The CMA BLOCKS Microsoft's ABK Acquisition, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Future Redeemed Impressions # 348

You are listening to Video Games to the Max. Hello, and welcome to another edition of Video Games to the Max. I'm your host Sean Garner, who with me today not Mark Morrison is chapter selects, Randy Isabel. How are you doing? I'm doing okay. I got, you know, the deep sexy voice going on because I went to an MMA fight and yelled a lot, and my voice is not happy with me today. But I'm excited. How long has this been since I have been on Video Games to the

Max episode? Oh? I don't think. I was on the Game of the Year stuff this year and I felt, yeah, wow that loan, that's insane to think about. But I mean, to be fair, you've started your journey with all the sports stuff, calling the your local basketball and you do baseballs to I will have zero time in May, so I'm glad you asked me. Now. Yeah, all the tournaments and championship stuff going on in May, it's it's a busy time. Yeah, I'm glad.

I could gotta could kiss you before you and you know you've you try to stay up to playing games, but I know you know, it's you got other things going on so many I always fall into the I think I've talked about this on the show before. I'm a big baseball person and I love them. Will be the show and I buy it every year and then around this time of year, like good stuff will come out and I'll just sit down and like I'm gonna play it, or I'll just play another basement.

So I've dabbled in things, um, but that will be the show has definitely It's where most of the hours go right now. That's well for sure. We will talk about that NIS in place of Residue before a remake as well, and some of those Pixel remasters. I've gotten to check out that Geno Bade Chronicle study Future Redeemed DLC and an indie game called The Last Case of Benetic Fox as well, which is something I had some stuff I wouldn't

expect him. And then of course we got to talk about the CMA blocking Microsoft's big merger of Activision Blizzard and where are they going to go from here with that, and some other things like the Jedi Survivor Star Wars Jedi Survivor

should mention PC and PS five issues and some other things. The mark would be finally made, the one billion dollars that we've been slowly inching towards all these all these times, so we'll get into Oh yeah, for sure, I'm glad that they did as well, because that movie is definitely worth that all right. So just to get this stuff out of the way, because

you know, we've got to sell things a little bit here. So just in case it's your first time watching Listening or it's your hundred time watching Listening, we always appreciate you think you regardless of how you consume the show. It's always great to hear from anyone and everyone and know that you guys are tuning in. So we do do the show alive. Usually it's on Mondays,

but today I have to work around rainy schedule. We're doing on Sundays, so and I appreciate you being on because I don't know if I could do this on myself, so we have. Of course, you can watch on YouTube w T Nework on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitter, wherever it is that you can find to Nework. We're there live and you can also watch on demand later on the YouTube channel as well. You go like subscribe ring the bill whenever we do something, it'll be there. And of

course we don't just do this. You have Rainy's Chapter Select show, which they did their review of the Super Mario Brothers movie. And then you have the Rales for broadcasting people if they stay stay up with all the movie stuff, so y, anytime there's any movie coming out, they have a review up pretty much that next Tuesday, so you can make sure you check them out. You got Taught to Kiki for anime, you got mme for Mark to rme, and you got some other stuff there too, so thank you

again for checking out. And of course on the podcast side, you can always just search Video Games to the Max and you'll find us there. Search Randy Chapter Select, search wherever and you'll find that show and you can subscribe and listeners. So let's get into it here, Randy. I'm gonna leave some of the that that CMA stuff for a little bit later because I feel like, unless you just don't consume gaming news at all, you've probably heard

your favorite people talk about that. At this point, it is it has been exhausted. So we will talk about that in a little bit. Let's let's talk about some some games that we're playing here, Randy. Like, so you're the big resident evil for fan marks, talked about it as well. He's he reviewed it. So what do you think about Sorry for me, Well, I will say this. I I'm a big Residue Evil fan.

While I think Resume Evil four was fantastic, I still blame it for the downfall of that series for a while because of four, we got five and six because they went more action oriented. Yes, the remake very much action oriented as well. They hit all the big marks for this game. They just continue to do this with the remakes. The original Residue Evil remake way back on the GameCube, they iterated on the whole system and made it

even better. Are two remake was absolutely phenomenal. Are three remake I think I like more than most people. Yes, it is a shorter experience and they do cut out some sections that are interesting, but I thought overall it was fine. But this has been absolutely fantastic. I've already beat it two or three times, trying to slowly work my way through the Platinum, trying to right now the last time or this last play through I'm going through.

I'm trying to do the no heal and no talk to the merchant at the same time, which is a lot more slow paced than the other playthroughs, but it's unbelievably phenomenal and just I think a lot of people were worried, and I'm sure it has been said by Mark two when this game came out that it would be too serious and they wouldn't go with all the campy stuff that was going on with the original Residueva for and Nope, it is just

this campy sometimes even more campy, and some of the little East Rays that they throw into this game is phenomenal. It's with remakes and remasters and stuff. As far as your guys, this game of the year, it always gets confusing, but this is by far the best game I've played this year. Not that I played a ton, but I've also dabbled in Dead Space remake and it doesn't touch this at all. Yeah, I mean the spacingmake was really good for what it is as well, but yeah, Mark had

all kinds of glowing praise too about it. And yeah, I'm wanting to second out whenever there's another because there was a little bit of a low, but during that low, I had to catch up on some other games, So I'm hoping if there's another low in this year, which right now we're starting to get into the we're gonna have a big game release every week. Yes, so we'll see how that goes. But yeah, that's when I

want to check out for sure. I loved resid Eable two three kind of not so much, but like four is much more like a Village, which I liked a lot. So well, we'll see, and I think you dell perfectly with it with the Village comparison. And I think we talked about it here because I was on that Game of the Year when we gave Village Game of the Year right for Big Games to the match, it was at

least really close, and it was because I think it was. Yeah, they touched on different horror aspects and a lot of it was based around RI four and just kind of knew that they were trying things out to then be able to do this remake and they've just nailed it. It's so good. Yeah, that's I mean, I don't think i've seen anybody like a yeah tens everywhere when that's coming out, So it's definitely been one of those that's

gonna be up for the Game of the Year talk for sure. I mean, have you been playing anything else you mentioned I've been touching on those foul Fantasy Pixel remasters. I didn't buy the whole bundle. I'm just gonna buy them one at a time as I get through them, instead of spending the seventy eighty bucks or whatever the bundle was. It's like, all right, I'm gonna get through the first one. All right, I've now beat the

first one. I'm like thirty minutes into the second one, and we'll see how long I can continue on. I've now already hit this point where two and three, where I believe the only numbered ones that weren't online that I've never played. Obviously, three kind of had its own release issues, and what we only got on like then you got the three D version on the DS. Yeah, so I just never got into that. And two is not good. So we'll see how far I get into two before I stay

screwed. I'm just gonna move on. But I'm trying to follow a guide because I want to platinum these games, so it's it's helping me go, Okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. This is how you kind of go against the systems that they've built. I didn't want to like overpower myself too much. But PA Fantasy too is very innovative and ambitious with what they wanted to do, which was kind of what Nintendo did or the games in Nintendo did. It was like their sequels were always way different than the

originals. And yeah, so I love them, some don't and we'll see if I can get through too. But they're beautiful. And I know I've talked about it with or at some point on the show, with them putting like FA Fantasy seven and eight and nine newer p or PlayStation versions on there, which is kind of all original rpg should be re released with fast forward

buttons and or auto battle buttons. It changes. It's so much like being able to just play the original Final Fantasy and know that I am under leveled for a boss, so I need to grind a little bit and to just go, you know what, I'm gonna watch the show off to the side, and I'm just gonna auto battle and kind of play it in the background.

Works really really well, and then when it's time to focus it, the game is good enough to focus on man auto battles and like the three times speed stuff that you got from that, the seven, eight and nine games just changes the game for those old school rpg Yeah. Man, it's absolutely like incredible that they've been able to add that and how much it adds to the fact that, hey, now I can get through this and I

don't have to necessarily that grind forever in a day. And even in um you know, like octopresur Dribbler too that I've been playing, it has. It doesn't have the fast forward for the actual battles, but it does it has fast forward in battle so like the attacks or and that kind of thing. So that helps some You're not sitting they feeling like, oh my god,

I wait, do this know? Like I mean, it would be nice to have it where you could and yeah, they do have things where you can cut off the battles that happen and stuff because it does have like random encounters. Yeah, you can do that in these two or you just turn them off. And I think it's it's brilliant that you know it lets you play it however you want. These games are forty years old now, so if you want to play it the way it was intended, you absolutely

can. But am I going to get on somebody for going into the options and messing with the systems that they allow you to mess with, which with at least the first though Fantasy Remaster, I was messing around through the options and you could get five times Gill or or no. You can just get no Gill if you want to make it even more challenging. So there's just

different ways you can play these games. I think it's just great, and let's people that are slightly younger than us experience the games that we played on and either break them or have fun with them exactly. And you don't have to spend sixty hours on the game. If you don't want to spend you know, ten, you can still have the same experience, you know, So I appreciate that they added that those are things that should be when you

bring in collections like that, have that in there for sure. Anything else you want to know, The rest is all. I'm just having a lot of fun on the PlayStation plus stuff yea, not just the monthly stuff, but the things that are just been thrown in there. I go through there sometimes and mess around. Also bought a couple of games on the Spring sale that was there that games that just passed me by. I'm absolutely loving Monster

