# Episode 37 - E3 2017

**Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2017-06-18  
**Duration:** 187m 52s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-37

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## Analysis

This is an E3 2017 gaming podcast episode from Eclectic Gamers featuring hosts Tony and Dennis with three guest hosts discussing E3 announcements. The episode includes brief pinball news updates about Highway Pinball (investor takeover, Andrew Heighway departure) and Dutch Pinball (production issues, upcoming webinar), followed by extensive discussion of video game announcements from EA and Microsoft presentations at E3.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Highway Pinball's investor group has taken full legal control; Andrew Heighway is no longer employed by Highway Pinball and his email account is being terminated. — _Dennis reports direct announcement from Andrew Heighway on social media regarding his departure from Highway Pinball employee status._
- [HIGH] Andrew Heighway stated he is not leaving the hobby entirely but is taking a break for the time being. — _Direct quote from Andrew Heighway's social media announcement as reported by Dennis._
- [HIGH] Dutch Pinball will conduct a webinar on Monday, June 19, 2017 to discuss Bagelowski production problems and answer preorder questions. — _Dennis reports direct contact with Dutch Pinball confirming webinar details and noting they are refusing podcast interviews until happier news._
- [HIGH] Dutch Pinball is refusing all podcast interviews at this time. — _Dennis reports this in response to offering Dutch Pinball an interview opportunity._
- [HIGH] Xbox One X will be priced at $499 at launch. — _Microsoft official E3 2017 announcement as discussed by hosts._
- [HIGH] Microsoft has officially stated they are not making money on the Xbox One X at $499 launch price. — _Dennis reports Microsoft's official statement on pricing and profitability._
- [MEDIUM] Only 1-2% of the U.S. population has 4K TVs according to host analysis. — _Dennis provides market analysis on 4K TV adoption rates._

### Notable Quotes

> "Andrew Highway went on to social media and announced that he is no longer in any way affiliated with being sort of an employee status at Highway Pinball."
> — **Dennis**, early in episode
> _Major personnel change at Highway Pinball; founder departure from company_

> "Dutch Pinball is refusing all podcasts at this point and less than until there's happier news to report."
> — **Dennis**, mid-episode
> _Dutch Pinball avoiding media during production crisis; indicates severity of Bagelowski issues_

> "Microsoft does not have the intention for the Xbonex to be the number one selling Xbox console. They expect the S to be."
> — **Dennis**, Xbox section
> _Strategic positioning analysis of Microsoft's console strategy_

> "This is the first time they've actually been able to appeal to that particular demographic [with superior processing power]."
> — **Dennis**, Xbox strategy discussion
> _Analysis of Microsoft's competitive position versus Sony_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Andrew Heighway | person | Founder of Highway Pinball; has departed from employee status after investor group takeover; announced departure on social media |
| Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; primary source for pinball news section |
| Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast |
| Michael Gaberthaler | person | Guest host on Eclectic Gamers; referred to as 'The Gamer Mike'; third appearance on show |
| Eric Hoke | person | Guest host; programmer by trade; provides video game expertise |
| Jacob Windsor | person | Guest host; youngest guest at under 20 years of age |
| Arik Lawson | person | Creative director on Highway Pinball's Alien Pinball; not an employee but aware of investor group involvement |
| Highway Pinball | company | Boutique pinball manufacturer; investor group has taken full legal control; founder Andrew Heighway has departed |
| Dutch Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer facing production problems with Bagelowski game; scheduled webinar for June 19, 2017; avoiding media interviews |
| Electronic Arts (EA) | company | Video game publisher presenting at E3 2017; announced Star Wars Battlefront 2 with free DLC, story mode, and new progression systems |
| Microsoft | company | Console and software company presenting at E3 2017; announced Xbox One X ($499), Xbox One S ($250), and games including Forza Motorsport 7 and State of Decay 2 |
| Xbox One X | product | Microsoft's new high-end console (formerly Project Scorpio); $499 launch price; described as most powerful console; requires 4K TV to fully utilize HDR and 4K features |
| Xbox One S | product | Microsoft console announced at $250 price point; supports HDR; positioned as value option for non-4K TV owners |
| Star Wars Battlefront 2 | game | EA game announced at E3 2017; features story mode, free DLC, new progression system replacing random pickups |
| Forza Motorsport 7 | game | Microsoft racing game featuring Porsche; Windows 10 and Xbox exclusive with likely cross-play support |
| Need for Speed Payback | game | EA racing game announced at E3; features Burnout-style takedown system; compared to Fast and Furious with heist narrative |
| State of Decay 2 | game | Microsoft exclusive zombie survival game; sequel to first game; features base building and character permadeath mechanics; multiplayer integration being refined |
| A Way Out | game | EA co-op only prison escape game; developed by lead designer from Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons; couch co-op focused |
| Pinside | organization | Pinball community forum; discussion thread about Dutch Pinball's production issues mentioned as being difficult to read |
| Phil Spencer | person | Microsoft executive; strategy involves positioning Xbox One S as primary seller while X positions brand as power leader |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Highway Pinball leadership transition and investor takeover, Dutch Pinball production delays and Bagelowski issues, E3 2017 video game announcements and releases
- **Secondary:** Xbox One X hardware specs, pricing, and market positioning, Microsoft gaming strategy and console ecosystem, Racing game market competition (Forza vs Need for Speed vs Gran Turismo)
- **Mentioned:** 4K TV adoption and HDR technology standards

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.55) — Pinball segment shows concern about Dutch Pinball's production crisis and uncertainty about Highway Pinball's future direction under new ownership. Video game segment is generally enthusiastic about E3 announcements but shows some skepticism about racing game competition and console value propositions.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Highway Pinball investor group acquisition completed with full legal authority; previous founder transitioning out (confidence: high) — Dennis confirms all relevant documents are signed and investor group has taken control
- **[event_signal]** Dutch Pinball scheduling webinar to address Bagelowski production problems and answer preorder questions (confidence: high) — Dennis reports scheduled webinar for June 19, 2017 to be recorded and likely dissected on Pinside forum
- **[sentiment_shift]** Dutch Pinball avoiding media/podcast coverage during crisis period, indicating severity of production issues (confidence: high) — Dennis reports Dutch Pinball declined podcast interview, stating they are refusing all podcasts until happier news available
- **[competitive_signal]** Microsoft Xbox One X first time Xbox has superior processing power over PlayStation, positioning as appeal to hardcore technical demographic (confidence: high) — Dennis analyzes Microsoft's strategy: 'This is the first time they've actually been able to appeal to that particular demographic' with superior power
- **[personnel_signal]** Andrew Heighway departing as employee of Highway Pinball following investor group takeover of full legal control (confidence: high) — Dennis reports Heighway's social media announcement of employment termination and email account closure
- **[market_signal]** Microsoft Xbox One X positioned at $499 launch price despite not profitable; Xbox One S discounted to $250 as value alternative (confidence: high) — Dennis reports Microsoft official pricing and statement that they are not making money on X at launch price
- **[business_signal]** Microsoft intentionally positioning Xbox One S as primary volume seller while X serves as technology/power leader for branding purposes (confidence: high) — Dennis explains Phil Spencer's strategy: 'Microsoft does not have the intention for the Xbonex to be the number one selling Xbox console. They expect the S to be.'

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## Transcript

 Welcome to the Collective Gamers Podcast. This is episode 37. It's our E3 special. Today is June 17th. It's a Saturday instead of our normal Sunday. And there's a whole bunch of us here tonight. So, I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we've got three special guest hosts this go-around. So, I guess let's go ahead and I'll introduce them. First, we have, for the third time, most frequent guest host ever, Michael Gaberthaler. The Gamer Mike, as some of you may know him as. So, Mike, welcome back once again to the show. Thanks. It's great to be here again. And then we have Eric Hoke, programmer by trade, gamer by night, coming along to bring us additional expertise in the video game front. So, Eric, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. And at under 20 years of age, our youngest guest together, we have Jacob Windsor. So, Jake, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. All right. We had to have somebody because, you know, the rest of us are all bloody old. Right, yes. And we don't all play on the same system. So I thought as a good sort of intro maybe, in case for Tony and I, we'll be reminding listeners, But just sort of in terms of current generation gaming, what sort of systems you play on would be a good thing. So I guess I'll start and we'll just go around the table. I primarily play on Xbox One at this point and secondarily play on PC. Mike? Oh, I bounce between Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. So very console-oriented. But all current gen, so you're on the cutting edge. Tony? PC Master Race. Yeah. That's exactly what I am. Well, there are a lot of you out there, unfortunately. Lowland in the land. Yes, your hair is so long and beautiful. Eric, what do you play on? I primarily play on Xbox One, also some PC, and Nintendo Switch. Okay, and Jake? I am mainly PC and Xbox One oriented. Okay, so we pretty much cover everything in terms of console and relevant computer gaming. We don't count Macs here. Sorry, but I'm sure all two of our Mac listeners are heard. so other than that before we get going we do have some pinball stuff to go over but before that some show stuff I wanted to note we had announced that we were giving away some new podcast shirts on Facebook so if you don't follow us on Facebook you should really be following us on Facebook I tell you guys that for a reason it was a sort of first come first serve who asked for some so those arrived and most of them have already been sent out so congratulations to Todd S, Dave B, Artie S, Dylan M, Chris L., Michael R., and Eric G., you all will receive shirts, and thanks for listening to the show. So, before we go into E3, I do have a couple of news items for our pinball fans, because we know you guys care, and occasionally you care for us to ensure that we are covering the news. There are two updates, both regarding topics that we covered last episode, which would be highway pinball and Dutch pinball. In the case of Highway Pinball, the investor group has taken control. They do have full legal authority at this point. All the relevant documents are signed. Last night, Andrew Highway went on to social media and announced that he is no longer in any way affiliated with being sort of an employee status at Highway Pinball. He noted that he will not be leaving the hobby entirely, but he is taking a break from it for the time being. I don't know what that really means. But, I mean, but that... I think it means he still wants to go to pinball shows. Yeah, that could make sense. And I'm assuming he probably still has an equity stake in his company, so he would have a vested interest in promoting their products. But even his email account at Highway is being terminated. So you will not be able to, for all intents and purposes, you do not contact him if you want to talk with Highway Pinball. I'm not entirely sure who you contact when you want to talk to Highway Pinball. I reached out to Arik Lawson, who served as the creative director on Alien Pinball, but he's not actually an employee. But I knew he was aware of who was involved in the investor group. To extend our offer, if anyone with Highway, once they gained all this transition was finished, wanted to come onto the show and do an interview, the door is open. And he informed me that he has passed that on. So that's it for Highway. Dutch Pinball. They will be doing a webinar Monday, June 19, 2017, to talk about the Bagelowski production problems and answer questions from those who have preordered. I did contact Dutch Pinball and offer them an opportunity to come onto the show and participate in an interview. They politely declined, said that they are refusing all podcasts at this point and less than until there's happier news to report. I can understand that. I mean, they're already running up against a wall. The last thing they need is something that drags them down even harder. Yeah. I'm not sure what platform they're doing the webinar on, but they did indicate it would be recorded. I think I checked the time. They listed the time from the Netherlands. So I think I did the time zone conversion, and I won't be able to watch the live one anyway. So if I get an opportunity. You're not going to stay up late or wake up early? it's more that I'm at work I think most of it falls into early to mid afternoon times in the US, continental US so anyway so you can't cover up your forum spending time at work to watch a video instead I probably could actually but there are limits and it is on a Monday which is usually my busiest day so I might just have to watch the recorded version or I'm sure it will be dissected to death on Penn's side. So I'll do my best to continue to monitor it. If that thread's even readable. It is. That remains to be seen. However, that's it for pinball. It was lucky for us for E3. I was worried about it. It was an incredibly slow news week on pinball. So let's go into video games, which means E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, for those that don't know what E3 is. We're going to tackle it by manufacturer. God, I'm still in my pinball mode. We're going to tag it by development, publishing studio, major presenter, or major category within E3 itself. So that means we start with EA, which kicked off the event. We're just going to focus in on the things, be they good or bad, that we thought were interesting. So I guess I'll start around the table and start on my left. So, Mike, EA, anything that stood out to you? Well, before I get to the main thing I want to talk about, a few things. They did show the new Need for Speed, which I've played a couple of them in the past, and they're generally okay. The one thing I note about this one is they seem to have almost a burnout-style takedown system in it. They crash into other cars, and since Lord knows we're never going to get another burnout, that kind of piqued my interest, but it's probably not something I would buy day one. New Battle Trip 1 DLC looks pretty good. Yes, Snow Maps. And Night Maps as well. Well, an introduction of the Russian army. And the impression I got was, I think the night maps they're adding for free? I'm not sure. They added a map back late last year that was free. It was outside of the premium service. Right, right. The snow Russian maps, I assume, are all part of premium. Well, I'm not a fan of paid map additions anyway, because it splits the community so bad, and it can make it hard to get games. And EA found that out with Titanfall. Because they really split their community when they started adding the DLC maps. And they ended up releasing all those maps for free because of it. I mean, but you would have thought that was something that had been learned back in the day. Because that was a major Halo problem back in the day. Is that they had lots of paid maps. And, I mean, you and your friends couldn't play. Because you didn't all have the same maps unless you owned all the DLC. Well, it looks like they might have learned that lesson. because the main game I want to talk about, Battlefront 2, all of that DLC they said is going to be free. Yes. I have a hard time hearing EA and free in the same way. Well, lessons may have been learned. So let's, I mean, some quick highlights for listeners about what they said on Star Wars Battlefront 2, which is that the DLC is free, as Mike has noted. There will be a story mode this time, which they super emphasized. They even brought out the lead actress to do the announcement. Well, I had no interest in the first game because it had no story mode. It killed a lot of what will I might have had. I played the demo and I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it enough to think I just wanted to go and play, you know, QQ Star Wars. And they did also know that they're changing how the specials work. They've been random pickups in Battlefront and World 1, and instead they're going to a points progression system. So Halo has done that for a while, where you get your killstreaks or whatever, and you rack up enough points and you use those and buy your cool vehicles and stuff. Well, in this, you know, you buy your Darth Maul instead, and then you win because you're Darth Maul. Eric or Jake, any thoughts on any of this stuff, maybe Battlefield 1 or Battlefront 2 or Need for Speed Payback? We could spend some time on that. Yeah, weird observation on the Need for Speed Payback video, and this is just how my mind works. The opening shot, they're at, like, a gas station, and the price for gas was higher on cash and credit. Really? Yes. I was going to mention that in a little weird detail. Yes. Yeah. I've been burned by the credit being higher than cash before, so you would have thought they would have, if anything, remembered that. Otherwise, the game looks pretty cool. It is very much a Fast and Furious game in another name because you have the crew of characters and you keep switching between them I mean, it's all kind of a heist sort of situation. So that is a more interesting need-for-speed game than they have done previously. Yeah, like with Mike, when I saw the takedowns, it immediately reminded me of Burnout, which I thought was really cool. The look over, I mean, it looked good. Graphically, it looked good. But I guess they're going for more of a movie cinematic angle. That was the sense I got from the trailer, which I suppose maybe they feel they need to. I mean, currently in the arcade racing world, there's Forza Horizon 3, which is the king of all now. And nothing I saw of this graphically other than Forza Motorsport 6, which we'll get to. Seven. Seven. Thank you. Seven. Looks like it's going to measure up to the experience you get with Forza Horizon. So I'm wondering if these games are going to do well, or when you have Forza Horizon 3 continue to be being supported and supported in ways that people are really excited about, like Hot Wheels DLC, so you can play Hot Wheels cars, if that's just too much to overcome. Well, that may be part of the reason why they went the cinematic route, is the, you know, the Forza Horizon games are very much a playground-style setup, where this seems more focused, more direct. Which, I mean, overall, like everything that EA presented, story was kind of the through-line to all of that, is, you know, we got story in your Madden, we got story in your NBA, we got story in your FIFA, we got story in your Battlefront. Notice we didn't spend any time on those games. Yeah. None of us apparently care. I don't know if I've got any of these games. No, you're right. That's like, I've been looking over at the wrong people, so the listeners are probably confused. Jake, you haven't weighed in yet on NBA stuff. Well, mainly I've been trying to find out the sports and stuff like that, too. but they completely dropped their NHL title. EA has not released anything on NHL or any of that. And NBA 18 is literally the same exact thing. From what I've been seeing, videos and everything else, it's been basically the same thing as it's been in past years. I mean, it all looks directly the same. Well, and I know in the NBA they have that issue because 2K has a sizable foothold in that sport, which is one of the... Football and soccer are owned by EA. at this point, that they haven't been able to seize control of basketball. And I imagine after those three, the popularity of the sports titles probably declines pretty rapidly in terms of how many sales they could possibly get, even if they did fully control, say, hockey. But I don't know. The only other EA game I wanted to mention was the one called A Way Out. It's the co-op prison escape game. What I thought was really bold of EA was that it's