you Hello, everybody, and welcome to a new episode of the MinMax Show, a place about games, friends getting better. I'm joined by Jacob Geller yet once again. Jacob, you were self-conscious about how much you've been on the podcast recently, which is, I think, a very silly thing.
to be when we pay you to be on a podcast. Look, I loved MinMax before I was on, and every time I'm on, I'm like, I'm taking away a spot from someone who I really like to listen to. Like Kyle Hilliard. We could double him up. Welcome, Kyle. Hello, I feel no shame for the amount of min-max content I've been on. That's what we want. Which is less than Jacob, I guess. Speaking of min-max content they've been on, we are also joined by the one and only managing editor of GameSpot, Tamar Hussain!
Hello. It's been a while since I've been on something with you guys. I know. I was really trying to map out. I think it was Trivia. I think it was Trivia Tower and it was before the launch of Elden Ring because it was an all from software edition of Trivia Tower. You really... You saved my butt on that one.
Unless you count the, like, random, like, event travelogue-style stuff that I occasionally either pop up in or just, like, walk behind someone else. Like, I'm there. Technically counts. Or I think I film you playing Liza. for an uncomfortably long amount of time? Yeah, yeah. Which, honestly, I'm into it. I love that. All right, that's the question because I do feel like...
Most of the time, if it's like, hey, travelogue time, let's take out a camera and start recording. I feel like it's more fun for people in the room, but I always embracing for like... Who thinks this sucks? Who is just trying to have a polite conversation in between appointments and suddenly Jacob Gellar, who's going to be at Summer Game Fest this year, is whipping out his phone saying, all right, everybody make animal sounds or whatever type of motif you have rolling this year.
I'm so scared. Every time you've done it with me, I think you've always given me a heads up or I'll say a heads up and be like, hey, I'm about to film, you know, XYZ thing. Are you cool? I've been like... Okay, good, good. I do get some people who have like random people who just like run up to me as I'm walking between appointments, stuck a camera in my face and been like, what do you think about this? And I'd be like, I think I'm walking around you and carrying on to my appointment.
are you looking forward to summer game fest this year i'm looking forward to walking around a lot of people yeah i'm going straight to my appointments yeah this is i mean have you been to every one yeah i think i've been to pretty much every single summer game fest um yeah everyone i didn't go to all the e3s obviously because i'm not like uh super old but um i have been to a bunch of them
no offense to any oldies out there uh but yeah i think i think i went to the last three e3s and then just everything since then yeah so Yeah. We're trying to prepare Jacob Geller. So this year for mid-max, it's Jennifer's going. Yeah. So Jacob's going and then Kelsey Lewin is going. It'll be Kelsey and Jacob's first time. So trying to convey that, like, it's kind of just a chill.
college campus vibe. It's a weird thing to get across. It feels more like a... uh like a con than it does a actual like video game event you know it's less polished and it's also like i'll just go in here and pick a game and do things It will be my second ever video game event. And the first one was Gamescom Latam in Brazil, Sao Paulo. So the fact that this one's not in Portuguese, I feel like is really going to give me a leg up. I love you.
On this episode, we're going to be talking about Summer Game Fest. We're going to be talking about predictions for Summer Game Fest, the showcase, stuff surrounding the showcase, all that fun stuff. Then we're going to be talking about Elden Ring Night Reign, which a couple folks here have been playing.
look it's weird to think of like this journey tam like last time you're on it was before the launch of elden ring and i wasn't really a from software fan outside of cookies and cream and you know the classics
But then since that came out, it's like, all right. It turns out I loved Elden Ring when that came out. What a surprise for me. And now you've come back to tell us all about this Battle Royale-esque experience with Night Reign. So we'll unpack that in a little bit. Then we're going to be talking about EA canceling their Black...
Panther game and shutting down Cliffhanger Studios. Sad news, it just broke on Wednesday, so we'll unpack all that stuff. And then back after the show, of course, community questions that people submit over there on Patreon. Thanks to everybody there. A couple things. Housekeeping type things. Next week is going to be funky. It's going to be funky because it's so big. And Kyle, you know how big things are often funky? Like giraffes and such.
Of course, and other examples, like whales. I'm sure there's more freaky big things, but it is a weird one because... The podcast is going to be delayed next week because Thursday is the launch of the Switch 2, obviously. So we're planning on having some cohorts in Minneapolis swing by the MinMax Studio. We're going to be streaming on launch day on MinMax's YouTube channel to check.
out realistically it's just gonna be like a full playthrough of welcome tours so you can tune in for that there might be some mario kart and stuff as well but we're really gonna savor all that welcome tour has That's the headliner is welcome. I think Sarah will. That might be the first thing I boot up on switch to a truly genuinely. I am right there with you. So the plan is we're going to have that stream and then probably record a podcast that Thursday.
So it probably won't be up until late Thursday or Friday. So heads up, next podcast is going to be delayed. And then on Friday at 4 p.m. Central, we're going to be doing our SGF reaction stream for the Summer Game Fest showcase there. So you can tune in live.
on that that's all happening on min max's youtube channel um and if you're tuning into this podcast saying hey i was looking forward to some hot thoughts on fantasy life i or to a t uh we need some more time with those games so we'll be checking back in the future to talk about those things right there but also if you're
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everybody but pretty good odds because we have 21 steam codes for the thing remastered so you can help support nabin games media and get a great game like the thing remastered by subscribing to the next podcast app all right summer game fest We're here, everybody. It is the season. Does it feel like the season, Tam? Do you feel, having gone to so many of these things, are you dead inside or how's the innards?
It doesn't feel like the season. And it's weird because I think it's been cancelled out by the fact that there's a console coming out. And at the same time, it doesn't feel like a new console is coming out. So I don't know what I'm feeling or what is going on, honestly.
You know, I think... Do we all get up in our heads about this too much? Do you ever have that weird thing as an adult where you're like, it doesn't really feel like... christmas is happening tomorrow like maybe the secret is just nothing feels like anything like i remember going to e3 like all those years kyle i don't know if you're in the same camp of just like god i can't believe e3 is happening next week and then suddenly you're like
I can't believe I'm getting off the plane right now in LA and technically E3 is happening right now. It just never feels like that big of an impact. Ben, do you think you have the memento disease? You're just relearning information every 10 minutes. I think that's probably true. I've certainly repeated enough stories on the podcast. I can't believe I'm in a cab. I don't know where I'm going. Wow, how neat. It is a weird...
Brent right now like it's just the console and SGF all happening at once I don't know it just and it and there's and like I can't do anything
with that yet. Does that make sense? I'm just sort of like, well, I guess I'll just wait. I guess I'll just sit here and twiddle my thumbs. I also feel like it's the level of access we now have the year-round kind of... devalues stuff like this where traditionally in previous years this was the like e3 was the time when there would be an explosion of new information right right beyond that you had to wait for a monthly magazine up until
you know websites came along and then a website was a little more frequent these days we're just constantly bombarded by information on what's going on in video games then when an event like e3 or summer games fest comes around For cynical people like me, I'm like, this is as much a marketing event as it is a information delivery event, right? So I think it's lost some of its mystique because of that. We just know everything all the time. There's no focused...
press conference that we can all tune into for an hour and just learn the year's news, I guess, right? I think it is, you know, it's like both with Switch 2 a new Elden Ring game and Death Stranding 2 coming out like a week afterwards it's kind of like I know the things I'm most excited about right now so hopefully SGF is cool because it's like
Here's stuff you didn't even know you were looking forward to, but it is weird that, like, all my most anticipated stuff for this year is kind of happening in the next month. And it's not SGF. Yeah, but I think that always happens. It feels like, God, what is the second half of this year? What could it possibly be? And then it's like, this is the event where you can start to lock down. Okay, there is going to be a ton of stuff in the back half of the year. We just don't really know concretely.
what it's going to be it's still we're in a weird phase of like Gears of War E-Day is that still going to be the big holiday game like what is this oh I forgot that it even existed I got a calendar. I'm crossing off the days till I get to big E-Day because it doesn't feel like Christmas, but it feels like E-Day, baby.
um okay so like the day that humanity like just like collapsed basically right monsters came up from the ground and killed everybody i don't know i didn't really remember the lord's will But Summer Game Fest predictions. It's fun to try and map out what exactly happened last year with this big showcase, the Jeff Keighley showcase, right? And so it was like the biggest stuff from last year was Civ 7.
Maybe the biggest reveal, Lego Horizon. Wander Stop was revealed there. Then stuff like Power Rangers, Rita's Rewind. That's kind of the arena we're looking for, I think, of like level of big reveal that could happen here. It seems like... In the big ranking of Keeley's, which we're all interested in doing, it's what? It's got to be the Game Awards, number one. Summer Game Fest, number two. And then Gamescom, the distant freaky cousin.
I might actually swap Gamescom and Summer Game Fest. Really? I think Gamescom is a bigger deal for... In terms of how it presents, because the audience, as Jacob knows, having attended LATAM, the audience is significantly bigger than most other events. maybe in terms of priority i think it's it's a little flipped around but in terms of what announcements who can say it's all based on where who's where and what cycle and that kind of thing right yep yep how hard keely can beg uh so here we go
Big predictions for Summer Game Fest 2025. Kyle, hit us with a haymaker, man. Give us one that's going to make our wigs fall off. The one that I...
And I was like, oh, maybe this is a good one. And then I pulled up that 2025 partners list. Yeah. And they're not on there. So I was like, well, I really don't think this is going to happen. But Konami, right? Konami seems to be sort of... re-emerging in a way they got metal gear remake their survival kids is a switch to launch title that is a konami game right yeah yeah yeah
And I was like, I'm ready for something Castlevania. Like I'm ready for just, I don't know what it is. And I think it's a little bit of me being so bummed out by Blades of Fire and being like, sort of remembering lords of shadow and being like i want new castlevania and maybe this is the time maybe konami shares a new castlevania but but they're not on the list of partners so i don't know if that's gonna happen
Well, also, you know, there's still the ongoing feud, right? Like if he's going to be hyping up Death Stranding there, is it still... Konami's the only publisher that Keeley's ever looked at the camera and said, tsk, tsk, too. You know? Is there still a little bit of... Did they not show, like, a Delta trailer at a Keeley event?
Was that against Comm last year? You might be right. I believe there's a story about how that beef has been squashed between Konami and Kojima. So that should mean that also like...
Akili's chill now as well. He doesn't have to defend his homeboy as much anymore. So I think it's okay now. I wouldn't be surprised if something Konami related does pop up in the actual like... press conference maybe like i don't have this written down but a new um new trailer for that upcoming silent hill game like uh oh maybe yeah which one what is that called silent hill f
It's like the H. Yeah, like gameplay from that, which I don't think we've seen. Pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. A whole world of Konami possibilities. I was kind of on the Castlevania front, Kyle. I do feel like... With the steps Konami's making, it seems like they're ramping things up. I mean, they're trying to publish games like Deliver at All Costs and whatnot.
We should have mentioned last week was free on the Epic Game Store. It's like, I think the offer might be over now, but that seems like that would have been helpful to get out there. But like... It seems like they are probably due for trying to make another big push into Castlevania. It's just a level of... what scale they're going for and i know you just want cells was the last like don't worry we don't haven't forgotten about castlevania and that was cool but i just i want something new
new-ish right like a new with an asterisk because i kind of want it to be throwback you know but you know yeah no i think we'll get if i had to make a prediction on where castlevania goes i think we get something that looks way more like the netflix series like super super similar which i'd be totally fine with yeah i would as long as the gameplay is is like classic i think like in terms of art style they need to capitalize on
the popularity of that Netflix show, which is, I believe has done really well and has extended beyond the sweaty audience that like us that really love it from back in the day. But yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be against that, like a super high res, like. framed crazy amounts of animation frames good looking uh kind of visual style
Like a hand animated almost classic Symphony of the Night sort of inspired. Like Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden. I would totally be happy with that applied to Castlevania. It reminds me of... What was that Mark of the Ninja? Like that kind of like, that kind of visual style. That'd be awesome. Yeah, I can see it. Uh, Tim, you got a big prediction out there? Um, so are we, are we...
Are our predictions strictly focused on what's going to show up at the Keeley show? No, you can broaden it out. It's the summer season, I guess. I think that we might see, or I would like to see what's to deal with Xbox's handheld, which we keep hearing a bunch about. And they're doing a thing over there, right? Like they have their... the usual stuff happening so that could be a good opportunity to be like hey everyone we know you've seen one trillion leaks about this so
There is the actual handheld, because I believe it's being created in partnership. Was it with Asus Rock or something like that? So, I mean, there's good opportunities for them to show it off and be like, hey, yes, we're partnering or at the very least say yes.
We are officially partnering with Asus to create a Xbox handheld. This is an Xbox and they show up, you know, wherever this thing is. And that could potentially be a big deal for them. Yeah, it's a weird thing. I mean, like partnering with Asus, like, does that diminish the impact?
A little bit like, hey, look, they're manufacturing. We're have like, you know, it'll have some Xbox buttons on it and I guess the interface. But is it going to feel a little bit like, OK, here's a little side project for Microsoft. And we're like, here's the next big thing or a big thing that we're doing.
hmm i think i think it is a pretty big deal from what i can do one the the asus hardware is really good yeah like the the rug was really really good i enjoyed it a lot and then the ally x that came out which is a you know a more powerful awful version of it it's asking price was incredibly steep it was like seven or eight hundred dollars
But as a device, it is very, very good. I use mine very, very regularly. So in terms of getting into that market, I think it's very smart and very shrewd of them to just be like, okay, we're not going to partner with Steam. And Nintendo is not going to make a Xbox branded switch. So we might as well go to Asus. I imagine they have existing relationships because of Microsoft and kind of taking that. And I think the main thing is the Asus. software is booty cheeks like it is
Awful. That's a bad thing. Come on, Kyle. Butts are bad. I have a problem with booty cheeks. Okay, don't get Kyle started on this. The beauty of booty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.
