Welcome to the Gamers Inn. Come on in, pull up a chair next to the fire. It looks like you've had a long journey. I'm your host, Jocelyn, and joining me as always is my co-host, Ryan. Hello, Ryan. hello welcome to the fun zone we're going to talk about video games and only fun Right? Is it only fun this week? I mean, let's look at the new. Oh. Yeah. Actually, there's like... Okay.
Half. There's a couple of like not so great stories, but I think overall, I think we're going to have like maybe 80% fun. That's more than last week. That's got to be an improvement. Yeah. Not that it wasn't a fun episode. You know, there was... Not so much fun stuff to talk about, but you're right. 80%. I think that's in this day and age. That's pretty good, right? That's pretty good. Yeah.
I guess that depends on what we think of the games we played this week as to whether it's actually 80% fun. But I mean, I liked mine. Did you like yours? I did. I liked it so much I finished it. Yeah. We're on track for 80% then. So far, so good. Thumbs up. I am curious, though, because I know you were playing Blueprints before the show. As you said, in your words, you had to play until you hit a wall.
Literally. And I don't know what that means because I haven't played it yet. But you've been playing it on Steam and... I mean, it's been billed as a Lorelei life. I mean, OK, so, OK, so first and foremost, I have to say something to you and you tell me what you think. OK, so if I said to you, not king, but what would you think? Uh, not King. But a queen? Okay, well, kind of close. So basically...
Matt and I were going back and forth because I was talking about this game. I was talking about how excited I was. And he kept asking me, he's like, so are you playing Blueprints? And I'm like, are you saying Blueprints? Or blueprints. And he was like, blueprints. Why not both? Yeah. And I was like, no, okay. But like, so I said to him, I'm like. okay but the name of the game is blue and then i said not king but oh and he was like not king but what the hell is not king but i was like no not
Like, not a king's butt. What's wrong with you? Oh, okay. Basically, the whole point of the game is that you are exploring the blueprints of a house, like architectural blueprints. And so the name of the game is like a... play on words almost like they didn't want to just call it blueprints. So it's the blue prince like royalty. But anyways, it was very, very, very hard communication between my husband and I as to what the name of this stupid game was that I was playing.
And yeah, so I thought... not king but was very obvious way to say prince but apparently not king but is actually a very obvious way to say queen so i just failed no matter what oh so wait there's no monarchy in this game at all It depends. Oh. Okay, so this is the thing. I think I'm actually really glad that we are recording when we're recording because it gave me a few extra days to kind of play it a little further.
I will say it is an absolutely massive game. There is so much. And at first I was like a little bit, a little frustrated, I guess. Because there is so much information, but you have no idea what's important. So it can be really overwhelming. And there are very few like straight up. You walk into a place and they want an input of a solution, if that makes sense. There's like a lot of documents to read, a lot of things to notice.
But then like to actually say, hey, I've noticed this thing doesn't matter. It's not like you're like cracking. There's like a few safe. to crack there's a couple of rooms that actually have that are like puzzle rooms like traditional puzzle rooms But for the majority of it, you're just kind of like exploring the mansion and you just have to pay attention and hope that.
eventually at some point you'll put some stuff together to like unlock something new um but yeah there weren't a lot especially at the very beginning there weren't a lot of like puzzles necessarily in terms of like you need to go input a code or a number or do you know what i mean yeah yeah Yeah, so it just it very much felt like I had all this information, but nothing to do with it. And then because I had nothing to do with it, I'm like, well, then what's the point?
And so it's kind of, I think I'm on day 22 or 23 now. And things are starting to, like, I'm building some, like, momentum. But it's a significant amount of time into the game. I say this all the time about like RPGs and stuff and single player story content that like if it takes five or ten hours for your game to get good. that's not a great game. And I don't want to play that much of your game to decide if it's good or not. But that being said, I do think... Blueprints gets better.
The further you play and the narrative part of it, because up until I would say like 10 or 15 hours in, like you just have so many little bits and pieces. But then once the narrative really starts coming together, once you unlock more rooms and find more information, more notes, more stuff, then things start to get really, really cool and interesting. And then like you have moments where there's almost like a cascade of information and you're like, oh my God, wait.
I remember that name or I remember that place or I remember that date and hang on a second, like, and you go back through your notes and oh my God. So I had 27 pages of notes in Lorelei. I gave up on handwritten notes. one extensive graph and about 15 pages of handwritten notes in and started a Google Doc. So that I could take some screenshots and stuff, because some things are just very, very difficult to describe.
So, like, I started a Google Talk, which is now 90 pages long, Ryan. 90. Nine zero pages. A lot of that is typing and I didn't translate my 15 pages of handwritten notes into my Google Docs. So I have like, I intended to eventually, but I haven't gotten to that yet because I've been playing the game. Just the sheer size of this game, there's a lot, it's a lot bigger than Lorelai. I think that it doesn't have the horror piece of Lorelai. So Lorelai was very atmospheric. There were some like...
It was psychological horror, right? So there were a few, like, not necessarily jump scares, but kind of like... There were moments, there was a murder, there was, you know, like... There were those kind of psychological torture horror moments. Blueprints doesn't have that at all. The whole premise is just like, you are an heir. And you need to prove that you are the rightful heir by making your way to the 46th room in a 45-room mansion.
Hmm. Okay. Yes, exactly. Exactly. That is all the instruction that you're given. And so basically there is a nine by five grid that is the mansion. And every time you open a door, you get a choice of three rooms to spawn in through that door. So you're trying to line up as many doors as you can to have as many options as you can. You have currencies, so some doors will be locked, so you need keys. Some rooms are more special than others, so you need gems to pay for them.
