like additional uh consideration for
<v Speaker 1>where you're climbing to do I want to use my
<v Speaker 1>supplies right now? You know? And and there is a
<v Speaker 1>cooking system as well that you know you are combining
<v Speaker 1>ingredients to make certain recipes. You'll find recipe cards in
<v Speaker 1>the environment that tell you, oh, if you know, the
<v Speaker 1>people that used to live here used to combine goat's
<v Speaker 1>milk and you know, let's say rice, and you know
<v Speaker 1>the benefits are this, and it's you're slowly collecting a
<v Speaker 1>catalog of recipes or recipe book that allows you to
<v Speaker 1>kind of you know, monitor or maintain rather your your
<v Speaker 1>survival bars and stuff. But it's not in a really
<v Speaker 1>effective and easy to grasp way. It's not you know, I,
<v Speaker 1>if you aren't a survival fan, I wouldn't this. This
<v Speaker 1>shouldn't turn you away. It's not like a true, you know,
<v Speaker 1>sort of obduse survival game in that way. It's pretty straightforward,
<v Speaker 1>but it requires you to make, you know, careful consideration
<v Speaker 1>on what you're carrying, what you're willing to eat now,
<v Speaker 1>what you want to say for later, and also ties
<v Speaker 1>into that reward vector for you know, exploring. It's really
<v Speaker 1>it's really well done. And what I haven't touched on
<v Speaker 1>and I don't want to spend too much time on
<v Speaker 1>this because I know we have a heart out soon.
<v Speaker 1>But the characters in this game are really human and
<v Speaker 1>relatable and there are some incredible performances in this from
<v Speaker 1>the voice actor behind Ava. There are other side characters
<v Speaker 1>that you meet that have really complicated emotions and serve
<v Speaker 1>as like contrasts to Ava's very logical isolate, isolate, isolating thinking, isolationist.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you, thank you. And there are just some incredible
<v Speaker 1>moments in this game, I think, really moving moments. And yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's just it's an incredible work. I really really think
<v Speaker 1>that the game Bakers knocked it out of the park.
<v Speaker 1>I think Miller, Matt Miller gave the game of nine
<v Speaker 1>two five on our scale.
<v Speaker 2>When he while ago, Yeah I would I probably would
<v Speaker 2>have pushed it up to like nine point five or
<v Speaker 2>you know up there.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's incredible.
<v Speaker 2>Uh.
<v Speaker 1>And so if you have any faint interest in checking
<v Speaker 1>this game out, I really employed it to play it.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's something really special. I think it's a game
<v Speaker 1>that we'll be talking about for years, and it's something
<v Speaker 1>I think that solidifies the Game Bakers for me as
<v Speaker 1>like a developer, I'm going to keep an eye on
<v Speaker 1>going forward. Having not played Haven, I did play a
<v Speaker 1>little bit of Theory. I think that was like a
<v Speaker 1>PlayStation plus game back in the day, but it really
<v Speaker 1>kind of solidified them as like, oh, this is a
<v Speaker 1>studio I'm going to be paying attention to. And it
<v Speaker 1>feels inventive in the way that Death Stranding did for
<v Speaker 1>me when I first played that, and how it approached
<v Speaker 1>the act of you know, moving and hiking. I think
<v Speaker 1>Karen does a similar thing and is really rewarding to
<v Speaker 1>master and to conquer. So yeah, I love that game.
<v Speaker 1>It's so good. I say this like so Complimentarily. It
<v Speaker 1>smooths out the play to metaphor line, like the thing
<v Speaker 1>you are doing is telling you. The story is telling
<v Speaker 1>you that it's conveying the themes. It wants you to
<v Speaker 1>understand what is happening, and it wants you to do that,
<v Speaker 1>not just through the game showing you a cut scene
<v Speaker 1>and being like this is what the game is about,
<v Speaker 1>but by having you experience it in that moment, like
<v Speaker 1>the act of play is feeding into all this stuff
<v Speaker 1>that is going on in Ava's head and through you,
<v Speaker 1>the player of If I just zone in and focus
<v Speaker 1>on the wall, the wall is all I need. The mountain.
<v Speaker 1>I will reach the mountain. I can't stop. I'm getting
<v Speaker 1>so close. The mountain is I will conquer this, this
<v Speaker 1>is what I am, this is what I do, and
<v Speaker 1>it so effortlessly just feeds into that thing that I'm
<v Speaker 1>sitting here. I was playing it, I was like, this
<v Speaker 1>is just this is game theory, like a great crash
<v Speaker 1>course in understanding how play can convey those ideas so effortlessly.
<v Speaker 1>It's done so well and I would even play it
<v Speaker 1>just for that if you like the idea of seeing
<v Speaker 1>how the act of playing a video game can tell
<v Speaker 1>you things without the game just having to tell it
<v Speaker 1>to you. It's it's very good for that. It's really solid. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>highly recommend. I love it. And if you're looking, if
<v Speaker 1>you're like, how the how do I spell Karen, it's
<v Speaker 1>c A I are in Karen. But yeah, I think
<v Speaker 1>that's gonna do it. For for the podcast this week,
<v Speaker 1>we have reached the end. That was a lot of fun, guys.
<v Speaker 1>I really enjoyed that episode. If you if you want
<v Speaker 1>to follow the career here on social media keep up
<v Speaker 1>with us in the meantime. You can follow Kyle at
<v Speaker 1>Kyle Hilliard, Kyle M. Hilliard, Kyle Hilliard.
<v Speaker 2>Kyle dot com, Blue Sky.
<v Speaker 1>There you go. You can follow Eric at c Moussey
<v Speaker 1>that's s e A m O O s I and
<v Speaker 1>you can follow me at It's Van Aiken on Instagram
<v Speaker 1>and Blue Sky. Don't forget share the show with a
<v Speaker 1>friend if you liked it. It really does help us
<v Speaker 1>out a lot. And don't forget pick up a copy
<v Speaker 1>of Game Informer magazine by going to Game Informer dot
<v Speaker 1>com slash subscribe. All right, folks, that'll do it for
<v Speaker 1>this week. We'll see you next week. Have a good weekend. Goodbye,