co-op only. You have to play it in co-op. Right. Well, and this is from the lead developer on Brothers, A Tale of Two Sons. Yes. Which, you know, that fits. It does. Hopefully it has a happier... That one was co-op with my left hand and my right hand. Right. Working together for once. I think you could play two-controller, couldn't you? I don't recall it. I don't remember. But I played through that, and I enjoyed it fine. I didn't think it was, you know, it is what it is. It was an interesting mechanic, and it's a short game, so it worked out fine. So, anyway, I like co-op games. This is very much designed to be couch co-op style, which isn't a popular format to really push it anymore, so that's why it's on my radar. I didn't like really how it looked, though, in terms of the animation style. I thought it looked stilted, surprisingly scrub for it being an EA title. But, on the flip side, they claim, the developers claim, that the puzzle mechanics and challenges vary throughout, so that it will give you constantly different experiences in what you have to do. It's really going to make you play a lot of different ways, which brothers did not. So in that regard, I'm kind of excited. It keeps you thinking, sort of thing. Kind of like what Overcooked and such wants you to make things a little bit more challenging as you go along and add new gimmicks to it, sort of thought. Right. one thing, I think it might be an EA Partners game, or whatever that program is called now, so it's more of they are acting as a publisher. Oh, like they did with the string guy. Yarny. String guy. Yeah. The other thing, another one of those little details is their sideburn game was on point. Oh yeah. Those were some wicked sideburns. On both means. I wish I could draw some like that. Okay, did anyone have any other thoughts on EA? The only EA game Otherwise that had any interest in me I think was more well shown In the Microsoft display So I think we probably talked about that Yeah, let's hit Anthem hard In Microsoft, because that's when we actually got Some sizable gameplay footage And speaking of which, we're now in Microsoft So do you want us To lead off with Anthem? Should we lead off with Anthem? We can lead off with Anthem I mean, they finished with the end of the story. But what's the least... That's what all the podcasts are doing. Yeah, let's go ahead and do it. Let's do it somewhat chronologically. Let's talk Project Scorpio, formerly now known as the Xbox One X. I just call it the Zox. The Zox. I'm just calling it the X-Bone-X. That's what I would say. That's what I would say. That's what I would say. So maybe fun with X-Bone-X? No. Okay, yeah. All sorts of fun with your ex-phonics. I don't know. Okay. I'm going to jail. Yeah. So what do we know? We know it'll be the most powerful console on the market, barring whatever Atari's apparently doing. Okay. That's outside of E3, so we don't need to go into it. Okay. And that the price at launch will be $499, which is where I thought it would launch. I thought it would be a $500 launch. I figured $500 or $600. I was leaning towards $600. from some of the stuff I've seen on numbers, even building a PC, it's kind of hard to hit the numbers on that system at a $500 price. Do you think they're taking a loss on it? I think they're taking a loss on it. They have officially said they are not making money on it. Okay. So at the very minimum they're doing a break. My street level analysis thought was going to be if they launched at $600, it would have been a disaster. $500 was playing it safe. $400 and they would have really moved units. but obviously if they're not making money at $5 Microsoft is in a position we have to remember that while Microsoft is quote unquote losing the console war to Sony this generation, they are selling Xbox Ones faster than they ever sold 360s so from a corporate standpoint, it's making them good money. They're not unhappy with their position in terms of sales. They're unhappy with the percentage of households they control vis-a-vis Sony. Is anyone planning to get An X-Bone X at launch I'll qualify for that Not directly at launch Eventually Jay says no, Mike says no I am Entering consideration of Getting a console But I am in big debate if I will go With a PS4 Pro Or save up and go for the X-Bone X I just have not If you got an X-Bone X you could play with Eric, Jake, Mike, and Dennis. Is that not a reason? Yeah, but there's more games that I really want to play that are only on PS4. Yes, this is a sentiment a lot of us who have invested in the Microsoft architecture... I mean, granted, we get certain exclusives as well. Unfortunately, this was not a year... All two of them, yeah. This was not a year for great exclusive announcements on Microsoft's part either, but we can dive into that. And that's the big thing is a lot of the Microsoft exclusives I can get and play on my computer. Yeah, and that's the deliberate strategy that they've chosen. It is, but it makes me not care quite so much about dropping the money on a console. A lot of their big exclusives were just indie games. They don't have a lot of big AAA exclusives. Not this year, at least. Eric, Xtonics, are you getting one? It's a hard maybe. Hard maybe. Do you have a 4K TV? No, that's sort of part of the problem. That's my excuse. This week I have been looking. Like, okay, I have to get a new TV, I have to get a new receiver. Get an OLED. OLEDs are ridiculously overpriced right now. I know, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they've been emphasizing, they being Microsoft, that this will upsample, it will make your 1080p TVs look great. Super scaling? Yeah. Super sampling. But is super sampling enough for me to want to spend another $500 after I've got a perfectly functional Xbox One that will play all the same games? And for me, that answer is no. So I'm not in at day one either. Maybe, I would be a maybe if I had a 4K TV, but I don't. Right, yeah. That is the hard value proposition is that, you know, it really only shines on 4K. The other thing it features is HDR, but I'm not aware of any televisions that support HDR that are not also 4K television. Right. HDR... Not all 4K televisions support HDR. I think you're hard-pressed to find HDR if your TV's over two years in age. I think the odds are you don't have it. I think even the... There's two standards. There's HDR10, and there's Dolby... Atmos. No, Atmos is the... It's not anything. Yeah, the Dolby HDR. I don't remember what it's called. Those were only really solid last year. So some of the older sets are getting firmware updates to support it, but nothing. It's still kind of... You've got to look at a new TV to get that kind of stuff in, so that's a... Dolby Vision. Dolby Vision, okay. I don't know what it's called. I'm not familiar with it. It's kind of like the Blu-ray versus the HD DVD. We have a competing standard. And so what's happening is a lot of the newer sets just support both, because it's hard to figure out which is the good one yet, but eventually it'll set it up. I do like that it has the 4K UHD Blu-ray built in. Yes. That's nice. Right. That's another distinguishing factor over the PS4 Pro. Right. But then my concern is it's smaller than the bloody S. I know. I really kind of like that. Yes. Microsoft has cooling problems. Yes. They've always... Well, yes. It's got the liquid vapor. Wait. The vapor. cooling it out. It vapes. It vapes. Okay, that's all I need is something in my house vaping. If my Xbox starts rolling fat clouds, we've got an issue. I heard one of the hardware developers for Microsoft has indicated that besides, you know, they're doing their testing, it will, the Xbox One X will run louder than the S. It's not a loud console, not like, because the 360 was notoriously loud. Oh, yeah. It's not like that, but it will be louder than the S. So, if you were prioritizing low decibels, the S is the better choice. It is actually quieter. Right. But, okay. Another thing worth mentioning is that they announced that, at least for a limited time, the S is 250. So, that is an interesting value proposition of, if you're thinking about getting an Xbox, and you don't necessarily have a 4K TV, then Xbox One S is a good option. The S does HDR. I missed that. Again, we're still in 4K TV for HDR, as far as I know. Right, right. Basically. So if you want a better Xbox, that's a pretty good thing. That's what I was thinking. $250 for an S. I would seriously consider $250 for an S. And that's where I think, this is where I think Phil Spencer's strategy is coming into play, in terms of his long-term vision. Microsoft does not have the intention for the Xbonex to be the number one selling Xbox console. They expect the S to be. This is to try and finally appeal to that technophile, hardcore gamer type that must have the most powerful of whatever. Microsoft, with me not knowing about the original Xbox specs, but since the 360, Microsoft has never been in the position of processing power over Sony. They've been close, but they've always been weaker. This is the first time they've actually been able to appeal to that particular demographic. But with only 1-2% of the U.S. population having 4K TVs, that's not a big market. But it gives them a position of strength that they can argue from, because they can't argue from the strength on their library, which is where Sony's strength is. So I think long-term, this is sort of a plan to put them in a good place. And Sony just developed the Pro. They're not going to be inclined to launch a Pro X right away. And they don't need to. They're fine. So it's an interesting proposition. but aside from they actually didn't spend very much time at the E3 presentation talking to Exponix they did what they learned from Sony to do which is let's spend most of the time talking about games and they spent a lot of time trying to emphasize a lot of their exclusives. Now as Tony had noted a lot of their exclusives are Windows 10 slash Xbox exclusives because they control both architectures so they love sales no matter which way but most of them you can still get on PC as well, but let's start exploring some of the games that were presented. Anyone want to lead off on something? Jake, you got one in mind? Mainly, my big one right now is Forza Motorsports 7, and their playthrough of it. Some of the places and stuff, and everything else. Well, it looked sexy. It looked really good. I know. And I do like that Microsoft seemed to have learned some showmanship, and the whole deal with Porsche and the unveiling of the new Porsche supercar. I mean, that's just from a showmanship standpoint. That was kind of a nice touch of stuff that Microsoft normally doesn't do. Well, there was a couple of years ago they lowered a car from the ceiling. A little over the top. I'm glad they didn't do that. Because I'm worried that that car is going to fall on people. I did. I'm not a racing car guy. I have not been a a race game person since like Gran Turismo? Like, the first one? Yeah, and Forza Motorsport is pure simulation racing. It is. It is for hardcore racing fans. Yeah. It's nothing like Split Second was. Split Second was just Right. Totally just famous. And, yeah, most of the racers we see, well, just like we talked about Need for Speed, most of them are arcade racers. Yeah. You really only have the Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport as being the major simulation racing, without getting into, like, the motocross stuff. I think Project Cars goes more simulation. You think so? Okay, I'm not familiar with it. Yes, Project Cars very much so. Yeah, no, I thought Forza looked great. Car games are always a good way to show off graphics. Oh, yeah, the Carl Weathers effects were nice. The one with the dynamic Carl Weathers looked so good. And Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon, while they have different development teams, they share assets. For example, one of the things for Forza Horizon 3 that they did is they went out with high definition recording equipment to Australia and just let it run and record the sky. And that's how they did the sky effects in Forza Horizon 3. Those sort of gains on assets are given over to the motorsport crews to take advantage of. So they share that sort of work that they do. And that's why Forza is kind of the top racing franchise at this point. I mean, you know, it was Gran Turismo for years, but I think they just took too long putting games out. So now, generally, it's Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon that get a lot of salutes. I don't know how many people really go in for simulation racing, though. To me, it's a niche. It's a niche genre. I mean, it is, but it's a large one. It's, I mean, it's not like football game people, but racing games is bigger than, like, Flight Sam's or probably even, like, the real hardcore real-time strategy people at this point. Yeah, I have played a little of Forza Motorsport. In, I think it was 6, they added a NASCAR expansion, which, you know, adds another sort of demographic to it. It lets you turn left. Yes, you get to turn left a lot. But, you know, they get all the official cars and that, so you get your team's car, and that's kind of cool. Oh, and there have been moments, at least in some of the Forza games, where it's set up for a little bit more fun. There was one which involved... So you had to talk to your announcers, talking over it, and you had to drive around and drive through trash on the track. They have a little bit of fun, but by all means, the Forza Horizon series is a much more fun, open... It appeals more to me. I've only played one Forza in Mortar Sport. It's whatever one came bundled with my Xbox 360. Two, I think. Yeah, we probably do. I'm not a huge race car person, as I've said. I'm not a huge car guy overall. That said, there are certain things that really, you can tell a car that looks really good. And when the art and stuff on these cars and these games anymore, the way they look is just amazing. And the way they react on the tracks and on the road is always really nice. And I've just been impressed. I haven't played one. I don't have a huge interest. but watching them play and watching the demos and stuff looked really impressive. Well, Forza Motorsport 7 is going to work on Windows 10. Yeah, I've been looking at it, it's Xbox Play and more. Yep. So, it should both allow you to play and I assume it will allow cross-play in terms of multiplayer. I would hope so. I don't see a reason why they would be There's no mouse and keyboard versus controllers in there. I think, in all honesty, I think this kind of cross-play type stuff is something in the years going forward is going to become more and more common for games where certain, well, specifically where games where, like, the mouse control for first-person shooters is less important. But for stuff where you're obviously going to be driving with a controller because you're going to have a much better job with a controller driving a race car or flying a plane than you are using your mouse and keyboard. For things like that, I think it's going to cross over a lot better. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Eric, you have a game. I'm probably the only one that will bring up State of Decay 2. Actually, I had it on my list. But go ahead. Leave us off. Okay. Yeah, so that is an exclusive one because it is sort of a second-party sort of situation. And you've played the first one, right? I've played the first one. Has anyone else played the first one? I've played the first one. I have not. It's not bad. You could see the gem that was in there that they didn't quite get to. And that big DLC patch thing they did fixed a lot of issues. But you could see where they were going for and didn't get. Right, which the one thing that they were kind of, that they're obviously going for, that I still am not clear whether or not they're getting there with the second one, is multiplayer. Yeah, I'm not sure. And I'm not sure how that would work, the way that they structured the game, because in the original game at least, if your character dies, you just change to a new character and continue forward. I thought the trailer made it pretty obvious that's what happens here, because the guy was doing the voiceover, the guy was doing all this stuff, and then he died and it switched over to the girl. and it just kept going. And see, that was one of those things that I really loved about the first one, was that if your character dies, okay, now you're bombed. Right. I just thought it looked interesting. I heard a little bit of feedback from the IGN team that does the Xbox stuff. They got some hands-on time with it. Their assessment was, it follows the rule a lot of the first one, but a lot of that for real stuff that was really rough around the edges has been polished out now. And that's when I thought that the first one, because the first one was fun. But again, it was rough. That's the best description. You could tell there was something there that just didn't quite get to it. Right. One of the things that's not clear from the outside, at least in the first one, is this is very much a base building game as well. Yes. That, you know, you start out and you're kind of alone or you're with one other guy, at least in the first one. And you eventually find an area where there are other people. And then you start establishing, you know, here's your perimeter. That's the part that I thought looked interesting. Right. and then eventually that place gets overrun so then you have to abandon that, get in a truck which one of the mechanics I really like in the game is that when you're driving, there's a button you can hit that'll kick out the door, so you can drive and you're driving by zombies and you kick out the door and just smack them it's pretty satisfying now hopefully they do get away from the first one had, it's just a mechanic I don't like but it's that open world mechanic that everyone hits there for a while, it's like, oh, look, there's the tower. I'll climb the tower. No, hey, look, now my math's added to it. But that also makes some sense. It does make some sense. Come on. That's where you get that secret info. I was going to say, there are games this year that have done that. Yeah. My understanding is the original crew game actually involved somehow climbing towers like in your car. No. No. I haven't played it, so I don't know. That was the rumor. We're a little louder. It's an open world game. Like in Mad Max, in Mad Max, you'd pull up and literally there'd be a higher balloon floating somewhere. And you'd get in and you'd winch it up and you'd look around and you'd winch it down. It's what we do now. But the nice thing is Mad Max had the thing going where when you winched it up, you used binoculars and you looked. And when you crossed over something important, it would appear on your map. So if you went up, all you things would appear. They wouldn't tell you what they were. They're just, oh, there's a dot here. but if you look at it with your binoculars, it'd be like, oh, there's a refinery here. Steve McKay does that as well. Yeah. Okay. Mike, give us another day. Cuphead finally has a release date. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Soon. Very soon. It is September 29th, 2017 is the announce date that they indicated during the show, at least. Hopefully it hasn't been changed since then. How long ago did they announce that game? Like four or five years ago? This was the fourth E3. Yeah. This was the fourth that it showed. and it's showed in every E3 going back those four years. So it's not like it skipped a showing or anything. Like someone do. But, I mean, the very first time it showed, which I believe was E3 2013, it was just a part of, like, ID at Xbox. And you just saw a really quick shot, but it got people really excited. This is an example of a game that has been overhyped. Hyped way, way too... Let me clarify. I'm excited about this. I think it looks great. It's just they promoted it way too soon, given that it's like a three-person team doing this. Right. Well, I think another thing is that they changed enough of the structure of the game. Because originally, you know, they debuted it, and you just sort of saw the art style and that kind of thing. And people saw enough of it to realize that it was a platformer. But the reality was, at least at the time, it wasn't a platformer. It was really more of a boss rush game. Yes. And so part of the extra time that they've taken developing this thing is to make it into an actual platformer. They're still bosses, obviously, but the amount of assets they have to create for that thing has to be insane. Yeah. Yeah, and I heard similar, that they really went back, they really emphasized adding more platforming elements to it and expanding the nature of the game. So this is one I'm glad we finally have a release date. When I first saw that trailer, my initial reaction was, oh, no. Yeah. Here's the thing. The art on this game, I think, is a lot of what brings the hype. I worry that the hype has been too much over the years, and it doesn't matter how good this game comes out at. Afraid of it, like No Man's Sky. It's not going to be as good as people hoped for. Well, I mean, it's got, what is it, they used techniques from the 1930s, such as videos and audio are creative with some of the techniques of the era, traditional hand-drawn cell animation, watercolor backgrounds, original jazz recording. They're using all of that with them. So I can kind of understand the hype, especially those older people, the older kids. Yeah, people like us, people like me who remember Simba Willie. It takes a long time to make 2D assets in high resolution. Visually, I think this will always be seen as a success. I hope the gameplay lives up to it. Initial reports I heard when people got to play things is that it is hard. And that makes me happy. Some people it might be too hard for. I mean, that shmup style, that's a true shmup style boss rush. That can be pretty rough for people. But it'd be interesting because that might actually help the popularity of the shmup genre. this introduces a lot of people to the notion because of the visuals, and then they'll be like, oh, this is really fun. It's like, you know, these shooter types are still made. Cage is still around. I don't think I've put out anything recently. No, no. And not a word from him here at E3. Tell me, do you have a game? I do have a game beside the Anthem. I still think I'm going to leave Anthem because I think that's something we're all going to talk about a little bit. I think you're going to talk about another thing I wanted to mention. Oh. So, it doesn't involve RDO, it doesn't involve fighting. Yeah, one thing I did want to mention before we get to that, though, that Microsoft did make a bit of an effort to show some actual, like, Asian games this year. Oh, they very much emphasized variety. I've heard several interviews with Phil Spencer over the last six months. He has been working really hard to try and bring in other genres. They know that Xbox has a branding issue where it's seen as the bro box, where you go and you play road shooters. And, I mean, yeah, we do. That's where I've been playing my Overwatch. That's where I play my Battlefield. But they do want to try and get other people to, they're just inviting them, please come and put your game out on our platform, even though you might not normally have thought about it. And a lot of Asian developers sometimes don't even think about it. Because, you know, even back when it was the 360, 360 was weak in Asia. It was strong in Europe and the U.S. so they just quit they just don't think about it that's so easy to develop for both systems now that they're both x86 architectures so yeah and I mean some of the things they showed like they showed a trailer for a game called Code Vein which was actually yeah I've actually that's the exact same trailer that I've seen before when that game was originally announced but now it's just like it's on Xbox as well but from what I know of the game it's kind of action hack and slashy but it's been kind of compared to a Dark Souls type game I marketed this Cool Mask, Hack and Slash. Yeah, they showed that, was it Black Desert Online? Yeah, which is a PC MMO. Korean, I think. Yeah, I think so. The only thing I really know about is apparently it has the most insane character creation ever. Like, they released the character creator months before the game came out. That's, that's kind of right. Now, one other thing, it's not one of the Asian games, but something that I think was a good pick for them, before we just hit the big things, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Browns. Yeah, I want to know, Tony, you as being a pretty big PC gamer, are you familiar with it? I'm very familiar. I haven't played it yet. I haven't picked it up yet, but I've been watching a lot of videos. I've been watching a lot of people streaming it. This game looks awesome. Have you played it, Jake? I have not, but looking from the trailers that I've seen and all the gameplay footage I have seen, it looks like a game I would... I watched the stream of it yesterday, actually, because, I mean, they made a big point to emphasize that it has a 3 million player base count on PC right now. And that's early access. That's why I haven't picked it up, is because I try to avoid early access games. I think I'm going to break on this one, because it's just looking so good. I mean, it's battle royale. It's literally, you guys are on an island. Last one alive gets to live. Yay! I mean, it seems really cool, and the stuff I've watched on Twitch has been so much fun, and just such interesting gameplay and some group dynamics and such. Listening to the E3 intro and everything else, it's like a large amount for a server. So what I heard was 100 people per server all in a battle royale. It sounds insane to the point where it's... Yeah, that's great. Many of it. Thank you, thank you. Okay, where was I going to speak? I was going to say I don't know anything about Battlegrounds, but my impression of it is it looked an awful lot like a griefing simulator. You're just going to look at the prior pan. Kind of. And when I turned on that... There were an awful lot of shots in that trailer of someone not looking, someone walking up, shooting him in the back of the head. Yeah. Well, there probably isn't. I saw a video the other day where there were a bunch of wrecked cars on a bridge, and like four guys were running across the bridge, and one of the wrecked cars actually had somebody in it and it wasn't wrecked wrecked and as they got halfway across the bridge the cars accelerated down the bridge and ran them all over it. It was hilarious. Did they ever get a release date for that? I never picked September. September is a console launch exclusive which we might want to touch on. The wording used on there. We can do it now. They use it a lot. They used, like, three or four different terms when they referred to exclusives. So console launch exclusive, I believe, if I'm understanding correctly, means that it's going to launch first on the Xbox One. Obviously, in the case of Battlegrounds, it's already launched on PC. So that should be... That's 22 of those that they gave out. Right. I think elsewhere they used, like, true exclusives, so, like, Forza 7 would fit with that because that, again... Or maybe they said console exclusive on that one because, again, it's not playing anywhere, so it's coming out on PC. A lot of them would be, there was the Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive, which is exclusive to their console, but they're also allowing it to be on the PC platform, which is most of the games at this point. Then there's the console launch exclusive, which I construe is the old-fashioned, what used to be known by then as timed exclusive. They did that with the first Tomb Raider. Second Tomb Raider. Thank you, second Tomb Raider, where it's on there only for a limited time. kind of like what Sony's doing with Destiny 2 when some of the content is timed exclusive content, but this would actually be the game itself. And then the... And then there were a few that were actually just Xbox One exclusives that, for whatever reason, are not being put out on Windows. And I think all of those were ID games. That must be just designed for console purposes. So, yeah, that's the summary on that. I know there were a lot that fell on that classification. Mike, another game. Dragon Ball FighterZ. That's the one I was going to raise my hand up. Dragon Ball FighterZ not Dragon Ball Fighters? Yes, Dragon Ball FighterZ. I actually have the station on my notes, so I think they must have emphasized that the Z is it. I'm a little disappointed. I know you. It looks amazing. The art. The art captured the show. Oh, yeah. I mean, particular attack animations are pulled directly from the show. It was so good. So much better than any other Dragon Ball game I've played. I've played a lot of them. It's being made by Arc System Works using the same tech they're using for the newest Guilty Gear games. Which, I actually watched a... They did a presentation at Games Developer Conference, I think like two years ago, on how they did the graphics for that game. And I watched part of it. Up until they did Q&A. But it was all very interesting how they do it. But, I mean, they've pretty much gotten to be the masters of the... That's not a sprite, John. Yeah. because they, I mean, they go to the point to where like most 3D games when you animate stuff you'll do like your keyframes of animation and have the computer fill in everything in between. They don't do that. They just do the keyframes of animation so it gives it that 2D animated look. And they can do things like exaggerate, you know, make a fist look bigger or something or bend something that's straight to give it that feel of movement. But yeah, the artist would grab me on this one. I mean, the fighting looks like Marvel v. Capcom? Yes. That's what caught my eye. I thought that it looked surprisingly good in part because it seemed to have the Marvel v. Capcom 3 level of crazy going on. While I'm familiar with Dragon Ball Z as a series, I haven't watched the whole series. And I don't play a ton of fighting games. I did wishlist this one. Because I think it looks fun enough that even if I'm not super familiar with every villain that was on DBZ, that I can have fun with this. This is a game that if I had an Xbox When this game came out it would be an instant purchase Well it's Xbox, Steam, PS4 I know That's why it would probably be an instant purchase anyway I think most fighting games Seem to have bigger followings on console So it would be easier to do multiplayer On console I think than on Steam It's also easier to do couch multiplayer on console Than on Steam because the likelihood of us having Four controllers is higher Right but for what I've seen of forums online like particularly on Shuriken which is the big fighting game website everyone is super excited for this way more than that other fighting game we'll get to that was shown at E3 oh the one with really bad art yes the um ok yeah no so it seems like it left a pretty positive impression oh yeah this game was I fell in love with this game it was my highlight of Microsoft's conference oh Wow. Amazing. I want to go back and touch on one that chronologically happened a lot sooner. I'm surprised no one else mentioned it, but maybe you all aren't familiar with it, and that would be Metro Exodus. It was on my list. Dragon Ball was ahead of it. I played Metro, some of the older Metro games. I played in one, both Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light. So this one I thought visually looked stunning. I thought it captured the atmosphere that I'm assuming they're going for, because this is now just inspired by the books. It's going off in its own sort of direction. We got to see a lot of gameplay, actually a pretty good-sized chunk, including exterior shots which look like life is coming back, which in the prior games, you spend most of the games in the Metro system underground because the outside's toxic. Because I like the other two, my sense is that this looks like it's going to keep the same basic gameplay, maybe go with a more open environment. The other ones were fairly linear shooters. But I thought if you like Metro, this looks like it's going to serve you more of what you want, but just make it look better. Now, like in the trailer when they showed where the guy was fighting the bear, I mean, A, that bear was awesome looking. Someone was wrong with him, though. I think he was seized. It's Metro. Everything's sick. I mean, that's another thing. You know, there are a lot of people fighting bears. Yeah, look at them. Look at the two. That's a lot. That's a lot of bears. That's a lot of bears. I mean, the fact that they were highlights of both of those trailers, that was kind of stuck out to me, because I instantly linked them together. But, no, the Metro, it's like Grimdark's Fallout, really. It's like, you know, I'll take all of the happy, fun, silly stuff from Fallout, Fallout, get rid of it, move into really dark stuff, and make it creepy as can be. The other major comparison I would do is that it strips a lot of the RPG elements out of Fallout. It is much more in the, as Xbox loves, that bro-shooter sort of approach, except it's not designed around multiplayer at all. It's a single-player shooting experience, like Wolfenstein, which we'll get to talk about later. But, Eric, you have another game for us. A couple couple thoughts on Metro. I never played a Metro game. I technically own them at least once. What's technically owned versus not? Well, the technically owned I think I was going to say twice. I think I have them on PC through a humble bundle but I own them on Xbox because of some sale or another Okay so you own them Yes yeah I do have copies of them but I able to play them But I aware of them a little bit One of the things I like is the way that they, you know, have no sort of HUD. Right. So, you know, you've got, there are things on your... They really try and make you feel like you're being that guy. Right. My impression of that, the gameplay they were showing, is it felt awfully scripted. Like, okay, the bear happens to end up in this place at just the right moment that it falls off. Or, you know, here's a... you hop on the zipline. So it felt very much scripted, but that may have been... they were just trying to show as much as possible. I don't know how that would work in the actual game. Because, you know, zipline, then, hey, there's a train here. Hop on the train. That seems... if they're going for sort of an open world kind of thing, the timing on that has to be pretty tight to make that work. Yeah. Don't know. Don't know. Tell me other games. This isn't necessarily a good thing. It doesn't have to be good. But they hit Sea of Thieves again with the really terrible stuff like they did last year with Sea of Thieves. It wasn't as bad as last year's Sea of Thieves. People working together, talking, whatever. I've never known people who actually talk like that while they're playing a game and this and that. but they at least made some efforts to make it. The trailer was kind of funny. It had its humorous moments. Some of the stuff looked interesting, but none of it looked anywhere near good enough for me to really have any interest in this game. But this game's got popularity coming out that wasn't new. There's so many people looking forward to this, and I don't. I just don't see it. I know it's all opinion, and people have things. I don't see what makes this game seem so good. Because to me, the fact that I have to get five friends to help me sail my ship so I don't get jacked seems terrible. Though the fact that I can jump in a cannon and get shot in the enemy ship, that's kind of cool. Yeah, I'm in a similar boat as you, Tony. I've heard a lot of... In a similar boat? Boats are on the freshwater. Ships are on oceans. So I didn't make a problem. I led you into my trap pretty well. So, the, uh, no, it's just, um, it's got that, what I think of as rare, at least rare as of being controlled by Microsoft, whimsical feel that they constantly are doing now. They're all about whimsy. This is a whimsical raid game, as near as I can tell. It's raiding without the grind of a lot of lineup. Apparently that appeals to some sort of gamer segment. It does not appeal to me, though. It looks like it almost wants to be an MMO, but without any of the work. And so it's just going on whimsical quests. The bottom line is, I don't have enough friends to do this. I don't have any friends. They're not going to go, and we're all going to coordinate our time so that we can all be online together and sail a boat. I can't get five other people to play Overwatch with me at the same time. There's no way I'm going to get this whimsical game going. And so, because I don't think I could have fun with it without close friends playing it with me, I just don't think I'd ever have fun with it. Yeah. That was my general thought of watching that whole trailer the whole time. I don't see where this would be enjoyable at all, because I don't think I would ever... And maybe it's something, you know, younger people, people who don't have jobs, and kids, and all that stuff that they're dealing with, would have an easier time pulling groups together to play stuff like that. And I'm just, you know, buddy-buddy. I don't know. If you've got a lot of friends that can be on with you, I think you can have fun with it. But not for me. But I didn't know that because, yeah, I thought it left a better impression than last year's E3, which made me hate it. Yeah, I'm going to say the presentation they did last year made it look super dumb. Yeah. I think I get it now. Yeah. This presentation did a way better job of making it feel like an actual game you would want to play. The previous one felt like, well, they're just running around drinking. I guess that's okay. What about two-year-olds like to... Getting rid of all of the, you know, which that was something in general with the Microsoft conference. I don't think there were any streamers as part of their thing. That was one of my complaints about the EA one is there were several of my notes in there that just say streamers with exclamation points. Yeah, they really were. They were really going to, or they call them game changers at one point. I don't know. Was it in Microsoft's conference where they had the shout caster? Yes. Yeah. That was during the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Right. Yeah. They had some other game where they had some body doing it, too. Well, they did something similar during the EA one as well. And X-Files was running the whole mix whatever thing. Mixer. That was known as Beam. Yeah. And still shows up as Beam on my Xbox. Yeah. going back to see things for a moment I'm actually sold on this with the caveat of I don't know when I'm going to play it right so it's not a day one purchase for me by any means but if they make it a good price at some point then it'd be like I'll get to play this sometime it very much like you say a raid or I was thinking more like heist kind of thing I think it only meant to be played you know in short bursts it's not supposed to be a you know you play for an hour or something, you don't play for hours. Yeah. So I don't know that there's any sort of progression mechanics or anything like that. The narration that was happening during that, I think, was really effective. I don't think that's going to be in the game, though. Because the flip side of that is, it was kind of clever and kind of funny the first time. I don't know that I would want to listen to that every single time. But it did give sort of a... It gave some direction to the thing, which I think was helpful, because the... I think your presentation felt entirely directionless. I think it was just there for the trailer to give it that direction and feel and help flesh things out. Right. Or maybe that's like the tutorial. Right. And we're going to narrate this first mission for you. Yeah. And maybe even the first mission is just you and a bunch of AI. So, you know, there are ways they can make that work. It is expectable anywhere. So, you know, that doesn't exclude PC players from that. Oh, that changes nothing. Oh, I know. Number one thing is finding time to do that. And I think the proposition that Microsoft will try to sell is that they have their new clubs and looking for group features so that you can go and say, I want to play Sea of Thieves, and you can find other people who want to play Sea of Thieves without having to be in Sea of Thieves to do that. Yeah. But still, I don't know that I want to play with random people. Right, because then all you're going to do is have people running off randomly. Right. And my brother. I mean, sure. Yeah. so yeah I think there's a strong potential in this I can't see any way that it could be played couch co-op so that's kind of disappointing because I think it would work well as a couch co-op kind of game the concept the problem is the presentation you can't you can't split three more than four ways well now we know we need four TVs right I have two Xboxes so which is why I'm a maniac if I want Xbox you need one so I can maybe I hope no one offers you heroin. Speaking of heroin for the masses, I want to touch briefly on Assassin's Creed Origins. Okay. Well, what were your thoughts on it, Jake? Well, I mean, the fact of it's completely different than the whole SEO series and everything else, it's finally, I mean, SEO is currently everybody's main favorite and everything else. I'm like, it's kind of nice to get off of the main character every once in a while just to see what different stories or the creation of something like that. It's not the group of, like the group of assassins. So you're looking forward to it? I'm looking very much forward to it. Very much forward to meeting Bayek, which is the main character's name. They've added plenty more, apparently, RPG elements like horse, Dread Horse. Yeah, I don't know if they added the horse stuff again since the first Assassin's Creed, which did have some horse mechanics, but they took it away. That was my favorite part of the first Assassin's Creed. Yeah, and they took it away because people didn't like how long it took to get to city to city, I think, was the main issue. Assassin's Creed 1 was really just a glorified tech demo, in my opinion. Here's my problem with this Assassin's Creed that I saw. Not really a problem so much as just a thing that's being weird to me, is that apparently you've got a hawk that they just treat like a drone from Call of Duty. So you can fly it around and shoot through its eyes and tag targets and this and that. But I have to admit, I liked that in the trailer, they played Assassin's Creed like I played Hitman where he sneak sneak sneak stealthily take this guy out sneak some more you know what screw it let's just kill everybody and that's how you've been able to always play the Assassin's Creed games they like to gussy themselves up as stealth games they often have segments that mandate particular levels of stealth but Exio which are the ones I am familiar with, he could hold his own against in combat against groups of enemies with ease. In Revelations. Yeah. And the thing is, the eagle thing, as funny as that was, and I noted that as well, but I was thinking, this has actually been like scaling it back. In the later ones like Revelations where he got the, I called it the squigoo, where he would go and he'd just go, squigoo! And he would send assassins to do all the killing for him. Bloody assassins. And he had guns. I like things in the past, because it was way too much tech. You're not going to do it again. You're not going to do it again. Body heat, Tiki Arrow. So he's shot that you're all hurt with... Yes. So anyway, this will be one that I'll consider when it's on sale. Visually, it looked great. I thought it was an excellent move that Ubi took a year off between Assassin's Creed because they were suffering. I think jumping back in time is just in good. No, yeah, definitely. I think they were getting way too far in the future. It got way too gun-oriented, and I like it kind of pre-form. I was waiting for it to get as fast as Creed Modern Warfare. Yeah. As fast as Creed Infinite Warfare. Exio in space. Why am I in space? Why am I still the main character? A few thoughts on this. It looked like there was maybe like a multiplayer that was gladiatorial combat. Hmm. Yeah, I have no attention to it. Either from this or from the Ubisoft presentation on it, it seemed like there was some aspect. Part of the trailer showed very clearly gladiator combat, and that didn't really fit in any other part of what seemed to be the narrative of it. So I'm wondering if they're doing a, we're just going to have one-on-one or one-on-a-few battles for that kind of thing. So that, I don't know if that's going to be any good or not, but that's an interesting aspect. There's a lot of animals in it. Yes. They specifically highlighted a hippo, and a camel, and an elephant, and then I just have animals with an exclamation point. I think they found that the animals are resonating in the Far Cry series, and so they're just doing it now. Well, they probably have the animals. Yes. Remember, every game that Ubisoft makes is really the same thing. It's been clear years ago that they were sharing assets between the Assassin's Creed games and like those motion sports games. Because they climbed the same way. It was interesting. The other thing, during the whole, where they showed kind of like most of a mission, at one point he climbs up this building. So it's sort of a two-story building. And so he climbs up onto the first one and then climbs up to the next and then pulls the guy down. And I assume the guy's dead, but he fell like five feet. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. It was like super short fall. Yes. In Egyptian times, short falls were very good. Well, that's how he assassinates. He has gravity manipulation. He just made that guy weigh like five tons. Gravity manipulation is probably how that arrow chased that guy down the stairs. It was like Roadhog Hook version. He went like, oh gosh. Also, like Jake was saying on the RPG elements, there's loot in this game. Because he picked up this bow and it was like, he did a stat and it was like a it was a rare bow of something, you know. The tiers of weapons and that kind of thing. So yeah, they're putting RPG in everything. So you have a game now. I have a few still. I know there's at least one on this list that I figured you were going to say, so I have it. Okay, well, I guess I'll go ahead and say the one that I'm sure you're expecting me to say, which would be Middle-Earth Shadow of War. War. War-dor. War Dwarf War Dwarf War Dwarf so the trailer was surprisingly funny I saw online apparently the reaction regarding the orc that he recruits in the trailer makes it a protagonist that people now want an orc dating sim and for him to be the true ending of it and this is what Tolkien always wanted so that really resonated well I remember Mike's reaction when the trailer because he said that, that doesn't even sound like a dork. Apparently, the voice was believed to be the same as the shark from Finding Dory or something. Finding Nemo. Yes, I have that written down. Rune sounds like the shark from Finding Nemo. So anyway, that won over anyone who wasn't won over. I was won over by the gameplay. They really featured the changes in the net. Yeah. Full disclosure, Middle-Earth Shadow of Mordor, the first game, I really enjoyed. Me too. And part of it is that I'm a pretty big Middle Earth fan. The part of it was the gameplay just worked really, really well. And this, they featured the changes to the Nemesis system, which I was confused because I was like, the Nemesis system worked just fine in the first game. What's the deal? Holy cow, have they made it far more intricate. Oh, yeah. So if you like sneaking around and you don't want Assassin's Creed, instead you want the precious, this is the game for you. So this is a definite yes, yes for me. Yeah, this is very high on my list. Yes, and it has been pushed back from when they first gave it a release date. Its current release date is October 10th of this year, so it is still expected to be out in 2017. Barring it getting pushed yet again. But, yeah, I'm very excited about Shadow of War. We've got another game, though. Or we should just go ahead and... Any thoughts, Eric? I like the dialogue in it. I think that was really nice. It's easily well-written and funny at times. there's a domination mechanic in it that seems kind of, you know, brainwashing. That's exactly what it is. That's what it was in the first game. Okay, so I have a thing for you. That's not new. Also, that's not a... Is there a ghost in that guy? Yes, there is. Yes. Is it like the... That's what I'm asking. It's in that game. Gotcha. It's basically, it's like, think of it as a soulless fuse. Yeah. That guy, well, I don't want to, I don't think this is too much of a spoiler from the first game, but he is Kalimdor, the ghost is. The guy who made the rings of power. Thor Staron. Gotcha. Or at least the end, who made the Elvis rings in secret. That's him. So that's why he's so mad. And that's why whenever you... He'd be dead. Whenever you... He always had that cool looking little wicked hammer thing. Whenever the ghost spirit comes out, he's always got the wicked hammer. In Tolkien lore, he was tricked. They were all tricked by Sauron. Sauron tricked him to make the ring. He forged the one... about, sorry I made the one ring, but he made all the other rings that made the Nazgul and everything else, thinking that he's doing a good thing. So, there's a lot of guilt in that, I guess. Gotcha. So, anyway. It is a fun series, and the first game was well-written. Yeah, I'm glad they were able to because all of the games based around Middle-Earth up until Shadow of Mordor came out were terrible. Shaky. War of the North I thought was okay, but you had to accept that it had nothing to do with any of the baseline characters, and in this you feel like you're actually touching it with us and not in this weird, awkward way. Oh, look, we stuck Frodo in. Yeah. Yeah, and it wasn't like, oh, here's the fellowship and Bob. Yeah, right, right. The fellowship is really ten. Yeah. Ain't no kid. Right. And my slingshot. Real quick, I do have a couple others. I wondered if we could touch on 16-bit Blade Runner. Yeah. The last night. Yeah, yeah, I have that. I didn't even put anything down other than 16 bits. I just put it down. I'm intrigued. I can't tell what's going on. I don't know if it's 2D or like 2.5D, if they're going to go for this shadow complex kind of style or what, but it looked neat. Yes, it looks very, very nice. It is hard to, it's sort of hard to reconcile sometimes that this game looks really, really pretty, but it's clearly not, you know, high def in a way. Well, and that's something that I think has been getting real popular, and it's something that we mentioned here. The art and the visuals, even if they're not super high-def, super hyper-realistic, we've gotten to a point where they don't have to be, and they can still be beautiful. Like, Owlboy is beautiful, and it's like 8-bit as can be. And I know, like, Ori and the Blind Forest, and the upcoming Ori and the something or another, because I don't remember what they were. Will of the West. Will of the West. I mean, that game is just sheer beauty. Nothing about that game to me matters. That game is just so pretty. It's supposed to be really hard. It doesn't surprise me. I mean, I need to sit down and play that. It doesn't surprise me. It's just kind of like, I mean, I've played a couple games lately that, you know, the game isn't that. I mean, it's not like it's some super special game, but the art is just so beautiful that you just play it just to see what's next. Does anyone have a game before Anthem that we haven't covered yet? We should probably mention Crackdown. Yeah, that's the one I still have. Oh, I've got one also. You mean Terry Crews as Terry Crews in the Terry Crews joint? I thought that was really clever for the trailer. I don't think Terry Crews may, he might not even be involved in voicing any characters in the game itself, but for an E3 presentation, I thought it worked really well. I actually thought that was their best trailer because of it. and you're seeing it the whole time going when are you Doomfist? Come on bro! We're waiting, Overwatch needs another character but Mike what did you think of Crackdown? My biggest question is what happened to all the destructible environments they advertised the last time they showed it? I don't know, it has clearly been significantly reworked and it's been such a, I mean there was supposed to be a multiplayer beta last summer that still hasn't happened yet. And that game is, I think, slated to come out sometime in November now. So I'm guessing we're going to see that soon, but I think they ended up making a lot of significant changes. Feels very much like they've gone back to Crackdown 1 roots, which, comparing the two, which I enjoyed both of them, but Crackdown 1 is definitely the one you'd rather emulate. Did the art feel a little weird to you? It's almost borderline weird. Yeah, it's always had the self-advocate look. But I thought it was a strange game to use for Xbonex when you're going cel-shaded, because you're not showing off. I don't think that shows off 60 frames. Yeah. It's okay very well. But that weird kind of almost ugly cel-shade style, that's true to the series. Yeah, I haven't played any games in that series. Yeah, cel-shaded. Oh, they're a lot of fun. Are they? Yeah. I knew there was a lot of hope about it coming out before the E3. Eric, what was your other guess? Oh, I just wanted to touch briefly on Minecraft. Oh. Because that's something that we were sort of discussing internally. So I'm still not entirely clear on the whole unifying thing, but if I understand correctly, so last year they were talking about the Play Together update or something along those lines. And that seemed to be built on top of their Minecraft Realms service, which is a subscription service. So then if you ran your world inside of their server, then your PC or your Xbox or your mobile could connect to that. And so everyone could play together that way. It seems like this update that they're talking about takes it away from there and just puts it on Xbox Live. So then, presumably, they weren't really clear, but presumably there won't be an additional cost associated with that, which was the thing that was kind of holding me back. because sometimes it would be nice to not play split-screen with my daughter. It would be, you know, I could bring her my laptop, she could play on the Xbox, and we could play together that way. Or you could play on the Switch. Or on the Switch, yes. And I'd have to buy Minecraft a fourth time, which I will probably do. I will probably do that. Minecraft with one of the four, because Sony doesn't want it. Right, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't have a PS4 anyway. But, yes, no, it is worth mentioning that they're doing cross-play, but not PS4, which there are other games that have announced cross-play. And not PS4. Rocket League, specifically, yes. So it is really fascinating that Nintendo is on board with this and Sony is not. The other thing is, as silly as it sounds, the 4K update for Minecraft looks amazing. I mean, everything is still cubes, but they look really pretty. The lighting in particular, I think, is the thing that sells me on that. I can't even believe you're talking about this. I know. It's the meme all over the place. I get that. But the lighting looks amazing on that. And that is me seeing it super compressed on YouTube, on my regular 1080p TV, knowing how the lighting in Minecraft normally looks, that looks significantly better. Now, add in HDR, add in 4K, and... So that's the thing that happens in those sorts of games, is things are smoother where they need to be smoother without it being, you know... you may have seen the, they just slapped, like, characters from Grand Theft Auto into Minecraft and said, look, it's the 4K update. Because the characters look realistic. It's never going to be that. But they did up the texture resolution. So, you know, where textures were originally, like, 64 by 64, they were probably going to be 128 by 128 or something like that. So the grass texture will still look pixelated, but it's going to have more... Pixels. More information, yes. More pixels. Four times as many pixels. Ah. So, it's worth mentioning, Minecraft is a super fun game. It was a brilliant acquisition for Microsoft. Yeah. I think that's PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. I think that's why they did this with them as well. They think this is another kind of up-and-coming, will-be-hot PC title, and they want to get in closer to the ground floor. Yeah. Well, then they should buy it now rather than waiting until they have to pay $2.5 billion. Yeah. They probably think, you know, what's two and a half billion to them? It was actually money that they needed to spend because they had to repatriate it. Yeah. That's part of the thought of that thing. It's fascinating the problems Microsoft has because they're doing so well as a corporation right now, whereas Sony's PlayStation division is doing great, but the company itself is suffering. But that's outside of our E3 scope. Anthem, I think, right? Actually, I've got Deep Rock Galactic on there. It looks... Remind me of this thing. Deepwater Black was Minecraft with Space Marines. Space Warp Marines. Warp. Warp. Space Warp Marines. Warp and bugs. What's catching your eye about it? I practically called it the Minecraft War, in a way. So, like, it looks so... I mean, it looks so much like... It looks fun. I mean, don't get me wrong. It was... The other thing they highlighted on that is that it has mixer integration, which, of course, they're selling that hard, because that was another big acquisition of theirs. so it looks like during matches people will be able to do things in the chat room that affect the gameplay that is the kind of like I heard yeah kind of like I'd argue yeah but it seems like it's more direct like there's an AVI built into a mixer that they can tap into so I haven't seen that in action on anything yet but that that is one of the things I think there was another game that they were talking about having mixer right they showed them yeah they showed somebody for watching on Mixer gave them a boost that gave them a shield because they got like... That's interesting. Kind of like, you know, since so many of these things are basically the Hunger Games, which, you know, Battle Royale, it's sort of like that scene in the first Hunger Games where the little thing floats in and drops her. Oh, it's in there a little bit. That super ointment, yeah. So, presumably, you can go slash super ointment and then your dwarves will be healed. Yeah, I'd forgotten about that one, but yeah. That's right, it wasn't visually interesting. Yeah, I wasn't really sold on it based on that. Yeah, I do. I'll keep an eye, but I'm in termination yet. Okay, so I think we're at Anthem at this point. Who's excited about Anthem? I guess I should open it. I have a very, very high level of interest. You have a high level of interest? Eric, raise your hand for those who can't see because you're on the podcast. Because we're not a video podcast? No. Not yet. Not ever. I am interested, but I don't really understand what kind of a game it is yet. it's Destiny with Jackass. Yeah. Bro. Have they even announced that it's going to be multiplayer? Yeah, it is. It's all... It is. It's not clear from the gameplay they showed at the Microsoft conference, and it wasn't clear from the teaser they showed at the EA conference. Where Kim came in, all of a sudden, and the stilted dialogue between the streamer folks were all like, gosh, maybe we should go back and explore that. Oh, those filthy role people? Yes. That was pre-recorded. No, that was terrible. No, those were the people playing it. It was bad acting, because that's how E3 He always was with the streamers interacting with us. It's not the fourth time. Have you been in that cave yet? No, but I was waiting for Kim because he really needs the XP. Okay. They did not do a good job of... Kim was you coming in late. That might have been late for me. I did not pick up... Of course, Bioware is not known for multiplayer games. They're known for single player experience. They're known for amazing single player experience. I was thinking that maybe this is the last part of my victory. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm not... I'll keep an eye on it. I'm not excited for it myself. I do think it looks like Destiny. I didn't care for Destiny's demo, which is why I never got Destiny. I do like that BioWare's on it. I respect BioWare, but they knew... And it's BioWare Edmonton. It's real BioWare. Yeah, it's real. This is not Joshua Clay Faye's BioWare Montreal. We're going to let you be tech support for like six months, and then we're closing you for failing us on Mass Effect Andromeda. Right. It's not that bad. Have you read the story on that one? No, and I don't care. The point, I don't care about the E3 episode. You know what? My point being that BioWare Edmonton has a pretty high pedigree. I am more excited post-E3 because I did hear on Friday that the lead writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2 is the lead writer for Anthem. Okay, I hadn't heard that. So they're taking the story serious. And Mass Effect 1 and 2 had a great story. And this could just be completely in my mind. I think what we're looking at here is going to be the fight is Anthem v. Destiny 2. Because I think they're aiming for the same niche of play. I think so also. Right. And that you have described it as being more Destiny, so very multiplayer focused, that I lose almost all interest. I think it's drop-in, drop-out, small group, multiplayer focused. That's how it is. I was looking for more of an open world exploration. That's not the vibe I'm getting. Yeah, no. I think it'll be more open than, that's me where you go to the hub for everything. If you were viewing it as those were all, there was one player and the rest were all AI, then that is the game I want to play. I want to play the game where I have... I don't want to play with them. Did you hear how they sounded? It sounded awful. It sounds like King's Quizzes all over the place. I can't hear the sound now. Ted, what was your thought on it? I mean, are you excited about Anthem? I mean, just from what I'm seeing here, it looks interesting. I mean, it is really pretty. It is real pretty. It does look real pretty. I will agree on that part. Man, that big old suit. I'm all about power suits, and I do have that big old suit with the mortar on it. Yeah, the suit's awesome. The only other thing, before, the transition from flying to diving under the water and swimming was bloody amazing. And that seems to be the sort of stuff that's got the Destiny people excited, because that's something that they don't have in Destiny 1, and they probably don't have in Destiny 2. So it's those sort of mechanics that are catching some people by. Because in the trailer, she was flying, and she just dropped into the water, and it was seamless, and it was easy, and it looked nice, and it was just, I was in shock at how that looked. That really impressed me. The only other thing I was going to mention before we moved off of Microsoft is they did announce backwards compatibility for original Xbox titles, announcing specifically Crimson Skies. I know they've announced a second game since then, but I don't. Fusion Frenzy. Fusion Frenzy. Oh, thank goodness. But they're not going to do Halo. Oh, you know those. They're not going to do Halo. They've never done Halo 3. It's true. Well, those are all available in the Action Keep collection. That's exactly the reason why. That's what I'm saying. But at the time, they didn't really go into any details at the time. But I have since heard that it will function very similar to what Xbox 360 backwards compatibility is. If you have the original Xbox disc, you can put it in. it will recognize it and will then download a digital version and if you owned a digital version, as soon as it's available it will be available for download. Was it even possible by digital versions? They specified it so I'm guessing I assume you're going to put them on the marketplace. Well, there'll be some way people have made somehow people who bought Xbox games digitally was suggested by the developer. Really? I'm assuming it was the developer. I didn't see his title when I was reading the article on it but that's what they conveyed. One thing I didn't learn also about it is that the Xbox One X, as of right now, the only ones for the One X are the Xbox One stuff will be backwards compatible. Only the Xbox One and the accessories for the Xbox One will be compatible with the Xbox X. That's right. We didn't touch on that. The Bone X is compatible with all the peripherals and accessories, which is smart. Well, it should be. Yeah, exactly. It's like enhancement kind of thing. It's like enhanced visual fidelity, isotropic filtering, and faster a lot of times, and they will also do super sampling with some of the games as well. Right. From what I heard. The only other thing I saw was they made it sound like, the guy who was being interviewed, made it sound like the backwards capability for the original Xbox actually wasn't as big of a challenge as it sounded like the 360 was. Well, of course. Because of the x86 architecture they used, because that was just a Pentium 3 processor computer, really. Okay. One other thing on the backwards capability for the Xbox, the original Xbox, they're releasing a controller. Hmm. That is the original Xbox. Oh, yeah, I didn't know about that. Otherwise known as the Duke. Not an Xbox-esque controller. You just give it on a pallet. You're going to have to have a forklift, and you're going to have to take the wire out of the house to put it in. It's like I quit the wrong day to quit using steroids. So, if Big Hands can play their original Xbox games, I don't know if it'll work with anything else, frankly. Yay. because it had the weird six-button configuration because you have the white and black buttons in addition to. Yeah. Like, there's triggers, but there's no bumpers, I think, is how that worked out. That's an ugly controller. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes, it was. The Duke. The Duke. Okay, well, let's go ahead and move away from Microsoft finally, and let's transition to the next major presentation of E3, which was Bethesda and their weird Fallout world. BethesdaLand, a place of adventure. Yes. BethesdaLand, a place of... Hey, look, you still love this six-year-old game. Please, please buy it again. Please, please. Why won't you buy this game? I don't have a whole lot, really, to touch on particularly. I'll go ahead and start off, though, and just mention that they did feature a couple of, which Tony just referenced, a couple of VR versions of games. One was the Fallout 4 version, which was talked about in the last E3. There's also a VR version of Doom. I'm not invested in VR right now, and I'm not convinced that it's worth the money, so these don't really interest me, but they're just about the only major developer I know of doing much in the way of VR. A lot of it's more smaller projects, so I thought it was noteworthy that they're still obviously putting a significant budget behind the titles they're working on. They need to put some more money into the weapon animations and the Fallout 4 VR, because, oh, it looked bad. It looked real bad. Doom VFR looked slow to me. but I've heard... Especially compared to Doom. Right. Doom is so... Elsewhere say that it is fast, so maybe there was just something in the video I was watching or something, but it looked kind of slow-paced, which I think is not necessarily the direction you want to go with the Doom game. Well, it's worth mentioning that not only did they announce Skyrim for VR, they also announced Skyrim for Switch. Well, it wasn't announced. Well, but they presented Skyrim for Switch with an ego support so that you can look like Link. It was the weirdest looking link. That was so... That might be fun, but... It was odd. It was really odd. Any way to justify spending that kind of money on Amiibos because they're not cheap. My question is why? Because they can. To try and get people to buy it again. Because you don't own enough Skyrim, apparently. I've read some people are really interested just for the fact that they can have a portable Skyrim. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Can you yell dragon language? Will you have to mix it with... I don't think there's a mic in this game. Rose, can you? Yeah! You probably have to have a separate phone app for that, because that's how much... I don't want to do all that crap. That's too bad. I want to mention The Evil Within, too, because I did wishlist this game. Have any of you played The Evil Within? No, I hadn't. I thought you had, so I was hoping that you might be able to compare and contrast them, because it's got the same vibe as the first. So, creepy trailer announcement. I did. I played in When the Evil Within. It's probably, in my opinion, it's the strongest survival horror game I've played in the last few years. I have not played Resident Evil 7, which I hear is very good, but compared to other Resident Evil games, I thought, this is a lot better. It's due out October 13th, 2017, so pretty recent. Yep, well-timed with the theme of it. But yeah, it looks essentially, while I'm assuming the story is different, there is a lot of feature about a girl who appears to have been killed in a fire and all that. But overall, I think it's going to play out the way the first one did, where there were a lot of stealth sections, where you had an option to try and sneak up and get around or to deal with these monsters, and it was very horrific. And I like horror as a theme in general. So, yeah, it's fun if you like that sort of thing. And I'm looking forward to it. Another thing that I thought I'd mention was another game which I played the first one of and have not yet started the second one of, which is they announced another Dishonored. Is it a DLC? It's actually on discs. Yeah, I was confused as well because I thought it was a DLC. It's using the same engine and assets, I think, essentially, as Dishonored 2. Well, it's called Dishonored 2 Death to the Outsiders, so I think this would be a standalone expansion or a side pull, if you will. So anyway, my understanding from that is you play as a different character in Dishonored 2, you either play as Emily or Corvo. Corvo's who you play as in the first game. And this you're playing as a character named Dowd. But I don't really have an opinion on it because I haven't played Dishonored 2 yet. For me, Dishonored 1 was a fun stealth game, but I thought it was really overrated in terms of the praise it got. Because I didn't think the story was that great. I thought it was pedestrian. But that's okay. I was there for the game. I think part of the reason that people like Dishonored is that one of the lead designers on it was one of the original designers on the original Deus Ex. And so that similar kind of, you have this thing to do and you can approach it from 15 different ways, is what a lot of people get out of that game. Yeah, yeah, and I totally agree. That's there. That's there. That's there in Hitman, too. That's why I wasn't as amazed, I suppose. Now, I guess we should also hit on the point that Bethesda has apparently decided that their complete failure to make paid mods a thing last year, made them change their names, and now they're going to try for paid mods again, but they're calling them something different. Right, though it's slightly modified, because I read up on this a little bit later. There will be individual developers, but all of the content will be coming from Bethesda. So it is more like they are farming out things than it is that you can make your own stuff and then sell it on their marketplace. It is, you know, maybe you could come to them and say, I want to make this thing, and then they'll go, yes, approved, we'll work with you to make sure you get the assets or whatever support you need to make it happen. And they'll go through and make sure that every single thing works together without causing conflicts. Yes, so there's going to be more, you know, weapons mods and those sort of things unless Macho Man Randy Savage is the dragon. Nobody calls it the take-in in the contract. Still, I just... We'll see. It is less of the we're going to just delegitimize third-party mons. I think that was sort of... They're trying to find a compromise that lets them put them on consoles because I know there was some pushback from Sony. Yeah. There's always pushback from Sony. Not everything. Sony is a more conservative company than a lot of people give him credit for. Eric, I know there's a game that Bethesda talked about that you really wanted to talk about. Yes, I do really want to talk about it. Do we want to talk about Quake Champions? I do not. Okay, Quake is eSports. Exactly. We talked about it on the last episode, and there was nothing new to me to talk about. It doesn't have BJ Blasovitz in it. Oh, well, then she's just... I know. Let's talk about BJ. In the game, we want to talk about it. Let's talk about BJ in the game we want to talk about, which is Wolfenstein II, the new Colossus, which opened up on what I thought was a hilarious sort of lassy legal parody. It was surprisingly long. I think it was over eight minutes of trailer, including that and gameplay and everything. They really devoted a lot of time to it. It was the only thing they had to do. It is really their big surprise. It was sort of an open secret that we were working on it, because last year during their presentation, they showed like a here's our file system thing, and there was a Wolfenstein 2 sitting right there. So that was literally everything that they had about it last year. Also, there was an interesting German or else game show. That was weird. I would like to see more of. So my genuine hope is at some point in the game, there is a TV going and you can just sit down and watch. Which I like too, The Darkness, if anyone's familiar with that one. it looks to me like the storyline is BD's going to start out waking up again from a coma he's had a rough time he got blown up he has a head trauma problem you should probably reclassify from Human to Minbari oh yeah the battle on fire references that's what I'm hearing Ask your nerd friends. Yeah, it looks like he's going to start out just frail. He's going to end up in a wheelchair. He's going to have to escape from somewhere. At some point, he's going to wear that suit from the last one, the dot-you-should suit. Then, at some point, he's going to be, like, completely healthy. And at some point, he's going to ride a tank dog. So, thanks. Tank dog's something featured for quite a while. Yes, but you never had to ride one before. No. So, that's... They are not for petting, but for riding. It looks like Coral Angle is back, which, that was my great disappointment of the last game, is that you didn't manage to kill her while you were in the giant mech suit. That doesn't make any sense to me. The strawberry milkshake thing was cool. Also, there's characters that I thought were dead that came back too, like Max Haas. And I think it was Bon Botte or something like that was one of the guys he's from from the prison. It's been a while, so I'm not really remembering. Yeah. So it's one of the guys you met in the prison that helped you out to get to... I can't remember that guy's name the Dottie Shook guy so when you escaped from prison you took some people with you and that guy was featured in the trailer. Plus some new characters on the American Reasons. Oh yeah it's worth pointing out this is in the United States this time. Yeah. Which is amazing. Yeah I'm thinking it's like supposed to be the 60s or something. Yeah I think it's 1960 specifically. It kind of feels like the aesthetic was a lot like the Man in the High Tower Amazon show that is the U.S. and the 50s and 60s, slow between Germany and Japan and stuff. Who all here has played Bethesda's reboot of Wolfenstein? I haven't even started it yet. Oh, you should absolutely play it. Yeah, I know you do. It is... It is one of the best single-player virtual adventure experiences I have played probably since Half-Life 2. This announcement, I remembered that they made a smaller digital version called Wolfenstein the Old Blood. I'd say a tiny bit of that. I just started this last week because this is due out October 27th. And so, I thought, I better do this. I must have got it when it was on sale. It's one of at least three games coming out on the 27th. But the reboot, yeah, the reboot, very good single-player, first-person shooter experience. Totally single-player. Very bold to do. And I like pure single-player experiences. I don't like pure multiplayer experiences a lot of times, except for Overwatch, because Overwatch is amazing. The exception that proves the problem. But for the most part, I like the single player. There is no multiplayer in Molten Settlement War, but it is absolutely worth the time if you don't want to, you know, if you want to make the, because on normal and above, the shooting is tense and difficult. If you want to, you can scale that back. Because at one point, I was playing through on normal, and I suddenly overwrote my save. there are no backups. And so I had to start over. And so I just restarted on easy. It's totally fine in that, but you really do not have to work as hard. I do like it when the game's... The story is a solid story. Yeah. Yeah, no, it is... There is a level below what I played at, too. Yeah. I think it's Don't Hurt Me, Daddy. Yes. It's old id style. And the story in that game is enough. The set pieces, everything about that is just, it's a rollercoaster ride from beginning to end. I wish listed it just off of the bona fides of the first. Wow. Yeah. And same dev team, all of that. Yeah. That's just how we play it. Did we have anything else that we want to talk about with Bethesda? Nope. It was sad compared to last year's. Last year's was so hard. It's been hard to live up to last year's. Yeah. This year hurt bad. I do sympathize with him a bit. This isn't really a company specific But I did think we should go ahead and segment out And do the PC gaming show They brought that back, they did it last year Tony, you're One of our primary PC gamers Probably the primariest Of those of us at this table So anything that's your eye I thought it was interesting that they're doing A remake of Age of Empires I noted that as well Age of Empires Definite Yeah, or dependent. Definite, definite edition, whatever. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Age of Empires is, yeah. It's definitely Age of Empires? Okay. What were your thoughts on that? Age of Empires, the Age of Empires games were fine. I just remember back in the day, it seemed like everybody had Age of Empires. I've got Age of Empires 3 on my computer right now. I don't think I've played it in four years. Yeah. But I've got it. I just, it's kind of a touchstone RTS-type game from a certain generation. And I just don't know how well it's going to do. Yeah, I don't know either. I've played a number of them, but it was never, like, one I played multiplayer. I always sort of played it by myself when I felt like it. And I played the one that was out for Games for Windows Live, which was a free-to-play one, and I refused to pay money. That was simplified. It was okay. It was simplified. but other than that I haven't played Empire since. I'm sure I've still got a boxed copy of an older one on my shelf. Yeah. I was really surprised but that was a complete surprise for me. It's never been, I mean it's always been kind of up there because it's been around for so long but it's just not, I don't know. I was really surprised. I think Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, either worked on Age of Empires or he He's just a fan of it, so I think that may be part of it. Similar to, like, Lulu Vents, which was an original Xbox game, had an HD remaster, I don't remember if it was this year or last year, and that was, like, one of his favorite original Xbox games. So you know clearly he can flex his muscles when he wants to Right The only other thing I had in my notes about the PC gaming show was they announced XCOM 2 War of the Chosen Right Which is a big expansion for XCOM 2. Which, from everything I've heard, is it could have been released as its own game. And so the only other thing I know is they're throwing in three new champions. There's three factions. It looks like there's going to be three new factions. And it's going to be... I'm really interested. It's on my short list. I figured it would be. Yeah, because I've loved all the XCOM games. And I, you know, I especially, squad shooters are kind of my thing. I love them. I just put out the Battletech video last, what, two days ago. Well, I've got a game for you. Oh, good. Now I've got to buy a Switch, too. We're going to buy one anyway. Did anyone else have anything out of the PC game yet? They did announce Warhammer Total War 2. Oh, yes. And I think the combination of the Total War series, the Total War engine, and the Warhammer Fantasy universe is just a match made in heaven because, yeah, they just work really well together. So I'm glad that there's a second one coming out. The first one was fun, but, yeah, it's just a sequel to a good game. So we'll see. All right. Well, we're not to Nintendo yet, though we can touch Nintendo a little bit, because we're now in the Ubisoft section. And let's see. Mike, we haven't heard from you in a bit, so go ahead and lead us off on Ubisoft. Well, Ubisoft opened up with the worst kept secret in gaming this year, Mario plus Rabbids Kingdom Battle. I saw that. Which is taking, obviously, Mario characters and Ubisoft's weird Rabbid characters. They're just kind of friendly Rabbids. Yes, and they're merging them together into a game that is XCOM. I put it in my notes. I called it XCOM, XCOMario, XCOMario. I'm not saying it right. It's funnier written. XCOMario. I haven't played XCOM, but I've watched you play it, so I recognized it right away, and I'm watching their trailer for it, and it's like, this is XCOM. Which is funny, because, like, everything I've read online, people going into this had no interest in this game at all. and now everybody wants it. I don't know. I don't know. I can't. It was odd. I saw it. My XCOM Mario reference was my third note on this. My first note is WTF. Yeah. When I saw this, I was like, what in the world? Because I, not really following Nintendo closely, did not know about this and didn't believe it would actually be like a real thing. Also, what? They're letting Mario use guns now? You don't kill with it. That was the thing that my person had wished. You're a Miyamoto. With a gun. Yeah. I mean, yeah, except that, you know, the gun's not shooting bullets, but it seems more violent than Nintendo normally allows Mario to become. That is best of me, I suppose. This is due out really soon. It's due out August 29th. So, Mike, are you going to get it? I don't know. There's a lot coming out. Eric, are you going to get it? I probably will. Because it's a Switch game. Yeah, it's a Switch game. And there are also some on Switch. I'm thinking about getting one. Just for this game? Well, I mean, the Tri-Z video went live. I mean, let's be honest. I'm probably going to end up with a Switch, but at the same time, it's never going to leave my daughter's room anyway. Yeah. That's true. That's a fair point. Jake, was there anything in Ubisoft that you wanted to talk about? I think we've already talked about the game I wanted to talk about in Ubisoft, and that was Ubisoft's The Creed. So we're going to talk about it. I do have one that I briefly mentioned. They did show another very brief piece on South Park, The Fractured But Whole. The first South Park game was a lot of fun. Put the wrong and fastest on the wrong syllable there. The Fractured But Whole. Sorry. I have not played the first one. I've been interested in it. And I believe the first one is going to be bundled with, right, Stick of Truth. And that will be bundled with The Fractured But Whole. Stick of Truth was a lot of fun. I've played it a couple times. It's pretty good. Okay. It's pretty good. So anyway, I think it still looks... You know, it's... Nothing new was really shown in the trailer, but I think it still looks interesting and funny. I don't regularly watch South Park, but... I haven't regularly watched South Park in years. I like the humor. I like the humor. And it's supposed to be out October 17th, so not a long wait. It's supposed to be out like everything else seems to be out. So it's... I think I already have this on my Amazon gaming wish list, so it'll just still stay, because I'm still... Obsidian? I don't remember. Okay. Well, that will make a huge difference on whether or not it gets laid. Okay. Eric, did you have any other goody socks? Yeah, let's talk about Starlink. I had that written down as well. Yeah. I did not, so you guys... I'm sort of the representative toys-to-life person here. I don't know that I'm going to get into another toys-to-life one, but that one has a pretty solid value proposition. because you take spaceships and you stick them on your controller and then you put stuff on the spaceships