But like, because whenever you start that thing, it... mine frequently boots into windows and i'm just like i hate this why can i see a start bar i hate this so much and then you hit armory crate and then it'll bring up another thing and i'm like i hate this just a little less So I think the idea is the Xbox part of it, what makes it...
appealing to people is it boots straight into some software that is xbox focused right and you won't be requiring to you know do some other crazy stuff in the same way the steam deck boots straight into big picture mode so i think that's what the exciting part of it is effectively it being a
frog ally x or whatever it may be that runs proprietary um xbox operating systems yeah so you think phil spencer walking out on stage with keely and he's got the xbox handheld awkwardly shoved in his pocket he's like trying to limp walk over that's what you're envisioning Is that an Xbox handheld or are you just happy to see me? I'm glad you asked, Jeff. All right, my big prediction, it feels like we're due. We're ripe. Pluck it off the tree, everybody. This has got to be Resident Evil 9, right?
It seems like we're at that period. See, I feel like Resident Evil would want to be their own announcement. You know what I mean? They could just do it on their own. You know what I mean? I don't think they're quite at that level. They have the weird... They do their own showcases where it's like, hey, here's...
another trailer for Onimusha 2 remaster. Yeah, but there's never anything cool at those. Yeah, they don't really save the big reveals for that. It's just like, hey, there's an extra shot of Onimusha Way of the Sword. Please enjoy. And so I feel like they'd want to partner with something. big like this. And there was that Resident Evil 4 thing recently where fans were really reading into that of like, oh, there's a bunch of signs that kind of look like nines. Maybe this is...
Resident Evil 9 being teased. We're at that level of paranoia. But, you know, it is weird. I was just looking at like Resident Evil Village was 2021. It was a long time ago at this point. So I feel like we're due. There's nothing. Resident Evil on the horizon at this point? Am I forgetting about anything?
No. There's another movie coming, right? Yeah, the movie from the Barbarian director, right? But other than that, I feel like we've got to put something on the horizon for fans. This seems like a good time for a cryptic teaser trailer. I like it. Thanks, man. I believe it. You sold me on it. I believe it. When you said people on the internet were looking at another game and going, that looks like a nine. I was like, of course. Definitely, it's happening.
It's happening, dog. Just like Kojima's involved with that. What was the name of that stupid PlayStation game that they posted on the blog about? I want to say Unsighted? Something like that. Unsighted is like a good indie game. Well then shout out to the good game Unsighted. Alright, let's never remember.
That dude's name. Oh, my God. I remember because GameSpot published the piece where it was like, we did an investigation. This guy's full of sh**. Don't talk to him. I remember I was working at GameSpot. Yeah, you were there. I'm really impressed with that. By the way, I think...
Tam and I worked together for like six months when I was at GameSpot. I think this is the first time we've podcasted together. Oh, weird. Yeah. So all our meetings have been private up until this moment. But just a snappy, just as fun. Backstage Pass has got us. That was called Abandoned, everybody. Abandoned was the game that has truly been abandoned culturally
But maybe like... Ben, I'll give you $10 if you can tell me the name of the guy who was attached to it. The studio was like... He was infamous. The studio was blue something, right? Hideo Kojima, right? Yeah, exactly. Infamous. what's his name I'm trying to find it right now. I want to know, Ben. That's why I'm asking you. He's also scrambling through his own ID. What is my name? I forgot. Oh, I found it. Hassan Karaman. Right, right, right. Our main man.
Look forward to a future guest cohort. The abandoned guy. Let's see. I got another oddball one. Kyle, do you want? Hmm. I want to hear Jacobs. Yeah, you want me to say any? I guess. I guess, Jacob. So I was thinking specifically about the Keeley show. I want to know what his level of showmanship celebrity is going to be. Of course. I think. That Alex Garland is going to walk out on stage. Say nothing more than I'm very excited to be.
directing the Elden Ring movie. We won't see anything. We won't see a logo. And then he'll maybe introduce like a dead by daylight tie in with 28 years later. or something. That's not bad. Alex Garland will be there and nothing related to Elden Ring will happen except we'll all know he's directing it. And Keeley will give a big smile and do a lot of that tease. Can you tell us anything about the post-credit scene in the Elden Ring movie? That type of vibe?
Yeah. I love the handle you have on Keeley's show because that sounds perfect. That sounds like I feel like you've been reading the actual run of show, which is like the way that was described is like, oh, my God. Yeah, that's exactly what's going to happen.
Thank you, thank you. I'm looking him up to see, would I recognize Alex Garland? Like, if he just showed him? I actually saw him recently and was like, oh, I didn't think he... look he is just kind of like a nerdy looking man yeah yeah i was gonna say i was gonna say in the best way possible he looks like a gamer he's not exactly uh a ball of charisma
I think he'd walk out there and kind of bum everybody out and remind everybody about the true nature of man and war. I mean, that stage never stopped Keeley before. Like when Pacino came out. Oh, Pacino doesn't have enough charisma for you, Jacob.
That's the take? Hot damn. I'm 2025. I'm just saying he has the same disease as you where he doesn't know where he is at any point in time. Yeah, that's true. What do you think about if Keely got out there and did something I thought he was going to do at Gamescom last year when... This game was leaking Six Ways to Sunday, which is officially announced Valve's deadlock game that MOBA, that everybody's been playing for like over a year at this point, is now the time and is the...
old connection with Valve enough to bring that on stage, you think? Hmm. I like that. I mean, Valve does have a pretty good connection because he did the, was it Inside Half-Life 2 or whatever it may be? Yeah, and Alex. And he did the first one for Gamespot.com back when he was a writer at Gamespot.com. That's awesome. Which was crazy. But yeah.
I feel like leveraging that could be a good... That would be the megaton, I think, of the show for him in terms of the scale of what Summer Game Fest is. I don't know, man. The announcement would just be like... it's playable for everyone even though most of you who wanted to play it probably have been already yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna take some inspiration from jacob and and try and put my mind into what
keely would do to hype that moment up yeah and i i think what would happen is the leading would be him getting really excited it's like it's my great pleasure to reintroduce Valve. And everyone's going to be like, Half-Life 4, hell yes. And they're going to come out and be like, remember that Deadlock game? It's back, baby. Like a pre-recorded video from Gabe Newell on his yacht.
just be saying we're excited to announce and for some reason this yacht also has like a wall of knives on it it's like why do you have that on boats yeah it's like a big uh what are those uh the steam ships in the water with the big paddle wheels in the back but it's just blades that just propel it yeah so i think i think keely be smart enough to try and
not get expectations up i think he'd have some if i was keely it'd be a little thing of like well they still can't count to three but valve has something very exciting he'd set it up hopefully in that way to try and take the wind out of those sails uh but who knows um Half-Life 3, obviously, the rumors never stop. And there were rumors bubbling up recently. That would be a biggie. And that is...
I agree. That would be a biggie. Frankly, a biggie. I would say, you know, it's not inconceivable. I would put it at a 4% chance that Half-Life 3 is debuted at this show. It would be held for a Game Awards, though, probably, right? Maybe. But I guess Valve is also going to do what they want. And if they're like, we're ready, we want it to be out now. Here, you can have it. Exactly. Yeah, for sure.
Okay, what else you got, Kyle? I was looking at the partners list because I wanted to check if Konami was there. And MetaQuest is on there. And this is an odd prediction, but I really want another... like Resident Evil 4 style approach to a VR game. And the one that I don't think will happen, but the one that I genuinely want is the original Metal Gear Solid. I want Metal Gear Solid 1. That would be so cool. Not VR missions.
Confusingly. Because I saw like a fan sort of rendition of it once. And just walking around in Shadow Moses in VR, I was like, I desperately want to do that. That seems really cool. That's my bold prediction. Yeah, hell yeah. Yeah, why not? Oh god.
um yeah there is there is a version there's that game boneworks where people just make stuff in there and someone's definitely made a a big big like Metal Gear style thing in there where you can play in first person and it looks really good I've just never had the chance to do it but you are like it's the full game I think it's the full game and you are just in Shadow Moses
In PS1 graphics. And the Nikita missile sequence, Kyle, how's that working? You going first person as a missile? Rotate your head. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go around the hallways that way, that makes sense. I assume that's how Snake did it, right? I think so.
The camera wasn't on him when you were firing that missile, but I assume that's what was happening. I mean, so Armature, who's owned by Meta at this point, they're the ones that did that Resident Evil 4. Not the remake of Resident Evil 4 in VR, confusingly. This is the...
older version of Resident Evil 4 that was in VR that you're such a big fan of. The better version, the more exciting, the more interesting one to play. But yeah, they haven't announced what they're working on after that Resident Evil 4, I don't think. I mean, is that Grand Theft Auto game, was that officially canceled? Yeah.
It was. I don't know if it was official, but I think it was in an interview. Somebody mentioned like, we were going to make San Andreas and we're not going to do that anymore, which is a bummer because that is the era that I think would be funky and cool to have in VR for sure. And probably like, I mean.
I think we all like Arkham Shadow here and stuff, but you look at like probably the budget of making some big new VR game versus like if we just lean into nostalgia and give people weird VR versions of crap they played. high school like it's probably a better play as gross as it might be yeah maybe it's like
lame to admit that I would prefer that. I liked Arkham Shadow a lot, but I want the charm of walking around in environments that I am incredibly familiar with and being able to look at them from a new perspective. I want Shadow of the Colossus VR.
Yeah. Yeah. So I can be terrified just looking up at this thing like, what, love? I mean, they did. They made that Last Guardian VR experience where you're basically just like in a room with Trico, but like, it's still pretty cool. Yeah. God, I forgot about that. about that weird thing. Has anybody else got one? Tam, you got another one?
yeah i mean i think this is a far-fetched one but it just in my mind i think i can make it work i don't think nintendo is listed as a partner and they very rarely do get involved in this kind of stuff yeah but my business brain or like
Like my marketing business brain is like, this would be the perfect opportunity to make some sort of switch to reveal announcement style thing. Because, you know, it's out now. It'll be around then coming out soon. And also like it's a. it's an event where a lot of the world is going to be paying attention to it so they probably want to take the opportunity to be like hey there's another switch coming out switch to his hair and maybe be like oh this is when
you know, Metroid is coming out or something like that. That's pretty good. Yeah, or even like, I think at the... Worst case scenario, it would be, here's a sizzle reel for everything Switch 2 related. Yep. Best case scenario is they come out and they're like, hey, Metroid Prime 4 is coming out on... uh this day uh on you know switch two and then just leave yep yep i can see that even like you know i think their partner direct kind of would would
scratch the stitch as well but even if it was sizzle reel of like third party release dates games coming to the switch too because i still feel like there is kind of like a pile up of People wanting to announce we're going to be on the Switch 2 later this year. And maybe this would be the way to show it instead of trying to squeeze everybody into the whole partner showcase. But that's pretty good. Just, yeah, kind of remind people that it's out now.
I mean, back in the day, you'd have Reggie come on stage and people would say, I recognize him from the memes. But, like, Doug Bowser walking out on stage, I just don't think it has the same impact. Like, you got to have something, you know? I was in a room with Doug Bowser and didn't know I was standing next to him.
and it was you know what makes it worse it was at the nintendo store so all the cues were there for me to figure it out but like i think it was lucy point i was like there's doug bowser and i was like what Where is that? He's like, I've been seeing this guy walking back and forth the entire time. It was like, they didn't even register that it was Doug Bowser. How exciting was that Nintendo store to visit? You know what?
it was pretty pretty cool like we went in there we had the access before it actually opened and that kind of stuff and i remember going in there being like it's just a store and yeah it is pretty much exactly a store but um it has a good vibe to it and also it kind of what it represents as a whole for like that area of the city is pretty big because it's it's an area that a lot of
people think is like abandoned and there's no one there it's like no it's union square people hang out there now there's just more of a reason it feels like a revitalizing presence At the same time, you go in there and you can buy some, there's some like exclusive merch in there. There's also merch that I've not seen. Like every Nintendo store that I've been to has never had anything Metroid related. Yeah. And it's been driving me mad. And I went in there and they had...
a bunch of metro stuff and i just like bought one of each just to send a message to them to be like there's one person that will buy one of these each something like an e-tank or something funky right that you could buy there yeah so the e-tank is a water bottle there's like a tote bag
which when you like fold it up it looks like one of the capsules um uh there's a bunch of shirts there's like a messenger bag i think as well so i got all that kind of stuff in a jacket as well um it was an expensive day
But now they know that people care about Metroid. God, I went down the dorkiest rabbit hole in a while where I became convinced and I'm like, oh man, that block that the Nintendo store is... on in san francisco it's like i think that's the same block and the same store that's in the opening of hitchcock's the birds there's like a scene where
The character goes into like a pet store and Hitchcock does his cameo on the street right outside. I'm like, I think that's the Nintendo store. And so I really rewatched that scene, tried to map it all out. And I think it's on the other side of the block. I was really disappointed. I was going to blow Blue Sky's brain. revealing that the bird scene at the Nintendo store.
Fun fact, I grew up in the same place that Hitchcock was born and grew up. No way. Yeah, if you go to my little town, not town, I guess, it's like a part of London, but in the tube stations, one of the tube stations is just a... a gallery of uh hitchcock uh movie moments in murals made out of tiles and it's like really cool um so yeah that's nice do you feel extra connected do you feel like you're gonna go through this whole filmography because of that
Nah. Oh, not really. Yeah, get the idea. Hey, what do you guys think about this? What about new Final Fantasy shown off at SGI? Now, not... Here's where the twist is. Not 7 Part 3. And not 17. My prediction is this is going to be a Final Fantasy big offshoot. Think of... something like World of Final Fantasy, if you remember that weird offshoot, but just some experimental side thing. Or like your favorite game, Tam. Of course, uh...
What is the name of that soul? Origins? Yeah, Origins. Is that what it is? Oh, Stranger of Paradise? Yeah, Final Fantasy colon Frank Sinatra. Yeah, Stranger of Paradise. Exactly, yeah. Something in that arena I can see being there. Okay. Okay, look, not everyone's favorite. I can't win them all. That's fine. The thing is, I would...
