Coming up on today's show, Call of Duty next happen and the world has a new look at Black Ops 6 Plus Nintendo had another showcase for Indies and Partners. Lots of Game News! Welcome to another episode of The What's Good Games Podcast! Your source of video game news, commentary, analysis and funny stuff every Friday. I'm one of your host, Andrea Rene, hanging on via Thread. Everybody. It's been stressful! This is Rene from Manual Paneas here.
I understand the stress. I recently survived a cricket attack in my own home. Oh my god! So I get where you're coming from. A Cricket attack? Well, I had to dive into that in just a second. And Brittany Brombacher is here. Hello! Wow, I don't know if that was all about. Hi! Hello. I was very little raspy. Flummy. It was flimmy. I think it was from Laughing so hard. I've found as I get older, the more I laugh, the more flim I produce.
I'm not really pleased with this new direction in my life, but it's my only body. I take care of it flim and all. Yeah, you gotta get on that saline rinse train. Oh, people but shut up their nose and like comes out their eyes and then their ass and then their butt. Oh, I know I'm good. No, no. It comes out the other side of your nose. That's the way that works. I don't know. It's probably coming out other holes you just can't show you. I don't trust the process.
You also don't have to use so much that you're rinsing it out. I personally only get the disposable ones. That's a very valentine to lose your shit off. I don't trust the process. I don't trust the process with the nitty-pots where you have to mix it yourself. I don't mess with that. No, thank you. No, I just buy the pre-made sterile ones. Costco's got the best price. Boom, done. Well, you do it. You let me know how it goes. Let me know if you leak anywhere else.
Okay, I'll report back. So weird. Welcome to the show everybody, whether it's your first episode or your weirdest 380 first episode ever. We're glad that you are here. Last week was Gamescom and there was a bunch of news and we're going to talk about some of it in just a minute. But I want to say thank you to this month's super producer as Faris the Tia, a punctified in Joshua Franklin.
And thank you to everybody who is supporting us at supercast.com. We are excited for this weekend because it's Pax West and we've been talking about our big party, our farewell event with our friends at Square Unix and Life is Strange. We're going to talk about that in a little bit as well. But Courtney, we have another wonderful 5-star review. We do and this comes from Carlos Sif and Carlos. I'm going to hold your hand after I read this comment because Carlos's comment is,
I've just started to listen to your podcast, but I love it already. I like your relaxed and happy style. It's different from any other video game podcast that I have listened to you. Keep up the good work. Well, Carlos, we are not keeping up that good work motherfucker. I'm just bitch. Carlos, I'm sure you're a wonderful person. I'm sorry if we're getting so aggressive on you.
Thank you for listening to the show. I kid, we always appreciate the kind words and we appreciate the positive reviews. Thank you so much. But yeah, you know what the good news is? Is there something about what? 300 and like 86 episodes for you to listen to and all of a sudden done? I think there's over 400 if you include every special episode we've ever done that's in the feed. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of content.
Yeah, we're, we're Sunsetting the Show friend September 20th, Anthropial last episode, but like I said, lots of fun content for you to go back to you. And you go back and watch all the old ones and tell us how wrong we were about everything. And that should keep you busy for a while. But thank you so much to everybody who has left us a 5-star review.
It means so much to us and our show and to everybody who has been sending messages. They are incredibly kind and I love hearing your stories about how the show has impacted you and your life. So if you have something you'd like to share with us, please do reach out at contact at what'sgoodgames.com. We love hearing from you guys. All right, Brits. Yeah, I know we didn't put this in the rundown because it literally was posted an hour before we started recording the show.
And then you've already done your speculation on it, but we now officially have an RGG showcase happening. Yes, I don't even do any speculations. Like you said, I've already kicked that dead horse a million times. But yeah, we are getting a showcase on September 20th. Timing could be a little bit more optimal. It's going to be at 3 a.m. Pacific, but you bet your sweet summer ass. I'm drinking my ass out of bed and I'm watching that shit on the PC.
You bet it because we are announcing their next game. That is when it will be announced. And so it just makes me happy obviously because it's like a new game. But also, because I have one more game to talk about on the show in some way, shape or form. I'll be able to gush and lose my liquids at it. Oh my god, I cannot believe I just said that. I'm very excited. I'm thrilled. I'm very, very thrilled.
That's just what I expect from you now. Like I don't, is there another way for Brittany to be? I don't, I don't think so. I think that's just it. Yeah, even from me, I feel like that was like half an inch too far. But it's fine. You said it, not me. Okay, continuing on. This is probably going to be mostly the Brit show because... Fuckin' go. Nintendo had a double direct where they talked about Indies and partner games.
And there was so many deep cuts that were in my Twitter timeline from people in the industry. I know about people being excited about very different things that were announced and all of them were like, I love this small title that means something to me from like 20 years ago. That's me, I'm that person. No, this was an incredible, I mean for me, I mean there's so much here I could spend hours talking.
But we don't have that kind of time. So yeah, this was an indie partner or an indie world showcase, excuse me. And then a partner showcase in one. So we got 40 minutes of stuff, so much to like break down and talk about. Obviously the first one I want to talk about is the fact that we're getting Yakuza Kiwami on the fucking switch, which is just like, it's just how they ended the show. I'm glad the world is finally waking up to the amazingness that are my hot, hot husbands.
And it's coming out October 24th, which is the same day that the Amazon TV series is coming out. So I think that is perfect. That's phenomenal. I do wish that they had paired it with Yakuza Zero, but again, because the focus of the show will be on Kiwami. That makes the most sense. I think the last time Yakuza was on a Nintendo console was in like 2013 with the Wii U. So it's been, and that was only in Japan. So it's been a hot minute. So welcome back.