And those are all things that you kind of like find throughout the house. There are like special objects, which I'm not going to give away what any of those are. There's special different kinds of keys that like if you use them on a locked door, they will spawn a different room. So yeah, it's a very kind of interesting concept, but there's definitely no, it's puzzle solving. It's like, I've heard it compared to The Witness.
if you remember that from god how long ago was that like eight years ago maybe yeah that was uh the guy who made um uh oh gosh now i can't remember the game i think his name was jonathan blow um what was the game oh braid braid yes okay yeah yeah and that was his follow-up and it was like this first person sort of puzzle mystery game and there's been a few more like that with like the talos principle and
that island game you played as well i think yes islands of insight yeah so it's definitely forming its own genre and i know that blueprints has like been getting just rave reviews Yeah, so this is actually on like all of the like Metacritic like review aggregators. This is the highest reviewed game of the year so far. And I do think it is well-earned praise. But like I say, it definitely has a it's a slow burn because you're trying to like it takes a little while to kind of learn the game.
It takes a little while to learn how to interact with the different rooms and how they change over time. It kind of it takes a while to start to like because basically the more rooms that you get, the more potential new information that you get and the more new information you get, the more the narrative comes together. So it is a very slow burn. It takes a while. But then once the narrative kind of starts to form, it is very interesting and I am enjoying it a lot.
So I can see where the praise is coming from. I do think it's really well built. The puzzles are... Like I say, there's so much information in each room just visually. And now that I've solved a few puzzles, I'm just like, man, this was very well done. Thank you. I enjoyed that. So, but like at the same time, so this is where kind of like some of the, I guess, more frustrating mechanics comes in for me specifically is this is a roguelike.
In a given day, you have a certain number of steps, and that number of steps can be changed by the rooms you find, by the permanent unlocks you get. But you start with, I believe, 50 steps and you lose a step every time you walk through a door from one room to another.
So you basically are limited in how much exploration of the house you can do. And if you don't make a good floor plan, then, you know, if you kind of like go all the way up. 10 rooms to a dead end, then you have to come all the way back down again, then you've lost 20% of your step. Like that sort of thing. So you have to be very careful with like how you're designing your house, which makes sense, right?
But yeah, if you run out of steps, that'll automatically end your day. Or you can like end your day at any point in time. But then your whole house gets wiped, your inventory gets wiped, all your currency gets wiped. So you don't get to carry over like unused keys to the next day or unused gems or gold or anything to the next day. And you don't get to hang on to any items.
And sometimes items are like vitally important. So there is a lot of strategy to it. It's not just straight up solving puzzles. It's definitely a strategy game. There's a system where you can't quit the game. You can't save and quit. without ending the day that you're currently on. So like right now, I think it says I have like 44 hours in Steam in the game. And I think I've played about 20 because...
I had to leave it like I had to go and tend to Olivia last night when I was in the middle of a day and I couldn't save and quit. So I just had to pause the game and then. like run upstairs. I didn't get another chance to come back downstairs. So like my game was just running for 24 hours, which is not ideal, obviously, for so many reasons. Yeah. And then we were talking about this pre-show and I was kind of thinking like,
This is because, yeah, I mean, like I started a new day. I thought I was going to be able to finish way before we we kind of hit our our time to start recording. But then I just randomly because again. You are shown three rooms out of your entire pool of available rooms. Some rooms are really rare. Some rooms are really common. And then some rooms work. only work when they're next to each other.
So you have like if you have a room that has like two open doors, you have two chances to roll the room that you need. And if you fail, you got to start all over again and hope you get the first room again. That part has been a little bit frustrating is this like very specific room placement in a very randomized format. But yeah, so I had a run.
where I got two rooms next to each other that I needed next to each other. And I was like, oh man, like I thought I was going to be able to wrap this up really quickly. But now all of a sudden... This thing that I've done has opened up all this new information for me that I have to read. And I was like, if I try to quit the game, then I'm going to lose all of this very important progress that I've been working on for like three hours.
So I was like, I'm sorry, Ryan. I literally can't pause my game, even though it's a solo single player puzzler. Like, it doesn't make any sense why you can't just save in the middle of a day and come back to it. It's a weird design choice. Is it from the perspective that the developer is basically saying, if you walk away for an extended period of time...
you'll lose the operational knowledge you have of this run and make your return not fun? Is that kind of... maybe possibly but the thing is you can you can you can end a day at any point in time so like if you did have to like if you saved in the middle of day and came back a week later and had no idea what what was going on you could just start a new day like
You're not tied to finishing that day or running out of steps or running out the clock or anything like that. You can literally at any point in time just be like, okay, I've exhausted all my knowledge. I've exhausted all my resources.
New day, please. So I don't really see the, because I thought that too, that exact same argument is like, maybe they just don't want people to get lost. But then it's like, If you're forcing people to quit out in the middle of a day anyway, like it's the same same outcome, I guess. So I think that was that's a really weird design choice. I don't know why they did it that way. But anyways.
Yeah, I think overall so far, like I'm definitely going to play this game all the way to the end because like I say, now that the narrative is starting to be a little bit more front and center, I'm finding it even more interesting. If anything, I just find some of the roguelike elements. It's basically like, and I don't know if you actually really played much of it, but do you remember Hearthstone Arena? Where you would make a deck by drafting three cards at a time.
yeah yeah i played a little bit yeah you might like start one way thinking like oh yeah i'm gonna have a like a zoo deck and then by the end of it you're like ah crap that didn't turn out the way i thought it was going to with my first 10 drafts It's very, very similar to Hearthstone Arena in that way, in that every time you open a door, you draft a room from three options.