I think that the problem they have is they need to finish off the Final Fantasy VII trilogy. And if they rock up with another Final Fantasy, it could be weird. I mean, they have done it before. The last one was... That kind of same approach where they had Final Fantasy, was it 16, 17, 18, 20? 16. They had Final Fantasy Clive Rosfeld edition. at the same time as Rebirth Part 2 or Final Fantasy VII Part 2. So it's not impossible.
I just think they also need to be smarter about not splitting the Final Fantasy mindshare in too many different directions right now. Yeah. What's the, what's it, the Forspoken? folks like what are they we don't know what they're doing right i think they were absorbed undoubtedly right there's no doubt no i think that studio was kind of absorbed into the larger business division uh structure i believe they were kind of they're probably working on
16, I would imagine. Crowboy is screaming at the backstage pass. Chad, he screamed about Final Fantasy IX Remake. which has been oh so long rumored since the great Nvidia Lake from so many years ago. It's possible. It's, you know, it's the anniversary. They won't do any big remakes until 7 is done. I feel like it'll be like a remake on the scale of like, you can play it on your phone.
and we ruined the art style, like that sort of Final Fantasy. I think it's going to be the great up-resing. We redid some of the art, but yeah, it's not going to be anywhere near what they've done before. It's going to be like a Saga Frontier level of remake, I think, or kind of remaster. Or they might do a Final Fantasy collection that brings together the HD versions of 7, 8, and 9. That'd be interesting. And be like, here you go. Here you go, nerds. Leave us alone.
And then the nerds were happy, and SkyRenix was left alone. Has anybody else got another prediction here? Yeah. I think there is going to be a new LEGO game. along the lines of LEGO Horizon Adventures, and I think it will be for the franchise Helldivers. I think there's going to be a Lego Helldivers. Is it like narrative based or it's still kind of the basic structure of Helldivers? I think that it will be like co-op.
missions but it will actually be like um if you play the same mission it'll have the same thing happen it won't be like procedural but i just think it's like it's a sony i mean this is this is me trying to take a big swing but it's a sony property Helldivers is rated M, but I think it lends itself really easily to like Lego humor and just kind of like the silly over the top.
kind of, like, fascist government things and, like, just picture, like, Lego people being blown apart when you accidentally hit them with a strata jump. That seems good. And, like, none of the enemies you fight are human. It's just aliens and robots. Like, you know. Genuine question. Is this game better or worse if they call it Lego Heck Divers?
That's really funny. I think they'd have to. That's pretty good. I think I would be more on board if they were like, that's the level of joke we're going for. They got to do it. I like it. I think that's a good prediction. That's a good one. You did it, man. You did it. Anybody else got another one to lob out there? I think the food is going to be bad at some of the game. How dare you? You snob.
It'll be great. They have Sonic the Hedgehog popsicles and all the booze you can drink, Jacob. It's a land of milk and honey. You'll love it. Genuinely, the Sonic the Hedgehog popsicle is one of my favorite things of all time because it is the one that... That meme one that looks like Sonic is being just tortured to death. The microwave hallway in Metal Gear Solid 4. I remember taking it out and being like, oh no, I've been eating it.
And the eyes are hard. It's tough to get through. I have some boring just like trailer things. I think we're going to see more of the house mark game. The Star Wars XCOM game will get a real trailer. We'll see gameplay from it. And I think Hideo Kojima will be there. He will talk about Death Stranding 2. Maybe we'll see. Maybe we'll have a big release date trailer for it. Or not release date. Just release trailer. Launch trailer. And I think we will...
See a logo for one of his other projects. Like the OD Xbox thing? OD or the whatever that stealth one's called. Physint. Physint. That's good. The Star Wars thing reminded me, this does feel like the time and place where Star Wars Eclipse could come back to. The Quantic Dream game. Yeah, that game's real. We're definitely going to see that game again. If you saw on May the 4th, they tweeted out some eye emojis or something, so...
That's a game to me, baby. Someone's doing something. Someone's doing something. And they're a bit overdue. Kyle, you know when someone's really doing something? Yeah, you can really tell. You can see it in their eyes. You can see it in their eyes when they're doing something. Like when they're cooking you a fine meal.
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Check out the link in the description, hellofresh.com slash minmax10fm to get 10 free meals. What a deal and what a partner. Help support HelloFresh because they're great. All right, Tam, let's get to the biggie. Elden Ring, Night Reign. I feel like I heard you talk about, based on...
previews for this game, right? That you're like, oh my God, it's so much more Fortnite than I expected as a big Elden Ring fan. Was that the fair assessment going into this thing? Or what was your read before you jumped into this thing yourself? I don't think I...
actually ever said fortnight but i can understand the sentiment it is way more of a battle royale style like setup than you might think except you're not actually taking on other people i think my preview the one preview that i wrote for it was kind of around the angle that it's a from software game so and it has all the kind of recognizable elements of that but it's a from software game that is designed to
teach you how to play it incorrectly so it's like you have to do everything the opposite of how you know you should be playing from software games So instead of like very slowly moving through environment and soaking it in, you just got a whole ass the entire time. And so that means there's not enough time for like exploration. You don't really get to sit there and look at like, you know, item descriptions.
your kind of decisions are made very very quickly and that includes like what weapons you use kind of like you know sometimes you don't have a choice you just need to pick up a weapon with bigger numbers because you know that the pressure is on and at this certain period you're going to have to fight a difficult boss. So it's a subversion of what FromSoftware makes and it's also a subversion of Elden Ring in many ways.
And that makes it a very interesting game. For me, I think it's a good game. Some might even say it's a great... I know our reviewer gave it a 9 out of 10, which I both agree with and also kind of elements of I'm like, I don't... that doesn't work in the same way for me but i can understand how someone would feel that way about it it's a really interesting game because
it's one of those ones where i think when people talk about it someone will mention something about the game and you'll be able to find someone who thinks that's awful and someone who thinks that's incredible and that is why i'm like oh it's a very very interesting fascinating and like
in uh intriguingly designed game from a experiential perspective i turned that game on multiple times and played for many hours and i had a good time with it there were like some rough edges that i bumped up against stuff like
oh the the jumping is kind of weird and at times it can feel like the bosses are a bit like bullet spongy But at the same time, all the fundamental pillars of what make a From Software game are there, just kind of reinterpreted or forcing you to come at it from a different angle.
Yeah. Kyle, I mean, you love Elden Ring and you hate the idea of multiplayer games. Even if you see another person like on the sidewalk, you get horrified. Are you scared going into this or what was your experience so far? I mean, my. Basically, when it was announced, my reaction was almost like, this is not for me. This iteration of Elden Ring is explicitly designed around the things that I don't want in a game like this.
And I shockingly bounced off of it. Like, like I just was like, I don't, this isn't what I want from this experience. I like from games and specifically Elden Ring to be a slow paced, lonely exploration game. Yeah. And this is the opposite of that. And I just like, I also don't like, I don't, the thing I loved about Elden Ring, and I would extend it to other sort of from games, is it's like, we're all given this world.
And it's everyone's job to sort of get into it as a community and like break it apart and figure out where everything is individually. And like, we're all sort of exploring the same thing and figuring out together by literally leaving comments on the ground and stuff like that, where this is like the idea of. like from software combat being placing me in like an a level that's somewhat different every time like it just it goes against what i like about these games personally
Yeah, Jacob? Yeah, Ben, do you want to ask me what I think of Elden Ring Night Rain? Jacob Giller, what do you think of Elden Ring Night Rain? I don't know, Ben, because Bandai Namco didn't send us any goddamn codes. Why would they? Why would they? Us who gave Elden Ring game of the year. Me who gave Elden Ring game of the year. Dark Souls 3's biggest defender over here.
I hear you. I agree. There's also a part of like, I can't complain about not getting the game free and early, but I do hear you that it's just like, you're right. You're right. It would have been nice to have more people who could, who could jump in and talk about their experience with this damn thing. Were you playing with people, Tim?
yeah i played with a bunch of people i will say first thing first do not play this game single player it is a nightmare it is one it's just not built that way and i'm sure people will figure out a way of making it work but it is not an immediately enjoy experience you you just get your ass kicked non-stop everywhere i'm laughing because because when i booted up the game and i hit start and the ad came up for like hey sign up for playstation plus which i'm not a member of and i was like nah
I don't want to pay to pay with other people. I'll just try it on my own for a little while. And it's like so many, understandably, so many people have been like, yeah, you have, you literally have to play with other people. And I don't even want to pay for the monthly fee.
yeah so you can like match make with people and that's primarily what we did so for context we were in a review we were in a review environment yeah which meant there is a a pool of people that you can match make against but it's just you know it's
going to be the same as the pool of people once it's out in the public which meant that matchmaking was a little it took a little while because it's obviously a small amount of people that could feasibly match to um but i did get a bunch of games in with randoms and it works like you you you're able to play the game and enjoy it using ping systems and that kind of stuff however it's contingent that enjoyment is contingent of one person on one person knowing what they're doing
and taking charge if you don't have that person in your group it chances are it's going to be a weird experience where you just don't feel prepared you're not really making any progress in the ways that you think you should be um but it is also doable i had some runs where it's just randoms and
We just ended up at the Night Lord because one of the players was like, I know what we're supposed to be doing and we're just ping, let's go here, let's go here, let's go here. And it's kind of like wordlessly talking to each other. However, the ideal scenario is you have two other people, you're all on a mic. You have one person who knows where they want to go or you have an objective that you want to try and achieve.
And you have some familiarity with the game Elden Ring or From Software Games ahead of time. So you're not like, oh, it presses button. Why does it do this? So you're not like, you know, falling over at the basic things. It's still like... When I had those... It was great. Okay. And it's still like core muscle memory. I'm assuming not, right?
There is not voice chat, which is a, as far as I know, there is not voice chat because, and also the way I interface with other people is just purely through discord. So like setting up little discord channels or rooms and just chatting through that. But yeah, I don't think there is any voice chat on a game level anyway. Like it seems, you know, it makes sense because FromSoft games have never had voice chat.
But it is weird because it would be like Fortnite launching and then being like, you don't need to talk to the other people when it seems like really cooperation dependent.
the thing is literally right and use like the xbox and playstation exactly i think it's it's just a a symptom of them not not implementing voice chat in any other games so not really having the foundational kind of knowledge to do that and choosing not to invest time and money and effort into figuring that stuff out um which is you know good and bad for various reasons but yeah i think you can just party up on a system level and go from there or just jump into a
a uh discord group or i don't know like phone each other because people do that apparently That seems absurd. Is it like pure old muscle memory kicking in for all Elden Ring aspects here? Or do you think if you're a huge fan of Elden Ring, some things will throw you off and be like, wait, I can't do this in the game or I can do this. What is going on here?
The majority of it is muscle memory and knowledge dependent that you can just transfer over. I think the thing that's a little different now is actually the class system, the character and class system, which it functions like a typical class system. Each of the characters has a path. They have like a functional skill and then an ultimate. And they usually have some sort of like pacing to them. Like there's a...
I played as I and I a lot of the time, which was a bow and arrow character. I could like do these weird like... jump off walls and like fire an arrow if i wanted to not particularly effective and then the other stuff he did was like um his ultimate was like a big arrow that would take out a bunch of enemies or hit a bunch of enemies on the way that kind of stuff um and then there's other characters
that have like you know more defensive abilities or offensive abilities there's a character which will like oh i i extract magic from the world around me to build a new powerful type of spell um that kind of thing so there's unique elements to each of the characters and I don't think
there's much of that in in the traditional elder run experience it's usually tied to weapons you pick up a weapon you get a weapon or a special ability that kind of stuff which also still happens right and then the other the other part of it is like there's no real character crafting or like progress
element you're not going in and putting skills into specific um kind of attributes you are your character has a set of attributes that the game deems as being priority attributes and then when you go up to a site of grace you just hit upgrade
and it just improves those specs and that's it. So it will spec your character... deeper into the the role they should fulfill and then the rest of it comes from weapons which you can pick up a weapon and most of them have a passive ability you don't need to use that weapon to confer the benefit of that ability
yourself you just need it in your loadout so if you've got a giant sword in your pocket and you never want to use it but you know oh every time i kill an enemy it gives me some health back you can just shove that in your pocket and keep it there and carry on using your spells or whatever it may be which gives it a bit of versatility at the same time
Yeah. Are you still dealing with like... equip weight and like different kinds of rolling or is that part of the character classes no no so you don't you don't have any of that the equip weight obviously doesn't factor in because you have a limited amount of slots where you can put items into so i think it's like
three primary, three secondary weapons, and then a few talisman slots and item slots. And generally, if you want something beyond that, you have to chuck something away or replace it and that kind of stuff. And there's been no... Oh, wow.
Sprint is supposed to emulate the speed that torrent moves at so that you can actually get around better without using a mount. Because if everyone was pulling out torrent at every moment, it would be a nightmare for that game. That's because you asked Jacob, like... sort of broadly like does it play differently that is what I was going to say is like you do move quicker and jumping's a little bit different like you can actually jump up walls to a certain degree like you can sort of like
like Mega Man X style a little bit. It just keeps you moving quicker all the time. is the jumps mechanic and kind of feel and system from Sekiro. They've just like taken Wolf's ability to kick off walls and made it way more lenient where the geometry will be very accommodating where you can jump up. things that look like they're not supposed to be jumped up at the same time it also the jump can perform
Jump can be very inconsistent. I had times where I was trying to jump up a wall, which I knew I could jump over. And I ended up looking like an idiot, just like constantly not being able to do it and not really knowing why. So then I'd like look for a... you know a distance that's a little more seems a little more doable or it would just work and i'd be like i don't know why that happened it is a weird feeling to have the inventory and like i need to pick up this like consumable
And it's like you can make the choice to just use the consumable in your inventory already to make room for it, which is like...
sort of a style of gameplay I've never had in a From game, right? Because in From games, you just hoard everything and hope that it comes in use later. But now I'm just like, you know... eating everything because it's like well i might as well use it it's like i'm better than throwing it away you know yeah there's a risk reward element to that part of it which is cool and then you factor in like stuff like the relic rights which
You unlock these gems that can give you special bonuses or small bonuses. They might be like, oh, when you spawn, you'll have this item. because you've got this gem in, and you create these loadouts that work best for each of the characters, and you can create multiple loadouts if you want to. The only... Which is...