Boy in the Cursed Kingdom, which came out a few years ago. I don't know why I've never heard of this game, but as a cute little

platformer where you can change into different animals. Though I've now gotten to the point where I have too many animals and instead of just being able to switch over with L two and R two, you always have to go in this circle and change things out in your dial, and a lot of puzzles make you change animals multiple times, and some of the animals don't have magic, then you have to go through their little dial as well, and that gets

a little annoying, but it's really fun. I'm also just started on a game called Typo Man, which is Limbo with words, and it's just as hard as Limbo was the first time through. It's it's kind of a fun little game. So that's kind of me right now. I am just in a holding pattern until Final Fantasy sixteen comes out. I'm trying not to overspend on other games when especially I knew May was going to be extremely busy, so I'm just kind of throwing in little side games for now. But fal

Fantasy sixteen is the next one that's an absolute must buy for me. That's where I think I'm at too, after they look at the calendar. But as far as like must must, I know I'm getting that day one for sure because the other stuff, like you know, like what you're playing remasters or like advanced for us is something that it's older. I can just you know, play it when it it has its moment. I'm still going whether or not Diablo four yea once or not. I think I'm really gonna I

would I didn't get to play the beta the first couple of times. I'm gonna make sure when they do this last one, I hop in And I think Diablo four for me is going to be a lot like the new Star Wars game, which we will talk about its issues later on in this show.

It's I know the history of these two companies, and I know how bad the first Star Wars game was when it first released, and I know how bad Diablo games can be for the first few months until they work on, not to mention how much and long you have to wait in a queue to get to play. So those are games that I will absolutely play, but I will not be a Day one or by any means, I'll wait

for it to to kind of go through it. It's cycle a little bit and calm down and work through the bugs, and in like six months or so, I'll give it a shot. Yeah, that's always the best one. You can wait and you know you're gonna get the best version later. That's the definitely better than sitting here and getting at day one and having to

deal with what folks are dealing with now. So as far as it goes for me, I have off game Pass, which it came out on the twenty seventh, a few days ago, the last case of Benedict Fox. I was kind of intrigued by it when it's been showing in trailers a few times, whether it was an intent of direct or on a Microsoft's showcase thing,

because it was kind of like a dark investigative story. I like those kind of things, you know, kind of Shrowlock holmesy sort of, and it does have that has your investigation things that has like puzzles you have to solve. But I didn't know it was a Metroidvania until until I download it and put it in, and yeah, it's definitely in metro Vania. As you go back and find things, you find the key try to get in

go back there figure out what's there. It has the map that's very much you know metroidy, that tells you exactly where the things are and where you have to it's just getting to the certain area that I need to get to. You to get past those points that it is not always easy because there's platforming as well, so some of the jumps are not not easy to do, and then some of them you can't get there. And the battle mechanics were not so simple because there's part of it. You have a gun that

you build up by doing melee attacks, and apparently I did. It took me a while to realize that I had to use the gun to blow up a wall, so then it was like, wait a minute, now I ran out of enemies, so I can't use the gun, so like I had to go back and reset it to be able to do it, which that was kind of annoying. But I like the aesthetic. I like the world. It's um it's really cool looking. I didn't expect that so far, so I'm usually not one for much urbanias Mark is someone that loves those

and jumps into him. I know you like him a little bit, Yeah, I bet if I showed it to him. He might actually like it, but you know he's opposed to game pass, so I have no idea when he would you know, somebody doesn't want to pay for a service. He would rather own everything. You know. I guess he never somebody that owns a lot of stuff, the newer stuff I don't care about. And that he loves to do that too. Man, he's on here every week telling me about how which thing he bought. Uh. He's had a PS

three dev kit for a while now. He's been tinkering around with that from all so and I should have noticed at the thought that Mark is not here because he had started around his ankle. He's gonna be out anywhere from like two weeks to a month recuperating. Hopefully he gets better and you know, can be back soon. But um, the big game that I've been playing,

I guess it's not big. It's a DLC, but it's a DALC to one of Unteno's biggest releases from last year, uh Zon, a big Chronicles Three's story DALC, which is actually a prequel to the entire series, which is kind of cool to have in your final game. A prequel to the entire series pretty much where you play as all the Founders, which includes

the protagonists of the first two games, Choke and Rex. So um, it's actually just I haven't got I've got think I'm like about six or seven hours in or that I played, because I'm also kind of exploring and doing you know, these are big games that they want you to explore a lot of stuff. So and then meeting the new characters are like, I love Matthew and a I think they're really great, like additions to the hole Zontlebay

Chronicles universe. And then of course getting to meet Choke and Rex and you know, more adult forms. It's pretty cool too because that's you know, I didn't think that we were going to get that until they showed us this trailer. Surprisingly, like two weeks before this game, this was gonna come out. This was supposed to be out in the fall, and then all of a sudden, Randley, they go, oh, hey, it's coming out April twenty fifth. By the way, Nintendo with their usual thing,

But I mean the gameplay is is pretty much the same. They've added some tweaks here and there to kind of make it special, like the new kind of tag team mechanic that they have with certain characters. So that's been fun to play around with. And uh yeah, I just love being in that world. I'm kind of sad to like get to the end because I know that my that's gonna be the end with these characters. If they have another Zenimblade game, it's gonna be like what keenom Harts was supposed to be.

It is supposed to be like a restart kind of thing. So yeah, but I'm glad that he's got to make his whole magnum opus that he wanted to make sense Zino Gears, he finally got to do it on the Nintendo Switch, and it looks like by all accounts, this is another great addition to that franchise. So I think I got to finish the story. I remember Zino Saga on their PS two and I think it was supposed to be like seven games. Yeah, and they threw it all together in three E

and it was a mess. Yeah, unfortunately, well sales wise, and I think not too long ago, people wanted the remasters on Switch and supposedly Ben and Emco did some kind of research and like they through that research, they found a lot of people would buy it. So now, like, I can't remember if I finished the third one for Zenosaga, but I beat the first two and I've played some of three. But I just remember a lot of there were sections in that entire trilogy that we're just like, what

are they doing? Like, yeah, there's a metager a solid fan. I am being a complete hypocrite here because Hitdealo Kajima did like to do the same thing. But I remember a point where I watched a forty five minute scene. Yes, it gave me control of the character. I walked out of one door, turned the corner, and walked into another door to another thirty minute scene. Yep. So again Betagher solid loves to do that as well. But I got into that story a lot more than a disagas.

So I'm glad the Xeno Blade hedly worked out. While yes, it's always sad when you have a big franchise like that coming to an end, at least you know it hit the end that he wanted to this exactly. Yeah, you with all of the different things that you can play with, there's a three games and then three dalcs. You have a complete story there, and that's pretty awesome to be able to do that because I thought when Zeno Blaye three ended, I was like, oh crap, they're not gonna actually

do the ending part. They're gonna just kind of give us a little bit of the Founding Fathers and that's gonna be it, and then we're gonna kind of just gonna be up in the air as to oh, I guess this was the ending. So thankfully, it's good that we are getting that and you can get you know, they've had other little expansion pieces, little story pieces, story story other DLC like a like a battle arena and all that kind of stuff that they added in the other dalcs and other characters as well,

so you didn't pick up the expansion past yet. Thirty bucks for all of that stuff is well worth it. Definitely go check it out if you've played Zeno three. So that's pretty much it for games who've been playing here. Just because we both reviewed this and then Rather's reviewed as well, you guys loved it a lot. Uh you know, I listened to your review EU and YenS, and it's obviously a universally loved thing because the Marine movie

has now made a billion dollars globally. Randy I mean, and I've I've looked at this, like look at the numbers, and it's you know, normally for all these Marvel movies and stuff like that, like the difference between like domestic and foreign box office, it's normally like a huge, right, it's a it's like big discrepancy, the like the way that they've been able to It just released to Japan obviously this weekend, which helps a lot,

uh and South Korea, and they actually made a different Japan script for it's it has a completely different script that was made by dumb buying Nintendo as well. So I thought that was interesting that me and models a completely different movie. No, no, it's the same movie. They just very they made sure that it's not like just translated okay loosely, it's they made sure that for Japan that they can understand this, and it has some local stuff in

it as well. So I had to ask. Because Jens likes to throw in random versions of these video game movies on Japanese flag, I was worried that all a sudden, I was gonna have to watch the Japanese version of it. Yes, um, but it's still it's like it's crazy to me that it definitely deserves it, right, it's the first video game movie to hit that billion mark. Now gonna set the standard for all the other video game movies. That obviously helps that it's Mario too, Yeah, and it

helps that they went at it in a smart way. I mean to get illumination out there that does minions and it does putting it as a cartoon and not trying to go this Super Mario and not to rag on the old Super Mario movie from the early nineties too much, but just Mario is one of those franchises that should be a cartoon and it works out extremely well that way. And that's why this works on the one back in the early nineties did not. Yes, that has a cult following now, but it's not a