And there are some ways and there's some items and there's some mechanics in the game that allow you to like get some more options or to reroll or whatever. But basically. you were doing like a Hearthstone arena draft. Again, anyone who listened to me on tack for any amount of time knows.
the arena was the bane of my existence and i was so bad at it okay so i feel like um yeah there's definitely and i guess the best um because i don't want to give too much away But the best way I can kind of explain this is like drafting rooms is so random that I on day 15.
got the room with the book that tells you how to draft the rooms so like I basically got like the instructions because like I say, when you first go into the manor, there's a note on the table from your great uncle that basically just says. Hey, welcome to the manor. You're here by yourself. Feel free to explore. Find the 46th room. Okay, thanks. Great uncle. You know. Thanks for leaving me this wacky, crazy mansion that I can't access everything. Whatever.
So that's all the instructions you get is basically like start opening doors and pay attention. So but there are like you can find lots of hints, lots of.
tips and tricks and all kinds of stuff hidden throughout the mansion but it took me a good solid 15 days and each day takes you know depending on how much you know time and observation and everything else that can vary but um usually it would take me like i would say probably half an hour 45 minutes maybe an hour to finish again so i was a good like let's let's be on the conservative side of thing and call it even like 10 to 12 hours
I was a decent chunk of the way into the game before I found how to draft rooms instruction manual. And I was like, are you kidding me? So yeah, like it, because everything is randomized, it can be. um to me a little frustrating but again this is a roguelike that i'm gonna play to the end so it's growing on me it's not the worst thing in the world but like oh man i don't know how you guys champion these games as your favorite genre because it just frustrates the shit out of me. Hmm.
So you're playing not only a roguelike, but you're playing something that reminds you of a mode you hated. And you're still powering through. I'm still sticking with it. That's how, I guess, intriguing is a good word for it, I think. is that I very much do want to know what all the rooms are. I want to know the kind of backstory of the family and the larger lore of the world around them. You know, it is like there's some like upstairs, downstairs kind of elements of it in that like there's like.
The family and then there's the people that serve the family. So there's like someone who manages the estate. There's a gardener. There's a maid. There's a valet and a chauffeur. And, you know, it's very Downton Abbey. So, you know, there are a lot of like elements, particularly of the narrative. And like I say, now that I've gotten to the point where I've solved a couple of puzzles of like the what I would consider, at least at this point, some of the.
I appreciate what the game is doing and it makes me even more interested to see where it goes. So, yeah, I think I am very much enjoying it, even though, like you say, it reminds me of a mode in Hearthstone that drove me crazy. It's in a genre that drives me crazy. I'm still... Very much enjoying it. I would highly recommend it. it is very hard to talk about because now I know Manny is playing it, my husband is playing it.
And I find it very difficult to talk to either one of them because of the randomized aspects of it. I've unlocked a whole bunch of stuff they haven't unlocked. They've unlocked a whole bunch of stuff I haven't unlocked. They know things that I don't know and vice versa. So it's like... You can't even really start to talk about stuff because this is 100% a game you do not want spoiled.
You don't want puzzle solutions spoiled, you don't want narrative spoiled, you don't want room spoiled like there's just. so many interesting pieces to this game and it works together in such an interesting way that like spoilers really would i think in my opinion ruin stuff So, yeah, I think it's very, very well done. And I do highly recommend it. And I do understand where all of the praise is coming from. I think it is very well deserved.
But yeah, I don't want to say too much else about it, but yeah. Avoid spoilers if you can. Go give it a try. It's available in a lot of different places, and I'm pretty sure we were looking ahead of the gamers in. recording and it's available on I think both Game Pass and PlayStation Plus. which I realized if you have extra or premium, then you also have this whole library of games. I didn't realize the thing. So yeah, Blueprints is on there too. Yeah, you have it on three platforms.
Yeah, it's Blueprint. Prince like the royalty designation. Yeah. Not prints like blueprints, like an architect. Although there is more of that than princes. Yes, 100%. Yeah, yeah. The whole entire day, every day, the thing that you are doing is drafting blueprints of a house. That makes sense. So the question that I know will come up. Is, are you starting the official campaign for Ryan needs to play this because it's game of the year?
uh lorelei 2025 honestly like actually maybe okay that's fine i just want to get prepared you really think i do really really think that you need to play this because i am 90% certain that this will be in the Game Awards Game of the Year category.
Okay. For sure. Like I. I really don't think that you can have like, I think it was like 94, 96 on Metacritic when it first launched and it might have fluctuated a little bit now, but it's still in the 90s and it's still the highest rated game of the year so far. Obviously, there's a lot of stuff still to come, but... I don't really think you can have that kind of an impact and then not be part of that game of the year conversation.
Like, and that's not just like Joss's own personal Lorelei game of the year conversation. But I mean, like the larger gaming industry, I think, will be considering this in their game of the year. conversations and categories. And so I really do think that you should give this one a try, especially since it is available on, you know, subscriptions that you're already paying for. Like, it's worth trying it out anyway.
Yeah, I have it installed on the Xbox. I think I watched the trailer with with Caden because he was kind of interested in puzzle games. And you did say it's it's less. like violent and or Oh, yeah, there's absolutely no, there are no horror elements whatsoever. It is. Yeah, it's literally you're just exploring a mansion. There's nothing scary or spooky about it. I did kind of like give myself a little bit of a jump, but I did it to myself because I wasn't paying attention.
oh okay so yeah like it was just like i yeah i just i wasn't paying attention i kind of turned a corner and i was like oh wait right oh that was a thing i did on purpose okay yep All right. Yeah. But yeah, no, there's no horror, there's no supernatural, there's no nothing. Even though it sounds funny to say there's no supernatural elements because the rooms are constantly changing. But it's very much presented in a way that like this is how the manor is built.