Cool. I like that a little bit. The only thing that I dislike about it is they just will not tell you numbers, which is frustrating. It won't be like, hey, this is going to improve this. uh holy by two percent or plus you know your damage will go up this much it just tells you it will improve your your items or like you you will
It will be like, oh, if you use your flask around other characters, your teammates, they get a benefit from it. But it never says like, what are the conditions here? How much of a benefit? The kind of intricate details, they just kind of try and avoid that.
not overwhelm you and for the most part it's fine but also I would like to know at times like how much more of a percentage is this adding to my output or kind of my ability to negate damage because when I'm up against a difficult boss and i'm like banging my head against that kind of adjustment and knowing the information could help or hinder my run so it's a bit bit um obtuse about elements of it that i think he should be a little more transparent with do you think in like
three weeks will everyone just have like absorbed the wiki of this game and know the meta and like get mad at you for not using the correct meta strats i i think that could definitely happen um i think for the most part people will be playing it in groups of people you know with other people that they i assume they don't hate and won't be to them when they're not picking the exact thing that they want i think that's definitely doable it definitely
could happen if you're just queuing up but at the same time there's no voice chat so you can't hear anything well if they're screaming at you you can't hear it running around in circles or like uh like sabotaging a run which is like whatever um but i do think that people will very quickly go into
you know the the files or however they do this voodoo where they figure out what how things work like and just lay out oh this is the when you get this gem it tells you it's going to do this this is what it's actually doing and that will be found in like wikis or wherever it may be so people
figure it out quickly especially given that there is a community element to it where I know that if you're the kind of person that watched the Elden Ring bingo brawlers I'm sure those people will jump in and figure out how to optimize runs and figure out cool ways of approaching it so it the core of it is like is this just an interesting weird novelty for elden ring fans or as a big from software fan like you are is the thing of
You're like, no, there's enough meat there. You should check it out. If you're a big From Software fan, please don't miss it. There's enough meat there for From Software fans to... to warrant checking it out but there shouldn't be the expectation that because you're a from software fad you will enjoy it or that you should enjoy it i i know that the that sounds weird but like i think the the worst the biggest like uh
hurdle to overcome from a optics view is that it looks like Elden Ring. It looks exactly like Elden Ring. It's using assets from Elden Ring. So people are going to come in there with expectations and they're going to be like, I love Elden Ring. I'm a FromSoft person. I'm going to enjoy this. There's no guarantee that's going to happen. You could bounce off within minutes because it's a different type of game. There is enough meat in there if you play it and you're like, oh, I'm into this.
i i kind of like the combat of it i like the way being in an elden ring world i'm okay with you know coming at it from a different angle and i want to see like old favorite bosses because it is like pulling from previous games to to like fill out the content slots like you will find the centipede demon the nameless king will show up and
that kind of like callbacks to other games is there and they have like a general loose narrative framework for it and then where it's like oh it's weird stuff it's pulling in from all kinds of timelines and worlds and that kind of stuff but You know, it's just an excuse for them to go back and be like, hey, we got this old boss, let's reuse it. It could be cool. And some of them behave differently.
So I do think that is that for me as a fan, it is also a novelty, but it's a novelty that I appreciate and I can see a purpose for. And I've mentioned this before, but like based on my interviews with Miyazaki and from, he's a... big proponent of trying to make space for
you know directors that aren't him to come in and find their feet and figure things out so this is a game directed by the battle director of elden ring so this is his first fully you know and and i think this was a case of them him saying i've got an idea for a game or
Miyazaki going to them or whoever it may be and saying like, come up with an idea for a game and then risk managing it into like, oh, we'll use the Elden Ring assets to put a new spin on it. And he gets experience out of this and it kind of helps build up.
people on on the rise within from software which again this might be like me copium for for from software or like just shilling for them but like i think it's a good move in making sure that the company is a little more healthy that they create
knowledge internally that can be used for more game development and also they start they do more work on figuring out how to improve future games by using you know projects like this they do that a lot they will come up with weird you know ideas or they'll implement things in various games that
will are a sign of what's to come there's like characters in dark souls 1 that are references to bloodborne that didn't show up many many years later and there's mechanics and stuff that are like the poison mechanic in sekiro is is a version of uh you know the stuff that they have been using in previous games up until that point so i think there's an there's parts of this game that i can see oh they're trying to
brush up on and figure this out maybe for a future thing and I think multiplayer is a part of that that's the thing that I think people are freaked out about like hey we want those developers we want new blood in there other than Miyazaki directing these things to build up the talents but like if the direction they're going
going with the talents is we want to get better in the whole online multiplayer arena. It's like, I don't know. This might freak some people out. I think I've, in talking to them as well previously, I think they've... And they publicly said they have no intention of leaning straight into multiplayer in the typical shilly way. I don't think this is a Shield Squad production. I don't think they were cashing in on it. There definitely is an element to it. There's a recognition that there's...
as a big group of, a big community for Elden Ring games. But I think that the thing that they could have made was... could have been a much more cynical production than what it is. You can definitely say, I don't like this. It's not for me. But I think the one criticism you can't level is that it's just phoning it in. There's enough going in there that I feel like it's an interesting experience.
and i think that what they probably are thinking is like let's say they make an elder ring 2 like this could be the game where we look back on and be like oh they this is what they were They use that to figure out matchmaking. Totally. Which makes sense because, you know, Elden Ring, one of the most popular mods is the seamless co-op mod where you just have people in that open world together, which means...
People have figured it out. It's just Front Software hasn't implemented it. You know, there could be a situation where we look back and go, oh, this is, we got to a seamless multiplayer officially by way of Night Reign, which I'm open to. Yeah. Okay, so is it going to be your game of the year?
I don't anticipate it being my game of the year. I think it's one of the games that I will remember from this year as being most interesting for various reasons. But I think there's other games that could potentially be.
My game, the Expedition's currently running away with it. Yeah, I'd have to imagine. But there is a naked snake on the horizon that I'm very, very excited about. Look, everybody in this call loves Malaga Solid 3, but wouldn't it feel kind of gross if we're like, well, I guess that's the top of all of our charts.
It's the remake of Metal Gear Solid 3. If a game is good, I'm going to call balls and strikes. If it's good, it's good. Like, I don't care about anything beyond that. Yeah. Elden Ring Night Reign. It is 40 bucks.
Curious to see what other people think of it, what the general reaction is going to be towards this thing, especially once things have like quieted down, like generally like end of the year discussions. I'm so curious to look back on Elden Ring Night Reign and see how everybody's sitting with it.
Jacob, where's your hype level right now, based on absorbing everything? Genuinely, my hype level is like, gosh, I hope I can get two friends to play this with me. Because I really want to play it, but like... coordinating even two other people is like a challenge at this point um and i don't i it really seems like the kind of thing that i don't want to be
learning at least with randoms because i'm going to feel that pressure of like i'm letting them down if i'm not you know performing an optimal efficiency the whole time and so like i want to I really want to get into this, but, like, I have just found, like, you know, even getting through all the split fiction with someone was hard, and that was only one other person. Yep. No, that's fair. That's fair. My advice would be...
If you're looking to do that phase of kind of like discovery and figuring it out, do it with randoms. Do it in a protected bubble where... they could jump around as much as you want you won't hear them just have that fun there and and like get ready for when you do get those friends and you can have an optimum experience you'll you'll be the one that knows what's going on and and kind of can guide people if they need it
Like who cares about randoms? Make the mistakes with randoms. It's the experience you have for your friends that you want to kind of preserve and optimize. So do it. There we go. Jump on in. Just before we start recording here, there was breaking news from IGN, Rebecca Valentine over there, that EA has canceled their Black Panther game, which is huge, strange news from EA. This is not the...
Amy Hennigame, if you remember that, that was the 1943, the one with Captain America in it as well. That one was just delayed until next year. That's the one through Skydance. But this is the one that EA was working on, and it was with Cliffhanger Studios, which was a lot of former talent. from Monolith. So it's an interesting thread now where Monolith has been shut down. The Wonder Woman game canceled.
But everybody who fled Monolith to form Cliffhanger Games, which is like the creative director for the Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of Borg games, Michael the Plotter, Kevin Stevens there, they all... Left on this arc sailing over the horizon with the Black Panther game with Cliffhanger Studios. And now also that has been shut down. Tough, tough journey for everybody here. You know, it's like people who are hoping for maybe there's going to be some semblance.
of the nemesis system that's going to be carried through to this black panther game because the talent involved if they can get around uh the patent all that fun stuff like that is also dead at this point it's a weird spot i mean yay just you know
Laid off so many folks a little while ago from Respawn and beyond, shut down the 18th opportunity to maybe revive Titanfall in a way. But, Tam, how are you sitting with this Black Panther news? I can't say I'm like... unsurprised I think I can't remember if I'm imagining this but didn't they say recently that like licensed IP games were kind of weird for them right now yes because it's everything of like you gotta EA was saying that
Yeah. They did. Yeah, which is odd because it's like, hey, they're also working with Motive on an Iron Man game and they're also working on that Star Wars Zero Company XCOM-like. And also like some of the most memorable games they've produced are Star Wars games. Right.
the jedi games right like reason of recent memory so yeah i don't know what that kind of position is but i think that i think that we're in an interesting space where the kind of ea would make licensed games previously because there was like one The expectation of it wasn't super high, you were cashing in on IP recognition more than anything and you could make them pretty cheaply.
That was kind of the reasoning between pumping out those games back in yesteryear. Now it's flipped around where that is unacceptable. There's almost a higher expectation from licensed games now because of obviously Batman stuff, but also...
because of the profile of those IPs. In this day and age, Star Wars fans are not going to accept a shit Star Wars game. And the same goes for pretty much everything. Right now, a bad Marvel game is... pretty rough like you're not getting unless you're like a free-to-play kind of you know um gacha style game the expectations are pretty high like you're going up against
uh spider-man on playstation i mean you're going up against yeah i mean the guardians of the galaxy game which was awesome it still was not meeting some people's level of quality like if that yeah special production is not passing the threshold for a marvel game holy cow everybody yeah the same time you've got two games in production that have black panther in it yeah like you're not helping yourself in that regard either so i can't say i'm surprised i
i'm disappointed i think because i think black panther as a character has a lot going for him or them depending on which black panther you have yeah um and and it would have been interesting
to have a Black Panther game where Black Panther is the focus. Yep. I'm excited for Amy Hennig's one, but let's be honest, like Captain America is the... the kind of the big draw for that right like people are going in there to play Captain America and then Black Panther is also there too um from what we know so far I'm sure it'll be like more even but it would have been good if
Black Panther didn't have to share screen real estate with another character, you know? Yeah. And there's something about like that Amy Hedda game. It seems like it's going to be pretty tight, pretty linear. Whereas this game, presumably running around an open world of Wakanda like that, that does seem pretty appealing. When they announced it, because I found the original announcement, which was 2023, they called it a rich superhero sandbox. Yeah.
To me, it feels like an infamous kind of approach. Yeah. Or Shadow of Mordor. A rich sandbox. Yeah. And so, yeah, that development team, like, you know, Michael DePlato, the career director there, too. leave after shadow of war it just has not gotten a new game out since like oh my god there's just so many of those
I mean, Jade Raymond's also in that camp now with Barragans. Amy Heddaig was in that camp. There's so many of these really talented directors that are just stuck in these year-long developments that then get scrapped over and over and over again. It's such a rough spot. It does. Yeah, it feels kind of like the what we were seeing with like HBO last year of just like you can't be a company that doesn't make games.
You know, it's like whatever the like, you know, it's like HBO scrapping the Looney Tunes and Batman or, you know, Batwoman and whatever, just being like.
At some point, you have to release a game, right? Like, even if you get a tax rate off for this, EA can't just be a company that cancels projects. Right. You also wonder, like, how much of it is just, like... senior people just making bad decisions based on like knee-jerk movements because like there was a time when Black Panther game was a slam dunk and I bet you around then people were like
Of course we're going to make a Black Panther game. Have you looked around? The culture is defined by Black Panther currently. And then not really factoring the fact that by the time that game comes out, we'll have moved on to elsewhere.
And maybe there's an element of that where it's like, oh, well, I don't think we should invest that much in Black Panther right now. So can it? Risk assessment. It's just to the idea that like you can scrap the game, but then shutting down the entire studio as well. It's like EA, there's nothing you can do. Nothing makes sense for having presumably hundreds of talented developers. There's no project you could slide their way at this point. That's such a rough spot to be in. Yeah.
All right, well, shout out, pouring out everybody for the Black Panther game. We won't get to see it, but there's still Amy Hennig's Black Panther and Captain America game coming out next year with 1943 from Skydance there. That game's coming out, right? It has to. What do you know, Jacob? What do you know? I don't know anything. I know that I haven't seen it in two years. Yeah. All right. Well, hey.
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8-bit soundtracks, 16-bit soundtracks. Absolutely. Especially from Sabotage. They do good stuff. They do good stuff. You can go to I'm 8-bit's wonderful online store and get that Messenger double vinyl.
And, of course, you should help support IM8Bit because they support the MinMax community in a big, bad way by shipping it a prize each and every week to whoever submits the best question on Patreon. We're going to read through all these questions from the community, Tim. We're going to choose the number one favorite, and then whoever has the truly best question. They win a prize from IM8Bit. And this week, of course, it is the Mario Brothers movie double vinyl soundtrack, the IM8Bit exclusive.
pink vinyl you've heard chicken jockey but remember peaches yeah don't turn your back on chicken jockey they're completely different uh but shout out to i may be shipping out a cool vinyl soundtrack like that and you can use the promo code it's gonna be May. It's going to be May for 10% off of everything in iMateBit's Wonderful Online store. Okay. Ready for these questions?