I'm very thrilled that this is going to be in my switch so I can just pick that bitch up and take it with me anywhere. Also, it's on the steam, but I like the portability of like putting on the little talk and playing on my TV, and then playing it in my dark corner in my house. But it's just me and my husband's. And you know, I mean the closet got the blankets going and I like to handle very exciting news, very, very thrilled to see.
I don't know how it's going to run, but it doesn't even fucking matter. It's just going to be there. Look at this. Look at them. Oh my God. I just love them so much. I love this trailer. And I'm very, very interested to see how well this is going to perform on the switch. Obviously, folks like me are going to buy it because like, yo, it's Yakuza. And what if they make a physical addition? Oh my God, that would be amazing.
But how the tie-in is going to do with the TV series. So we will find out and we will see. But that to me is a very, very exciting announcement. Again, I can talk about my voice. Okay. Next one though, Bri, I know you were thrilled about this in Andrew. I'm sure you are too. Tetris celebrates 40 years in a new collection. So it is called Tetris forever. It is a new collection. And it is described as an interactive museum.
And features a variety of different games like 1988. Famicom's version of Tetris. Super boneless. Super Tetris too and boneless. Tetris battle gated. And this is like Kingdom Hearts bullshit. I can't keep up with this. But I'm sure it's just someone out there. It means a lot. It comes out sometime later this year. And this is the exciting part.
Apparently, according to the folks that get off with Tetris, Tetris time warp, which is a brand new game that jumps between gameplay styles from across the series. Many eras. It seems like a pretty cool remix of a classic game. We all know and love. According to I.J. and Ducks. Bri, you stoked. I'm stoked. I'm in excuse to play Tetris. You know, I'm always down for a plus. You know, the switch is the place where it feels right to play it right now.
Like I have a switch light. It's smaller. It gives me the closest vibes I could get to my old Game Boy days, which you know, I played so much Tetris on my Game Boy. So I'm really excited for this. It's definitely going to be an nostalgia moment for me. Oh, yeah. I'm pumped. I love Tetris. I think I've said that in one of our... I don't know if I was like a secret segment or one of the questions we did a long time ago.
If you could only have one game with you when you're stranded on a desert island. Like what would it be? And I said Tetris. You can literally just play it forever. I don't even remember what I said. Probably some MMO or something. We're going to have to dig that one out of the box. Yeah, dig that one back. That's an old fucking episode. But that's very cool. The other one that I know you all were excited about. He was Bologna Tro's little announcement. They're teaming up with which.
Oh, yeah. I'm pumped. Yeah. So it has... It's collaborating with four different games in the Friends of Jimbo Update. And that is a free update, right? Yes. Yes. For free. Can you believe it? So those games are the Witcher, Vampire Survivors, Day of the Diver, and Among Us. So the collections contain theme decks with cards styled after characters from each game, potentially with exciting new effects. For instance, Day of the Diver deck changes the number of cards to fruit.
And the Among Us deck seems to include death animations for playing certain hands. This doesn't really mean lots of things. Again, I haven't played it. You all have explained it to me. But how excited are you for this? I think this is just such a fun and light-hearted collaboration. And the fact that it's free is great. Because in my mind, I'm like, they easily could have sold this and people would buy it. Because the game, like Bologna, was already cheap. And it's so good.
But I also understand that once they start to sell something like this, then they have to get into licensing deals and royalty splits and all that stuff. And it sounds like, you know, with the teams that they worked with on this, that it was more of like a friendly like, hey, we all work in the indie space. I guess technically, you know, CD Projekt Red is an indie, I guess. But they're independent. I guess we don't aren't going to get into that whole discussion now.
But I just like this that it's fun. And it's just like a really nice, like, hey, you get this cool thing for free and it's a way to get back into the game and maybe get some new people to buy it. Which by the way, if you haven't bought Bologna, so good. It's so good. I know, I need to. Don't judge me, Mommy. God, I'm trying. Just do it already. It's just so perfect on Steam Deck. I miss. Or on Switch, which is what we're talking about here. Like both of those platforms are great for this game.
So the next few games that I'm going to talk about are Brit-Ask Games. And you're doing worry about pulling footage because I'm going to wrap it far through these bitches, save yourself. You got it. You got it. Okay. Oh my God. Okay. So the other one that's really interesting is this was revealed during a sizzle reel is that we got Legend of Heroes, Trails in the Sky, the first. And that is a long ass title. So there is a series of games that I've always wanted to play.
And that is the Legend of Heroes games. And I think there's like 11, 11 games in the series. And there's multiple articles and discussions online about, oh, you know, like what order should I play these in? And everyone has their own different opinions. But the one thing that I think everyone agrees on is the correct order to play these games as you start with Trails in the Sky. And that right now is only on Steam. I believe it is also on PSP, but, haha.
So it's actually one of the reasons why I got a Steam Deck. Because I wanted to play the Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky, the first one. Now apparently they're remaking the first one entirely into this like really cool 3D looking ass game or before it was more like top down in 2D. So for those that love this series, this is a really big deal. This is exciting to me because now this maybe this will be like the thing that actually gets me to get into this series. But again, it's 11 games.