And it's presented as like an engineering feat, not like magic, if that makes sense. Yeah. Interesting. Everything's very kind of, yeah, everything's very, it takes place in like the 80s and 90s, I think. I'm pretty sure that you arrive in 1993. So it's kind of this like, yeah, like early, early tech, like console computers sort of thing, like terminals and like that era, like disks, like actual like.
floppy disks it's that era of tech yeah the best kinds yeah they present the uh They present the house itself more as like they make it sound like engineering more so than like supernatural magic spookiness. Yeah, definitely. There's nothing that I would like. No reason why a kid other than like, like I say, it's a slow burn. But there is.
You have a kid who enjoys exploration and who it's like at some points it almost feels like a hidden object game. Like there's just so much to notice. And like I say, you'd never know what's actually going to be important. Yeah, I think as long as your kid doesn't get bored, there's no content warning, I guess, that I need to put on this game. Yeah, I think it'd be more about time than anything and whatnot. It is definitely a huge time sink. Like I say, I'm probably...
I'd say if you take away like breaks where I had to leave the game running, I'm probably somewhere between 15 and 20 hours worth of game time. And I feel like I'm, again, it's hard to say without finishing it how far I am at this point, but like... You're probably looking at somewhere around 25 to 30 hours, I would think. Like, I think I'm probably about halfway, I think. But again, I don't 100% know, but I don't think that there's that much more.
like physical space in the game if that makes sense where I absolutely haven't been so now I'm just like trying to unlock some doors, but I know that they exist. I'm trying to draft specific rooms to fill out my grid of 45. Yeah, I think I'm probably, probably about halfway, maybe a little past halfway, but I don't know. I don't know. It's, it is really hard to say, but it's a serious time commitment. Like there's a lot going on. It's a lot longer than Lorelai, a lot longer.
Well, it's a mystery. Like, what was it? It is the whole thing. Not a king, but. Yeah, not king, but... Not king, but... Not king, but... Not king, but... Although... blueprints of a king's butt who knows yeah but yeah i am curious like so basically um blueprints came out and i knew this was something that i really wanted to play
and it came out very quickly after South of Midnight came out, which is what you played this week. And I want to hear about it because I'm, first of all, surprised you finished it so quickly. That either means it's very short or it's very good, or maybe both. But yeah, I was very curious about this, but this one I've seen kind of like, not middling reviews, definitely favorable reviews, but with like...
valid criticisms pretty high up in the text. You know what I mean? Yeah. So tell me what your thoughts are on South of Midnight. So I haven't really been paying attention to the reviews outside of a couple of like little points that have bubbled. to the top of of social media but uh south of midnight i'm i played it on xbox game pass it's uh by compulsion games out of montreal canada Uh, they last made, uh, we happy few, which we talked about on the show. I did. Yeah. Oh man. I absolutely.
Love the idea and the vibe of We Happy Few. It just wasn't the genre for me. But the setting and the art style and everything, oh, man. we happy few is so good yeah well that's that's the cool part about south of midnight is that they have you know the art style the vibe the setting the characters and the gameplay alongside the music and voice. Everything about this game is... I enjoyed every aspect of it. It is a smaller title. It's a $50 Canadian title if you're looking to sort of place it.
in the spectrum of cost of video games and what that means. But it was about a 15 hour experience. It is a game where you play as Hazel, who discovers she's a weaver. Her mother is swept away by... a flood caused by a hurricane and that kicks off your journey to try to save your mom. And it's kind of this journey through. folklore and you see that in the trailers with the i was gonna say wasn't it the kind of like bayou louisiana vibes am i remembering this wrong
No, that that's correct. Yeah. You got to, the original trailer was more of like a, I think a concept trailer, which had a lot more of that. But then the gameplay trailers and stuff deal with, you know, a lot more folklore and history of the American South.
um and dealing with the the the stories told you know and and the the culture there as well and it's just it's this really unique and interesting you know put together game that that does sort of i think where the trappings of you know some of the negative points you saw in the reviews was more tied to the gameplay um yeah the gameplay is very old school and what i mean by that is like it feels like this is like a 360 or xbox one era style game that is like
You have combat is done in the combat arenas. Boss battles are done in the boss battle arenas. There are chase sequences where you're running and using your mobilities. to progress and i think as um i was actually talking to the game or talking about the game with crofton and he had described it as the double jump air air dash video game And it is that era of gameplay, sort of like old school insomniac games with the... not insomniac to sucker punch with infamous uh in that ps3 area like you are
like a badass superhero with all these abilities, you get like four combat abilities and like four sort of traversal abilities. And, and that is the game. And as you're progressing through, it's a very linear experience where you can tap the right stick and it'll like show your... This is the path towards the main objective. So when you come to a fork in the road and you hit it, it's like, okay, that's where I need to go to progress. this is where I need to go to go collect this.
the collectible get the collectible yep so it's like it's it's very straightforward but honestly like coming off of huge games uh like avowed uh which wasn't even that big but to me it was it was a big investment in dragon age which was even bigger i was gonna i was just gonna say i feel like you you play and i thought there was one more but it kind of like you went one into the other into the other where they were these kind of like big
open or semi-open worlds, like longer stories. And, you know, so, you know, a 15-hour experience isn't bad. If blueprints was 15 hours, I'd be done by now. Yeah. I mean, I enjoyed. You know, every moment of the game I did, we talked a little bit like through the week where I said like the opening was a little clunky. And I think that's where the criticisms come in is like at the beginning of the game.
It's a little clunky because like you've got one ability in combat, which is just to mash the X button and dodge. And the traversal feels a little. off you know but then as you get more abilities like the double jump and the air dash and this all happens very quickly uh and combat starts to expand as you unlock more your powers through finding various tools as you progress through the game. Eventually, you do have this suite of powers and traversal abilities that really shake up the experience.
I was really enjoying combat. Like, is it the greatest combat ever designed? Like, no, but it's fun. I was having a good time. I never like, oh gosh, we have combat coming up. It's paced really well. It doesn't overstay its welcome. It tells a full and complete story. It explores stuff that I have not seen in video games before, which is awesome. I'm always looking for something new to play.