and that stuff appears in the game. That's pretty solid. And the guy literally said, I grew up in the 80s. We watched a lot of sci-fi. We played with a lot of toys. We're trying to make that work here. The game itself looks fun. I don't know about... The reason I've never gotten into, like, Lego Dimensions and all that stuff is because it's like, games are expensive enough without having to buy a whole bunch of other stuff for him. That has said that you will be able to actually just buy the stuff digitally. Right, he sounded like, yeah, he said something. I didn't know if he meant all of the same things or whether there would be some things that would be digital only and some things that would be physical only. The impression I got there was there was basically anything that you can buy physical, you can just buy it digitally as well. But it's something I'd have to see a lot more of before I would ever decide. Yeah, but I like the concept of just sticking it on the controller. Yeah. That's an interesting take on that. It looked interesting because they showed, you know, every console controller with a freaking spaceship stuck on top of that. Yes. Presumably. You can't do that. Yes. Reminds me of, you remember back in the day, this is way before your time, Jake, I'm so sorry. But you did the big spaceships and you put in the special tape. Yeah. Yeah. That's empowering what you were thinking. And you shoot the TV. Yeah. Yeah. I had one of those, but it didn't have a video cassette, so I had to rent the video cassette from the video store in order to be able to watch. And it used similar patterns to what the original Light Gun worked with. So, of course, it's the feedback from the screen that is seen, so it's not a gun, it's really a camera. Yeah. And what I learned is that if I just pointed it away from the TV, much like, you know, Duck Hunt, then I wouldn't get hit. Plus, I only had the bad guy ship. I didn't have the Captain Power ship. I did more Photon. I wanted to touch briefly on the crew, too. Did we need another open world racer? Were we excited about it? You can race everything. That was what I noticed. The gimmick here is, they're like, okay, we're not Forza. And instead of doing cinematic, like me for Speed Seeds would be wanting to do, let's just do diversity. So it's not just cars. There are going to be boats, and there are going to be planes. That's all of them. It's featured prominently. You can race dump trucks. No, you can race monster trucks. Monster trucks. I didn't say dump truck. I'm not saying you can't. Right, right. We don't know if it's dump truck or not. Let us hope that there is. Visually, I did not think this looked as polished as Need for Speed. Jake's rubbing his hands together, so... Did you play the first crew? Ah, yes, I did. I actually got it as one of the games for Gould, but Gould didn't. Oh, okay. So, I mean, it was... I actually kind of liked it. I mean, it reminded me somewhat, a lot of Split Second. Oh. Has anybody ever played that? I have played that. And Mike, what did you think of Split Second? Split Second's a lot of fun. Dang. Because it's insane. Split Second is the Disney-produced one that's like a game show, right? Yes. The one where you're driving around as you're driving around and you build a meter and you can do things like blow up buildings and have them drop on the track and stuff like that. Oh, I remember that. Because there was another game that came out at the same time that was basically Mario Kart with real cars. Blur. Blur, there you go. See, I get those two blurred in my mind. I played them both. They were both a lot of fun. Blur's video went out of business, I think. Didn't they? Yeah, the season made it went out of business. Because they're the ones that made Junk Yours and Project Gotham. Yeah, Project Gotham. Way back. Yeah. Okay, so some interest is there. What about the new IP they showed, Skull and Bones, which is apparently Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag, but just the ship part. So is Assassin's Creed just the part anybody wants to play? Right. Or so everyone's saying. I couldn't tell from the trailer. The trailer was entirely cinematic. But that's what all the... But then they played some. Right. Right. I didn't catch that, though, because I only went back and had to go through highlights on Ubisoft. I didn't watch it all. Yeah, they did show some gameplay. I heard people saying, no, this plays like the ships on Black Flag. I'm not an Assassin's Creed guy, but I wanted to play Black Flag just for those sections. Right. Because that was literally the only part that interested me about that entire game. So it looked like they're five-on-five PvP. You each pick different ship classes. so you can have like a frigate and you can have, there are probably other ship types that I don't know. Like a PES or a... I don't know. One of them had a Grand on the front of it which was kind of awesome looking. Yeah, that was one that was like a scout ship and then you had your big warship that was just lined with cannons. Your first grades and your third grades. And so there is boarding and so on and so forth. So yeah, it looked interesting. I don't know if it's the kind of game I would play or not. Yeah. It looked... It was more arcade-y than Sim. So that, like, you defeated that guy, your ship's now repaired, even though that has no relevance whatsoever. Yeah, it sadly doesn't seem to happen for our military. Far Cry 5. I want to talk about Far Cry 5. It's due out February 27th of 2018, so it is a ways off. There's been a lot of buzz about it. I've played every Far Cry except Far Cry 3. So, I thought it looked really good. This one's taking place in America. It's going to go with that whole rural militia vibe thing. Graphically, it looked great. They've been looking great on the new console. I just finished Far Cry Primal a couple months ago and really had a lot of fun with that. So I'm assuming it's basically going to be more of the same. They showed some of the gameplay seemed to be more of the goofier variety of weird ways you can deal with stuff. In this one, you have a dog. He'd be hungry. We have a hired dog. Hired fangs, it says. Hired fangs. Hardcore? So, is the mercenary aspect something that has been in previous games, or is that new for this one? You know, Far Cry 2, I believe you played as a mercenary. I don't remember if Far Cry 1, I thought Far Cry 1 was mercenary styling, and then they went away from that. Right, I didn't mean that you were a mercenary, I mean that you have a mercenary team. Oh, I see, I'm sorry, I misunderstood. Yeah, the concept of mercenaries, yeah, that's different. But there have been some that's following some similar beats. Like Far Cry 4, for example, you would, as you rescued towns and stuff, you would gain the ability to call in loyal rebels who would come and help you in fights. You'd use a consumable and summon, like a flare, and you'd summon them. So there have been mechanics for quite a while, I think since 3, that I haven't played through other than Blood Dragon, which is awesome, but not like a true Far Cry, where you would rely on, like, in Primal it was taming beasts, and then you could ride the beasts if they were like a saber tooth, or you could send them like honey badgers in to fight for you, and things like that, so they're kind of your hired gun, and in Far Cry 4 there were the rebel villager people that were your hired guns, but you didn't pay them, but it took a consumable. So it's been a mechanic where they've had to call for help. The squiggy, when we go back to Southern Street, they've got the squiggy thing going on where you bring in your buddies. I saw a comic that was making fun of some of the normal Far Cry type things that are in this, like climbing the tower. The guy climbs the tower and there's like a Verizon guy. And then, like, instead of crafting, he's just getting a delivery from Amazon via UPS or something. Yeah. Yeah, there's been a lot of that. The tower thing has always been sort of good. They kind of got away from the towers with Primal, which was nice. It's fun to take. Again, they couldn't get away entirely. They had substitutes where you would go in and instead you'd just get to the top of a plateau or whatever. You'd have to scale the thing. You'd light it on fire. But Far Cry Primal, I think, used Far Cry 4's map and assets into our basic layout and just changed the characters to not have any clothes. But it was a fun game. Did anyone else have anything on Ubi? Just Beyond Good and Evil 2. That's the only other thing. It's a thing that exists, probably, but only as cinematic. Yeah. All of spiritual successor style, I guess. It's supposed to be a prequel. Yeah, it's a prequel. Trailer's cinematic. I played the HD rendition of Beyond Good and Evil. Maybe it would have meant something to me if I had played it when it came out. I enjoyed the game. I don't understand why it's called classic, though. I don't. So I'm not excited about this. But I know a lot of people are. So the listeners might be. So don't take my judgment too harshly, listeners. Right. Yeah, I don't have any attachment to Beyond Good and Evil one way or another. I played maybe five minutes of the original one. Nothing against it. I just haven't sat down to get through it. Okay. Well, that's it for Ubisoft. So I think that means we get to hop into another major segment. Yeah, just one thing on the Ubisoft presentation as a whole. it's the one of the ones I watched that felt the most earnest and possibly emotional. Not because of anything that they necessarily announced, just the way that the presenters felt. Like, especially that thing right at the end where, like, all the employees came on. Also, I was kind of realizing with as many cheers as random Ubisoft employees were getting, that most of the audience must be Ubisoft employees. Did you post that to Ubisoft? I don't know. I totally get it. Or Shigeru Miyamoto. I totally get it. But I didn't I don't know any of the other people. Ubisoft has always kind of felt that way with their conferences. They didn't have a way to hire Tyler this year. Yeah, I was going to say that. The other thing is, I really like Aisha Tyler as their presenter. Yeah. I felt that that was one of the most professional presentations as a result of her being the presenter. Apparently, there's a lot of people that don't like her. But, you know, I've heard opinions on the internet are not really hard to come by. Yeah. Well, they had her do it for years, so I would have assumed any negativity was already determined to be not as good as the positive. And they kept having her back. It could have just been as it was down to the scheduling. Okay, I was just... I know, due to the scheduling stuff, she, like, her podcast went from, like, three, four episodes a month to, like, one every three months. And she's done some other things. Right. I hope that's the case because I thought she added a real professional flair. All of the scripts that they have for those things are terrible. Yeah. The thing is that what I like about her is that when she's on the stage and she's talking, you know, maybe she's acting, maybe she's not, but I feel like she's a real gamer. Like, she really cares. She really likes to play games. And that That level of authenticity, I think, is good at a conference about gaming. Right. In contrast, in the EA presentation, Janina, and I'm not going to say her last name because I'm sure I'm going to get it wrong, she was clearly a professional. She was also clearly saying lines to make her seem more gamer-friendly. Right. And she may or may not be a real gamer, or whatever a real gamer is. She may or may not be that thing. That doesn't matter. Her lines were stupid. It felt bad. And as we've noted before, a lot of these lines are stupid. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and a lot of the people that kept presenting here aren't, like, professional presenters. Right. But in the clear, in contrast to the rest of the EA conference, she had her act together, where, like, the two soccer guys, I didn't care for that part at all. Oh, man. For me, that is a sports part on EA. Yeah. I think that's when I went to the bathroom. See, I sat through the whole thing, and I read the basic notes. And it shows. We can't hear. Well, let's go ahead now and transition to Sony, which decided to not have to rely on bad lines by just not having anyone present anything. Yeah, they had one guy. There was no Kaz, which I thought was interesting. I don't know if they had him out last year or not. I don't remember. They did open it up with the hippie band. a satire I don't know I called them a hippie band I called them a one guy a guitar band yeah they always have to do something a little weird they do now the waterfall thing was cool yeah it looked cool but I bet it meant more for the people in the audience than the people watching the stream well in general the atmosphere that they had for that that overall presentation that was kind of their thing in terms of all the presentations I saw Sony was the highest production value they had the best spectacle and Sony normally has the best Yeah, they get that theater. It looks great. It looks great. Is that the Orpheon or something? I don't care enough about it. They have a theater band. It started snowing at one point. Yeah. I was disappointed when it didn't also start raining, because they used rain a lot. They had live fire on the stage. They had porches hanging from the ceiling. They had points where they had multiple screens moving in the background. Right. They were showing the same scene, but from different angles of stuff. Right. Yeah, no, their spectacle is amazing. Xbox is the same stage every year. Yeah. It's pretty much what it is. Yeah. And so, yeah, so let me, well, let's go in, let's dive into the game. Because, yeah, it was one presenter, Guy, very brief. He came out twice. And that was it. That was it. It was basically a trailer. It was basically, here's a couple trailers. Hey, yeah, we're going to show you some trailers. We hope you like us. And, hey, this is our big finale. Bye. It was even more extreme than last year. Now, I'll just go ahead and say that, well, I didn't like it. I didn't like that. I don't like that approach. I don't think E3 should just be sitting there watching a freaking trailer reel. I want people to talk to me. I want the developers to talk to me about their games, and Sony doesn't like to do that. But I guess they don't need to. Yeah. I like the games I saw. I just don't. I would have liked to have seen more people out there, more developers out there talking. Yeah. And it seems like Ubisoft was the only one who was really leaning in that. We're going to show you a trailer, and then we're going to bring somebody out who belongs with this game, who's going to give you the first place. I mean, it's E3. It's what I expect. This isn't PAX. I don't need, you know. It's a small point. Sony's also had problems in the past with their, whenever they demo something, you're not writing it right. Well, I can understand foregoing live demos, but they could have shown the trailer for Uncharted Lost Legacy and then bring out the lead writer to tell us why it's going to be different other than that there's no Drake and instead it's a chick. I mean... So, let's start with that. Uncharted Lost Legacy. It's Uncharted without Drake. See, we were just watching that. Yeah. You know what? I mean, it's due out in August, August 22nd, so very soon. I think the game's going to get compared to Tomb Raider because the protagonists are female, and Tomb Raider is, I think, a great game. I think Blood of the Orange, Uncharted, wasn't already... Yeah. compared to Tomb Raider. Wow, it was before Tomb Raider was compared to Uncharted. Right, but I mean, obviously, the first Uncharted had to be compared to Tomb Raider because they're very similar. But then when they rebooted Tomb Raider, they played like Uncharted. They were being informed by the changes in Uncharted. Is anyone excited for Uncharted, Lost Legacy? I've never played an Uncharted game. I haven't either. It's really interesting. I would say, if I do get PS4, I will get Uncharted because it looks actually really good. I just watched the trailer again for it. it looks really I get it no drink but still it still looks really good I can play the Tomb Raider games I can play a little bit of it I've played the Tomb Raider they're good they're real good I should probably play the entire games because I got the collection with my PS4 I should play them again because I've been playing so much other stuff but okay Jake you have a game from the Sony presentation you want us to talk about I actually want to talk about the expansion for Horizon Zero Dawn Okay. And I know Michael. It looks like... So I have the trailer up here. Going back through it again. I'm going to start explaining it. Well, Horizon Zero Dawn, it's one of the best games that's come out so far. Just watching you play it in the hotel in Dallas when we went to the Texas Pet Ball Festival, I was like, you know what? I could swing a PS4. I mean, it just looked so good. That game alone makes me want to have a PS4. It's probably the most visually impressive game I've played on a PS4 so far. I mean, the combat mechanics are very well done, and I mean, when you go into a fight, you have to plan out how you're going to do this, because some of these big robot dinosaur things take a lot to take down. So, I mean, you have different ways of going about it. You can ride other things that are like robots that kind of look like horses or steeds or something like that that you can actually hack into and ride them. And just all your different weapon types, you can try and take it out, blow an arrow. You have, like, a slingshot that you can launch bombs with, or you can use, like, the slingshot can also fire, like, ice bombs to help freeze it. You can lay down tripwires, which ended up being my favorite tactic, which I was just lying the whole air with tripwires, so they would just keep running over them, and they would explode, or had ones that would stun them, and then I could go up and hit them. It's such an amazing game. The story is really well done. Lots of side quests. Big open world. A whole lot to do in it. So I'm really excited to go back to that world. And then the expansion looks amazing. Frozen Wilds? Yes. Hopefully we get some new robot dinosaurs to mess with. I'm sure there will be more. The towers in this game were giant robot dinosaurs you had to climb and then back into their head, and that would give you the map of the area. it's it's it's gonna be I won't be surprised if it gets some game of the year awards I mean I'm looking just looking at it and everything else seeing it the snow actually looks the snow yes and I mean this is a game when you're walking through snow you leave tracks in the snow it's very well done it's really it's something fantastic alright well they're exciting and Tony likes it yeah I do it looks good it looks good uh Eric do you have a game that you want to hit on Oh, we should probably talk about Days Gone. Yeah. They featured it pretty heavily at the end of E3 last year. Yes, what do you think? I don't think it previously. Yeah, last year, that was the one where they showed it, where they were showing it was more... They warmed. Yeah, they were concentrating on the swarm, the particle physics of the zombie hordes, or the whatever they are. Yeah, breakers, I think, maybe. It's all zombies. It's all zombies. Because they're fast zombies as opposed to slow zombies, and they were talking about using, how to use the particle physics stuff or how they interact with new huge swarms. And it looked really good last year. The art definitely went up a notch this year. Right. When this didn't seem to really focus that much on the zombies. No. In fact, you really didn't see the character they were playing as fight them at all. It seemed more that zombies... And what I think is interesting about it is it looks like this game is exploring the idea of using zombies as more of a puzzle mechanic. Right, or an environmental hazard. Yeah. and, you know, the genre is somewhat tired, so doing something like that, I think, is... If I had a PS4, I would probably put this on my wish list. I wouldn't prioritize it, but I think it looks interesting enough, though it is... In my mind, it's very much falling, and I'm not going to trash Event Horizon, or what was it? Horizon Zero Dawn. Horizon Zero Dawn. So, but, this has what I'm now deeming the PlayStation look. Yeah, we hide in tall grass. There's a bunch of games with that. And this looks like, Xbox might be the home of the bro shooter, but holy cow, you want games to hide in tall grass and sneak around in? Sony is your platform, because they just love that look. And this is more of it. It looks good. I think it looks really polished and fun. I'm not sure it's a game changer, but... It looks very QuickTime event heavy. Yeah. That's why it looks a little like Hitman the Walking Dead. Not like Hitman, so that could be the attraction. There was the whole thing where he took the bear trap and set it down and then hit over in the thing and then threw, was it a coconut? I don't know. The way that it sounded when it hit, it sounded like he threw a coconut. Maybe it sounded that way. I guess the sound issues at the beginning of the conference, all the video I found, I couldn't multiply because that's the kind of sound