It's a big old ass GRPG series. So rip me and rip my time that I that I that I don't have. So that was really cool. The other one is that we got and I'm going to pronounce this incorrectly. So whatever. So I'm looking care of Sukiden 1 and 2. I think some people pronounce this week and HD remasters were getting them in March 2025. Which is like, I'm glad that it's not this year because I would never get to it anyway. Anywho one of my grandma's all time favorite PS1 games.
And it's a game that I have tried to get into multiple times. Just didn't get into exhaust to into party and then drink and when I was in my 20s. You know what I mean? My early 20s. So I never really actually sat down and played them when I actually tried to like spend time with these games for the first time. Maybe I can I think this looks fantastic again. Like it's a really important franchise to my grandma. So to me, I feel like I need to play this and experience it myself.
Yes, very, very exciting. Roon Factory, fucking Roon Factory game. I mean, we've known about this one, but we got confirmation that's coming to switch. It's coming in 2025. We got a bunch more looks at it and the different sort of things you can do in it. Again, like all the hot has bandos like let's fucking go. I'm just really excited. Sounds like there's going to be town building. Oh my god. And then a bunch of other shit. Don't need to go into that. Capcom got a fighting collection.
Capcom fighting collection 2. Arrived in 2025 over eight games or maybe it's just eight games. Saw a lot of people getting hard over this. Not my thing, but I'm thrilled for all of you. And then Power Wash Simulator is partnering with Shrek. I mean, why not? Why the fuck not? Is there any IP partnering with Shrek? There was another game that was announced actually that you want to talk about. It's called Date Everything. Have you all heard of this?
Yes. We first saw this earlier this year, didn't we? I think we I think so. It looks familiar. The dating game I remember talking about recently was when Sarah was honest. She was talking about buildings. Like you could date building. Ah, the building. Yes. That was the one I'm thinking of, I think. Okay, so maybe we've heard about date everything before I thought. I thought we had. I don't know if it was just announced. I don't know.
But essentially it is a sandbox dating sim and it takes place in your home featuring 100 fully voice acted dateable characters. Let the romance flow between your bed, smoke alarm, and your overwhelming sense of existential dread. Like what is this? This is absolutely wild to me. But essentially, yeah, like you get these pair of glasses that show up at your front door. You put them on and it turns all of your inanimate household objects into things you can date. I don't know if you can bang them.
I'm assuming you can because the game is emrated for sexual new windows and sexual references. So like probably. But yeah, like there was a vacuum cleaner and you put your glasses on them and he turns into a very attractive man named Hoov. Like Hoovr. And I'm kind of like, okay, I'm tempted. I'm tempted to try it out, but over 100 things to date and struggle. Like I can barely manage my own emotions little and 100 inanimate objects. So I feel a little boyfriend dungeon in that way, right?
Where you're like dating your weapons? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting though, very. You know what? Points for creativity. You know, how can we get 100 people dateable in one area, one space? So we don't have to you know animate and then whole last town make it all household objects. So you never have to leave your house smart. Exactly. Anyhow, those are my highlights. There was a lot more obviously, but that's what got me hot and bothered and this is my fucking show. So it is your fucking show.
Yeah, no, those were those were great highlights. It's probably very similar to everything I would have highlighted. I'm just like scrolling through this list of trailers being like, what would be like the other thing? I guess the one call out that I should probably show everybody was the one that punctified was like, where is Andrea's thoughts on Peglin? So this is a game that is giving me more round guard vibes than actual Peggle vibes.
But it does, I mean, you can see the Peggle inspiration as well. But there's clearly more going on here than just doing the shooting of like the little ball that bounces off of all of the points on each of these different levels. But it's got this cute little like eat that 16-bit art style and it looks very much like a game that I'm going to be real. I probably would have ignored this game if it wasn't for like the Peggle like mechanics.
Because the games I've said this before and I'm not sure why but games with this art style just don't do it for me visually and I think it's because I just like some of the cool new innovative stuff that's being done. But I absolutely understand that there's a giant market for this art and there's a lot of people who love that retro style.
And there's a lot of teams that use it because it's way more affordable for Oundi teams to do art in this kind of style than it is to do a lot of different kinds of animations. But that said, I feel like I got to try it now. Yes, I think you do too. What else am I going to play? What else? A bunch of other stuff. A bunch of stuff. But it looks really cute. So thanks, Punctified, for calling that to my intention.
Because I probably would have missed that and then it would have come out and would have been like where did this game come from? And then everyone would have been like, the Nintendo indie showcase. Yeah, that's what I get. And the other big piece of news we'll talk about in just one moment. But first we're going to take our quick ad break, the first of the show. We'll be right back. This episode of What's Good Games is brought to you by Square Enix and Life is Strange Double Exposure.
Join me, Britt and Rihanna and the developers from Decline in Seattle this weekend at Pax West 2024 for the What's Good Games Faroil Party presented by Life is Strange. After years of incredible gaming discussions and adventures, it's time to say goodbye as we close the chapter on the What's Good Games podcast.
Sad, I know, but don't worry, we still got a couple of weeks to go everybody. To mark this momentous and special occasion, we're throwing an epic Faroil Party in collaboration with the immersive universe of Life is Strange Double Exposure. Journey back to the town of Arcadia Bay with the ordinary meets extraordinary. This time it's more than just a game. It's a journey between timelines. Max Kauffield returns in a story about a young photographer with the power to manipulate time.
But every action has a consequence, every choice, a ripple. And this time the stakes are even higher. Double Exposure gives you the chance to read the story you thought you knew with new twists, deeper connections, and the haunting realization that sometimes to save the future you must confront the past.