I think today, the two games we're talking about are just... fantastically new like there's yeah nothing like it yeah And yes, both games have, you know, similarities to games that have come previously. Stop motion animation in a video game. is not new. You know, a 3D platforming combat arena game is not new, but they're fun. And I think When we look at what came previously this month with Assassin's Creed Shadows,
the biggest reason both of us kind of shied away from it was because it was this huge, giant video game. Yeah. As soon as they started making like Valhalla comparisons, I was like, nah. i'm out thanks if you had told me it was mirage i would have been all over it like a much better experience for me right now is I want something that's in the 20 to 25 hour range, not in the 100 to 150 to 200. So you're never actually going to finish this shit range like. Or see at all.
Yeah, I appreciate the effort that goes into those kind of games. And I know that there are people that will play them. But like, I just don't have the time or patience for that size of an experience anymore. And I feel like they get. And this isn't necessarily true of all big open world games, but I feel like it has been true in the Assassin's Creed franchise for me is that like a lot of it starts to feel padded.
Like, did you really need this much space? Do I really need to run over there to get another Apple? Come on. Yes. You need to collect all the apples. Yeah. Like this game is beautiful. It has an amazing art style. Great voice acting. I think that. I was constantly sort of surprised by the music. So the game has a formula in terms of how the levels are sort of structured, where there's like a traversal level and then there's... like a collecting where you're collecting sort of this.
the resources to progress through to the next area to the boss battle. And, and through that you're discovering like trauma of, of, you know, various characters. that you come across because that's your job as a weaver is to is to heal. people. And I think that there are these moments where you're traversing through an area where there is a boss or I think they call it a mythical creature.
there's music that's sort of progressing as you play and the lyrics are becoming more clearer and clearer as you progress through the level and they're kind of talking to this you know mythical creature and the story behind it uh which is really neat and they they've just done a great job of like integrating all of that and, you know. Having something unique there where the music is evolving as you're playing.
There are moments where when you use your weaver abilities to traverse, that's impacting the music. So every time you do a double jump, there'll be a little addition to the music to give it a bit of flair. So you kind of feel like you're also... impacting something that usually just plays in the background in loops, right? So they've done a lot of work to kind of...
tie it all together. And I think that's what makes it such a really compelling 15 hour experience because you can tell they like really worked to make. Sure, every aspect of it was like... was was touched upon and crafted in a specific way uh but yeah it's not like a perfect game like i would say that from a gameplay perspective it can be a little clunky but it was never It was never enough to cause frustration. I think that, you know.
It's a game that has far more good to offer than to just not play it because... you know it's it's uh the combat is is a little clunky or it's not even clunky like it's just it feels feels like there's just like There's a set amount of moves and... I think a criticism that is thrown at it is like, well, it's a limited move set. It's a limited set of actions. And it's like, yeah, but that's fine. Like, I think a game doesn't need to be.
options of combat like the fact that there are four buttons on the controller and there are four moves that you you know special abilities that you can trigger that sounds good to me And I was having a blast with it. So if you're looking for something that's a little smaller, you know, simpler experience, like remind you of the games of old.
And that seems to be like a trend for me, like with Dragon Age and Avowed is like, let's not build these giant open world games, which has their place, but let's do something unique. Let's tell a story. present a unique art style and, and just go for it. And I think, I think this one's definitely worth checking out, especially if you have game pass, cause it is, it is a Microsoft first party title. So it's on there.
Yeah, I had a great time. And I think you'd enjoy it too, Jocelyn. Again, just based on the aesthetic and the music and the story they tell, it's really cool. Not for the kids. I did start playing it with Caden. Especially early on, there's some language. And again, as the game progresses, they start to deal with... you know, more, more traumatic, heavier themes. But I really did enjoy the game.
That's good. Well, I'm definitely going to give this one a try. And like you said, you're playing it on on Game Pass. So it is obviously available on a subscription that I already have. So something I will and I'm 99% sure I already installed it. Like I say, I was primed to play this, and then I was like, oh, wait, but Blueprints is coming out, so I'm going to just...
Next time I have a game night, it happened to be Blueprints' release night. And I was like, okay, I'm going to start this now and I'll get to South of Midnight. And then I was obsessed. So I'm sorry, South of Midnight. I will play you. I promise. I think you'll love it. So when you're done laying down princely rooms, I guess. Yeah.
Yeah, you'll be ready. You'll have a good time. I think you'll love it. Awesome. Yeah, I think I will, too. All right. So if you guys love what we're doing here, head on over to patreon.com slash the gamers in to support Ryan and I and everything that we do here, like running the TGI game club. We are still working our way through Twilight Princess, but we're coming up to the end. We've only got a couple more weeks left.
If you do want to jump in those conversations, all of those, as with every game club, all of those forum posts and everything are still up. So you have plenty of time to join the conversation if you want to. And yeah, we're getting near the end. And we had a really, really good time doing our kind of like halfway check-in thing.
voice chat that we did. That was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that. So I think so far Twilight Princess has been a pretty good pick. I've really been enjoying like the only thing that took me out of Twilight Princess is blueprints. I was diving in hard into Twilight Princess for about a week there. Yeah, I'm enjoying it. We just unlocked the unique weapon to Twilight Princess, which is the... Some call it the Beyblade, but I think it's called the Spinner. Yeah, the Spinner. Yep.
Yeah, it's really cool. I really enjoyed it. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. So if you guys, again, want to get involved or if you want to support what Ryan and I do, head on over to patreon.com slash the gamers in. All right. That brings us to the news this week. Poor Mythic Quest. Apple TV has officially canceled it. I generally enjoyed Mythic Quest.