good movie. It's absolutely not good. It's fun to sit back and laugh at, but it is. It's not good. And now to be you can be over the top, you can be colorful, you can be goofy and this kind of stuff, and it just fits really well with the story. Now. Am I saying all video game movies need to go in this direction? Of course not. Because the Last of Us TV show was amazing

and with live action and that would not have worked with animation. And I think what has me more excited is we are nearly four months through this this year and we've already got the Last of US TV show and the Super Mario Brothers movie, which you know what, absolutely we're bangers. They nailed it. They were so good, not on the ends, and Randy's of movie scale, which we have to bump up because all video game movies back in the day were so bad that if we don't hate did, we have to

give it an eight just or everything would be at a one. Um. So it's it's really nice that we have now had back to back hits that that represent video games. Hopefully that means things you're turning in the corner. But there's another story that you have on here that has me worried that same thing. Well, definitely, I mean, and then to be fair, you know, The Witcher has also been pulling its own weight, and it's

gonna have a season three in July. Obviously gonna be a little bit different not having having a different actor playing the main character this time, but we'll see, we'll see how that goes. But um, for sure, it's great that this is happening. And you know, as as Mark and I talked about last week, you know, Miyamoto is hinted that there is other Nintendo movies to come. Yeah, so, and again, they can go in completely different ways. They make a Kurby movie hash to absolutely be animated,

could go either way, like action that could be interesting. But if they do it in a cartoony way, I think it could. I don't think they could do it in a cartoony illumination way. No, that's like, that's what I worry about. It's like, if we're gonna try to make illumination make all of these, they're really gonna have to illuminate. Could do Kirby. I think Kirby would be great. Any kind of a Yoshi thing, Yeah, k even star Fox something they could do because it doesn't

have Nobody cares about that guy. Yeah, people care about Star Foxes much to care about Kid at Chris anymore. Just yeah. I mean people will sit there and we want them to come back, and then they come back and they're like, well no, no really. I am glad that somebody has brought some sense to the table, because Mark, for about like ten minutes last week try to convince me that if they made a Star Fox movie, it's gonna do amazing numbers because oh it's it's a movie. Depends yeah,

it depends on what they do with it. If it's a very good movie, it could be great. It's not going to be Mario levels of success just because it doesn't have that fan base like Mario is. As video games, you ask people that have never heard of a video game before, and they show them a picture of Mario, they know who that is exactly.

They're not going to do that with Star Fox. It's not. But let's let's say they wanted to make a Nintendo cinematic universe, right, Yeah, I really hope that this is not a Marble thing and we're trying to I don't think Nintendo is, even though you know, everybody see everything seems to have to have a universe at this point, Like what are what are the movies that like, let's say you got to have six six movies? Are we say? So we're saying Nintendo universe so that we can last movie

or something. I guess it doesn't have to all be made by elimination, but I think if you're putting them in as a universe, you have to have them in the same style, So then when you combine them, you can't have a live action Zelda movie. No of the the old in cu is what Yeah, then Nintendo Cinematic Yeah, thanks, um, but I

think it'd have to be at least similar. But I think you could just throw in there Mario Kirby Yoshi, Donkey Kong is your four and then again I think Zelda is better live action, so you'd be a little different there. So it's it's tough to then try to figure out which direction you want to go if you have a state. I don't think they'll do them live action. I think they will keep them animated. I just worry about illumination, understanding that they got to be serious with the not that they have to

be totally serious. You can obviously have gags, but it's got to be a little bit more serious when you talking about Zelda, and obviously with Metroid as well. If you're gonna you're gonna use both of those, which I

think you can't Metroid. Yeah, have a Nintendo Cinematic universe if you're not going to include Zelda and Metroid. Those are your two biggest franchises outside of Yeah, everything that has to do with Mario, but I think Zelda and Metroid both would be better fitted with a live action feel, yeah, which would take them away from this whole universe idea, but again they could work

animated in some way. And then I like your Smash Brothers idea to bring out all these movies and then just throw them in the pit and just have them go nuts, because I mean you already had that with the docy Kongen and how you could throw a Sonic in there, because Sonics and I just combined in. Can we get a MegaMan movie? Please? That's not horrible, That'd be great. That's what I want. Uh Well, I mean Aaron says that's a live action don't work at all for Mario. Absolutely agree

that the live action for Mario does not work. However, some live action stuff works. Most of it is in Japan. Is again YenS and I have been going through a lot of these. I mean, you watch the review, so you know this Super Mario Brothers movie is not our favorite video game adaptation that we have reviewed on that show. The other one just nobody knows about because it's in Japan only. Ace Attorney live action is so bonkers and over the top, it hits, it hits all of the fields.

It's hey, I mean that's good. Like see, that's the thing is, let's see if they go that route. I just want to see what other or not if they do eventually get to it, because first of all, you have the DK movie that we know it's probably coming. We know we're getting whether it's Super Mario Brothers to Yoshi's Island or whatever it is. And uh, sorry, it's almost a month after the movie, so I'm

sorry if I just you know, spoil made a billion dollars people. Yeah, and maybe there's a Luigi's Mansion to be in there, who knows, But that all has to do with Mario. So if you're gonna throw other Nintendo movies, and he mentions that we have a cast, we have a cast of characters that we could bring out. Uh, you know, you definitely got to be doing Zelda, especially with the two big tech pole games that you have to feed off of and the other lower that you have of

Zelda to feed off of. So speaking to Zod, I'll just throw this in here because I won't be here when it releases. The Breath of the Wild game and this new one do not look like I mean, I did not get in the Breath of the Wild as other people, and I will not be playing Tears of the Kingdom. However, I just wanted to throw it out there, and I've said this many times to our mutual friend Robert

Taylor. I hope it's a killer. I hope it's fantastic. I hope it's game of the year, because everyone is so hyped for this game. Yeah that while it's not for me, I'm not one of those people that

goes, well it sucks, No, it just wasn't for me. So I am sitting here as somebody who will not play this game that hopes that when that releases ten out of tens everywhere, because I know so many people are just waiting impatiently for it finally to Yeah, we'll get more into it a little later, but for sure, I'm also on that same vein as

you. I wasn't a big fan of the first one, just because it was way too like there's open world and there was like way too open world for me, where it was like I don't want to feel like I gotta I've got to figure out everything that I'm gonna be doing here. I want a little bit of direction, you know, yes, and I'm too stupid to leave me alone with my own inhibitions. Give me an arrow, give me a list of quests, or I'm lost. Yeah, you don't have

to point me in every direction. Yeah, but you gotta like let me know. Okay, this is like the main story thing. Go over here if you want that, or we'll see. We'll talk about it a little bit. But I guess to move. Just to answer Aaron's question, here they put it. Do you think that if they did Zelda, they'd let him talk or he'd still be a song protagonist and everybody else would talk. For the last time they let Link talk, it was horrible. Well,

that's a that's a was the nineties. I mean, it was a CDI thing, and it was terrible. So they could make a joke on it and have him just sounding hilarious. Hello, sir, he we bring up Zelda and he shows up right exactly. Yeah. Um, they could make a big joke out of it where he sounds funny and then clears his throat. They make that joke in the Mario movie about certain ways of characters talk

in the games and how they're going to talk in the movie. There could be a lot of times where, at least at the beginning of the movie, somebody asked him a question and he goes to answer, and then somebody just butts in and he's a silent protagonist for a little Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's different ways you could go about it. That'd be great.

I definitely think they'll try at the beginning to make him silent, and then eventually they will build up to a point where he has to talk, whether it's a joke or something that will then open the box to where, oh you talk, okay there, you know. So um, Like you said, they made the joke very at the beginning of the Mario movie that oh, we don't have to be so so crazy and exaggerated with our voices. We can just be you know mar and Louisi's uh, you know, Aaron

brings up. You could just continue to make grunts and yells from the arc are in Time's Love. He could do that to so. But yes, moving on from movie talk here, I'm gonna we eventually gotta get we gotta get to it here. So let's preface this by saying there is some good news for Microsoft Ukraine did pass the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which they joined Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Serbia, Chiley, Japan and South Africa.