Whether you're a longtime fan of our podcast or maybe you're a newcomer eager to explore the world of Life is Strange Double Exposure, this is a night you won't want to miss, enjoy free snacks and giveaways, snap selfies to post on our Polaroid photo wall, and wear Life is Strange or WGG gear for your chance to win exclusive prizes and who knows? Sounds like a hot dog man.
It's going to be making an appearance of everybody. So join us on Saturday, August 31st for a Faroil Party that's as unpredictable and heartfelt as a Life is Strange storyline mixed with the infectious enthusiasm of our show What's Good Games. Follow at Life is Strange on X or the app formerly known as Twitter for more details about the event or you could of course go to our account as well, What's Good underscore Games,
and head on over to squaringx.com to learn more about Life is Strange Double Exposure. See you in Seattle everybody. Let's continue with the other major news story of the week and that's all about Call of Duty next. We have a deep dive into what is coming in a Call of Duty Black Ops 6 and boy, it was a doozy of an event.
Rihanna, you watched the entire thing and took some studious notes. I did. I have a whole Google keep. I like how we got that flare on the end of that notes. So, Blop 6 everyone. I'll do this quickly because everybody knows what this game is. Right? Let's call of duty. We are getting some Pew Pues. We're getting some Omni movement. There it is.
Which is my new favorite thing. But we got to see it in action. So, Call of Duty folks invited 250 creators to come and play live in Washington DC and they did all kinds of exposés with the developers about multiplayer. They talked about prestigious. They talked about weapons. They talked about zombies, which I'll get to at the very end because that's definitely an exclamation point for me.
So, I'll do what I can to summarize at high levels. So, we're getting all of the typical prestige stuff and then also second level prestige for anybody who wants to master. There's a really cool thing that they're doing with weapons loadouts where they actually move with you from game mode to game mode. If you've played Call of Duty recently, you'll know that you have to make your own weapon loadout for multiplayer.
And then a separate set of weapons loadouts for zombies. And it's not fun. Now they follow you from each game mode to game modes. That's huge improvement there. There's some really interesting things they're doing with the natural interpretation of what you're trying to do as a character moving through the space.
So, I think they're calling it intelligent movement. And there are three different settings that you can add to your settings menu to determine if you want to sprint automatically, mental automatically, or I think, is it like drop or mount automatically, something like that. But essentially, as you can imagine, you're running through a place base and you're pressing down the thumb stick to sprint or you're running up to a ledge and you press a to mantle, I play an Xbox.
So, instead of clicking those three or four times, you're actually just going to naturally move. The character will just sprint if you're pressing further up on the thumb stick or it will just mantle if you're at a ridge and then you press forward again. So, you don't have to click as many times and for somebody who has old gamer hands, I'm really excited to try to try the sound and see if it helps me play longer because that's definitely something that can wear on your body.
And especially for high level players who can really fine tune this. I'm interested to see which player styles favor the high level of fidelity and control versus the ones who go for the convenience and maybe even find new ways to manipulate that intelligent movement system in their favor.
So, that's really cool new thing. Omni movement is meant for all skill levels. The people playing it kept saying over and over, it feels so natural. It's so natural. It comes so naturally. It's very straightforward. It feels familiar. And if for anybody who thinks like jumping backwards out of a window looks unnatural, don't worry. It's going to feel better than it looks like it will feel.
They also have an Omni movement training course that you can use to test out all of this stuff, both Omni movement and the intelligent movement system settings. So, you have opportunities to try it out before you go and get your ass kicked in multiplayer. Also, ranked mode is coming out during season one. So, there's split in that player where he's early sweats. Get ready. Get your sweat bands out.
They're also going back to the classic three lane maps, which were a big fan of there are some favorite maps returning from previous black ops. They were very coy about it. But I'm sure if you've played any black ops before you can guess which ones strike mode is coming in where you can do face off modes and smaller maps.
This is going to be basically all the doors and windows closed off to the maps that are in the score six V6 playlist, but you just get a tighter play space. If you're just really trying to prove something to somebody, I guess you go into that core face off playlist. You can do executions like usual, but you could also choose to take a hostage and make them a meat shield instead.
Very fun. Very fun. Very embarrassing. Oh, no, it's like, oh, no, they got me. I was camping and they feel me. How embarrassing. You just go like, oh, everyone to see.
People are going to be so mad. Another quality of life thing that I think is really, really dope in the accessibility spaces. You can actually move the elements of your UI on some of them on your your HUD. So let's say the map is always on the top left, but maybe your stream setup you want to put your camera up there or maybe your right eye dominant and you have difficulty seeing in the blind spot there.
You can move the map to the top right instead. So there's some really interesting things that they've done with customization in this new iteration of of multiplayer, especially, but just all across black ops six that I think are really thoughtful and just things we haven't seen multiplayer game really iterate on before. So very exciting stuff.
I could get in a ways about like weapon skins and stuff, but you know, like they're going to do a bunch of collaborations. We know what that looks like. The zombies trailer has dropped. There's a new map. So we have two maps. We've already seen terminus, but this new one, it's called Liberty Falls and it's giving keynote or Totten vibes like it's it's continuing the storyline.
You're going to see the dark aether storyline come through and move forward. So if you've played Cold Wars zombies, that's the best way to probably get caught up on the story or just watch some videos because that stuff is really hard to figure out. Yeah, the story in zombies is very, very vast and very dense. I think like there's some recap videos, but much like me trying to get caught up on what was happening on Love Island ahead of the reunion.