And this may be sad because I have grown to absolutely love Rob McElhaney through the whole Wrexham documentary. So if you're not paying attention to that. It was one of those things that like everybody started talking about a few years ago because basically he and Ryan Reynolds bought Welsh. soccer team, football club, depending on what part of the world you're from. And yeah, they decided to make a documentary out of it. And I found it.
heartwarming and entertaining and informative and I absolutely love Robin McElhaney now so the fact that his Mythic West show got cancelled makes me very sad yeah I feel for him Yeah, I had watched the latest season, which is season four, and their spinoff side quest.
that sort of took the bottle episodes from the previous seasons and sort of gave it its own space to, to have. So there's four episodes in, in side quest. And then there, I think there's like eight for mythic quest eight or eight or 10. But yeah, it's a continuation of the same sort of, you know, satire of the video game industry in season four while sort of focusing in on...
Some of the stuff that's lately been bubbling up like, you know, budgets, creative burnout, parent companies not being so great and and dealing with those themes and. Like I was actually surprised it got canceled because I thought they had already renewed it for a fifth season, but maybe I'm thinking. When season two hit, they renewed it for two seasons.
Yeah, one thing that's actually really interesting and that I think is like one of the strengths of streaming services in terms of actually delivering a TV show is so they put it out. The whole thing was out. Season four was complete. and released and they're actually editing the finale to give it a better like more appropriate ending given the fact that it's not getting a fifth season so
I thought that was really interesting that they're like, hey, you know what? Let's just reshoot some stuff for our finale episode and change things around so that this makes sense and isn't like a cliffhanger, which is something that... Every streaming service could do. I'm looking at you, fucking Netflix. but nobody really does. So I thought that that was a really cool, like, yes, it got canceled, but also there's a little bit of a good news piece to the story.
I thought that was really cool about because they didn't have to do that. They could just be like, yeah, we're done. This is it. Sorry. Like everything Netflix has ever canceled, which is everything Netflix has ever made. I mean, Apple TV. I'm so salty with them about so many shows. Oh, I feel you. And the ones they do finish usually don't end well. Like it's always some controversy for the last season. I still haven't watched the last season of Umbrella Academy. I didn't hear it was great.
Uh, but yeah, Apple TV plus has done this a couple of times actually with mythic quest when they delayed the second season, they had like a COVID. lockdown episode that released between seasons um and season four it it does kind of feel like they could do one more season but it also felt like they wrapped up a lot of storylines brought characters to like their natural conclusion or what could be their natural conclusion so i'm i'm interested to see like how they update
The last episode was sort of like an epilogue. I would laugh if it is like a video game style where it's just... you know, uh, an image of a character and like a little writeup, like. Ion bought a team with a famous Canadian actor. That would be really funny. Managed the Toronto Blue Jays and went on to... Like, I wonder how they'll do it. But there was some really fun moments, funny moments in the season. So I was sad to see that it got canceled because I felt like there was.
maybe one more and i was hoping for you know the side quest sort of anthology episodes to kind of get like another, another run at it. I did feel like the episodes in side quest were not as strong as the bottle episodes that came before. There was a couple of good ones, but then there was like a couple of. a couple of duds in there there was one that was about a raiding party And it was done like, there was a lot of in-game footage and it was just...
It wasn't the greatest episode, but it's not good. There was some good ones in there though. Like there was a comic book one that kind of dealt with like a comic book shop, uh, only getting one copy of a mythic quest.
comic and and them fighting over who deserves it most uh and then there was another one that dealt with uh like over overburdening uh like a worker or something and and he was like on his honeymoon or he's on vacation with his with his partner and ion kept calling him and stuff and it was like exploring like that angle of like always being on call always always on call yeah so there was it was interesting but
It's canceled. Apple TV. This is around the time where stream the streamers like their original shows are either ending or they're canceling them. So like this is unfortunately going to be happening. uh quite a bit probably with apple tv going forward because they you just can't keep them all going forever but uh yeah yeah So, Bungie.
has, I guess, re-revealed Marathon, and we're getting a September release date. I don't remember the original Marathon reveal, so Ryan, do you want to give us a rundown? Sure. So Marathon was a title that Bungie made way back in the day. They rebooted it as a PvP shooter, and now it's going to be coming in September.
Stop me if you've heard this one before. It is a... pvp ve extraction shooter first person shooter uh that will be not free to play it will launch in september from playstation studios because bungie is now owned by playstation I think their goal is to survive longer than six weeks, but we'll see. I don't know. I don't know. Actually, they didn't say whether they wanted to last longer than six weeks. I think that's the goal.
So we'll see. In general, you would think that it would be, but who really knows? I mean, I... I just think these days, like Sony. You have to look at what's working. And if you unless Marathon comes out and it's like it's it's so fun to play. I mean, here's the thing. Destiny has amazing shooting. Bungie is behind this title. So one would assume that the shooting is going to be superb.
But at the end of the day, when you don't do free-to-play, you're making a statement of like, this is a paid experience. And that is a barrier to entry and you need players. Concord.
failed at launch because it did not have players even if it was fun does not matter how fun your game is if people don't want to pay for it no one yeah if no one's playing it yeah especially when you have the like pvp v e but like there you need the p's not just the e you need the players you need people playing exactly i think that uh coupled with the fact that this is a game because it's paid
It requires a subscription service if you're playing it on PlayStation. This will also, I believe it's also coming to PC. I don't know if it's coming to Xbox, honestly, because... i thought it was still like a multi-platform game yeah it is coming it is coming to xbox uh so it's coming to all three platforms so that's that's another difference from concord so you know yeah at least they're trying to kind of um expand their potential player base a whole lot more than concord was but
Honestly, like I just watched this whole trailer in the background. It is ringing zero bells for me. Like none at all. I feel like I've never seen this before. Apparently it was revealed in 2023, but. It was just it did not make an impact on my brain, apparently. Yeah. And it's I've never played the original. Maybe it's it's just me or the art style that they chose or something. But like. It doesn't really look like a 2025 game, or if it does, it's like a very weird art direction choice.