And doing so, they also made another deal with one of these cloud gaming providers that are in the European region, this one called Nwhere that's a Spanish cloud gaming provider. That's a ten year deal. You know whatever. I don't really want to get into what those deals mean. They also had their like second best quarter ever for Xbox revenue and all of that heading into what they thought was going to be good news, it turns out that there is

bad news for Xbox when it comes to this. The Vision Blizzard deal's been blocked by the CMA, and it's been blocked due to not consoles, not Sony, even though Sonny probably has a little bit to do with it, not Nintendo. It's blocked over cloud gaming, of all things, this highly amazing version of video games that everybody plays, cloud gaming. That that's what

blocked it all. Yeah, we can all blame Google Stadia for this not happening, because it pushed this cloud gaming thing to a whole new level and it worked so well. Now it's it's interesting I'm in the mind that I don't care about all these acquisitions. It got over the top there for a

bit where Microsoft and Sony just we're trying to buy up everything. This Active Vision Blizzard thing obviously is a huge deal if it goes through, which now it's not looking like it will be in the UK, and we'll see if what other countries do with it. But in the end, I honestly just don't care about the back end stuff. Just as long as the games come out and they're not full of micro transactions high school that I'm happy And that's

fair. That's fair. I think from the you know, the casual perspective or the person that doesn't pay attention to this every single day, that is pretty much what people's probably take is that, Okay, I don't really care. Am I still getting my call of duty every year? Whether Microsoft has it or not? Yeah, okay, then who care? Am I still getting you know, Diablo and whatever? On the buzzards side? Can I

still play Candy Crush? All right? Whatever? That's that's probably what your GQU person, if you talk to them about that, would say, right. But I think from the perspective of let's let's look at this from the Xbox side of things. Who have not had a good year, I mean good few, however many they haven't had a good generation of video games. Uh, you know, everything's when the Series X came out, the Series AS came out, It's like, Okay, it's a whole new ballgame from

Microsoft. We're gonna they got the best acquisition, they got all this stuff going on, and then you get these small little wins, right like Hi Fi Rush this year, and then a lot of it's just really really negative. Yeah, it's it's so it's so weird to me because game Pass is such a positive. As I'm a I'm a Sony guy, but I think game Pass is absolutely phenomenal and everything that Sony attempts to do will never reach what Microsoft is, okay doing with game Pass. I think it's brilliant.

But you know, I remember all those E threes, you know, Rush and Peace to E three, But I remember all those E threes where Microsoft will come out. It's like, look at the twenty seven first party studios we have now, and all these games that we're going to make, and they're all going to be on game Pass. I think like four have come out in the last twelve months. I mean, Sony is not much better

as far as first party stuff goes. But but I know Sony's first party is going to be amazing, So you know, yeah, but I will give a little excuse as far as you know. Yes, COVID was a couple of years ago now, but obviously it really wrecked havoc on a lot

of gaming studios and slowed things down a little bit. And it also kind of backlogged a lot of these games where we are getting Residue before Remake and Legend of Zelda, Tiers of the Kingdom and Final Fantasy sixteen and Streets a Fight or Street Fighter six and Diablo four within like a four month period, so you would expect one of these games to come out every four months.

Is like just Game of the Year contender, just banger games, and we're getting all of those on top of Dead Island two was getting good reviews and it topped a million dollars in sales and it's become a pretty good thing, and the rise in DZ is completely ignored. But I guess it was pretty good. So we have all this stuff in it like a four month period.

It's just it's crazy, how backlogged these releases are, and I think I think a lot of these companies are going, well, we need to find a window where things are not as crazy so our game doesn't get completely forgotten about it. Yeah. Um, that's the thing is that you know, Microsoft that they were gonna started hitting a period where it was going to be all good news, right, you get the old CMA is gonna pass it because right now they're having to deal with the FTC suit them to block

this. So they were hoping the CMA would pass. Then the EU passes next month and they put pressure on the FTC too. Hey you're the only one I want to think about it. And then it actually turns out that the FTC met with the CMA and there's possible you know, they may have talked about this. They said, there's no litigation talk, but who knows, and the CMA decided to block it. Uh, And it just feels very arbitrary, like over cloud gaming right, like so you know cloud gaming

is part of xpots Game Pass Ultimate. How much have you used ever the cloud gaming thing that Microsoft has? No, I don't. I live in northern Idaho. Do you think we have the internet capability to run cloud gaming in a suitable fashion. Yet no, absolutely, we are pretty good internet here in Miami, but still, you know, there's even parts of Miami where the internet sucks, and even then in the UK, the internet it's

even worse there. So I get it that they're saying that by default because Google failed and Sony jammed it in the middle of like million other things that's on PS plus. That's like a thing that's part of PS plus that they don't really care whether you use or not. But you do have to use it to play PS three games. But that's that's either here nor there.

I'm just saying, like, it's not Microsoft's fault that everybody else is involved in cloud gaming either failed, they don't care about it, even though supposedly Mark sto and he said that he figured out some kind of revolution with cloud gaming, like right or for they were going to make the decision, which I don't think it makes a difference. And you know, Amazon's there, they're the biggest player and all of this, and they're fine with whatever Luna's

doing. But you don't hear anybody ever talking about Luna. It's just there, and it's there because Amazon has the money to just keep supporting it, and you know whatever. It's so it's not Microsoft's fault that they're the sixty to seven percent dominance of cloud gaming. They're making all these deals with these other providers, which all the providers will come out and gone, wait a minute, we want this to go through because we want those games on our

platform. Now we don't get them at all. So it seems like the CMA is just doing this because they can, because they want to prove that you're not going to come in here because you're Microsoft and be able to tell us that we need to approve this deal. Now you got to figure it out. And it's like, first of all, most of y'all's issue at first was consoles, right, it was about so many It was about oh, we couldn't let Microsoft gain a foothold because it would ruin possessions dominance in

the arena. And then they realize how quickly that makes no sense, and how much PlayStation is actually doing to prevent Microsoft already from rising any higher. Now of a lot of that's also Microsoft's fault with you know, all these other problems with their games coming out and Halo kind of failing and other things. It's not just Sony, right, it's also Microsoft has not been able

to get footnick ground that they thought they were going to. But this is supposed to be like an accelerant, right, It's supposed to be like the thing that went all right, we're going full speed ahead, and now it's like, oh man, what do we do? And so you know, Brad Smith came out and called it like one of the darkest days for Microsoft in Britain ever and that you know, oh my god, Joe. Yeah,

and this is really bad. Well, to be fair, maybe it is bad for the UK citizens because you don't get all these games on game Pass. Now you have to go and pay your however much money which number it's more in the U K And Europe to buy games. So I think in a way, yes, it is bad. Um, I think of all the things you could have criticized it for a cloud gaming just seems very like, really, we're doing this based on future possibilities instead of what's here

right now. Yeah, I could have hurt understood that, well, this is just too much of a monopoly at this point, with buying such a huge company as Activision Blizzard and putting all this on your system. Yeah, I could hear that argument. I don't agree with it, like, put whatever you want on your system. I like console wars right because I like

it for the two companies to really battle it out. Yeah, if if console exclusive gaming completely disappeared, which I know a lot of people for whatever reason, wanted to do, then you would not have game pass because yeah you wouldn't. You wouldn't would have had no reason to do that. They would have zero interest in just play your game wherever you want to play.

I mean, I guess maybe they have game Pass because they're trying to They would try to get you to bite their system overplaystation, but you could just play it either way. But I don't know. I like it's we're bold old old school wrestling fans. When wrestling has competition, the wrestling is better. Video game companies have competition. It makes the companies better. Yeah. I think about Nintendo's saga, how great that was to watch that unfold and

how they each made each other better. And just to show to prove your fact, Nintendo is off on its own island right now, doing its own stuff. Zero competition. The one thing that listening to game scoop trying to get myself ready for the show and just kind of hearing different stuff. I didn't realize the Switch has never dropped in price. Nope, never had a sale. But if they were, if they had a competitor, yeah,

then it would be dropping in price. We would have another iteration of the Switch, which is what we got last iteration with Xbox and PlayStation, where they just kept throwing out different stuff, trying to compete with each other, bringing it better stuff, bringing up bet or games. Now. I admittedly believe Sony has won the exclusive games battle over the last several years, but that's why Microsoft went, well, we're not winning that battle, so let's

win it this direction and we get game like Nintendo. I would absolutely love to get into some of these other games that come out, but I can't use the same strategy I do with PlayStation and Xbox or My god is wait for a sale, because that never happens. I mean, it is a sale, it's for two days, and it's down ten percent, but it's full price from what it was released forever whatever. Maybe I bet if I looked up the Mario game Mario Odyssey, I bet it's still sixty bucks.

Oh yeah, unless you caught it on the sale. Ye, that ridiculous. Yeah, and that's because there's no competition. So all right, they didn't even do their like Nintendo Selects thing that they've done with the other years because they were competing, right the we you sucked out loud. They had

to do the Selects thing to get people to possibly buy those right. I love that the way you sucked because I have now forty percent away through owning that entire library because a lot right, yeah, there's not um and yeah, and most of it's on the switch anyway. Yeah, most of it got parties to the switch, which means that the prices are not skyrocketing on those games yet, right exactly. So I mean that's that's the thing,

is that composition is good. And I get with the UK just going in and then doing it about a sector of gaming that may never take off because you have to have the infrastructure for it to take off. And as Barbara as our friend Barbert Taylor saw, he lives in southern California and he still doesn't use it. Um and And that's the thing is that it's an option.

Right now, Microsoft hasn't bundled as part of another thing that you buy and I get I get it from a perspective of Okay, well they can raise game pressis after they they passed this, Well Microsoft really doesn't you know, they've already said that they weren't going to do that. Yeah, and if the right yeah, they could you know, release tiers of Okay, well whatever the twenty dollars tier is you get this and this and this,

but there's still the fifteen and the ten. They give you the same stuff, just you get more withever, whatever they're gonna put on twenty, whether they they tell you okay, we'll make sure that the I don't know.

I really don't know what they could do there other than extra perks and and maybe some like extra rewards like getting you know, some kind of percentage off your games or whatever you wanted to buy them or uh because you know you can't lock out, which that's the thing is, they don't want you putting the Activision Blizzard stuff behind another paywall to tire right. So that's the thing is, yes, do they they don't. If you let this pass.