Yeah. Well, then I hope you're sitting down, Kyle, because Chris Fantry writes in. They say, hey, Tam, and I guess everybody else, what is your favorite ridiculous thing from the Metal Gear Solid franchise? You must get this all the time. Oh, you like that series? The one where this stupid crap happens?
i mean like yeah but also i love i love it because it means i can talk about the things i like i think like the craziest thing i mean it has to be nano machines right like that's the that's the bog standard answer like nano machines is so silly um but also i think that there's a bunch of crazy things along the way like i still feel like the metal gear solid 4 the the the the unit of ladies that were weirdly just chasing you around and being extremely like yeah
Sexy was like, what's going on here? And then once you beat them, you could take your camera out and do a little photo shoot with them. Yeah, I am. The fact that Kojima hasn't been canceled is a impressive like feat that in this.
day and age. I think it's just like South Park at this point. It's like, well, South Park's South Park. Kojima's Kojima. What are you going to do? There's nothing we can do about it. Also, it's like... that's that's a big one and then obviously like uh consciousness being housed in a a arm that has been cut off and then that is hypnotically like uh that's what i was just thinking about because like after metal gear solid 2 just the big question is like what is
going on how is liquid alive through the arm that's attached to revolver ocelot and then for for what i remember the answer million solid four just being like Even ocelots can impersonate snakes. He just does a spot-on, pitch-perfect Camp Clark impersonation? That's what's going on? He was manifesting. He was manifesting. He was the greatest impression.
of all time he should be a hero just on that factor i was just kind of running through just like what what are the things and i feel like the single most absurd moment maybe is when uh the what is what is the giant aircraft carrier that liquid is going to crash into snake in four you know, the one with like the Mount Rushmore of heads on it. Yes. Yes. Oh yeah. It's like a, I forgot. Is it GW? Yeah.
Arsenal? No. Arsenal Gears 2. No. Yeah, whatever that thing is. But it's like, he's like, I'm just going to drive this into Snake. And then Raiden jumps up. is holding back the aircraft carrier, is having a hard time, and then stabs his sword through his own foot. Which helps him hold back the aircraft carrier. The idea of like, oh, that's his secret. He stabbed his sword through his foot, so now it can't push him anymore.
That's just how physics works, man. Yeah. That's just a high-frequency blade. That's how it works. Mine is just... It's kind of broad, but it's specifically...
Campbell just sort of losing his mind at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2 or like revealing itself as like an AI and like that that was genuinely effective to me the first time like I played it I was like is my game broken like why is he a skeleton mommy yeah here's here's a small one but the more i think about it the more it makes me laugh at the end of metal gear solid one before the big climactic fist fight against liquid on top of metal gear rex
Like you pass out and you wake up and then, you know, Liquid is monologuing, of course, and then you start that fight. But it's so weird because when you wake up after you pass out, suddenly Salt Snake just doesn't have a shirt on.
I love the idea that Liquid Snake dragged an unconscious Salt Snake to the top of Metal Gear Rex and then took his shirt off just because he knew it'd be really cool and masculine if he could have a fist fight with two guys with their shirts off on top of Rex. And you know what? Liquid's not wrong.
I'm not going to argue this point when liquid and snake are injecting each other with the thing. I mean, it's like, that's not even, I would argue that's not even like, it is, it is goofy, but it's like, it is kind of poetically. beautiful in a way that a lot of the goofiness misses it's like i genuinely love that yeah there's there's like flourishes of weirdness and everything it's got a game it's got a character called hot cold man in it which is how do you argue with that that's fantastic
You can slip on bird s**t, which is great. You can kiss posters if you're hiding inside of a locker and the poster is a hot Japanese model. I really liked in 4, there were a bunch of unlockable weapons, and one was the sunlight gun from Boktai, the Kojima game that you had to play in the sun, like the Game Boy game, and when you use it, Snake just holds it up and yells sunlight yeah also there's the stuff that kind of alludes to the the politics of what's going on like the whole
Remember the whole discussion about when you had to, in Ground Zeroes, when you had to erase all the Kojima production logos? Right, right. And that was happening at a time where people were like, is everything all right in there, Kojima? Are you doing okay, buddy? That was such a weird release for that entire Ground Zeroes package. Yeah. Are you all in on Death Training 2? Is your hype level off the charts at this point for that thing? Oh, yeah. I wasn't...
I don't think I not finished Death Stranding 1. I enjoyed what I played of it, which was significant. I'm probably going to go back and wrap that up very soon, hopefully. But I... Everyone who's played it, I didn't get to play it at preview, has said it's more Metal Gear than Death Stranding. Which is like, it's saying good things to me. I'm in for that. And it definitely...
has a lot of the weirdness around Metal Gear that seems to be there as well. Yeah, it's interesting of more of an action focus. Yeah, I'm curious to see. Yeah, which I... It's like I trust all of the previews have been positive at the same time that action focus is a little like, well, like what I liked about Death Stranding was like if you killed someone.
It didn't like deal with them respectfully basically by cremating them. It would like destroy the world. Like I thought it was like a really cool, bold choice. So I hope that it's not just like. Oh, and they gave Snake, you know, a chaingun or, you know, not Snake, Norman Reedus, like a chaingun with tranquilizer bullets so you can just, like, shoot everyone and they don't die. You know, I like the focus on... walking around.
I loved that in Metal Gear Solid V, you could get an assault rifle that only did knock out bullets. That was one of the greatest moments. I was like, hell yeah, because I never kill anyone. But you never know. Maybe it still does treat them like that, where it's like, oh, you killed this person? Now you've just blown a hole.
in this ground and now everyone knows where you are. Good job. Deal with that. James Yoshida writes in. They say, Tamar! Super happy to see a fighting game representation on MinMax. Can you explain... To everybody else on the call, what throw loops are in Street Fighter 6? okay um yes i can thank you as best as i can like obviously um if i'm sure i'll upset someone in the fighting game community by incorrectly explaining this but my understanding of throw loops is obviously
A throw in a game, press two buttons together or you walk really close and press an attack button and it throws them. Very powerful tool. it kind of it's a guaranteed if you can get in the right position you're guaranteed a certain amount of damage and there's very specific timing based defenses against it that not a lot of people are are able to pull off so a throw loop is a situation where you throw someone they're now on the ground and you're now
potentially in a 50-50 position to continue an offense by throwing them again and again and again so the reason people don't like it is because it's a 50-50 in in some games it can be 50-50 where it's like oh if i get up and I don't do anything, I could get thrown. If I do a move... You know, I could get, you know, missed a move or like it could be blocked and I get thrown. The only real kind of counteractive measure is if you tech a throw, which is you throw at the same time as a throw.
and that way they cancel each other out and there's like it creates some distance but then the problem is the person who's like got the upper hand could walk in as if they're about to do a throw and then walk back which makes you instinctively try and counter it and you do a throw
And now you're open to get thrown again. So it's a situation where you're just constantly being put in this like grinder of, am I going to get thrown? Yes, I've been thrown again. Will I be able to get out of this throw loop? Nope, I got thrown again. Oh, I got thrown again. Oh, I got out, but I screwed up the get out and now I'm in a position to get thrown again. So it's like just a...
It's a loop of pain where you just get thrown over and over again. Is it like a high level thing or is it just... It has like a metagame to it. It's mind game to it. Depending on how it is implemented in a game, it can become... like a an annoying factor where the execution it depends about the mechanics around it like if you've got mechanics around it that will kind of balance it out great if your game isn't properly designed or like poorly designed and throws a superpower
for it can really upset the balance of the game and then it also requires your own kind of like skill like in some games like you do a throw and you know there's there's moves that are meaty or whatever it may be that can quickly prevent you from being thrown again or i think street fighter six does a thing where if you take a throw you like they jump back so you're in a very very like a neutral position again yeah so it's a game by game basis but there is a strategy to it but at the same time
it can be abused pretty badly it often gets abused against people who don't know what they're doing or they're not skilled enough and if a player picks up on that and knows what will happen is like they'll come up to you throw you do something else and see if they can throw you again that's when they know oh
This person doesn't know how to counteract the throw loop, and then they just do the throw loop. If they're being disrespectful. Do you get all that, Jacob? Yeah, I got it. Okay, good. We're in the summertime, which means... Back to playing a lot of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 against my nephew. And it is a sad state of affairs out there. Every time we play of just... He is beating me about 80% of the time. And it's...
And I, I am consoling myself and I'm able to sleep at night by telling myself like, yeah, but I'm choosing like fun, weird characters. And he's just like looking up the tier list. Like we're the strongest characters. Okay. I guess I'll choose these guys. But at a certain point, I think I just need to look at myself in the mirror and just be like, I think I'm just.
aggressively not good at fighting games. I need to like go through a whole montage just so I can have a chance to take down this 11 year old, which makes me feel like the biggest goddamn loser on earth. Maybe nephew's like a savant.
No, he's very dumb. I cannot imagine. Did you say he's very dumb? I mean, he's 11, everybody. Let's be honest here. What are we working with? So help coach me, everybody, please. Did you see the story about... people encountering a player by the name of, I think it was Wazla or Vazla or something like that, a very recognizable or like a weird username. Just going around and demolishing people and then people figured out it was Justin Wong.
and he was just terrorizing people under a different name online and it was so bad that there was an actually like a a bunch of stories about him making people refund the game because he just would was unrelentingly like whooping the floor because he said legendary all-time great multi-champion evo marvel player so people see you see him pop up and they're like all right i'm out of here
That'd be kind of cool, though. It's like your chance to lose at a one-on-one to LeBron James. Yeah. That's still a fun story. Absolutely. I mean, at least in LeBron, when you're playing a one-on-one, at some point you get the ball and can bounce it. The problem with... playing Justin Wong is if he hits you with his first move you might as well put the controller down because you're stuck in a lot of confidence
to more like someone like me i don't think i could ever bounce that ball i feel like if one-on-one at some point the the positions have to switch and lebron has to hand you the ball at that point you go like oh I bounced the ball against LeBron. Whereas with Justin, it's like if he hits you with an overhead or like any sort of infinite combo, you're just done. Yeah. Linktrev says, hey, gang. Hello. With GTA 6 dropping next year, I've been wondering...
Does free roam crime still hit the same way in 2026 as it did in 2013 with GTA 5? When in between missions, just messing around, committing crime to evade cops for fun felt exciting. Now it just feels off. Is that just getting older? Or am I alone in this? Are we moving past violence in games for violence's sake? I think you're just getting older, Link. I'm sorry to tell you that, buddy. The GTA formula, because I've been revisiting Grand Theft Auto V, is like...
It is surprisingly sparse. You know, it's like a lot of things are held up by wow, look how good that city is. But it's like the guns are boring to use. And the like driving is like the main hook of the game is you get a wanted level and then you have to escape the cops to lose your wanted level. And it's like realistically what that looks like is you are just driving down streets. until it goes away you know like it it is it is a mechanically very simple process and and it's kind of like will
Will it just be like the increased fidelity of GTA 6 will make that feel real and new again? Or, you know, and or will there always just be an appetite for that? But like... It's kind of stunning how straightforward it is. That it's just like, you just drive down streets until they're not chasing you anymore. That's like the whole game. Yeah, but sometimes they block you off and you have to go through a back alley or something. There's gameplay there. I mean...
In GTA 3, though, it felt so novel that it was reacting to what you did, right? It was like, oh, it's noticing that I've done something I'm not supposed to do, and now they're coming after me. And now that's become... pretty standard video game stuff you know it reacts to the developers have gotten so good at like making sure the game reacts to you in a in a big way that it doesn't feel as novel anymore because yeah i mean now my my excitement for
GTA six is like, holy story. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Like, you know, that's what I want to see and just existing in what feels like a real world. I don't expect myself ever to just have that moment where I'm like, oh, I'm going to get my wanted level up and see how that goes. I probably am just not going to do that.
I think there definitely has been a shift on what the priority is in open world crime games, because there was a period of time, I think up until GTA 4, where you would say either the emphasis or there would be an equal importance. and support on mechanically engaging the player as well as on characters and narrative. You look at games like GTA 3, GTA Vice City, San Andreas.
I think they're all exactly what Kyle said. They're reactive, but also they have gameplay weirdness to it. You're doing weird things, rocket packs, jet packs. You're messing with wanted levels. You're using the bike in Vice City for the first time. And then there's games like, you know, Crackdown, which technically you're a cop in that, but still open world crimey. Saints Row is probably the most mechanically heavy, dense open world crime game.
And I think since then, it's moved towards being more narrative focused and more character focused. I definitely think that's what GTA 4 pulled off. I can't remember. I remember the GTAs 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. I don't remember a big discussion around Claude, Lance, or CJ.
whereas in four there was a lot of chat around nico like there was people wanted to know more about nico people wanted to more about um his cousin and like how do they play and they they kind of they designed it that way right like nico was a porn character and since then i think
been very character focused like we don't the much of the in gta 6 you do this this and this it's like here are the characters here's what they're doing this is why you should be invested in this world so i think like the story and the characterization is how they add a layer of
more intrigue or investment in the stuff that Jacob was talking about, which is like just the world, like the fidelity of the world. Yeah, but at the same time, it's like a new GTA is, at least from a financial... perspective like a delivery mechanism for gta online right which is solely open world crime like i i mean i i don't know i guess they have like stories and missions in that kind of but it's like you know in in terms of just like
10 years from now, if you look at like the pie chart of how much time players have spent in what part of GTA 6, it will probably be like 90% online, right? Or at least that's... my guess is that's kind of what they're counting on. And so it's weird to be like, I agree that the, you know, the focus of the campaign is like, this is, this is a character focused story. Now that's what we're going to show you in the trailer, but also like.