Like it almost looks unfinished. Like the textures and stuff don't look maybe gritty enough. I don't know. There's something about it that just like I look at the visuals and I'm kind of like. That's a choice. I, I think I, I understand where you're coming from. Like it's a lot of primary colors, like very shiny plastic. feel to the characters yeah and very simple shapes and very simple environments yeah like this guy is crawling through a vent that is bright blue that's so weird yeah
I think this is the thing. To wait to see how the alpha and the beta is received. how playtests go like i think that's when you'll know whether this is going to make it or break it but then again i think concord Did have favorable reviews during their playtests, although I think there was some.
there but but the fact that it's not free to play is to me is like that's a choice and a choice you'll have to you know reckon with if if it doesn't work out and uh Sony has shown their cards and how they deal with... a game that launches poorly and i wonder if that'll make more people like play it because they don't want playstation to cancel it or if that'll make people shy away like it's the netflix problem right
Do you get invested in a title, like a TV show or a game, where the platform is known to cancel shit if it doesn't have a good launch? Do you try to put your time and money and effort in to show that company that you're interested? Or do you wait and see? If it's going to stand the test of time before you get invested, like could really go either way. Yeah, I do tend to lean more towards like, you know.
uh like i wait like i don't jump in just to show like hey show them the numbers i i yeah especially if it's a fool me once you know Shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. And I think that's happened with Netflix multiple times and with other.
companies but i feel like i've just ripped on netflix now in both our news stories that had nothing to do with netflix well i don't know i mean i i think it's a it's a solid example such a great example yeah of shitty things congratulations netflix you're the Standard for shit. Yeah, and shitification comes for us all. I don't know. I don't have a vested interest in Marathon. I just thought it was interesting because it really does feel like a repeat of Concord.
uh and unless the gameplay is just superb and they really feel like that's the best step forward but but it does kind of reek of bungie has been struggling it's an investment that sony made and it's not paying off and we need to charge for this or else yeah they need to put something out and it needs to make money so therefore it will not be free to play it'll be
oh and it'll definitely also have like battle passes and cosmetics cosmetics yeah there's the pvp part so you can't pvp without looking shiny yeah Says the Fortnite player. I'm aware. My character in Fortnite is literally covered head to toe. Yeah, that's true. It is free to play, but... I am head to toe in glitter and Fortnite and I love it. Anyways, PlayStation Plus has gotten more expensive in Canada, so that's fun.
I got the email today and went to cancel my PlayStation Plus and then was like, oh, wait, I already did this. I remember back in March, I guess. It auto-renewed and I was like, oh man, like $155 a year? That's so expensive. Cancel. And then I got the email saying, hey, guess what? Your subscription's going up next time it renews to $190 a year. And I was just like, okay, no, I can't.
not happening so yeah i went to cancel and then realized i'd already canceled and i was like sweet but yeah if 155 was too much then yeah almost 200 a year to play my playstation and i know that you can now for 110 because all all of the packages went up so for 110 a year you can get the the basically the the connectivity right the the play with your friends stuff yeah and then the the extra and the premium are the ones that have the the game pass s
functionality but like i that's not a thing that i even realized i had which is not great well just because i'm not like so the reason why like i keep up with xbox so much better is because it like
They also own Windows, right? So the Xbox... functionality the launcher and and the games are on my pc as well so i'm always every day on my pc so that ecosystem is just much more in my face If I don't have a reason to log into the PlayStation, like I remember Matt used to log in once a month just to like go and check what the free monthly stuff was.
And I didn't realize that there was like an entire catalog in there. That's totally on me. I didn't know what I was paying for, but I was like, I just let the whatever the original. OG play with your friends connectivity subscription thing was that I signed up for. I just kept telling PlayStation, yeah, sure, charge me every year. Obviously, I want to keep using my PlayStation to play with my friends.
So I had no idea how all the different tiers worked, what I was paying for. I thought I was premium. I wasn't. I was extra. Yeah, I don't know what it is. I don't know if I should blame myself or if I should blame PlayStation. But either way, I had no idea the hell was going on. And now they want to charge me almost $200 a year. No, thank you.
Yeah, well, I think with the subscriptions going up, and up and up there's just too many things now there's too many subscriptions across all types of media i'm talking about netflix again i was just going to yeah i was gonna say like when a subscription service increases their price you if the price goes over a certain limit and and i know that limit is is based on personal situations but for me if it goes over a certain limit um it immediately becomes a conversation of like do i need this
at a drop of a hat if it goes over the price of a certain limit and it stops being a convenience just pay for the year and use it whenever i want it becomes a month to month or becomes a when i need it and playstation has been that for a while I've canceled so many annual subscriptions. I think the only thing so like I've canceled I've canceled Amazon. I've canceled Crave, which is basically like HBO Max, I think. But the Canadian version.
Then I've canceled the now the PlayStation annual thing I've canceled. I feel like there was another one. Well, my WoW subscription. I was every six months for that. I'm not paying for WoW. I'm not playing WoW anymore. Basically, there's just so many of these subscriptions that we're like, oh yeah, you'll give us like $25 or $30 a month, right? And I'm like...
But no, actually, I won't. Like, do you understand how many different companies there are and how many different subscriptions? And the only reason that I have the subscriptions that I still have, like so Game Pass. is because I personally find a lot of value in Game Pass because I'm much more in that kind of... Xbox PC ecosystem. I still have my Nintendo because the Nintendo annual subscription cost is not enough for me to notice.