If another if say somebody has a cloud gaming competitor, does it behoove them to put that on there no, But like you also don't seem to understand how those cloud gamy things work. The cloud gaming things are not like Sony Store, Nintendo's store where they get a cut, right, You're they're just renting the cloud gaming thing and you're playing your game that you already bought somewhere

else on there. So it's not the same thing, and it's it's just a lot of it just seems so silly what they're doing just to be able to block it. And then the thing is also Microsoft may not have much recourse because number when it's very hard to get something fast and appeal through the CMA, it takes anywhere from nine months to a year. So I means we're gonna be talking about this again for another freaking year. I'm so tired of it. And this is from somebody, like I said on the last

show, and i've you know you said it just now. I do not care about Activision Blizzards games, by and large, I don't. I'll just buy Diablo whenever it comes out. I don't care about ain't hardly anything Activision except for like Crash if they make another one and if I have to play that on Xbox and I have to play it on Xbox. Yeah, I think you and I are both in a decent situation where we can play them on all these systems. And yes, there are people out there that can't.

However, that is part of the battle between Microsoft. They're part of the game. Hey, if do you want to play the Last Epist, then you have to buy a PlayStation. Do you want to play Call of Duty, then you're gonna have to buy an Xbox. I don't know. I mean, I think Call of Duty is too big to be putting on as an exclusive. And I'm fine if you don't put any avtivists games as exclusive. No, I'm just saying if they did, it would not bother

me one bit. Their problem is they don't want Microsoft to get any bigger in the gaming market by doing this. They they even told them, oh, well, why don't you just make smaller person, you know, why don't you go after another gaming company that doesn't have the biggest game in all of gaming in it. And it's like, I kind of get it in a way, but they're shooting big because they know they need this to compete with Sony's dominance. And then to those dominants, Microsoft to go, bitch,

we already have Minecraft. Do we have the best game? Yeah? Right, exactly. So that's the thing is I'm just sitting here. It's if flabbergass to me when that finally came out, and who knows, maybe Microsoft, maybe this deal is completely dead. Maybe it is. I firstly, it does not bother me, but I know there's a lot of people that were wanting this to be a thing, and I kind of wanted to be a thing because I wanted to see Microsoft grow in the gaming space.

I wanted to see Xbox become a more level player with PlayStation because why because, like you just said, it makes PlayStation have to fight more. What are they doing right now? They're buying studios like crazy. They're not doing much either, like we have Spider Man this year. Well, I mean

they're gonna be great, but that's about it. I think Sony is a different kind of thing because they want to release the the quadruple A quality like movie tier games when they release, and now they're focusing on, oh, we want to have like a million multiplayer things. Almost all these studios that they're buying are for multiplayer stuff, which personally, I don't care about. But again there's that's what makes the money, so they gotta go where the

money's getting made at the end of the day. But I don't think this is a good good thing for the CMA. Maybe the E will pass it and then that will put pressure on the other two and then Microsoft notes they can probably win in court against the FTC, and then the CMA is the one that gets put the pressure on. And then also if the UK, which this is what they want, right, they want the UK to get

some kind of advantage. Maybe the UK gets isolated and they don't get anything Xbox because you did this, So they may be coming back to rue this situation. And also Sony is not without fail here because Sony pushed hard against this, So anybode the CMA aware of a lot of stuff. And if this doesn't go through, somebody may may wish that they would have let it go through, because I think Microsoft is gonna come down with the hammer,

and they're gonna come down with the hammer hard. Uh. You know, they they're probably not gonna get you know, they're not gonna go after score Enix or whatever. You know, Sega's doing stuff to make it look like they want somebody to buy them. I mean Microsoft comes around and goes, let's see, let's see if we can convince Sega to come over here. You know, let's let's let's go try to grab some other I mean,

I don't know. Take two has been rumored around, you know that somebody's been been sniffing around to see if they'll buy them so they can have you know, Grand Theft auto. Uh, yeah, there's Honestly, Grand Theft thought it would work great with Microsoft because they don't release games either. Yeah, still waiting, still waiting for six yeah, eighty seven years. Well,

they are working on it. They are working on us supposedly so, but that being said, you know, they do have a game coming out in a couple of days, Red Fall, So we'll talk about that when we talk about a high level thing. But yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot to go into. There's people you can I don't want to sit here and spend this thing. There's there's a lot of people you can listen to. I'm sure there's lawyers you can listen to that will break

down this whole thing for you. If you want to deep dive into what what Microsoft could do with the CMA and I'm sure we'll get more news in this entire year now that we're gonna have to talk about this again. So you know, if you want more of that, there are there's a million places you can go listen to it. I just don't want to spend an hour talking about this and it's not necessary. That being said, we did have which has been another trend, this Randy that bad PC ports and then

just bad running big games coming out. Started with afore spoken and now it's in it's blood throughout the year with other games. And now we got Star Wars Jedi Survivor, a game that made the folks that make De Island have to move up their game another week to make sure they didn't run into a game that people have been waiting for for a while, and it comes out with some really bad PC port issues and it has issues on the PS five

as well. Yeah, it's one of those games where you know, we make fun of Dead Island too for being ten years in development or after being announced and finally coming out, but at least they knew that whatever they were fixing needed to be fixed, and Star Wars just refuses again. This happened

with Fallen Order I'm a big fan of girlfriend reviews on YouTube. Go watch their first review of this game and how buggy Fallen Order was and then YenS and I for Chapter Select like a year later, played it and it was fantastic, And I think that'll be the same with Jedi A Survivor. It came out in a buggy mess, which you and I, I know, have had many conversations over the years of needing to put a stop to these

developers going ash, you know, we'll we'll just patch it later. We need our money now so we can patch these these broken games so they're playable in a few months. But that's what Star Wars does, and I wasn't too surprised that Jedi Fallen or Jedi Survivor is doing that same thing, and even less surprised that the PC port is broken. Guess what, the PC port is always broken. I'm not going to go full Greg Miller, but by the way, he has been absolutely hilarious. Oh yeah, has gone

total like WWE Wrestler on the full. However, you know what, this is also why I have zero problems with Microsoft buying Activision and then making a lot of those games exclusive, because it's a lot easier to make one game for one system then it is to try to report it to the eight billion different setups that people have. Yeah, yeah, which is why the PC ports always struggle because you know, they work on it on a couple of different machines, I'm sure, just to test it out, but they don't

have every configuration that's not possibly out there. And then people will get their stuff and it's all messed up, so really get fixed. Of course it'll be fine, everyone will calm down. But this is just a typical PC part. It just doesn't work, it, I mean, but I do understand people's being upset. Right, You're paying seventy dollars for this game and it doesn't work on day one when you buy it. That is a very reason to be frustrated, a reason to go get your refund if you want

to whatever. Um, you know, Digital founder we called it the worst triple APC point of twenty twenty thirty too far, and that's something saying something because we have some really bad ones already. I mean, that's the thing is, I don't play this on PC. Mark's PC is not good enough probably anymore to play something like this. But um, you know, even on PS five it has some issues, and I think that says a lot that you guys did a delay earlier in the year to supposedly give this polish

and fix it, and then it wasn't long enough. And I get it. There's uh, you know some devs that that we're talking and they said, look, if you want it to be a perfect your game will never come out because no game ever comes out perfect. There's always an issue, but a lot of games come out where they're workable right where you don't really have most issues. You might have some freak ones here and there, and you get to fix those of the patch, but that's not excessive and this

is not the EA way. The EA way is get it out, get the money, yeah, and then possibly fix it later. There's a reason why as a football fan, I don't remember the last time I bought them Adden, and I will every year download Madden on game Pass eight months after it comes out or whatever, just to try it out. And it's still a mess. It's one of those things where at what point with EA do gamers go, you know what your game comes out, I'm going to wait

a week and see these reviews because EA Dave completely lost my trust. Like I was super excited for the new nc double A game to come out, I am terrified of NCABA Football still being an EA product and it being a complete mess when it comes. Oh but I mean to be fair, I mean Dead Space Freemake works just so, it's not everything. It's just it seems like these big ones that they're really hoping. So we need to make Madden O six. Yeah, and it'll work out well. Add in the

season Madden No. Six that it'll be perfect there that wasn't in there. But yeah, I mean hopefully they're promising a lot of fixes. Hopefully it gets fixed it or later. But this is again why I don't go crazy pre ordering games. Uh day one. I wait until there's reviews. I wait until um I mean obviously, if I had to review the game myself, then obviously I don't have a I can't make the decision that might my issues to be one of the journalists reviewing and telling you whether it's good or

bad. I also have a problem with journalists not pointing out the issues and then giving in an a to the ten anyway, but that's been an issue for a long time with gaming press that we tend to do that. We tend to kind of push aside issues and say, well, I could still

kind of mostly play the game so it didn't affect it. And I understand that you don't want to give a game a six because it looks bad when it's something that they can fix later, but it's still bad for the consumers when it first comes out, and it's not good because they're the ones spending the money. So yeah, just wish sometimes there could be a little bit more honestly on that side of things. But again, U as gamers need to do your research sometimes not get all in the hype cycle and wait,