Their people have been playing GTA 5 for the past 12 years, and they haven't been playing the campaign over and over again. Yeah, I would say they're playing the game online. by stretching the mechanics of it and and like using them in a way that they perhaps weren't intended if you know what i mean like i think about on a base level i think the gta combat for example it's not particularly good like i played online a bunch and it was not enjoyable to shoot stuff but the joy comes from you know
partying up with others and then having that pushback from other players it's the other player part of it that you're kind of you kind of the interaction you're having with other players It allows you to forgive the fact that the shooting is not great. And then more recently, most of the popularity for GTA in a significant way has been through role-playing servers. In which case, that is nothing really in the game that is...
forcing you to play that it's it's a game that people have created around the video game which is you know inhabiting roles and then telling dnd style stories in the world of gta there's nothing that really enables it designed in the game so i think that a lot of the The longevity from GTA Online comes from it being a set of tools and an environment for people to try and figure out new ways or find ways to enjoy this thing. Yeah. Overall, you're enjoying going back to GTA 5, Jacob?
Kinda. I think... Boy, they, uh... The way every character in Michael's life... is just like man this feels 10 years old you know just like the writing of his daughter makes me want to like claw my eyes out Pork Bun Powered says, hello, Min Max and Tamar. Be honest. This is a place for honesty, everybody. How are we feeling about Alex Garland's Elden Ring adaptation? Do we think it'll even come out?
How dare you? I think it's coming out, but I've been wrong before. I don't know. It's so weird that I like Alex Garland. So when I saw this, I'm like, all right. Better him than somebody else. And I haven't given it much more thought, but now that I'm really thinking about like, wait, what is the story they're going to be telling? Who is the main character? How are they going to frame this? This could go wrong in a lot of ways.
Yeah, it's it's weird because like what I want out of it kind of feels impossible because I want it to be directed kind of like an art movie in that like I don't really want like here's the protagonist and the storyline because that feels not really in line with Elden Ring but at the same time I don't know how you make this movie and not have it cost like 200 million
right you know it's like what what like it's either gonna be kind of all green screen and ugly or like you're filming in real locations and somehow that's supposed to like look like limb grave you know it just it seems like visually i just don't know what it's going to be i mean i'm more optimistic about it than i am the zelda movie
that's interesting yeah which is a zelda movie like i am if you put both in front of me and you're like you pick one of these that you want to go see right now i would go see zelda but i think Elden Ring will be the better film. Because I think you're going to have less cringe because we know for sure that Link's going to be talking to Zelda and the idea of this added weight of like, oh God, what is Link going to be like? It doesn't really compare it to...
Here's some tarnished. Yeah, it's dumb that they talk, but it's not an iconic character speaking all of a sudden. You know, maybe saying tarnished is not iconic. Maybe that's foolish, but just it's more ambiguous of a character, you know? It's like I did rewatch Annihilation recently and it's like it's impressive how little characterization he gives to those characters. You know, like I really like how like not movie like.
all of the people in that movie are that they're just kind of these like vessels for weird ideas to flow through. So like, I don't know if they let them do that. That's kind of cool. That's the thing. I mean, would it work if it's just tarnished going on an adventure and then they encounter different. NPCs along the way and have little chapters and weird sequences.
I think it needs to be way more focused than that. Like, I think the approach here, I imagine from A24, they probably haven't said it, but like, I think they're probably looking at Elden Ring as being a universe in the same way that like...
middle earth is where there's many many stories that can be told and i think the smart bet would be to tell a very focused story to begin with that is like tarnished that meets some npcs that ultimately are that are necessary to tell a singular thread of a story like for example you wouldn't include you know, Kenneth Hite in a story about, you know, Rot, for example, the Rot God. And it could be like a story where it's Tarnished, Millicent, Melania.
rock god that's it that's the path for the story how how a a you know a warrior was corrupted by an elder god from out another world and in my mind i think like the ideal kind of framework or the game or the movie that i look at i'm like if it can be similar to this i think they're onto something is green knight yes yeah yeah if they can pull off something like that which is again a very focused almost poetic
storytelling moment or tale being told i think if they can do that that is the way to like successfully start a a kind of almost like arthurian legend universe that is built on the back of elden ring And it is true that something like Erdtree actually had a much more like...
digestible story interesting eldon or you know it's like urgery kind of had like five characters and you met them all and they went off and did things and then they all came back like that and then you could make a movie out of that I also love the idea of one of the most powerful moments for me in Elden Ring was when you... Spoilers. When you defeat...
the veiled monarch of, you know, Margit Morgoth or whoever you want to call him. And he turns back into being a human, which you never see him as because he's, you know, cursed as to be an omen. But in the final moments where... godfrey is there and picking him up and he's like dead you see this like emaciated skeleton of a human being and there's like something potentially there as well like you could follow
that figure as a human and like see their progression into becoming this character who is like despised by the rules of the religion that he... spends his life like enforcing and loving and that kind of stuff so there's like a there's definitely like a tragedy in various parts of the Elden Ring story in almost every part of it that is
good fodder for a emotionally gripping, like, heavy story in the world of Elden Ring. I just don't get what song Jack Black's going to sing in that version, though. That's a good point. It does make sense. There is the official manga approach, which just goes... full comedy just a hundred percent which is alan scarland our funniest filmmaker you know what's gonna happen they're gonna have that moment where you find carly and he's like sitting at his like little merchant
bonfire area and he's like playing his guitar thing and then Jack Black's gonna jump out from behind like a rock and start like tribute style just giving lyrics to the song and then just like run away I do think this could be You know, if they do just go moody, just imagine, yeah, the Green Knight version of this. I think we could be bracing for impact for another moment of just like, oh, Elden Ring is so popular. Everybody's going to the theater to see this.
Is it naive? It feels like people are so surprised by, like, Minecraft's movie is doing so well. And Dustin's like, well, obviously, everybody knows Minecraft. And it's not at that level. The two successful video game movies are for kids. Right. Yeah. It won't be a kid's movie no matter what. And so I think that'll put it in an interesting position. The guy wears the Santa hat. He does, yeah. It also benefits from...
I think, again, looking at the glass half full, it also could benefit from the fact that the masses don't really know what Elden Ring is, right? Like, they just see a... a fantasy universe in the style of a Lord of the Rings and go like, oh, I'm into Lord of the Rings. Maybe I come to it and try this out. Yeah, I feel like it's got a good shot. I think it really helps that Alex Garland clearly loves The Elden Ring. Yeah. So easy to a degree.
Again, the hope is he has a good understanding of what makes Elden Ring Elden Ring and the, you know, movie making system and the studio system doesn't bend his arm into making some sh**. It's just like cashing in. Kyle, give me the prediction right now for Elden Ring Rotten Tomatoes score and Zelda movie Rotten Tomatoes score. Uh, so Elden Ring will be 88. Whoa, whoa. Yeah. And then, and Zelda will be, what's the, what's the, like it's 60 is like still considered threshold. Yeah. I'd say like.
69. I was going to go 62, Zelda. 74, Elden Ring. But even that's optimistic. Yeah, I think if the Elden Ring movie is good, it actually won't have a unanimous critical consensus. You know, like, I think it needs to be a little weird in a way that will make some people not like it. Okay. It's got to be the Elden Ring Night Reign of movies. Yes. Yes. Now that's a pitch.
Christian Hall writes in and says, Hey, everybody. What do you think is the hardest game to explain the premise of to someone who doesn't play video games? I have a few, actually. Yeah. And I have categories for why. Okay, of course. So the first one I would say that came to mind is based on reinforcing stereotypes.
I feel like whenever I've tried to explain this to people, people have looked at me like, oh, this is gamer behavior. And it's become more and more difficult to talk about it and also explain why it's fun. It's pain. the ps3 game where you're just a dude that throws yourself at
and this is what happened. Yeah, that's pretty good. I feel like that is a weird one to explain because people look at you funny and then you're like, I get all nervous and I'm like, no, I promise you, it's fun. It's not just like weird gamer sh**.
the other one of that is like not about that game in a long time yeah the other one is like it's just too weird it's like how do you you start explaining it and then people again look at you and you're like yeah this is this is a bad game to explain and that's hatterful boyfriend Oh, the pigeon one. Yeah. Yeah, you're a bunch of pigeons and you want to have sex with a bunch of them. And the other one that I recently tried to explain to someone and had someone look at me and be like, go outside.
And just do that outside is a game called Lush Foil Photography Sim. Oh, yeah. I want to check it out. It's just a game that is like a really nicely made high-res environments and you just go around taking pictures. And I explained it to someone and they went, go outside and take some pictures.
yeah like yeah yeah fair enough it's interesting because it's like well that's an easy game to explain it's just a hard game to explain in a way that's not personally embarrassing it's the game about you know but it's like they understood concept like they were not confused by what you were doing in the game yeah i feel like it's so it's so weird that they like retroactively don't understand the concept because it's like but why
Why were you doing this? It's like, you know, you do this. They're like, yeah, I get the mechanics, but why? Why are you doing this? I actually think, yeah, I think it's more like the mechanical complexity is hard where it's like. I think roguelikes and deck builders are really hard to explain. I think explaining something like even even like a mainstream, like a Marvel's Midnight Suns.
is is just impossible in terms of like telling people what it is that you do in the game of like okay You have three characters, but you can only do the moves that you're given, and you're given those moves out of a deck of cards, and you're allowed to move sometimes, and then sometimes if you do this, you can get another move of just like... You know, I feel like people understand like, oh, it's a video game. You're a guy who can run around.
And then when it's a game where you're not a guy that you can run around and it's like, no, you have to build your deck in order to like get the optimal moves to have your people work together. Then it's just like, I just don't know how to tell a non-gamer about that.
Yeah, I think you can't punch that guy because you don't have the punch card. But you're Iron Man. Yeah, no, it is weird to think of like, oh, I'm tempted to go for just like some weird ass arcade game. Like if you're explaining Robotron, but even then it's like, you save the family, you shoot the.
weird robots i guess it's not that wild but then you think about like oh something like bellatro secretly like the hardest like those types are just like oh no it's a systems-based thing it's it's not poker but it's poker but more strategic like i think deceptively those can be the hardest to get across Mr. Mosquito that everybody understands be a perv fly around as a mosquito and yeah bite some people I mean mine's always been Picross like I cannot explain
to anybody why i am so obsessed with i can explain to you how it works and that just makes it worse you know yeah it's like no this is you got to line up the numbers and like you got it's kind of a logic puzzle and it's just like I just, I gave up like years ago and just be like, this is for me and don't worry about it. I have definitely recommended Picross to people that I know would like Picross. And then when they ask me, how do I play it? I say, I don't know because I don't like Picross.
I don't understand it. One bit, but I know you probably would like it if you figure it out. Good job. Good luck. I'm 8Bits. Co-founder John Gibson was on the Easy Allies podcast last week, and he's bringing up Burger Time, the arcade game.
where he's obsessed with it. But he's like, if you think too much about it, it's like nothing makes sense. You're just going up ladders and creating gigantic burgers for nobody. Like it's not like there's an angle. Just hanging all over them. Yeah, what are these giant burgers doing? What is the point of them? Maybe games are silly, everybody. These things are done right silly. Snowman14 writes in. They say, hey, missed joke opportunity.
We encourage these, Tim, just in case we're ever not in a game, people can write in with misjoke opportunities. It's usually puns, which is fine. But Snowman says, hey, misjoke opportunity for Sandfall Interactive. Instead of having a parry button... Oh, this isn't for us. This is for the developer. This is nice. Instead of having a Perry button, they could have had a Paris button, but pronounced like the French way, Perry. Very good. The gay Perry. It's a Perry slop.
Brad Beyer writes in and says, Hey, y'all, what are your thoughts on bosses with multiple phases? I feel like I've begun to find them more and more tiresome as the years go by. Seems like the shock value of a boss's health suddenly reloading and having to keep going has lost all of its novelty and now it just becomes annoying. I guess I don't mind the boss evolving shape or tactics as the fight goes on, but I think it should be one health bar no matter what.
I was thinking about this recently because I really had a hard time with the game Blades of Fire, a game that I struggled with and ended up not giving a good review. And you have talked about more than anybody on Earth. I've talked more about Blades of Fire than Elden Ring Night Ring. a minor spoiler for the final boss of Blades of Fire I'm fighting him and he's like a normal human guy and I was struggling and I'm like this sucks like I'm
He's going to turn into a monster like this. I haven't even like broken through to the second part yet. And like the relief I felt when that just normal human man died after I hit him enough with a sword and just collapsed on the ground and didn't transform was like beautiful. It was like my favorite part of the game. So I think I don't like transformations. I think I'm done with them. I feel like there's a distinction between games that you want to beat a boss on your first time or not.
um you know where it's like south of midnight a game that i thought was pretty cool i have no desire like even fighting the bosses the first time i was like
I'm ready for this to be over. I did not want to die and have to redo it because you understand the attack patterns the first time. However, I think that what's engaging about... a boss with multiple health bars is the second the second health bar the second phase of the fight should be you know the the first phase is the training round and the second phase is
is you demonstrating mastery of it um and and like when that is the case i actually think that the multiple health bars really help because you can kind of see how much better you're getting at the first one as you learn the second one in a way that i find really satisfying i i want to shout out one of my Honestly, one of my favorite games and a game that does not get talked about very much is the Game Bakers game Fury from like 20. Oh, yeah.
2015, 2016. And the way that that game works, it's just a boss rush. There's nothing else. And all the bosses have like six phases. And the way that your health bar works is you have... You have three deaths before the fight ends completely. And each time you die, you go to the beginning of that phase. But... If you beat the phase, then you get a try back, which means that you're always going to be able to try a boss's phase at least twice.
before dying and so it's like it's a system built to be like you are going to be repeating this a lot the goal is that you are going to like learn this boss intimately you're going to know every attack And because of that, they actually give you a bunch of tries for each phase before you ultimately do it. And so it's kind of like saying the point out loud, which is like, yay.
We want you to try this a bunch of times. That's what makes it fun. Yeah, I think an important part of it is also continuity between phases.