All of the recap videos are like an hour long or more. If you're looking for like a fast recap, like probably finding like cliff notes, like typed version, like that you read is probably better than trying to find an actual video. We need a Vati breakdown. The dark aether storyline is going to keep moving forward. We're seeing the origin story of the character if you were recognized from before the replacer.
This guy is a big bianny, but apparently he's been wronged in his life before too. Some bad happen to his family. We get some shades of gray for the character motivations of a person who used to fight against and now we're thinking of them in a new light. Anything that you're going to be doing in Liberty Falls is going to be handled by the head of Janice Security Blanchard, who is your handler in that environment.
But it's running concurrent to the story and timeline in the terminus map. So there's two different teams that you're playing as one terminus map and the other in Liberty Falls, which is like I said, hometown USA 1991, like you're playing around in comic book shops and there's a bowling alley and it feels very familiar and very fun and Americana.
But what's interesting is that this security handler is trying to salvage what happened in this town because it's basically a failed evacuation and they're trying to salvage with the Canada of the town. Obviously everybody did. Maybe you should have picked a better one. What are these weapons? I'm sorry. The weapons are so cool. The weapons are wild. It'll get to those crawler enemies in a second. But essentially this handler thinks that you're part of their team, but you may not be.
So there's all kinds of interesting like meta storylines going on on top of ether on top of the replace her and Liberty Falls looks wild. I'm probably going to want to play in that one more than terminus. So these little spider things which I don't like. So you can see them crawling around the map. If you don't prioritize them and take them out, they will start eating or consuming the other zombies and they will create an
abomination, which is if you've seen I think a few clips from previous videos, this multi-armed multi-headed multi-leg monster that sucks you in with the tentacle and then tries to eat you with a ribcage mouth. Yeah, that sounds pleasant. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's impressive evil shit. No, because one of those zombies was walking and then one of those little spider things just exploded out of it. It was getting.
Oh, man. Yeah. So there's some some weird new zombie types and new enemy types. We saw in previous terminus map footage that you can actually eventually get an upgrade where you turn into some of the different higher powered zombies.
So they're doing a lot of really cool stuff. Omni movement is part of zombies. So you can of course like jump back flip a window and then shoot at zombies at the same time. And if you have PhD flopper perk on, then you like make a huge explosion when you hit the ground, which is very
fun to see how yeah. And there's a third person mode. So if you're feeling like you're constantly getting attacked from behind, you can switch modes and maybe give yourself a little bit more heads up for those out of site attacks. So it looks fantastic. I'm really excited to get into it.
Obviously this is probably now at the top of my list. Many things have jumped to the top of my list this year, but this is this is fresh. And if you're pre-ordered or if you're in the close beta, that's this weekend. And I am absolutely bringing my X screen to the hotel in Seattle to try to play on the internet. Should be luck. But also you can get into the open beta the week after if you need to wait. So yeah, we'll be playing.
Wow. I love that you love this so much because it's so nasty. It is. We was like, we're talking to me about it because we played a good amount of zombies together. And I love playing zombies with you and Danian. We're absolutely going to play. And then we're talking about the beta. And I was like, girl, I know. I'm not going to sleep. I'm going to just pray that the internet works or I have my phone hotspot.
But there's the next weekend afterwards. So you don't have to wait long to get back into it for sure. Yes. And then the game of course comes out at the end of October. So lots to look forward to with Call of Duty. Black Ops 6. Yes, yes. And they're running content. I think all day today there's like live streams happening and there's going to be lots of creator content coming out.
So I imagine over the next couple of days is going to be a plethora of deep dives and things if you want to go down the Call of Duty rabbit hole. There'll be no shortage of videos for you to watch. So very excited about that. And thank you so much to Activision for sending over codes for us to check out the beta. Looking forward to the Pew Pews for that as well.
That's going to do it for our news blocks for this week. And we are excited to talk about what we've been playing last week. Rihanna and I got to go to an Xbox Gamescom event and get hands on with some games which are going to talk about including upcoming RPG from obsidian about so what
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I'm just enlarged it in the dock. Who did it? It was me. I'm sorry. I thought I would make a different instead of just stretched it. Daniel. Daniel. I'm free. Gregorio. Patrick Lee. Andrea. Noelle Nevada. Omega Buster. Do we reach. Robert. Framering. Steve French. Gary Peck. Justin Foshee. Kelsey Perguess. Gabriel Olifana. And Andrew Cotton. Thank you friends for supporting the show.
We appreciate you and appreciate everybody who has supported the show over the years whether on Patreon or on super cast. Centest tips on Twitch or donations. We appreciate every bit that you have sent our way. And we love you for it. All right. Let's talk about a vow. Thank you to Xbox again for inviting us over to their games comm event. They had a really great setup where they had multiple games that we could try out. But I'm going to be honest.
I spent almost all my time with a vow because I was able to sneak into multiple demos. So thank you to the team at Obsidian for that. I know that this is a game that we've kind of had our eye on for a little while now. But I was always a bit confused what was going on story wise. And I think it was because I did not connect the dots that the story of a vow is set in the Pillars of Eternity Universe. And I was like, oh, got it.
So if you were like me and you were like, what the heck is happening in the lore and the narrative of this game? You got to go to AR and Pillars of Eternity to figure out exactly what the backstory is for all of these folks. But I was less concerned about the story and more concerned about how does it play? Because this is a big RPG from Obsidian, a company that is known for making excellent RPGs. And we were like, so is it going to be fun? And turns out it is fun.