issues. Yeah, I was like, we were watching the IGN feed, and we could, like, not hear it at all. We switched over to a different feed, and it was fine. I don't know if it just happened to get fixed at the same time or what, but... Tony, you got another Sony game? Yeah, I've actually got a couple, but I'm just going to start with one. We can come back to it. They're remaking Shadow of the Colossus. I can't decide if this is worthwhile or not. I know it's one of those kind of touchstone games for a lot of people, and I can see the reasoning to bring it out, but from the sounds of it, it's an actual remake. Right, yeah. They've already done a remaster. They did a remaster of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus on the PS3. So now they're remaking Shadow of the Colossus again. It just seems like... Having not played Shadow of the Colossus originally, I fall back to my standard default position, which, in this case, unfortunately, is I disagree with remakes. Yeah. If you want a remaster so that your game is available on a more recent generation of console, I get it, and I'm okay with it, assuming you don't have backwards compatibility. No. But I'm not, it's the same reason why I'm not excited about them remaking Final Fantasy VII. It had its time. Yeah. Rerelease it if you want. Do some minimal work if you need to to maybe polish up the textures a bit, But I'm not going to, I mean, to me it's the same with movies like, wait, let's remake Psychos. No. No. It's not your place. Unless you're doing something totally, not even totally different, but unless you're making substantial changes, like from the original XCOM to the new. Sure. But then it's not a real remake. It's a new game. Right. But for just a remake, I don't know. I'm not. I can't get excited about it, but I know a lot of Shadow fans are. Yeah. Really excited. I can't wet the bed over this. Right. Yeah, it's in sort of a weird place, because on one hand there already is the remaster, though that's not technically playable on a PS4. So, you know, part of it is trying to get something available for PS4 players. But at the same time, I've heard some complaints about the early footage of it makes it seem like the atmosphere of the game has changed in a way that isn't necessarily positive, like it looks too clean when the original is very much a a misty, foggy kind of feel which helps with the atmosphere literally and figuratively that they were going for. So in terms of artistic direction it feels, to some people, like it's going in a different direction. It's been over a decade since I've played Shadow of the Colossus so I can't... I don't have anything to really compare it to. It's a really amazing game. Um, so, if it means that they have to do a remake in order for modern players to play it, that makes sense. But I don't think it really exists as a thing for people who played it before. Mike, pick a game for us. Um, I'm going to try to talk about God of War. Hmm, yeah, that did have some prominent time dedicated to it. I thought it looked great graphically. Oh yeah, it looks very good. Escort Mission the game. Yeah, pretty much. Do you think he's more like a little helper, like what's-her-name in Resident Evil 4? You had to escort her. Yeah, but I was saying not, but useful. Like, this is like a little kid, and you throw him like a little facehugger. There did seem to be a few instances where you saw him, like, shoot an arrow or something. Right. Or a fellow member or something like that. Or he stabbed somebody at one point. Yeah, he's got a knife, too. And the aesthetic they had on that game was beautiful. Like that shield, when he whips the shield out, that big expansion spin-around thing. and the axe, and all the various creatures, and the whole Norse setting, it resonated with me. I liked it. I don't know if it's a game that would be... To me, until I see more, I don't know if it's a game that's going to make me go, you know what, I need to get a PS4 so I can play that. Have any of you played any God of War games? Yes. No. I have not, although I know the collection. I'm glad I've heard it. Tony, you're the only one. I played the original a long time ago, and it was fun. It's okay. I mean, I don't know. I couldn't sit down and tell you anything specific about it. I remembered enjoying it, but I never played any of the other ones. I thought this looked nice, but it didn't make me want to play it. Yeah. Having not played it before, it didn't. It's not. To me, it's like, this is not the hack and slash you were looking for. I'm sure I'm not the only one to make the observation, but old man Kratos. Yeah. That might excite some people, but I think mostly fans. I guess people are saying it looks like it plays differently than past God of Wars. I don't know if that's in a good way or a bad way. And the producer on it has said there will be no quick time events in the game. Which, the original God of War was very heavy. Yeah. Or the original series. We've seen a lot of events that do that. There used to be a time when there were every game. There's not a game that's bad to the grand of gamers everywhere. Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah. Yes, you do. A bunch of losers. Jake, you have another game. Oh, yes. You're all probably going to harm me for this, but freaking Call of Duty World War II. Actually, it was on my list to discuss as well. It's where I come from now, Jake. So, my thought on it, I like the historical background of it, but honestly, I think what they're trying to do here is copies directly from Battleship One. That's basically what they're doing with the World War II kind of thing, kind of history, a lot of lost time countries. Well, I think it's because you're too young to remember the original Call of Duty. You're too young to remember Call of Duty was a good game. No, no, you're too young to remember Call of Duty was a good game. I mean, I played Modern Warfare 3. Modern Warfare 3 was a good game. Like I said, you're too young to remember the original Call of Duty was a good game. Okay, gentlemen, please. Allow me to bring some kindness in, as I often must do. I agree with Jake, and I disagree. I agree that it makes a lot of sense to push World War II now, especially in light of what we've seen with Battlefield 1 however, there's no way this wasn't in development before they even knew about Battlefield 1 because of the three year cycles that they're going off of, but it's a good idea to do the throwback thing it's very in right now I think this is something they kind of felt coming because they didn't really this is just me brainstorming out there but I'm thinking that they're like, okay, we've done this like far space thing, back to old Walden, the next one's going to go back to the roots. And it's not like people have been calling for Call of Duty to return to its roots for a decade. I think they've been reading the tea leaves for a while and they were like, okay, we need to. You see, there was a time when the criticism was, why is every single shooter World War II? Why are we always in World War II? We're in World War II constantly and it was a fatigue with dealing with World War II. but now no one wants to do it because there was this, that fatigue in it the fatigue of war and all they don't pivot on a dime on this, now in case of DICE, they went and said well let's just do an old war but not World War II we'll do World War I which is about as far as you can go back unless you want to start doing quick time events or reloading a musket now long term I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Activision has three studios working on Call of Duty games now. So they have three year development cycles. They have three. They have, this is Iron Tusk or whatever. Sledgehammer. Sledgehammer. Sledgehammer. They have four. Treyarch. Right. Treyarch. Treyarch. And Sledgehammer's the newest. They're the newest to be incorporated into the Call of Duty family. So that you get, they're able to put out a game a year, but the development teams aren't fatigued. They get three years to work. I could see it with Activision maybe going, Sledgehammer, you are going to do the old setting. Be it World War II, maybe they do World War I in three years, which I would say is definitely a response to Battlefield 1 if they do that. And then maybe you have Treyarch doing your... Modern Warfare. Well, not as bad as it gets. But you do your, let's do our present day thing, and then you have your Infinity Ward doing your near future or far future style shooter. Yeah. And you do it as three different flavors that way. I don't know. But I think it was a smart move. I thought this was super polished. It was real polished. And I think it's nice to see Call of Duty getting back to World War II. I think it needs it. And the game itself is not a priority for me, but the multiplayer looks like what I expect of Call of Duty, and I imagine will be a competent experience. this will make this will probably make me buy a Call of Duty game again I haven't bought a Call of Duty game since Modern Warfare 2 so I don't know I don't know I don't know World at War I think is the one you were trying to get me to bring out well I was the last Call of Duty prior to that there was Call of Duty Call of Duty 2 Call of Duty 3 Big Red One oh those okay Big Red One was a different one wasn't it that was like a side Call of Duty 3 yeah that was like an expansion side of the game I think that might have been a PS2 example or something, because by that time, everybody had gone to the next generation, whatever. But Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2 were amazing games for their times, with wonderful single player and incredible multiplayer, that I felt that they managed to recapture the same kind of fun with the multiplayer, I felt, in Modern Warfare 2. and the single player in Modern Warfare 2 was okay, but that's as far as I would go as okay. I didn't think they ever recaptured what they had. My general impression, the note I've got here is there's lots of stuff going on while you run in a straight line. I have to call a duty single player. Most of the shooter single players are that way. Eric, do you have another game? Do we want to talk about Monster Hunter World? We probably should. Yeah, I don't truck with Monster Hunter, so I don't really... I didn't even know it was a Monster Hunter game. I knew it, but I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't figure it out. Well, because Monster Hunter is just about, hey, let's make weird weapons and do this and that. I played Monster Hunter on one of the portable systems. Probably 3DS. It wasn't mine. It was one of the guys I worked with. And all I remember is you had to hold the control, you had to hold the system in a weird way to hit all the buttons in the right order, or to be able to hit every button when you needed to hit them, so it was kind of uncomfortable to play. But it's a fun game, provided you like the whole, hey, I've got to kill stuff to gather stuff to make stuff, so I can kill bigger stuff so I can gather stuff to make stuff. So, I mean, I can see where this game could have popularity. I mean, the Monster Hunters are hugely popular. popular. So I thought, I did wonder what its online presence is going to be, especially because they're calling it Monster Hunter World. What kind of online presence is it going to have? And will it have auction houses, and will it have the horror of real money stuff? Have they ever done a Monster Hunter that was online? Not that I can think of. They had multiplayer components. Yeah, they had multiplayer components, but it's always been like DS to DS, or stuff like that. Yeah, I think maybe on the PS2 they had a Monster Hunter game that you could play multiplayer, but it was like four people. Yeah. And it was just, you know, basically somebody's running a server kind of thing, not a sort of a persistent world. Right. That's why I'm wondering if it's not going to have like a persistent or a large group thing that modern systems let you do. I've never played a Monster Hunter. I thought this looked okay, but that it didn't look like Monster Hunter. like what I think of Monster Hunter, like the art style was different, and not nearly as polished as a lot of the other Sony stuff that was being shown. Graphically, it looked subpar. Well, it's Capcom, and that's Capcom. Okay, well, separate from this, from any of that, this might have been the worst trailer of E3. Oh, maybe. With all the cuts and jumps. Yeah. I couldn't follow what was going on. I couldn't believe, with a franchise as popular as Monster Hunter, that the reveal was this poor. But it just looked like, the game may be good, but the reveal, I thought, was really clunky. I couldn't tell what was going on. Yeah. It was just like, okay, that didn't leave a great impression for me. Which is unfortunate, because it's a fairly popular franchise. I'd say I'd skipped time, but I did that on purpose, because I wanted to bring up a game. I wanted to bring up VR in general. They covered several VR games, but there's only one worth talking about. So we will talk about it. And that is Monster of the Deep. It's a fishing game. I know. It's a Final Fantasy XV fishing game, people. It's a fishing game. Let me read you my notes. Really? Does this need to exist? No. No, it doesn't. That was my notes. That's all we need to know. No. I'm going to read you my notes. I've got four points. Point one. It's a Final Fantasy XV fishing game! Exclamation. Point two. It wants to display Sega's bass fishing game as the ultimate in fishing. Point three. The trailer was so ridiculously over the top that nothing has made me laugh more. All E3. This trailer may have won E3 with its epicness. And point four. Fishing! Exclamation. Those are my notes, which are far better than your notes. In all seriousness, this game looks completely terrible I can't believe that they're doing it However, the audacity behind it With its rip and bass I was amazed they didn't dubstep this thing And then drop the bass the moment they land the freaking fish They got killer fish, they got teeth on them I played Final Fantasy XV and I won it I did the fishing minigame a little bit I didn't like it Final Fantasy XI's fishing was more fun than that it's just okay I just remember last year the VR thing was Prompto the annoying obnoxious teenage guy who was going to get a game where he got to shoot behemoths with his pistol and I don't know what's happened with that it sounds like that's not out that's what I was going to ask is this going to include the other PSVR elements like that and like the Sidney Gawking simulator well I was thinking now that they've done number are they going to do the other mini game style things which I mean they didn't with Prompto, his would have been photography, but instead of shooting a camera, they were going to have him shoot a gun. This means we're going to get Cooking Mama, the Final Fantasy 50 experience, because that's what one of them is, is he cooks. And then your favorite, Eric, camping. Because one guy's mini level-up thing that he does is every time you camp, because he wants to rough it and not stay in hotels. I don't know how you mini-game that, SimCamp. SimTent. But, I don't know. It needed to be said. Monster of the Deep! Exclamation point. It is specifically Monster of the Deep, colon, Final Fantasy XV. I don't include that one. Yeah, no, that's what I've got on my notes. Your notes are... My other note is just fishing in September 2017. That's right. It'll be out soon. Get your poll ready. Yeah. Yeah, along with the other VR stuff, there were two kind of platformers in there. One was called Starchild, which looked interesting, but I don't understand how the mechanics would work on that. because if it's just a straight up platformer I don't really get the point of the VR aspect. Yeah, that one I couldn't figure out. That's the one where she lands a great cool spaceship, a really cool landing scene, all that stuff and then she gets out and it's like a 2D platformer and then she walks up to this giant robot and this big alien comes out and that looks tense and then the robot says no and then the alien runs off. I couldn't figure the mechanic out on that. I had no idea. I don't understand that one but that's It at least looked visually very interesting. It would probably be plain interesting not in VR. Then the other one was Moss, which is the platformer with the mouse. Stuart Little 3? Yeah. It's probably more like... What was that other mouse-based kids' movie franchise that had literally three of them? It wasn't The Tale of Death's Grow, which is a different mouse movie. I don't know. but then I at least got an understanding of how the mechanics work because it looks like you aren't controlling the mouse unless maybe you are and also you get to move the environment but it looked like there was something sort of Super Mario Galaxy style where you could influence things in the environment to therefore how about Jeremite? that would be a good touchstone where they're moving forward on their own and you were just moving things up and down so that one looked interesting but again I don't have PS4, I don't have PSVR I do actually have some move controllers lying around, but I'm sure I'd have to replace the batteries on those, which doesn't sound difficult. They're hardwired batteries, so it would actually be a little difficult. Like all the PlayStation controllers, you just plug in a mini USB. So, I'd be looking at like $600 to $800 just to play this game. More than that, have you seen the price of a PlayStation VR? Isn't it like $400? $400 or $500? Right. So then another $400 for the system, and that's a variety of hundred bucks. Which still, the same price as just buying the headset for a Vive or a Oculus. Yeah. So. Yeah, I didn't take any notes on those. Tony, did you have another Sony game? Yeah. Terrible Art vs. Really Bad Voice Acting Infinite. Other than that, Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite. Yeah. What did they do to Tony's face? I think she got hit with a frying pan. That, or she was climbing the ugly tree, and she fell down and hit that grass on the way to the ground. Well, it looks like she's also missing, like, most of her eyebrows. I assume they'll be DLC or something. But they made sure to hit that it was going to have a story mode. Yes. It's actually a demo after. A demo after the story mode. It's, like, 20 minutes long. It's fanfic-level writing. Wow, it's that high? because honestly I didn't think it was that good from the trailer. Because I bought some fanfics that were really good. It lets you play, you get a chance to play a decent amount of the characters, but all you're really ever fighting is like Ultron robots and some like Asgard soldiers that have been like taken over by Ultron in some way. The gameplay mechanics itself, I feel are fine. It plays, it plays really well. Yeah, they do. It seems like they're trying to simplify it somewhat to try and get in a bigger crowd, so it's not the 3v3 like the past games. It's back down to two-on-two like the original Marvel vs. Capcom was. They're doing the one-button combos that a lot of fighting games are doing now to try and help with people just getting into the game where you just mash the one button and you'll do a full combo and stuff like that. Some of the moves seem to be simplified. I didn't look at everybody's moves list, but I noticed a full Captain America's, and he had one move in past games was like a shuriken type moveset, so four down diagonal. In this game, it's just like down, down on the button. But mechanic-wise, it's fine. I've seen some comments from some of the, like, pros, like Justin Wong and Filipino Champ that got a chance to play the V3. They like the mechanics, too. Okay. So, mechanically, it played fine, but as far as the graphics, everyone thinks it looked like crap, and there seems to be far more hype around the Dragon Ball game. That's the thing, My takeaway was, I was really excited when I heard this announced, because I feel Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is so long in the tooth. Yeah. But it's got a lot going for it to make it a good competitive game to watch, at the very least. I'm wanting this to have replaced it, but I'm now thinking that Dragon Ball Fighter might be the replacement I'm looking for. Not just for me to play, but also in terms of the three-character combo stuff. I'm not a very noble... Possibility. Right, but... I mean, we won't know until the action comes out in place. It just I was like you I mean Marvel I was like Marvel vs Capcom This is going to be awesome and I saw that trailer and I was just like this looks horrid I prioritize the gameplay but but it's moved, it's not it's like a maybe, maybe I'd ever buy it at this point which so many fighting games languish in that list for me, it's like oh yeah it's okay but not, do I think I'll play it a lot I don't know so I have a few questions on it, is it a PS4 exclusive? No okay because that's the only place we saw it right yeah it was on it was on Sony's page but the demo I downloaded on Xbox One okay it will also be on Steam but the demo is not available on Steam because I don't want people data mining it which makes sense or correct me the entire roster is pretty much known already most of the leaks and it's not so much Marvel vs. Capcom it's MCU vs. Capcom the only non-MCU character that I know of is Nova they brought him back from Marvel's Catwoman 3 