What else do I still have? Oh, Disney Plus because my daughter loves Bluey. And I have Netflix because my parents watch nothing else. So I pay a second screen to have them on my account, which I probably should just cancel Netflix and buy Netflix for them because it'd be cheaper. But anyways, I digress. The point is, I used to have probably 10 or 15 subscriptions across all of my entertainment, like my video games and my TV. And now I'm just like, this is insane. These prices are actually nuts.
And even with like the ad free versions, I'm like, there shouldn't be ads in here anyway. You're charging me so many dollars. Stop it. Yeah. Well, I think that's just, you know. Like it hits a certain price and you have to have that conversation. And when you do sort of put them all up.
beside each other and see the true cost of everything that you're you're trying to enjoy there's only so much time and i know subbing month to month that's a big piece yeah there's effort involved with with subbing month to month and but you do you do get used to it and i think that for me like with playstation plus i usually get like a month or two a year to play online with friends. Last year was hell divers too. Uh, but you know, um,
I don't do it for the free games. I do it because I need to get the... The online play. Connectivity, yeah. Which I mean, so the essential, which includes the online functionality is $14 a month. So like, again, I can't justify even $110 a year. or $190 a year. I just can't justify that. That's not a shrug whatever purchase anymore.
I mean, it wasn't a shrug whatever purchase at 155. So obviously it's not a shrug whatever at 190. Like that's a big jump. No, but I do get that if you are solely in the PlayStation environment. it still sucks that prices are going up. But if that's all you play and you want to have some extra games thrown at you once a month, I get it. you still see the value absolutely there's value there it sucks the price is going up uh it
It was funny. I was having this conversation with Ashley. It's like, it feels like once a month I'm like texting her, like our cell phone bills going up, our insurance going up. Yeah. And it's always the conversation. Like everything's going up, but our paychecks have not. And sometimes they do, but like not as often as somebody asking for money. And I think that's where PlayStation has to be careful, just like Nintendo and Microsoft and Netflix and all these.
optional services because you don't need Netflix. to survive you you do need home insurance you do need car insurance yeah yeah but i do not need playstation plus extra okay yeah so if i'm looking at cuts That's the first to go. And it is weird to see video game companies trying to charge more now when we are in this like affordability. crisis you know it's odd and i think you're going to see paying for these services because like, well,
I don't need PlayStation Plus extra for the year sight unseen. I'm just going to wait until some games build up and then sub for a month. Yep, yep, yep. So again, and that price is only in Canada. That increase doesn't apply to the States, right? It's just us. Not yet. Yeah, well, yeah, not yet. Who knows? It'll come. I mean, this was news after I think they raised prices in a lot of the Asian countries.
So now we have Canada and I imagine where the canary in the coal mine for North America. It's coming everywhere. I mean, honestly, maybe PlayStation is just waiting until. Maybe the U.S. dollar gets stable again and then they'll announce the new prices. I don't know. I'm not an economist. We shall see.
The other thing that we're going to see, although it's a leak, so, you know, we don't have release dates or anything else, but Oblivion, Elder Scrolls Oblivion, which was the fourth entry in the Elder Scrolls series. is getting a remaster so uh i guess ryan you were saying that they they basically left their uh their website public by accident and so like
I mean, technically it's a leak, but these were images that were stored in a folder on their website, basically. So somebody found them and then published them. yes it's a leak but it's like the most valid leak we've probably yeah exactly it's like i mean can you call it a leak if you just post it on the internet by accident like It's not a leak. It's a whoopsie. It's definitely a whoopsie.
before yeah this is a this is a category that you know where we will cover it like usually leaks are like yeah we'll wait till it's real yeah i feel like this it's like not only is it It is an unfortunate thing where I know when they like to release these things with like a marketing.
spiel but like this is a wordpress directory that was not protected where they were building out the the page for oblivion uh i think it was the developers uh virtuos uh i've not heard of the studio before but i guess they're working on this oblivion remaster and and i gotta say like This is a, it looks like a true remaster. Like the comparison between the original and the new screenshots, like looks. Awesome. It looks amazing. Amazing. It looks so good.
I'm really excited. I played the crap out of Oblivion way back, literally 20 years ago. And I can't wait for this. I'm definitely going to give this one a try. I mean, obviously, I want Elder Scrolls 6, but I will take a remake of Oblivion 100%. I mean, like, I've played so much Skyrim, my own Skyrim in so many places. Like, give me Oblivion. Give me Morrowind. Like, let's go.
I am really excited to, I didn't get far in oblivion, but I'm really excited to adventure with Patrick Stewart. You didn't get far in, oh my God. I'm joking. I got far into that. okay what is happening right now i just remember playing it and it's like oh man it's so cool patrick stewart's here we're gonna adventure through he's gonna be through oh Okay, never mind. But I did enjoy it. I played a lot of it on the Xbox 360 and at PC as well for a little bit.
This remaster looks great. I think this combined with Avowed should bridge at least a little bit of time while we wait for Elder Scrolls VI. So this is good news. It is good news. And it's good news to end on. We're ending on a positive note. I think overall, I think we probably hit 80% of good news today. I am so proud of us. So much positivity in here. Except for Netflix, but they had it coming. Well, yeah, but screw Netflix.
We're not going to get a Netflix deal is what you're saying, basically. It's fine. Aren't they closing their gaming division anyway? I think so, yeah. If you would like to continue the conversation, head on over to TGI Discord at tiny.cc slash TGI Discord. That is also where we do the game club that I mentioned earlier. We're having a lot of fun over there.
Do come and join the community. You can also visit us on the web at gamersinpodcast.com or follow us over on Blue Sky. You can find me, Jocelyn, at jocplays.com and Ryan is at ryanmurphy.ca. Also, be sure to check out our TGI Community Starter Pack, which is at tiny.cc slash TGI Starter Pack. Thanks for staying at the Gamers Inn. And remember, tune in next week. Bye, everybody. Bye, everyone.