I had a really great time playing. But I also was like, I feel like I've played this game before. So I definitely want to dive into why I felt that way and what was fun about the demo. And some of what I'm looking forward to. And Rihanna, I'm very excited to hear your thoughts as well. During the demo at the event, we had the ability to choose from three classes, Mage, Barbarian, or Ranger.
So I started my first playthrough as a Ranger thinking, well, I don't know if I'm going to have enough time to really learn all of the spells to get good in the short amount of demo time that we had. And I had a pretty fun time plane as the Ranger with the bow. I will say I didn't really care for the double guns because it was these pistol-like weapons, which to me didn't feel like a Ranger kind of a weapon.
And I think I also wanted the Ranger class to feel more like a rogue class than a ranged character. And maybe that's just a me problem. But I wanted to evade in the kind of, I was expecting like a dodge roll situation and I didn't have that as well. And so I kind of was like waiting for this class to feel a specific way. And it didn't end up feeling that way. So I switched pretty quickly over to the Mage class to check that out. Rihanna, did you spend any time with the Ranger class?
I did. I actually only played with Ranger. But I had the benefit of a Devon my shoulder. And I was looking through the menus quite a bit every time I picked something up because I was just curious about it. And so I asked when I picked up a Grimmar. I was like, what is a Grimmar do? Like it's an equipable item. I don't understand. And what he explained is that even as this class, which they're very fluid, there aren't bespoke classes.
If you want to play, you can customize your own play style, your own build. If you want to play with, let's say, a gun in one hand and a Grimmar in the other, you can. And whenever you pull out the Grimmar, a magic spell wheel will pop up when the place of the gun on the other side. So there's ways to kind of combine and mix and match the different classes or the different typical play styles, which I think is really interesting.
But what made the going in as a Ranger and wanting to explore some magic stuff, what made it difficult is that I had the Grimmar, but I didn't actually find the spells in the world yet. And it's almost like finding a weapon and then I have an empty hand. I couldn't put the spell to use because I didn't have the experience or pick up the item. So I enjoyed experimenting as much as I could. At one point, I picked up a sword and tried an sword and a gun.
And that felt kind of cool. It felt very piratey. But yeah, I thought it was interesting that they had these set loadouts ready for us just to try to dial down the experience. You know, the limited time we have in that setting to preview the game. But I almost think it would have been better to let us loose. We know how to play these types of games, right? Like we're fans of these genres. Like you said, Andrea, you know exactly what kind of abilities you want to put on your rogue, right?
Like I wish we had a little bit more flexibility in this demo environment. And I think it would have helped because I've heard from people who have played all three options such as Danny or Blowworth from Easy Allies. They had a ball and they really enjoyed like the mixing and matching aspects. But it just wasn't as easily achieved in that very limited setting.
So I liked the Ranger. I wish I had gone in as a major and tried major plus weapon because then I would have started out with more spells already equipped. Yeah, it's interesting because I think that it's so tough. And I want to caveat that it's incredibly difficult to show a game as extensive as an RPG, as a vowed. It's looking like it will be in a limited time demo that's only an hour. And I got about 90 minutes, so I got a little bit of extra time.
But even that, it's like trying to show a game like Dragon Age or Skyrim or even a game like Elden Ring in just 60 minutes. You're never going to fully understand what you're capable as a player and all of the different options to you. So I want to caveat that they already had their work cut out for them. But I think we all went in going, this is an obsidian game. We have certain expectations for what it's going to feel like.
And I think the reason I was maybe also feeling like a little bit wanting more was because I was looking for something to kind of hook me about either the gameplay, the combat, the traversal or the story. And none of those things hooked me in this demo. The world is beautiful, like the colors were vibrant. I love that you can traverse underwater with swimming and you get to see different things.
And it definitely felt like there was something worth getting when you went exploring an item to pick up or Laura to find. But I think I'm just not as a player looking for that deep RPG experience at this particular point. And I'm not sure what players who are wanting that experience are expecting out of their gameplay experience.
Because essentially if you just want a very typical obsidian RPG in the vein of Fallout New Vegas or in the vein of Outer Worlds or even in the vein of a Skyrim or I think that this game is going to be excellent for you. And I think you're going to really enjoy your time playing this game. But if you're like, that's I'm looking for something more than you might be left wanting a little more.
I mean, I'm looking at these levels and I mean, I'm my pants are getting tight. Like this is 100% like my sort of thing. I'm seeing that they're showing lore and those little scraps of paper you can pick up and read. I guess the question I'd have for you to how long do you play get to play with it total about an hour.
Okay, it might be harder to detect this then. Is there a semblance of like personality or tone with this game so far or was it mostly like you're just kind of walking around shooting things killing things was like. Do you know what is that makes sense? Like was there a personality? It does. Yeah. You know, we got to hear from Kai who is our companion in this quest who was voiced by the same voice actor who does garrist for the last six series, which was incredible.
And Kai has a very specific personality and like a lot of Obsidian games, you could to choose how you play it from a perspective of am I going to make this specific personality choice or this choice when you're in narrative dialogues with other players or other NPCs I should say.
It's very standard RPG in the sense that when you have certain specs or abilities unlocked it gives you additional dialogue options in the dialogue tree to be like well do I want to use this perk to use this line of dialogue instead versus this one.
It's like you can choose to lie to a character or tell them the truth you can choose to help us certain character or choose to withhold the thing that they're asking you to give them and then you're going to have to deal with the consequences of what plays out from that. How that is going to fit into the overall narrative of the game and what the weight of those consequences are of course remains to be seen.