just wait, Robert, wait on Jelda, sir. Yeah, I mean it's gonna be hilarious when everybody is sitting here complaining about, you know, thirty fps this and Jetta Survivor issues, and then Zelda's gonna come out. It's gonna have some issues running. It's not gonna be thirty fps all the time or nowhere, gonna not gonna be sixty at all. People are gonna be playing the crap out of this, So it's it's hilarious to me. We have all each fights about graphics, graphics, graphics, and this game

is gonna come out. It's do crazy. Let's talk about graphics in a different way, Randy. Both of us own the PSBR one at one time or another. How do you do you have any interest PSVR to know? Because PlayStation doesn't care about the PlayStation VR two, so I'm not going to care about the PlayStation VR two. It came out in February. I don't know, I've seen a single ad or commercial or anything from Sony. It just was like, here you go. It's the same thing if they ever

came out with another handheld. It's like, I absolutely love the day. I don't play a ton of handheld gaming anymore, but when I do, I like playing on the Vita. I thought it felt good. The game just looked really good on there. But PlayStation just did not support it, and they supported the Vita way more than what they are supporting the PlayStation VR two. You put in the notes that this might be coming the stores. I didn't realize it wasn't, just because I have zero interest in it,

and I just right no, thank Yeah. So essentially the two hundred and seventy thousand units that sold so far as only through the PS direct, so the hardest of the hardcore people are the only ones that have seen or touched this. Now it's gonna finally come to stores. I don't know how much.

I do think there's gonna be an increase. I do think there's gonna be a bump and people seeing it and saying, oh, there's And now it puts the VR two in. It has its own controllers, which was my hang up with the first one because I didn't want to buy the move controllers. Uh you know, so like I'm sort of interested. If I had the space, would I consider it. But for me, the price is just five hundred and fifty dollars is a lot, you know for seven

games? Yeah, exactly, for you know, when you can I could just buy the was It the Quest two and get a lot of these same games. Is there gonna be this one killer game that's gonna come to PSBR two and I'm gonna like, oh my god, I don't think so. I just don't think that. Look, there's a lot of VR defenders, and I get that VR is cool technology. We may one day get to be Ready Player one. We may get to that point, but it's not right now, and it doesn't seem to be the thing that a lot of

consumers want. Well, if we ever get you Ready Player one, it won't be Sony hardware that we put on our heads because they just don't care. They don't care about this thing. Yeah, there's somebody in the Sony studios that just bags and bags and they absolutely love VR and they get it to work. And for somebody's like, all right, fine, just release a stupid thing, but we're not going to talk about it ever. It's like some son of a higher up just loves vrs, like all right,

I mean with our own stuff. But they company to themselves, they don't care the same. Sony CFO Hirooki Tooki says that he believes that VR can be one of the largest growth markets in the media entertainment seven for the next you know, five years. What are they've been selling that for like twenty years before that because they have no market there's no and yeah, just of course there's a lot of growth because you have none there, but they just

don't put the effort in. I agree. It's just the thing is like you can't have that same gaming experience in VR because like eventually you want to get that thing off your head, Like I don't want to spend an hour with that thing on my head. I don't. I don't know where Meta thinks that anybody wants to sit in the office with that thing on their head for eight hours. So like that's the thing. It's just this is cool for something to show people to, Like, maybe you have it at a

party. They could play Beat Saver or some kind of family game or whatever that you could put on the TV and then you have the one person wearing the headset or like, but man as a single player, like, let me sit in here and play this for hours and hours. It's not that I just don't think you get enough sales for the be worth it. They are selling. They are stilling a lot of PS five though six million. In the last quarter, they've shipped thirty eight million in total, which is

ridiculous, breaking all the records for all their other consoles. I mean, you know, we both had our PS fives at launched like y where so you know you mentioned Sony with their they're only going to release what seems like the only release in Spider Man this year. They do have a place in Showcase coming true in a few weeks. I mean what do you think they could surprise us with anything. I think some smaller stuff and I guess that

last of us a multiplayer thing now at some point this year too. They could definitely surprise us with some stuff. But I really think that they are building up for next year and as far as a showcase goes, and I'm hoping these numbers prove it to be true. I'm just hoping that this next showcase is basically going. All right, the PS four is finally done. Every game from here on out that we make is PS five only, right.

We suppressed some of the quality of these games so we could put it on the PS four because we knew with all the COVID stuff that it was difficult to get our PS five. But now the numbers show that is not as difficult as it was before. So from here on out, we're PS

five. That's what I'm Yeah, I'm hoping for that too, that we're officially done with PS four, because hey, we bought PS five's for a reason, right, and Fall Fantasy sixteen is showing that that, you know, what could you do with a PS five if you only release it on there, it'll it'll certainly look pretty like I just want to see some games that are that are not only known IP, but new IP as well. What is Sony guy cooking that we that's not some big known franchise. Hopefully

it's not all multiplayers stuff. Hopefully you're still getting some the single players stuff as well. So I'm excited for this showcase that they're coming up, you know, gonna have pretty soon. And that's good that Sony is selling ridiculous numbers fives. It shows people still want the console. Um. Although I don't know if you've seen so, you know, you both of us have kids relatively around the same ages, and you have your you know, younger

daughter as well. Like Minus in a big gamer. She plays roadblocks and things like that. You know, I know Chase plays more stuff like um, I guess that that would be known to us console gamers. But where where is he at with Because I was reading stuff that you know, our generation under us and then our kids they're not big gamers. They're not big

Let me play on my consoles like we are. Chases in a weird mix where a lot of the games he'll play are very multiplayer based and it's just so he can chat with his friends and and play and and and that's fine, but he is recently really gotten into some of the older stuff. I wish I would have recorded this because it was hilarious to me afterwards. But he came into my office and I I'd finally gotten a bunch of older systems hooked up behind me again and and got things going, and he's like,

I really want to learn about these old systems. He's like, well, you know, some people are really into cars, and some people are really into this or that. It's like, I want to get into like video games and know the history of video games. I'm like, absolutely, son, let's go. And I went all right, well, you've been watching

me play the RI four remake and you absolutely like that game. It's like, yeah, well here, And I sat him down with the original Resident Evil for the PlayStation with PlayStation on the PlayStation system and set him up with it and made fun of him because he took Chris, which is the hard mode of that game. He had to pick the guy and we all fall for that back of the time. But I left the room for a little bit and all of a sudden, I hear, oh, all these controls,

Oh, I can't figure this out. Oh, I'm out of m O. I'm out of m alright, just started looting. So he's starting to get into the old classics stuff and we'll see where we go from there. However, Um, some of the accommodations that newer video games have made him a soft gamer. No, I mean that's it's it's the thing. It's it's the accessibility thing that push for hat making things easier for people to

just enjoy, uh, their game. It's not bad, but yeah, it's like you know, when you're used to playing the fortnighte and and all those all those things that are like make AMO available to you like everywhere. Right, Uh, it's it's it's a different experience. Um. You know she's the same way. She sits there on discord, talks to her friends. Uh, they'll play roadblocks together, They'll do it's something they can all

play together. She's not really about doing it by herself. Um, even if they have to watch a show, she has to have her friend there video watching it with her, which is funny. Um, you know, I'm on the mindset of like I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna watch this

thing. Don't bother me, you know, like or or I might put a podcast on and play or something, but it's, um, it's just an interesting thing that I'm like, maybe Microsoft is actually going in the right direction with letting your games be everywhere, because that is what the what generations after us are gonna do. They're not going to sit in front of their TV and play games. They're gonna want to play on their phone. They're gonna want to go to their friend's house. And that's why the switch.

Yeah, you have that Asis roge Ally thing that's about to come out. That's a Steam dec competitor. See, that's the thing that you were talking about. Competition. We need more of that. We need The problem with the seam Deck is it's only being sold by Valve in Valve Store. People are not seeing it. I think if you saw other computer based especially every runs Windows like things that the switch, I think you would get people to

say, oh, I can play games on this thing. And maybe I can't play Mario on it, but I can go on the Steam Store and I can play all these kinds of games Like I think that's that would be amazing if we can get that and get more competition for Nintendo to do. And then also like Nintendo has that of you know, there's that quote by Yamoto of he doesn't know if the switch one games are gonna work with whatever next switch thing that they make, and it's like the PC just has that

library. If those games all work, don't matter, you know. And I mean obviously it seemed decks different because they have to make it work with that. But like I wonder if it would push the Nintendo would be like, oh man, we got to make sure the switch one games work because you're gonna go all people that may not buy the switch too because they can't play the other games. You know. Yeah, I love seeing that.