I think there's good ways to do multiple boss fight evolutions and there's bad ways to do it. Like the good ones are the ones that, like Jacob said, they test your understanding and your capability of handling them by... increasing intensity or making slight adjustments to the way that you think that you should be behaving or they train and prepare you for like the next phase to some degree because then it gives you like an it gives you this uh
Confidence that you understand some element of what the new boss has become and it affords you the ability to kind of figure things out. And there's also bosses that are like multi-phase that are just straight up cool. Like, for example, like the twin princes.
Loderick and Lorien from DS3 I think are very good like multi-phase boss fights because um they don't drastically change there's just another factor that's added to it um margit the fellow allman is that like where his second phase is like he becomes more intense but his his um his what you call it his uh health bar just stays the same and
And Melania is another one where at a certain point... her moves change but they're still very similar moves and then like slave knight gale and soul of cinder from dark souls 3 are just like cool and they have that same kind of element to it that there's continuity between them the random
just for the sake of it or like just feel unnecessary or annoying those are the ones that are really bad like for example elden ring you do not need the beast clergyman phase of the malekith boss fight malekith is a monster a terror like you don't need that first phase because just go straight into malekith
um crucible knight and the misbegotten warrior those are just two annoying enemies paired together and it's not fun and then dark souls one like the bell gargoyles which is the most arbitrary second life introduction ever it's like here's a bell gargoyle you've almost beat it It has another one. Why? Why did you do that? Like, you didn't need to do that. It's just like, come on. Yeah, it's got to have a big reason. And yeah, it can't just be...
you know, elite four in Pokemon of, oh, they're almost dead. Oh, no, a whole new health bar. They just healed all the way up. Like it needs to be a radical transformation for sure. Issa writes in and says, I usually watch or listen to content. at one and a half or two times speed and can follow most people just fine. But I had to slow down for Dan Reichert in the interview about Giant Bomb recently. I could not understand him for whatever reason in that interview.
That's right. That's normal. I was listening on one time speed. I had a hard time. He's a buffoon. Do the CLCs ever think about turning on... A podcast voice and being more conscious of clarity, pacing or breathing. Tim, you got a good podcast voice. You think about this a lot? i don't think i have a guy because i have thought about this with the context being every time i speak there's at least
There's a significant portion of people that are like, you sound awful. Why do you sound like that? And I'm just like, oh God. There was a period of time where I was like voicing all our reviews and people were like, mounting campaigns to stop me from voicing reviews because they were like we hate your voice so much and i was like and the only reason is because i don't change the way i speak and the way i speak is based on a mixture of
East London British kind of upbringing and Pakistani upbringing so I've got a very weird East London accent that is not commonly shown on tv or movies or anything like that the best you'll get maybe more these days like i guess like if you watch snatch you might find something or like
kid althood or something like that there's a little more grime music making its way to the american world as well um but it's a very unfamiliar sound to a lot of people and because i don't really change it like i don't slow the pace down i don't pronounce my t's i just like kept it natural there was a period of time where i did and i do have that kind of like slower
podcasty like almost npr voice but i just don't like using it because i feel like a fraud like i feel like if anyone that knew me from back in the day like heard it they'd be like
This guy, he sounds like a knobhead. Why did he become this? But I do have that voice when I need it. Someone's asking me... voicing like a an audiobook style thing for them and i messaged them back and i was like do you want me to sound like an audiobook or do you want me to just sound like me because if you want me to sound like me People are probably not going to like it. Just speak like you speak. And I was like, fair enough. It's your funeral. Whatever. I have a video essay voice.
And I but I don't have a podcast voice and I kind of wish. I don't know. I there is no training for podcasts as far as I know. And like I would actually like to take a. voice training class. I mean, I see you in the comments, some random person who always notes how many times we say like. Don't bring it up! It's a curse! I find those comments very irritating. At the same time...
I wish that I was better at kind of speaking like a politician. Not in that everything I say is a lie, but just that like they speak in sentences with beginnings and endings. And I feel like it's really. It's really easy to just kind of ramble. And in everyday life, I think most of us speak in kind of run on sentences. But I wish I was better at not doing that. I had a phase where I say like a lot.
And I spent a lot of time specifically focused on minimizing the amount of times I say like. And let me tell you, everyone that I had a conversation with without using filler words or run-ons, they think you're a psycho. Like you don't sound natural. You do not sound, you sound like a robot. That's how it works. And you can, you know, that is the case because you look at newsreaders, they sound like robots just giving you information. You're right. That's the thing you want to avoid.
yeah you're right i won't try to improve myself please sorry guy in the comments i like i like you exactly how you are so i'm being selfish so don't change your voice or the way you deliver information
No, yeah, Jacob, I mean, you focus so much on editing your own voice and all the video essays and stuff. I think... Let me know if you've heard this one before. I think maybe you think about it too much. I think even just talking about you and podcasting, I also wish... I remember, you know, back with BetterQuest, we tried bringing in Emily Reese from NPR here to try and guide us because I wish there was some sort of like radio voice.
training thing that was easy. But if you look around for voice training, it's all just for singing and stuff like that. But I feel like you are on the worried end of the spectrum about just, I don't think I sound like a podcaster. I don't think I am being concise enough, but I... I don't notice. I think everyone is just podcasting is a whole new arena, you know? It's like, I,
Yeah, I'm I'm more comfortable being scripted. You know, I think that my forte is like I write and then I say the things that I write. But really, it's just I just want to be Ira Glass. You know, I want to be his level of kind of casual conversations in this American life.
And I feel like if I could just like that's he sounds like a normal person, but also it's very easy to follow what he's saying. And you're like, wow, that guy sounds smart all the time. Well, every time you make a new point, why don't you just say like part 13?
Part 17. Just keep that rolling every time you're lobbing a great point across the... You listen to a lot of the Samaritan life. Oh, yeah, all the time. I did back in the day, honestly. I haven't listened to an episode in years. I've fallen off. Yeah, I... Yeah, I should get back into it. Feel good. All right, cool. That is what he says. Isn't it part? How do they separate the sections? To me, he always sounds exhausted. Like, he's always kind of like, today, we're going to learn about somebody.
Who did this thing? Like, it just sounds like a little tired, you know? It sounds like he's saying things very quickly and as if, like, he's got a little bit of, like, sass to it. So he's like, today on This Market Life. We're going to be talking about podcasts. That was weird. Speeds up and slows down. He smacks his lips a bit as well.
While I've sidelined this show into talking about This American Life, they recently launched their version of a Patreon. They have some supporter thing on that I immediately subscribe to. And they have been revisiting early episodes. Ira Glass has been talking about like how he had to convince people on radio stations to let him talk like that.
That they were just like, this is not what radio sounds like. And he was like, just let me try it. But like that sounding like you're having a conversation with someone was a really new and unusual thing. And Ben, actually. I think you'll find this interesting. He was like, we had, you know, we had to be on a bunch of stations. We couldn't just say like, let us be on because our show was really good. But they put a lot of effort into making like the best. Um...
kind of charity drive or like the NPR funding week, you know, when they're all just asking you to give money. He was like, we put so much effort into making good ones of those. And they were so profitable for the individual stations that they basically.
had no choice but to put us on because our ad reads would just get like seven times as much money as anyone else and so then it like you know that's how they got on so many stations it's so funny you bring that up because even in the in my head i was i was thinking of a specific one of those where he was interviewing a guy who had just bought a cup of coffee and the guy was freaking out because he was like he was like yeah i paid like four bucks for this coffee but i don't have the money to
donate to NPR and like his and Ira Glass's commentary was just like I've interviewed like murderers and criminals who are less nervous than this guy and like and I'll always remember that conversation so yeah they totally nailed it that's really funny do think about that all the time maybe because i guess it's my job now but just the amount of plugs that i hear
You can support us directly by going to this on podcasts and radio and stuff. The tossed-off plug. I know I do it a lot at MinMax, but it drives me insane if I think about it too much. Somebody will throw out a plug like, I can support us here. And I just think with that pitch.
Tossed off in that way, I don't think there's a single human being who's being compelled to actually go through the effort and click through. How do you message things in a way to actually raise an eyebrow and have people go, wait, what are they actually saying? What is the sentence that I shouldn't ignore?
Ben, I'll find this and send it to you. I'm interested. I think you would find it really fascinating. That sounds like my life now, yeah. The ones that always got me was like, there was a period of time where I listened to a lot of true crime podcasts. And the segue from content and like subject matter into ad is always one of the, it'll be like, and he was brutally murdered by a man who cut him into individual pieces.
And now Casper mattresses. And you're like, what? No, you can't do it. You can't do it. There's no way. Sergeant Pepper says, hey, y'all, not a question. I wanted to give a shout out to the MinMax community, though. I was recently laid off and posted about it in the MinMax Discord. Not only did I get some wonderful advice and support, but someone asked for my LinkedIn.
And said I can connect as a reference. I just want to say thank you to everyone. And I really love the genuine feeling like I'm part of a community in the Midmax Discord. You all rock. Shout out to the Discord. Shout out to the mods for keeping it friendly. Luca Alberti writes in and says, Hello, lovely cohorts. Two simple questions. Place your wagers. What game will sell more in 2025? Dragon Drive or Marathon?
What the hell is Dragon Drive? What the hell is Dragon Drive? It's the Switch 2 game. Someone Dragon Drive this fool for not respecting Dragon Drive. I think the way you asked us if we wanted to... answer this question was which one's more successful well they say also what will have the higher open critic score as well okay um
Because I think it's odd because it's going to review well. I mean, you played it for like five minutes and you were like, I don't want to play that anymore. Get it away from me. Get it away from me now. The thing about Dragon Drive, though, is like the sort of investment on that. Right.
versus Marathon. Wasn't there some news story recently about how Marathon has to sell this specific amount at some absurd amount to make back its budget? I was thinking of it in terms of that. I do think Marathon will sell better.
yeah but i but i feel like it has more potential to be like in in a year or less even like sorry we got to shut down marathon it just didn't find its player base where it's like you know just like arms is probably still has people on their plan right yeah dragon drive will have people playing for the next five years probably because it's just such a unique weird thing right dragon drive will sell it'll sell 200,000 copies
Marathon will sell 2 million copies, but Marathon will be the absolute failure of the group. Yeah, I mean, not to be so pessimistic. I want Marathon to be successful. Yeah, that's my prediction. Got on the arms front. I was reading that Nintendo asked, whatever the hell they call it, about the making of Mario Kart World, you know? I forgot that, like, that was the Mario Kart team. Like, all the leads on Mario Kart World are like, oh yeah, I worked on...
Mario Kart 8, and then I worked on ARMS. It really was like premier talent within Nintendo at this point that created ARMS, which had a great theme song. There's no doubt about that. Good soundtrack. Yeah. Tam, you're the most insightful person here on several fronts. I mean, you've played Marathon, man. I was offended by that. It's anger in his eyes.
You guys are way smarter than me. I was like, what? Yeah, okay, obviously. But you got to actually play Bungie's Marathon. With that level of insight, what do you think is going to be the bigger success? I feel like Marathon is going to be the biggest success. Okay, fair. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the better game.
I've not played Dragon Drop. It's the better game. What are we doing? Marathon is already the better game than Dragon Drive. It's okay. We don't have to pretend everybody. Yeah, I've not played it, so I can't say definitively, but from what I can tell... I mean, Dragon Drive or whatever it's called doesn't look very appealing. It's one of the grayest looking games. It's weird that they didn't like rocket league it up and make it a bit wackier, you know? Yes. Or arms it up. It looks like...
They made the act of playing basketball in that scenario where you're in wheelchairs or whatever so awful looking. It's like, why are you doing this? Well, they wanted to make... damn sure that you knew not a single asset was stolen from somebody else. Oh, smart. The opposite marathon route. I see. You know why you know we didn't take anything from the internet for this game? Because there's just nothing there. This is polygons in a gray background. Please enjoy Dragon Drive.
I feel like Marathon's got a built-in level of sales that is going to be there just because it's a first-person shooter game. It's a Bungie game. Yep, yep. And it's... And it's on multiple platforms, yeah. But again, I played Marathon and I was like, yeah, it's fine. But I don't know why I would play this over anything else. Yeah, that's rough. Did you play Arc Raiders?
I haven't, but I've heard nothing but good things about it. That seems like that's the competition that's heating up now. It's between Marathon and Arc Raiders, which should be interesting on the extraction front. Okay, I'll download it. Kat Pernicus says, You know the icebreaker question, which is if you could have dinner with anyone living or dead, who would it be? Okay, Jacob, to make Kat's point here, do you want to ask that question? And I'm going to role play as Kat Pernicus here.
Yeah, Ben, if you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be? Living! Good. So Kat says, do you have any jokes that you keep ready? In case a common scenario comes up. Like, oh, for example, this is another 10 out of 10 joke. Capernicus says, like, for example, if the power goes out and it comes back on and you yell, my pearls.
Also always funny. That's good. I have one that I... It's not really a joke. It's like one of those very wry things that you say when someone is... particularly vulnerable and i know it's effective because it was used on me by my younger brother and it wasn't even good but i remember like just being rocked by it i was like standing there like i can't believe that happened to me and it was like i was walking very normal
very normal thing happened where I like tripped a bit like just didn't see something and I tripped and like I didn't fall over I just like buckled slightly and like just oh didn't see that carried on walking he like stopped turned to me and looked at me directly in the eyes and went watch out there's floor there like i was just like stood there and like that kid just killed me in public
And so I save that one for whenever someone trips in front of me, I'm like, watch out, there's floor there. And I can never do it with the same effectiveness that he did it. That's so good. I feel like... I just have. I mean, it's like they're basically just dad jokes where like already bad jokes that you just drive into the ground. And mine is if anyone ever says they have an appointment at 2.30. I say, hope you're not going to the dentist. But then it's just like, if anything happens at...