I think that and something that does not an answer to your question Brittany, but something that makes me think of in your response Andrea is the playing an RPG postbolters gate three is just going to feel different right and this is not that this is not
the game play like I put poison on the great and then it goes down into the room below and then everybody passes out it's not that right so if you're thinking it could be that but in the pit pullers return to the world like please adjust your expectations this is a very interesting story there are lots of different directions every conversation can go of course but
you are moving through an environment that is already anticipating what you could possibly do there is still a merchant gameplay there are still choices you absolutely have to make as you you know fight enemies or avoid them or decide to do sneaky takedowns or go and more aggressive or explore this room and maybe you miss a grimoire spell or maybe you get a different weapon if you go open this box that's underwater and you didn't think about it before all of that is still there all of that you know explorative goodness is still there but this is maybe like a little bit of a lighter weight version.
It's not overwhelming and for me boulders gate three was overwhelming so I happen to enjoy this more and I know that that's probably an unpopular reaction I don't think so I think that that's a very valid opinion to have okay thank you thanks for the validation but I found this more approachable honestly I will say that I had a really great time exploring a couple of conversations more than once and finding out like what happens if I lighted this person or what happens if I give them what they're asking for the most important thing that I can do is I can't do that.
So I give them what they're asking for but then destroy the machine they're trying to build or completely like ignore an entire storyline and just keep moving forward and how does the gate react to that really interesting stuff and it also has a really great tip for me where as people are talking in your dialogue encounters there's little terms that pop up on the side that you can choose to expand to remind yourself what the other talking about that so much because like if you put it down for a couple of weeks and you come back you like I have no idea what's going on and it's just like that it's like a little bit of a big deal but I can't do it.
It's going on and it's really convenient like again I don't want to say it's holding my hand but it felt more approachable for me and as somebody who's playing games very limited time and huge breaks in between especially for these
larger experiences this this felt like something I could actually play maybe not finish but play a lot more of and not feel overwhelmed so I really enjoyed the the approach in the tone and especially the quality of life choices that they made and there's still a lot of depth to the impact of what you're doing not just dialogue but also actions did you get to dabble with progression at all no not really no they had several of the menus like locked in the build and I'm guessing that's because they're still doing some like final path
balancing this game did get bumped to February next year which is such a good thing for multiple reasons as we discuss them going head to head with dragon age would just be unfair to everybody and so I'm glad that this is now coming out in this fall them going head to head with dragon age this fall now it's coming out in February 2025 but I think you know what is going to hook people on this game is the
depth of gameplay and the really comprehensive role playing game experience that people expect from obsidian the thing I would love to see is is that obsidian like witty humor in the dialogue options do they have really cookie side characters who just
really like entice me to care about the mundane thing they're asking me to do because then it's going to open up some really fun like hidden path or something like that right I think that's what's so awesome about obsidian as a studio is that they do such interesting narrative work in a genre that is
flooded with great narrative work right where there's a spoil of riches you know in RPGs right now it's like such a great time to be a fan of RPG games but what that means is that there's also really steep competition and I
think the points about us being in a post balder's gate three world are important and we even talked about that extensively last year about how it's not fair to everybody else to compare against what balder's gate three did because the team at larian did something very unique to them and that their team was able to
accomplish in that every game should or can be balder's gate and doesn't need to be right even talking about what we've seen from dragon age the veil guard like that game it looks very different than BG3 but also very unique in its own way and I think the reason why I was left to kind of wanting more is because the combat in particular in this demo just did not feel fun to me felt so I think a part of that was that there is no really good evade mechanic and when
you're playing a character particularly like a mage and you have slower wind up animations from when you're casting spells and you have all of these different spells that you need to you know be comfortable learning and there's just a lot of pieces that you're managing it just all felt a little clunky to me and I hope that there's a way that they can speed up the combat now in the gameplay B roll that they provided
the developer who's playing makes it look really good and fast but it just that that pace of combat never happened for me and maybe that's just onboarding and I need to learn to like get good at the same time like I should be able to at least use the mechanics quickly and feel like I'm competent because it's not like they're reinventing the wheel of RPG combat here so that was just one of my like I wanted the
combat to feel more fun but all the mage spells were like not like quick Diablo style like I fire off all these like fireballs or lightning bolts and it all like happens instantly it's like there's a cool wind up animation they all yeah just take a couple seconds to hit and I was like that's not what I want from a mage class fair I think hearing y'all talk about and seeing the footage
the setting alone is enough to get me to want at least like go into this world I think the piece that's missing for me is like what am I hopping into what's the world what's the narrative because to me that's the most important part right I think about a game like Diablo I know I'm going into a Broody gothic ass like world and I can immerse myself into that and I'm here for anything about you know persona or metaphor refundos you I know I'm getting a game that's
dripping in swag and I you know it's going to go over and be above and beyond so I think that's the part I don't want to go in this world and even though it looks pretty if there's no solar like personality to it it's not going to maintain me so that's the part that I'm kind of like hoping to see more of but sure looks beautiful that looks like my kind of shit yeah I think this game is going to be very popular if they can you know get it across the finish line in the way that they want
but I also think that the reviews or the previews I should say they came out of the games calm event both the one that was here and the one in Germany are very split it's like there are people who are very very happy with what they played and what they saw then there's people who are like kind of all the fans about it yeah I think it depends on what you're looking for honestly and you know we we have a wealth of choices these days so hopefully