I hope we get more of these things, whether they're cloud gaming based or they're more used on operating system those, more of those little switch like devices push them to know a bit more because as long as it's PS five and Xbox Stories, that's not bothering them at all. Um. And then just to throw this out there, because we both do things with the PS five this month, Um, we do know we're getting Humanity Day one on May sixteenth if you have extra premium, so if you want, yeah, that's

weird, weird peddle game. Okay, exactly. The one with where You're the dog, following the made by the Tetris Connect people. So but for the essential games, you know, the free games you get every month, you're gonna get Grid Legends, which is a decent racing game that it's made under code Master's banner that he bought, Shivalry two, which was another you know, decent game, and then Descenders, which is like a game where you're on a bike doing stuff. So yeah, some decent stuff. It's

not the big games or whatever crazy stuff. So sometimes they don't put the crazy stuff here, and then they put it in a mid month catalog deal, so which they've been gotten really good with that lately, like the last couple of months, they've been thrown in some heavy hitters. So there's been a lot of times where I'm like, all the so good. I already played it, but that's so good, Yeah, right, might play it again, Like, oh, there's that game that I kind of wanted to

play before. Oh, now it's on here, I might play it actually. So it's interesting. But all of the Doom, Yeah, even the fact they put Doom sixty four in there, it made me like, yeah, exactly everything Doom. And then almost that whole thing was but Doza, I was like, well, Microsoft is really playing trying to play nice right now right putting that on there, So I wonder if it gets pulled next month, right, like, oh yeah, I screwed us, forget it.

So that being said, let's we've talked about some of these things already. Yeah, but you know, just to kind of have this this segment here, what are your hype levels for some of the things that are coming out relatively assume whether it's gaming adjacent or an actual game, most of these are game related because unfortunately, aside from this one thing that we're gonna talk about, most of the gaming stuff is kind of like nebulous. We don't

really know when it's coming out. It's just there right, other than like Witcher three season three, and we know Sonic three's coming out at the end of the year, but that's way down the line. The first thing that we got to see like this week was they showed the first teaser trailer for the Peacock Twisted Metal Show, which has h Anthony Mackee. Uh you know, we're talking about like some known names here, yeah, or Thomas Hayden Church, Nev Campbell. Uh So Samoa Joe's in it, so what?

And they the trailer showed Anthony mackee uh in a in one of the vehicles. He puts on like a that You're My Sunshine song and and starts going down the road shooting stuff. And then they showed Sweet Teeth. I mean, not much to go on there, but like, I'm not the biggest supposed to metal guy, but I did play the game back in the day. July twenty seventh is coming out. What what is your hype level for this? Like one to ten kind of start. Yeah, I'd say six,

which was more than I was expecting. I think, honestly, it being a series and not just a movie works well with Twisted Metal, just for the fact that if you ever played any of those original games, that whoever you beat the game with, you kind of got their backstory and what happened when they won the tournament. So I really think you could set it up where each episode, at least for the first few, is focused on one character and they will interact with others, but we get their backstory and

we get what they would do if they win this Twisted Metal tournament. The fact that Samoa Joe is the body of Sweet Tooth and will Arnette of all people. Is it's the voice of the weirdest combination to me. Like you said, the trailer was not much. There was very much a teaser thing. So I want to see what the show itself is about. But I think again, the fact that it's a series and not a move has me a little bit more interested just because of the they could do it. Yeah,

for sure, I'm the same way. I kind of want to see what they can do with it. We have seen some bad video game series here recently. Yeah, and I hope you know the Wisher has been the one standout or the cyberpunk thing which is an anime. This this looks interesting at least like they definitely nailed a little bit of okay, this is this is supposed to metal right, um, at least the look and getting some of the vibe down. We'll see when the actual show comes out if they

actually it or not. But like you said, that's that's a good preface for it. You could get the backstories of these characters, you get some known actors in there that it will get people to to pay attention and you know, give it a look on Peacocks. So if they can they can nail it, then uh, you know it could be good, right, Um. You know. One I'm also kind of worried about is the Grant Reason movie, which I think is the only one of the movies that may

come out this year. I don't think it's a video game movie. I think it's a it's based on Yeah, it's based on like the guy that you usually played the games and then got put on the team and stuff. Yeah, I look at it more and I shall haven't seen it yet. But that Tetris movie that came out recently on an Apple TV plus or I thought it was good, but I think it doesn't appeal to non gamers. I think it appeals to people that really, but I don't just from the

trailers that I've seen from Tetris, I don't really. I don't think that's a movie that Yans and I will cover because don't think it's more of a documentary kind of a thing. And yeah, a document movie or whatever you want to call it, it's not a a movie or show that's put in that gaming universe. Grant Tres might looked interesting, but it's like I said, I don't really look at that one as in the same vein as some of these other video game adaptation. Yeah, that'll be interesting to see what

they do it, but I agree with you. It's more of like, oh, the game or it turned into a racer, right, not oh, it's something to do with the video game itself. And also, Grant Thrids was so realistic, like how much of it is really it's really just trying to simulate driving is now it'd be hilarious if they were showing all these scenes and in the bottom you said taken from Grand Trismo six gameplay. This was real. I thought, oh my god, we really stepped it up

here. And if they if they use this as a way to sell that game, with how beautiful that thing is, then you know what I'm down for. I'm sure it will give people to be like, oh, yeah, there's a new Grand Trismo on the BS five, I'm gonna buy it. You know, it would not surprise me if they threw it on a PlayStation plus like the month they came, Oh for sure would be would be good if they could actually do that. They good people into it, for

sure. It's actually pretty decent in VR as well from whatever too, So getting into actual games. We talked about this one, but I guess, um, well, no, what, we didn't really give it a grade. Red Fall has literally come out in days. But I know both of us don't care about that. Whether it's thirty fps or sixty or whatever. You do you care about it at all? Have you seen anything for it? No? When they first revealed this game, I had zero interest in

it. The more they showed it this game, I had even less interest in it. Yeah. Again, just because I'm not interested in something doesn't mean it's going to be bad. I hope it turns out to be better than some of these previews have shown. I hope that the fact that it's like thirty fps or whatever people are crying about ends up not being a big factor and it works out well. But it's not a game for me. I'm one of those that I know I'm gonna try it because I like the

aesthetic, I like the world. I like you know, vampire stuff. Um, but my thing is usually arcade games don't five with me. Like I couldn't get it with Definite Loop I tried, and like Dishonored, I tried. I just couldn't. It didn't work for me. Like so I probably I know I'm gonna run into the only thing that helps is a red pole as a shooter, so I you know, I'm better with shooters, but especially probably not. I'm not gonna have friends to play it with.

Even though I know you can play the solo, I probably will wind up dropping it. I'm sure, but I'm gonna give it a shot. But I'm not like I would say and maybe posing on that level Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, which is the game that everybody is waiting on. Both of us are in that same kind of rom of Okay, the first one just wasn't for us. Yeah, and this one is even less for me.

When they came out with that presentation what two three weeks ago now, that really broke down the gameplay of I went, you know what, the people that absolutely love Breath of the Wild, like my son. My son really liked Breath of the Wild, They're gonna absolutely love this game. But to me, some of the stuff that really hurts me was, like you said, I felt like that the world was a little empty. I do am disappointed that we didn't have dungeons, but we have these weird little puzzle things

that were spread throughout the world. Um I hated that my weapons just disintegrated, and they're doing that again. But so that's what they've done. It's like, all right, here's everything that the people that really love Breath of the Wild loved, but now we've made it more, even more intricate, so now you can combine things to make different weapons that will break on you later. And the world now has an upper level and possibly a lower level

with caves and stuff, and we'll see about that stuff. So now the world's even bigger. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Banjo Kazooi Nuts and Bolts version stuff going on there with the Zelda stuff, I get. I think people are actually going to love it. It's one of those games like, um, I almost have Blood Born elden Ring thank You from last year. Where would I argue with somebody that says that was game of the year. Absolutely not. But it's just not my kind of

game, And that's totally fine. That wasn't going to happen here. I like Tears of the Kingdom. If somebody plays it and I pray that it's a ten for ten game for these people and then they go, that's my game in the year and was like, that's great, but not I probably want to so so how about how much is Chase hype He's interested, it'd be and that's the one issue is being in the same household as him.

Now that game possibly could be in my house. I have decided if I'm gonna make that kid use his allowance to buy it though, that's the way that way, But if it ends up in the house, I might give it a try. At that points, like two or three, it's more so just four people like Robert Taylor that loved that first one. I'm more hyped for them. I'm more of a I definitely do enjoy some of the older Zelda's I'm not yeah, Birth of the Wall I was just like two

d's eld is better than three D's Elda. To me, that's fair enough us moving on from there to the next game, Street Fighter six Crazy. It looks so fun being a fan of Maximilian dude and watching some of his stuff and watching some of his content on this I cannot do fighting games like.