2.30 at all it just I just have to turn it into saying something about hope you're not going to the dentist yeah you gotta do it there's no way around it I always like saying you would in like in a really accusatory way for just the most benign Like, it's like, oh, yeah, I really like McDonald's French fries. It's like, you would. Yeah. And the nice thing about that is it's a fun game, too, because there's obviously a clear and positive response to have towards that one.
That one is just like a brick wall being shoved between two people conversationally. But it's good, Kyle. It's good. Back at Game Informer, there's one that came to mind. is a game former like visiting studios for the cover story trips and all that fun stuff um it was just so much of those trips was like setting up for video interviews and then having to move like okay we got to interview the creative director in his office we got to haul all this equipment and
You know, I'd be holding the two cameras and all this other stuff. So I'd always ask somebody else to grab the light. Like, hey, can you carry the light to the other room? And then when they would pick it up, I'd say, don't worry, it's light. And I would use that joke repeatedly on every trip over and over again. It's slayed every time. Like a stand-up comic dialing in your material. That's exactly. For a very specific case. The polite laughter from those moments, just overwhelming.
The light chuckle that just echoed through the halls of the most famous game studios. Absolutely. All right, Tam, what do you like for question of the week? Which one stands out to you? Let me just roll you through. We got Metal Gear Solid Most Absurd Moments. We got the Elden Ring movie. We got the video game hard premise to explain. Multiple phases. Podcast voice. repeated jokes i i'm gonna go with repeated jokes wow
Okay. Yeah. I enjoyed that one. It told us, we learned a little bit about each other and people who maybe not aren't super familiar. We learned kind of humor, you know? We did learn humor on that day. We all know to look out for floor. Yeah, just careful. If you trip around me, I'm going to brutalize you in public. Yeah, I really don't want to forget that joke either.
that caipernicus has of the yelling living it is surprisingly fun like kyle let me let me lob it to you you ready you can deliver it and you tell me how good it feels because i think it's a it's a very satisfying one So Kyle, I was going to ask, if you could have dinner with like anyone living or dead, who would it be? Damn it. Sorry. That was good. That was good. No, I think you want to step on him a little bit. You want to like, yeah, put the.
foot down right in the last line. It almost indicates that you've been forced to have a conversation with someone dead before. Which is what's fun about it. And you just like really don't want to be in that situation. Yeah, you know the horror. Absolutely. Congratulations, Cap Pernicus. You just won the vinyl soundtrack to the Mario movie. Way to go. And now it's time for something with a little jingle that we call Get a Load of This.
Hey, get a load of this. I'll go first. So the pressure's off Tam for thinking he has to come on with something really impressive. Have you guys ever seen a Dumbo octopus? Did you know that there's an animal that's just called Dumbo octopus? Don't be disrespectful. It's an octopus that just has Dumbo-like ears and it...
like controls where it's maneuvering in the water by flapping its ears like Dumbo. It is just a beautiful little creation that I feel like we need a reminder actually exists. So Dumbo Octopus, everybody, make your life better. Look them up. Unfortunately, it looks like the first enemy in an RPG that you just farm for like three XP each time. A real life slime. Get a load of this.
I was listening to the Lonely Island podcast, which this morning was on. Don't drop me. And Seth Meyers, which was on I'm on a Boat this morning, one of their totemic songs. But there was just like a little.
a little like video production detail that they talked about which they said that the the cinematographer that they had like the person shooting the video was just doing so many like flares where they were like he was like literally like taking the lens on and off the camera, you know, like doing all this kind of like hype video stuff that when they got the footage, they were like, oh, my God.
there is no video here and and uh do you know akiva said that he basically edited it for a straight week and he was like every shot in that video there is no other shot that we could have used you know that it was just it was just like we got it and it looks good but like we had one option for everything and it took me like a hundred hours to even figure that out
But you know, the cinematographer was so proud of themselves. Like, I'm elevating this joke. They need me. And they were like, you know, and in the end, it looked great. And we think he did a really good job. And I was like... I feel like if I had that experience, they would not be saying that. They brought back Popstar, apparently. I don't know, right? Is that what they said, too? Talking about speeds, it's like one of like...
Blank Check and that podcast I listen to on 1.0. And then everything else is like 1.5 or 1.7. Oh, actually, Comedy Bang Bang is another one that I do normal speed as well. I feel like if I go above 1.0, I'll never be able to go back.
so I've never allowed myself to speed it up because I don't want to be in that world. Yeah, but imagine if you could consume twice as much content in your life. It's so good. That's not my problem. I have so much content. I did the same thing where I was like, oh, I'll speed it up, then I can...
get through more stuff no it you if you lose concentration for a second you then have to go back and rewind things and you end up rewinding things so many times that you've spent double the time that you would have just if you just listen to it at one speed i don't know i guess i've just 1.5 just feels normal now I guess for me I don't really yeah I listen to the new episode of PPO Bang in like 28 minutes like I just yeah it's perfect you got one Kyle?
Yeah, hey, get a load of this. This was just a fun thing I saw a couple weeks ago. This is from Boone on Blue Sky. They had this. They said, my big project, the Death Generator. And what it is is you go to this website, deathgenerator.com, and it's like... dozens of like classic uh game over screens and screens that use that become memes and stuff like that and they've just found like the fonts for all of these and made it very simple for you to add your own text into them
And there's like, and like, like, for example, like the, like you can get the Peaches letter from Super Mario 64 and just put in your own text very easily and the fonts match and stuff. And there's like just tons and tons and tons of, of. of screens and game over screens and stuff. It's just, it's just like an impressive thing that I was like, Oh, this is cool. How many, um, there's links below for all this fun stuff. How many, um, epitaphs have like the from software you have died.
That's got to be on real tombstones, right? It's going to be on mine. Okay. All right. Well, good. Congratulations. Get a load of this. The golden ratio. Are you familiar with it? Yeah, that's like Jacob's face, right? Yeah, or the golden proportions. I remembered an article that I read a bit of ages ago, and I remember leaving it being like...
That was too complicated for me. I don't understand it. And every now and then I go back to it and try and understand it. And I feel like in my latest one, I read it like two days ago. I still don't understand it, but it's impressive. But it's called, it's written by... foreign or cine and it was published on kotaku and it was called mario music of mario's music of golden proportions
And it's basically explaining how the golden ratio, which is, I've copied and pasted this from the article, or I believe, or like from Google. In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. No. which is nonsensical to me. But apparently like that and like Fibonacci series and that kind of stuff, it's, it is interpreted as by humans as being.
aesthetically pleasing or beautiful and it's just like it functions in a weird way where it messes with our brain chemistry to make whatever we're experiencing that involves that good and the article breaks down how it's used in the song gusty garden galaxy from super mario galaxy okay and i i listen to it every time i listen to it it makes me so happy like eve and i don't and i feel and for a long time i was like there's some sort of voodoo in here that is like very weird and it is the golden
proportions golden ratio and it's like a theory that a lot of people like will dispute whatever the impact of but i challenge anyone to listen to gusty garden galaxy and not leave with a smile it's like engineered to make good feelings happen so yeah everyone We should read the article. It's fascinating. I have thought before that it's like... Sorry, Jacob. We're trying to jam.
Please, go ahead, sir. Make your point. It's just like, if Gusty Garden Galaxy was a symphony by Beethoven or something, we would all be like, this is the greatest piece of music of all time. I 100% agree. it's from a mario game makes people be like it's pretty good for a video game like if you just heard the song and you
learned that it was from the 1800s, you'd be like, there's never been a better piece of music. It'd be in every commercial, every rom-com trailer. It would just be ubiquitous at this point. Yeah, absolutely.
Uh, hey, get a load of this from the Discord. The people in the community share interesting factoids all day, every day. It's a fascinating channel and toast bomb in there. They say, hey, get a load of this. This is just something they discovered on their own, which I love. They said, apparently... They made official Xbox surge protectors. The house I recently moved into has one hidden behind the built-in entertainment center.
So they just wanted to share that there are official Xbox surge protectors for the collectors in your life. I'm sure Kelsey Lewin owns like 16 of them at this point. Just fun facts from gaming's beautiful history in the Discord there. But that is it for this episode of the MinMax Show. Thank you so much, everybody, for watching, listening. Again, if you are watching, you can always listen. That's an option for you. You can subscribe on your favorite.
podcast app you leave a review on apple podcast specifically before june 2nd and you're in the running to win a code for the thing remastered on steam we have 21 codes to give away so your odds are very high you'll get a code for night dives the thing mastered. But Tamor, thank you for being here, sir. Thank you for having me. This Xbox search protector is hideous. Would you expect anything else? Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. You bet. What do you want to plug?
You can go to GameSpot. You can find some of my work there and find a lot of good work there. You can find me on Twitch. I've been preparing to come back to streaming recently. Okay. Yeah. So I'm on Twitch at TamorH and then I'm everywhere as... Come on H. What is the tone of GameSpot at this moment? I know it's a complicated question, but is everyone...
planning, ready to pounce with a new strategy wave of content. You don't have to get into specifics, but is that the general tone? Yeah. How would you describe it? I mean, we talked about it before, whether we should talk about it. And I think the point I made is like, things are happening, but they're just not at a state where I can comfortably and... completely describe them and i don't want to half-ass it because then it could lead to an impression that things are
worse than they might actually be but where we're at is like obviously we are impacted by the same kind of realities of modern game journalism to various levels that everyone else is impacted by at the same time we are a group of people that love what we do and we're trying always to make it as as interesting and enjoyable to people as possible um and our intent is to keep doing that we have new ideas that we're
planning to implement and and execute on those are ideas that one are from you know the people like me who love games journalism and love covering games and there's also ideas that come from people who are on the business side of it and think that it's important to help us um stay you know viable and maybe you know those two don't always meet in the same way but we're gonna take a crack at it and keep going i i am excited at what could happen but i'm also realistic that you know
Often in this industry, doing something good and of high quality doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be rewarded for it and achieve a success because of it. And I don't need to explain that to any of you guys. You know how it's been. Yeah. Right on. So GameSpot, or you can give a follow on BlueSky. Tamor, what's your handle there? BlueSky and tamorh.com.
Right on. There we go. MinMax stuff. The world of MinMax. We have Pee Pee Bang, the new episode that dropped on Monday. It's very good. It's the biggest episode yet. It's four and a half hours, but it's very good. That's a real perk for some people, but if it's a turn off, let it turn off.
into a turn on because it's an excellent episode. It's about largely, I guess, friends and gaming with friends, but it goes into a lot of directions beyond that. Jacob, I assume you listened to the latest Pew Pew Bang. Look, I'm like... Two hours into it, but I'm having a blast. Sarah used the phrase crash course and being a woman in that episode, and I can't get it out of my head.
Yeah, subscribe on a standalone feed. Pewie Bang is very good. Help spread the word with fem-leaning people in your life, please. We have a new rapid-fire interview up on MinMax's YouTube channel with Hideki Kamiya, the director of so many great games, Devil May Cry, the original Resident Evil. 2, Bayonetta, Beautiful Joe, Okami. And so we talk a bit about the sequel to Okami and founding Clovers, but a bunch of other stuff. It's just exciting to kind of get to...
Ask questions about this director's full life. Normally those are tied to like a single game that's on the horizon, but it was nice. It's like, this is just an incredible career. So I really wanted to unpack it in some format and rapid fire seemed to be the best ones. Thanks for the help spreading that one.
Also, Jacob, just because I know you're very jealous of our planning meetings where we go out and get breakfast and just pitch ideas and jokes and stuff for those rapid fire questions. This one was very fun because the first time that Sarah joined us for one of those. And it's so fun then to. remember sarah like making a joke or asking a question over breakfast and then in the final video like oh that's a sarah line like i'm delivering i'm trying my best to channel sarah
When I talk about Luca from Bane into 3 being like, that yucky guy? That is exactly verbatim. Sarah made me laugh at the table, so I'll just try and ask it like Sarah did. It's funny how much Sarah is coming through my voice in that video, which is a weird mishmash of people.
Let's see. Also, if you're at the $10 tier on Patreon, you can get the extended version of that. It's kind of the rough cut that Jacob checked out as well before we started trimming it down. But if you're like a video production dork, that's true. If you're a video production dork, you can... Check that out and see how we edited it down to the final version. But there's an additional seven minutes of rapid fire.
Questions and answers in that you can check out. Otherwise, New Show Plus is up on YouTube. It is Jeff Cork from the Game Informer days reviving an old thing that we did at Game Informer for New Show Plus here where it's called Memory Card Archaeology. where we got an old PS2 used memory card and we boot up the old saves to try and figure out how much can we learn about this person.
based on a PS2 memory card that they have long forgotten. So Leo Vader and Jeff Corker in the studio with me for that one. It's a fun episode on YouTube. Otherwise, a big thing is we have another MinMax community meetup coming up in August, August 9th. from noon to 5 p.m. at Utapils, Utapils Brewing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We'll communicate more about this, but there's a post on Patreon if you want to...
get some details. But the plan is all of the MinMax cohorts are going to be in town. All nine of us are going to be in Minneapolis there. So you can fly on out if you'd like. Otherwise, we're still planning on making an East Coast meetup happening next year in Asheville.
want to wait for that one that's totally fair but check out the patreon there's a public post where you can learn more about that meetup on saturday august 9th also heads up we have the short documentary film festival doc lightning that people are working on in the community and creating their short documentaries under three minutes um thank you to everybody who submitted yours so far because of sgf and schedules and all this fun stuff uh we are delaying the deadline by one week
So you now have until June 6th to submit your short documentary under three minutes. Check out the Patreon to learn more or jump in the Discord channel to learn more as well. But June 6th is the new deadline for the Doc Lightning series. All right. That is truly it for this episode of the podcast. Remember next week, the episode is going to be a little bit later than usual because of SGF and switch to fun business. But tomorrow, thank you again, sir. Greatly appreciate it.
You're buying me. And thank you, Kyle and Jacob as well for being here. Thank you. Send me a code, Bandai. Bandai! Thanks so much, everybody. Until next time, be good, have fun, let's go!