enough people will vibe with this and you know build a little community around it and get excited for it I will say it was polished nothing was broken the art looks great the video sounded wonderful the game does not look broken in any way which is fantastic right that's half the battle these days is getting the final build across the finish line and having to be playable for consumers when they actually buy the game and in that
regard the game looks really great and so I think most of what the you know concerns are are purely subjective at least on my end so I hope people who are listening take that and understand that that's where that's coming from that you don't as far as I've seen you don't need to
play this game not playing when you buy it but again they still still have like five months so six months they've got some time yeah all right there was other games at the Xbox Gamecom event Rihanna or any of those ones that you would like to talk about or would you like to talk about something else that you've played I would have had something else yeah all right let's do it I'm a huge fan of a little to the left and I'm as usual late to this game this is one where you're
putting things away in like trays or on desktops or you know things like that and occasionally a cat comes in and swipes things cute but it scratches one of those parts of my brain that just like needs things to be organized just so enjoy this one I played this on the steam deck and this is a little to the left seeing stars is DLC to the original game so in addition to daily tighties which I usually do in the original little to the left this is an
entirely new pack of levels similar to cups and cupboards I think is the one that they had before and this came out a couple months ago but I'm just now getting to it and it's not hitting the same atom sound it's not and I'll say the bad first the bad there's some puzzles that I solved
correctly and then looked at the hint and it told me the solution is what I did and it still didn't work which is one of the most frustrating things in a puzzle game you could encounter and there's also some levels where the solution was just weird it didn't make sense this one the one with the protractors and the pencils that's one that I did it correctly I looked at the hint it matched exactly and it still isn't
so is that more of a bug I think it may be a bug I don't know what it is I don't know if it's a steam deck issue I haven't tried it on the PC to you know compare the two of course you know my game saves across both but there are just some solutions that seem wrong they seem like not as clever as something I thought they were going to do and that's really frustrating me because I adore this game and it's been so intelligent and so delightful and I hope that maybe it's just the first you know
third love the DLC that I've gotten through and perhaps it changes but I think I'm well enough into it to see a pattern that I don't know the magic isn't there for me the way it was before and I'm very disappointed to say that and I hope it gets better and I'm going to keep playing it the good there are some really interesting mechanics that they've added here so there's one level I think it was in the
preview clip that that you just played Andrea where you have a table full of tomogachis and you're trying to figure out what the different patterns could be and one of the things you do I'm just going to spoil it sorry you're figured out fast enough is you can actually press the button on them and it wakes them up and then the screens do things and then you have to make an arrangement or two I think based on what's on the
screens and with your button presses so there's just so many more levels of depth to these puzzles which as I said just a second ago can be frustrating when they don't make sense but when they do it's like oh my god I feel like a genius like I was so back but it's annoying me because in the same puzzle like I'll at one moment feel like I figured out something and I'm a smart person who ever lived and the another moment I'm like why they do that you know and I'm kind of getting a bit of a
whiplash effect so I'm like I said going to keep playing it this this ball wasn't really good there are handful of levels that only have one solution ones like this the plants that have many and some of them don't make sense but at the same time they're they're all still scratching that it's just some of them piss me off on the way there you know what I mean yeah and I'm trying to figure out all like what I would score it I don't know I'm somewhere in the middle space with it but I'm glad I'm
playing it it is still a good time just a little more frustrating than the previous ones which I don't like yeah so yeah I was very excited for this I saw you you were not trapped you had the steam deck power thing plugged in you were set for life I didn't even need my heat my cooling pad on my steam deck for this one yeah I was I was really excited and I still am happy to keep it I don't want to poop it entirely because it does still do what it used to do just not hit in the
same way it was was before that's okay it's okay if it doesn't hit the same way sometimes I'm still in it I'm still in it I'm still down for the next one just you know make it make more sense please that's something I liked it games are so fascinating in that regard because the way people approach puzzles is so different which is why whenever I play a puzzle game so much like I have to play it in a room by myself because if anybody is like watching over my
shoulder trying to tell me how to do it I get really bristly because I'm like I'm going to figure it out by myself and don't need your input until I ask for your input and then please tell me how to fix it because I'm really frustrated I don't know how to solve the puzzle it's 0 to 16 you know it is 16 that's that's the that's the Andrew that's the Andrew puzzle game story that's a good way to do it but I was saying is that's
how I that's why I love unpacking is because you can turn off like the need to have a correct puzzle like solution and you can just throw the shit wherever you want it to go wherever it makes sense for you sometimes that was the floor you know what but the game's going to let me do that and I like that about it yeah I don't know if that kind of would make sense for a little to the left but well you can always click let
it be in the menu and just like oh that's it you don't but you don't get the star and you don't get the thing well literally the same thing one of the puzzle is you got to solve it to get the reward right I need the time to tell me no dopamine for you you want to participate in trophy I do I do I do I'm a little bit worth you love our participation trophies over here amazing amazing I think what's really
exciting about where we're at with games is that there's just a little bit of something for everybody and it's so exciting that there's just non-stop releases and there's always something good to play I mean that's just always what we say every weekend it's true so hopefully you guys have heard these and are excited about something that we've been talking about whether it's from the Nintendo announcements the games come news call of duty coming out and then all of the stuff of course coming
in 2025 the omnimovement 360 prone spins it's really so good like I can't wait I can't wait I love gonna be good I love it all right ladies and gentlemen that is going to do it for our 381 episode shout out to all the end of the episode homies we appreciate you hanging
with us till the end and we were excited to report back from what we see at Hacks West be on the lookout if you are a supercaster or patron for details about the party coming in hot and hopefully we'll see you in Seattle otherwise we'll see you here next week bye everybody you