The closest to a fighting fighting game that I can get into is either Smash Brothers or the w W two K games, and I don't really consider either of those this kind of classic fighting game with all the crazy combos, and even with those, for the most part, I just smash buttons. So will I play Street Fight or six Maybe at some point if it goes on sale or gets on PlayStation Plus at some point. But it's the same as legend is Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. I think the hype is so

high on it because it looks so damn good. Yeah that I really hope it hits, and I am a little worried without that hub thing that they've created in the little city. But again, watching the beta or whatever with Maximilian dude going around just punching people and it instantly put some you in a fight with them and you create your own characters for it. It's like, you know what, they might have nailed something here, and I really hope it hits. I'm the same way. I'm not. I can't really do

finding games. I did like that or Alive was a big finding game that I liked, and so Caliber as well, where two finding games that I back in the day would always buy or play. But when it comes to Street Fighter, you know, played the two D version as a kid, a lot, obviously, but when it became more intricate and it all of that stuff, when it went to three D, I was kind of like,

yeah, I think I'm kind of out there. But the actual story mode thing, the world mode thing, like you, it looks interesting. I played some of the demo. That stuff is fun. Just going there getting a fight with the people, It's just I don't wanna. I know, I'm gonna probably like I will go and play the story mode and stuff, but I'm not gonna go and and play that and go fight people online

where I'm gonna die and instantly. You know, for all these people that that trained forever to be in tournaments for this thing there, that's to the community. I'm sure it's super hyped for that. This is gonna be a big game. I'm sure that Capcom's gonna be making a lot of money off that and have another win on their hands. Absolutely, kudos to them. Diablo four you talked about you know, you sure you're probably gonna play it, not at launch, but yeah in six months. I always say my

hype is seven or eight. I'll let everyone else be the beta testers. Yeah, yes, there's been a beta and they've done all this stuff that's not really a beta yet until you fully put it out there. So I will let everyone else beta test this thing for me, and in six months or so, when a couple of my friends who were way into this Diablo series have found every knook and cranny and or replaying it for the fifth time,

I will I'll give it a shot. I know Mark will definitely be playing the Sunday one, whether it's a review code or he buys it. He's already leveled out the beta and everything he loves Diablo, so I know we're gonna be talking about on the podcast. I don't know. I'll have to play that beta that ironically is comes out the same weekend as Tears of the Kingdom. Once I play that, I'll see how it goes. I like Diabblo a lot, It's just the Alblo is one that I've always like

associated with having a friend to play it with or whatever. So if I can get Mark to play with me, maybe i'll I'll put it down on the first day or not first day, but like within the early release month. But like you, it might be something that you know, in three or four months I might look at and go Oh, you know what, maybe it's the Ablow time, but that's another game that it looks like it's

gonna be great. And kudos the Blizzard. They need to win right now with all of the other stuff that's been going on with them and all the kind of stuff that is kind of like the rest of the stuff that they make because it's exists, but it just exists, right They need something that's like, oh, people are playing this right now and enjoying it. I think this is the first test of people's morale systems. Like we've seen so many people go, I'm never going to buy an Activision Blizzard game again.

Yeah, well, let's see what happens when Diablo comes out and how many of those will be streaming it. Oh, yeah, they're gonna buy it because you know the thing is like Devil two Resurrection. That's fine, but that's for the people that like have nostalgia for that. I overwatched two was not what they wanted it to be. You know, Mark was very disappointed

in it. So this is the first game that's like, this is brand new, like this is what you've been waiting for when it comes to Blizzard, and hopefully it it nails it for those people, and then of course the one that's gonna appeal to both of us here for sure, probably our most hyped yes game of the year, unless they end up releasing Rebirth this year. Uh Fallow Fantasy sixteen. UM. Me and Mark had a big debate about He wasn't a big fan of what they've done with it, Um,

as far as it's over the top. So I mean, how how do you feel about that? Like, it's it's more that make crime more acually, it's not to me, especially watching that that longer video that they came out with with all the different systems and hunts and all that stuff. To me, you're right, it's Devil May Cry meets Final Fantasy twelve, right, and not only just the aesthetic of it, but with it with the different jobs you can go out to, different hunts that you can go

out into. From everything I've seen, it's like the main mission if you go straight through it as a decent leath, But there's so much stuff to do sidewise that will completely derail me. Because while I have said that, I wasn't into Breadth of the Wild because it didn't lead me in any direction when there's ninety seven question marks on a map, say which or three? I never leave the main area because I have to get rid of all the

team question marks. So this is a game that I feel like most people will be talking about the end game, and I'm sitting there, like thirty hours in just still early on just chapter two yet because I haven't completed chapter two. But boy, have I completed seventeen hunts and done all this extra

side stuff. I'm very hyped on it. I do think that out of the games that I was hyped for that I knew were coming out this year, this has the greatest chance of disappointing because it is so overhyped, and it is one of those games that was supposed to come out years ago and has been around forever, and I think that they've put maybe too much into it, So we will see how it ends up going in plus with the different battle system and stuff, maybe it'll just end up being one where I'm

not into it as much as I had hoped. But no, I'm absolutely psyched, and I will go against my better judgment and probably get this Day one. Is Yeah, definitely gonna get this Day one, just because it's final fancy. You know, the only other game I've bought this year that thankfully that I haven't gotten to review is The Rhythm or theat Rhythm. You know you love that you I'm moose. I've done all the quests, I've done all of the crazy crap that they want me to do. I've done

the Endless World. I just have to go through and kill more enemies because you have to kill like five thousand enemies. I'm at like, oh wow. And instead of you could play the what a Price of Freedom song from Crisis Core. Yeah, because you can kill like thirty people in that song. But instead of playing that over and over, I'm just kind of waiting

for deals. So the new DLC will hit and I'll play those four or five songs they hit, and then if I still have not reached said trophy by the time all the DLC comes out later this year, then I'll cheeze a little bit. You think that they'll I think that there's gonna be sixteen DLC that comes. That'd be really cool. I mean, it wasn't part of the roadmap, but it would be really cool if they add I'm hoping

that there's some to add content and stuff like that. Like, you know, I like the little you know, the the last three DS one had like this elongated quest thing where it went through these It's kind of similar to the ones that are there now, but it kind of felt more like you're going through this like labyrinth of Oh, here's just all these different ones that you can pick from, and that here's just not pick one of three. Yeah, right now now you have to do this song now, all right,

now you get one of two. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, I'm fama has sixteen is the one that just look, I'm not the biggest I want to say, the Olmacraft fan, but I do like the action combat, you know, like that was in seven. Um. The my thing is I worry with the enemies that they showed in that longer version. If it takes me five minutes to kill every single enemy that shows up, I'm gonna get pissed. Yea, yeah, like I don't want to

like. Stranger's Paradise is actually really good as well. It has some of that Dark Souls kind of combat or whatever, but it doesn't take forever to kill something. You know, you can get overpowered and and kill stuff like I'm just hoping that it's something that you were just fighting some of the like mini boss enemies, you know, tougher enemies, and there is some of the enemies you're just gonna go whack bam, goodbye and go move on to

the next thing. And it's not like everything has to be this elongated battle because that's gonna wear on you. Honestly hope the story hits I like fifteen more than a lot of people, though, I really do need to go back and play it now that they have the the one version out where they fixed a lot of the issues that we all had with it, But I wish they would have been able to complete that though. It sucks that. Yeah. So I mean that story obviously did not hit very well. Thirteen

I thought was very very bad, right. I know a lot of people thought, oh it was linear as all hell. It's like most of those file fantasies at the time, like go back and play Fall Fascy ten is just as linear. Yeah, the story in ten was so much better.

I just couldn't get it to any of the characters in thirteen. Twelve I thought had a very interesting, old schoolly kind of a story to it, and of course from ten on they were really they were hitting their their peak, you know, that's that six seven, eight, nine ten range.

The stories were there. So I'm hoping that this is not what we've gotten from Final Fantasy over the last few iterations, whereas way over the top graphics and beautiful scenes and we completely forgot about an actual story because it's one of those we We've said it before. How many times was Final Fantasy like the top notch as far as graphics go, and or the cut scenes ridiculous? And I think Square Enix went, oh, that's what they want from us.

They don't care about the story part. They just want these over the top yeah action things and yeah, so I'm opening the story nails, I really really do. And then, like you said, and then we wait for Rebirth. Yeah, I do about the icon fights too, Like are they stuff you're just gonna walk in? And you know, quick time event and it seems like each one's like a different type of gameplay, which I think will keep it fast. But I do have to say, I think

we see Rebirth at the PlayStation choke. I really hope so as well. I hope that that's why we haven't heard anything about it. I don't think we see a lot of it. I don't think we get a date by any Yes, but I mean we've seen I've seen that will happen very at the very beginning of that. But I would like to start now seeing a little bit more. Yeah, I hope we uh we get a little about

the Ever crisis as well. I'm still kind of I know it's on your phone or whatever, but it still looks awesome and so sure, all right, Well that's it for that, and I think that's it for the show this week, just to kind of because we always do this here, what what games are coming out in this week ahead, And of course we talked about Redfall already. That's the big game that's coming. You can go get it on game Pass, PC, game Pass or just you can go buy

it as well. And then there's also another game coming called raven Lock that's coming to game Pass. That's maybe the City was made Echo Generation, which that was a really fun indie game that kind of felt very eighties. So yeah, definitely go check that out as well. That's coming on on the fourth. So yeah, there's not a whole lot coming at the beginning of

the month. Really, that's that's worth noting. But those two games are pretty good, and I mean hopefully Redfall is a hit for some people, regardless of what you care about, what fps it plays, that or uh. But yeah, you know, whether you're playing those games, you're playing something else. Enjoy your gaming. Thank you Rainy so much for being on this week mark. Hope you feel better man and they recuperate soon, and we'll see y'all later.