well no that should be an MCU he's somebody from the MCU who I want to be yeah but there's no X-Men characters at all no Fantastic Four characters that's the loss is this the same engine as Street Fighter 5 or something else I think they're using Unreal 4 ok is Street Fighter 5 also using Unreal 4 I don't I have no idea I don't remember a lot of Japanese companies are moving to Unreal 4 A lot of companies in general. Yeah, but I mean, it's amazing how many Japanese companies are like, okay, our engines are all crap. We're going to take what the Americans are doing. Well, it seems like it anymore. I don't know that Unreal 4 counts as an American company anymore. Unreal 4 and Unity and what is the one that Amazon's creating seem to be the engines you hear about all the time. Unless they've got a big enhanced one. Right, it doesn't on Frostbite. Right, it doesn't everything on Frostbite. And it's causing problems in some places, like the after-effect of drama. Then, I saw the article after that, because of course I don't have any experience with 355, so I didn't notice, suddenly I didn't notice Dante looking awful. Nothing looked great to me, but I saw the article after that, and yes, it's, I'm, yeah. Gamora was horrible. Yeah, Gamora, by far. Well, she looked like her comic book was horrible. That's not how I remember Gamora looking in the comics. That's how she looks now. Okay, because that's not good. No. Talk to the artist. If you're going to go with all the MCU characters, then go with somewhat MCU lightnesses. Yeah. Because that's what people are going to recognize. Yeah, no, that was definitely, I was not. That was the personal low light. Low light for you. Oh, yeah. Like, it's off my list completely at this point. Unless the game, I'm not a big fighting game person. Well, I mean, I play fighting games, but I'm not like, I don't own all the fighting games. I guarantee you with Dragon Ball coming out, this game will never even see my show. Mike, got another Sony game we can move to? The only thing I have still on my list is Spider-Man. Okay. You are a mind reader over here. Come on. Well, it was the last thing they showed. It was also one of the best looking things. Yeah, it was very, very hot. I'm not a Spider-Man fan. I thought it was their best presentation. It was. I'm not a Spider-Man fan boy. I'm not a Spider-Man fan at all. I don't really like Spider-Man, and I've always thought the concept of Spider-Man games were like, meh, whatever, you swing around and quip. The way they did the web swinging in this game and the way they played out made me want to play this game. I was really impressed by it. It was entirely context-driven. Yeah, and that's kind of cool. I've read a lot of that was just for certain sequences like that, and the game itself isn't going to be quick-time heavy. Also, like, when you're in a mission. I'm not saying quick-time. It felt less quick time, though there was some of that. And more like... More like using stuff in the environment. Right. You're in this position. Here are all the things you can do from here. Yeah. Like when the aim was moving around. Right. And you saw things highlighting with buttons. Yeah. So, like, when he was fighting those thugs, there was a barrel in the background. And he never used it. But it was clear that it was highlighted. So he probably could have webbed that and thrown it at him or something along those lines. Or when he was fighting the big guy and he grabbed a stack of concrete and spun it around. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of stuff, the use of the environment for the combat and everything else, it got more fluid than it did. I also read that they have it programmed so that you cannot actually kill anyone. Yeah, I know. If you do something like try to throw someone off a building, the game will automatically do something to where you web them and pull them back or something. Yeah, I've been watching some of the gameplay over here. Yeah, I know. It's been doing that where it's been, like I saw something, you try to get tossed off the edge. No, it pulled them back in. Yeah. Spiderman don't kill. Exactly. I thought it looked like it had the fluidity of the Arkham games. I thought it took Arkham City, but made it Spider-Man. It reminds me so much of Fren-der-Foe. I haven't played Fren-der-Foe. You haven't played Fren-der-Foe? No. Anybody play Fren-der-Foe? Which one's the Fren-der-Foe one? Where's the better one? It's old. It's older. It's about 06, 07, something like that. Do you split your time between Black Suit and Red Suit? Okay, I think I've played that one. I've played a number of Spider-Man games, so it's hard for me to sometimes remember. Yeah, my take is the QTE moments, the quick-time moments, were probably the most scripted major mission things for the epic set pieces they wanted to go with. And Arkham did, though, have that stuff. Yeah, but still, you know what? What didn't have the quick-time modes? Like, when he was fighting, when he'd fight the guy, and he'd grab the guy with webbing, and he'd throw him up against the wall, and then throw a webbing up to lock the guy against the wall and walk away. Just that, those little bits of things. It felt like what you would imagine Spider-Man to look like. Yeah. I was really impressed by it. It looked really good. I wish it wasn't console exclusive. It looked really good. Yeah. Did something happen at some point that the Spider-Man games got locked down by Sony? Or was it just Sony? It's because it's being named by Insomniac. Yeah. Okay, and they're wholly owned by Sony. They make the Infamous games, I think? Yes, they do. Anyway, it looks good. I don't know. Somehow they got the license to do it. Right. It seems odd because, of course, they were making multi-platform Spider-Man games, and then suddenly Sony seemed to have it locked down. And I wasn't sure if that was just for this game, or if it's an overall thing. Oh, yeah, I don't know if I don't know if Spider-Man's not allowed to sign away those rights. Yeah, I don't, because, like, the Marvel license is somewhat spread out around right now, because, like, you know, Capcom's doing their Marvel vs. Capcom. I'm trying to remember who has the main license. I thought EA. I just assumed maybe it's because Sony gets to do the Spider-Man movies, and they've got a deal. Right, I wouldn't expect that it would be related to that unless they were doing an adaptation of a Spider-Man movie. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe they just made it easier for him to work out some of the questions. And Miles Morales was in the trailer. Yeah. Some people seemed to get excited about that. I didn't care. Miles Morales is a I know who he is. I just don't understand why it's a big Easter egg deal. They haven't made a Miles Morales game yet. I'm not a big Spider-Man person. I've read several issues of Ultimate Spider-Man. I like him more than Peter Parker. But I don't like Peter Parker. I think it's part of the reason I don't like I don't like Spider-Man, it's just I don't really like Peter Parker. I know that he's supposed to be their everyman comic guy. Okay, did anyone have anything else in store? Yes. Destroyed Become Human. That's my last thing I have. That was probably the most interesting Sony trailer to me. But have you played Beyond Two Souls, or Heavy Rain, or Indigo Prophecy? No. Okay. Those aren't really games, though. Aren't they more like basically visual novels? Detroit Become Human is a David Cage game. Yes. It is trying comparisons because of that. Yeah. But like Tony, I haven't played any David Cage games to my knowledge. Not his more recent, more famous ones. Last E3, they showed a trailer for this, which made it look like you played an android negotiator for the police. Now it apparently is much broader than this, and you must be playing as different people as you play the game. I think... Or it could be taken from different... I think it looks really interesting because it looks very, very different. Yeah. Clearly the angle they're going for from both last year and this year is that this will have a lot of choose-your-own-adventure choice. They apparently want you to feel like you have real choice, not the false choices of the Mass Effect or the Dragon Age or whatever else, or the Fallouts, where it's not deep enough and people feel like, I can see through the transparency of these choices, telltale sort of thing. and I was just trying to get past that. It just looks interesting. So, I'm interested. You've got a lot of interest to me. I'm interested. And it's because of that. It's because of the ability to choose. It's something to, okay, we're going to do a pacifist run, or we're going to do a pure war run, or we're going to do, I mean, the ability to choose like that creates a lot of interest. Now, whether it's too gimmicky to actually have long-term legs, like, will you want to go back and play it, or will you be like, I want it and I'm done with it. I don't know that yet. Right. But I think it looks different at the very least. Yeah. To me, it feels very much like an iteration of what David Cage has been doing his whole career, where he is trying to make that cinematic experience where choice matters. My understanding, and I've played some of them, is that it tends to fall short, and that in particular the last third to half of the script really falls apart. I heard that about Heavy Rain in particular. But Heavy Rain absolutely has that. You are playing multiple characters from multiple perspectives at different points in the timeline, and it all is supposed to come together in the end. So I don't know. I would be cautious of this one because they tend to make good presentations. They don't necessarily make good games. Well said. Well, we're ready to go into our final major segment, and that will be the Nintendo presentation. As we have already seen, everyone I think has got some thoughts on the Nintendo presentation, even though Switch ownership is only limited to Eric and Mike. But I know they also talked 3DS stuff overall as well. So who wants to lead off with something? I'll start. Okay. Well, first off, they kind of showed us just a little bit of some of the stuff that's coming out soon that they really touched on a lot last year. so they showed a little bit with ARMS, which I have sitting on the table now. Did it just change? It did. We paused. Just for it. They showed some Splatoon 2 during their presentation and a little bit of the Pokken tournament because they're releasing a deluxe version of it now with all the new characters that have come to the arcade. They did a lot more with that. They did their 25-minute direct or whatever it was, but then they also did three days worth of streaming in the afternoon where they really touched on a lot of these games even more. And I'll be more ignorant there, because while I watched the direct live, I did not watch all the streaming. But I'm just going to get the thing that had me jumping in my chair out of the way right away, and that is Metroid Prime 4. Woo! Or more specifically, a Metroid Prime 4 logo. Yeah, thank you. And it doesn't matter. It's a cooking simulator. It's going to be a first-person cooking simulator. I wanted to be a shrink simulator where she's all broken about Ripley or whatever. Ripley. No, that trailer started out, they showed the space, they're like, ooh, maybe it's Metroid. Nah, it's not Metroid. And then it kept going, and the stars kind of started coming out. I'm like, that kind of looks like the Metroid logo, and then the music from Metroid Prime started playing, and I was just jumping up and down in my chair. I know nothing of it. I don't care if Metroid Prime 4. You don't know that yet. Well, to be fair. Well, we do know it's a direct. It rarely announces things that it does not follow through. Well, no, no, no, no. But, I mean, it could be. It could be, you know, the Metroid Prime fishing simulator. But it didn't get the number. So we know it will be called Metroid Prime 4. You know, you have to hold one of the switch wands in your one hand and spin the other around it like you're really into it. All right. So Mike, obviously, is extremely giddy over Metroid Prime. Well, yes, because also after their direct was over, when they were starting going into their streaming, the first thing they showed was Metroid Samus Returns, which is a 3DS remake of Metroid 2, written by Sam, that's from the Game Boy. Yes. Which is, this is not the first Metroid game they remade. They remade the original Metroid, I tell the Metroid Zero mission. Right. Which took the original Metroid, added a whole lot to it. So, this one, they're, like I said, it's a remake of Metroid 2, but they're adding a lot of new stuff to it, new abilities. It's got like, melee options, where characters charge at you, you can push the X button to melee them and stun them, and they need to do a follow-up attack, which really works well on some of the larger, like, Metroid creatures you have to fight in this. But I watched, they did, like, not an hour of streaming of it, and it looks amazing. And it's a return to old-school 2D Metroid. Right, and it's on the 3DS, right? And it comes out in September. That's the breaking point for me. Not that I don't have a 3DS, but I play my 3DS a whole lot less than I used to, so. I generally only play it when I'm at work during my breaks, but I stayed there. I play it very much race. Yeah. I'm We'll cut that out. I'm just going to do a spot. I'm going to work. They're so strict about anything at work I wouldn't daily go with. Now, Jake, you seem to be pretty excited about the Metroid announcements. Is it the the DH one that's really got you going or a mode? I don't own a 3DS. Oh, really? Yeah, no, I still own a little 10DS light that I carry around in the room. I don't even know what the name of the one I own is. It's so old. But, you have an SPS I think. Yeah, I probably got sick. That's a GBA then. Yeah. Yeah. I think you have a DS that someone's doing. What thing? I don't know. Someone. I don't know. Probably like the original DS. I probably do. Yeah, Nintendo needs to separate their names a little bit. Because then if they announce this new 2D something, 2DS. 2DS. And possibly a new 3DS as well. No, the 3DS is the new 3DS. Yeah. The new 3DS came out last year. Yeah. Well, because they're saying Nintendo will support 3DS beyond 2018. Well, yeah, that's because they're not going to find them 3DS. Well, but that's a good thing to bring up because Tony and I had a discussion when we learned about the Switch, and I know Tony was, you really advocated that your opinion was that they were moving to drop DS support. That was my thought. That's what I thought at the time. Do you still think that, or do you think at this point that they believe they can sustain both architectures? that they'll have a true mobile market and then they'll have Switch for people who kind of want portability but mostly want to play on their TV? I think 3DS is going to fade. I think it's going to fade and drop. I still do. Okay, I think I have my precedent for it as well because when they originally announced the DS, it was announced as the third pillar of Nintendo gaming. You were going to have the, at the time, GameCube, the Game Boy, and then the DS. And when the DS was so successful, then the Game Boy just sort of went away. They had the Game Boy Micro but that doesn't count. That was a weird one-off kind of thing. Well, based off of that philosophy then I would guess that your projection will be whether or not the DS fades depends on the uptake of the Switch. It's going to depend on how well the Switch does it and it's going to depend on how well the 3DS or well the 3DS and 2DS continue to do. So I think they've got an exit strategy where they go full-on on Switch but I don't expect them to announce any new hardware past the 2DS anytime soon. Now, because we have several 3DSs and a 2DS for the little ones of the first 2DS and it's a nice setup. I think one of the biggest sticking points and something that was only partially covered in the C3 is there are certain titles that are considered primarily DS titles at this point that until they start appearing on Switch, the DS is always going to have a spot. But they've said at E3, they are working on a Pokemon RPG game for the Switch. Yes, I wanted to get on that also. All right, so let's segue into that one then. I don't know if it's a mainline game. No, that's what they've said. It is a legitimate, it is not the Pokemon Stars. Yeah. That apparently was, because they had Pokemon Sun and Moon. Yeah. And then they have since announced Pokemon Sun and Moon 2. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. Oh, sorry, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. There we go. Because they previously had X and Y and then X2 and Y2. So that follows that pattern. But there was talk that there was going to be Pokemon Sun, Moon, and Stars. Well, that's just back in the day they used to do, you know, Gold, Silver, and Platinum. What was it? Pearl, Ruby, and Sapphire. Yeah. So that fit that thing. but it doesn't sound like it's going to be, you know, the equivalent of Sun and Moon, but on a Switch. It's going to be an entirely new, but it's supposed to be a mainline, because previously they've never had console Pokemon that wasn't, like, Stadium or... The Darkness one. Yeah, XDD. Yeah, XDD. Something like that. Like the weird one that was up for the Wii or whatever. It was like Wii or GameCube or something. It was GameCube. GameCube was the XDD. GameCube was XDD, because that's the one... And then we, when you were talking in the little stadium, you never got to choose which Pokemon you had. You always had these random three or whatever. Yeah, and I think that's one of the big things, is a mainline Pokemon game. Because, frankly, the mainline Pokemon games are the best-selling DS games, period. Yeah. They're, like, the best-selling portable games for a good long while. And the other thing that is big, that there were no announcements unless something came up that I heard, is there's nothing about Animal Crossing on Switch yet. so I don't have to buy a Switch yet. Yeah, actually, I did see in a highlight that that was listed as a, what someone, I don't even remember which side it was, labeled as a Nintendo miss, that they should have had an Animal Crossing announcement by now for the Switch. Or at least their mobile game. That I have another year before I have to buy a Switch. The other one that I saw was Smash, seen as a miss. Where's Smash? Where's the port like they did with Mario? cart. Why isn't Smash already being announced with a release date? Maybe they're making Smash 5. This was, it's not my words, either that or it's a PodBirds or someone. I totally expected Smash 4 to be released, but... Yeah, I wouldn't mind Smash 4 Deluxe, because I didn't get to play that game on the Wii U, since I didn't have a Wii U. Also, that puts a little more longevity in the Amiibos. Well, they're still using Amiibos for everything. Oh, I know they're using it for everything, but I like that that is a really easy target they could throw out there and here's all the Amiibos you can use with this bag. I think there's still Smash Amiibos coming out because I don't even know if the Bayonetta one's out yet. I haven't seen it. But then again, I haven't been to a Toys R Us in a while because Target does not get Scrapple in the way of Amiibos. I've been there because they had a big sale on Animal Crossing Amiibos that had us here not that long ago. I was looking at a video with the 2DS XL while you were all talking about that. It will have Amiibo functionality The 2DS XL has a mean functionality. And the 2DS XL is the one I've most recently heard about. It's the new 2DS. Because new is different than 3DS. The new 3DS is different than the 3U. Because there are games that are exclusive to new. Oh, gosh. They've got to work on their names. Yeah, I know. Just as bad as Razer. My brain hurts. No, no, no, not Razer. Mac. Apple. Oh, yeah. I want to talk a little bit about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Yes It was a mostly cinematic trailer Not entirely, but mostly There was a brief look at the gameplay During the initial segment that I saw My thought looking at it was It didn't look fairly typical JRPG fare I think it would appeal to old school Final Fantasy fans Like old school has been around Final Fantasy 7 I don't think it's going all the way back to 1 But they did really emphasize the story so, you know, I think I thought it looked good. I thought it looked fun. I saw some of the gameplay footage that I shared with them, but it kind of had an interesting mechanic. It seemed like, from what I saw, you had, like, a party of, like, three people. All those three people have, like, another person tethered to them that would, like, power them up or something like that. Mercies. They all have a pocket mercy. The main character that you could play as, though, could, like, switch between three different ones and that affected, like, what kind of weapon he was using, what kind of special skills he had, and stuff like that. They seem to have, like, you could, like, build up your, I think they might have called them arts. That seems to be a common thing for skills in RPGs nowadays. But you could, like, build them up to, like, different levels, and that would help you to be able to do, like, team attacks with your people, and that would do, like, massive damage to enemy bosses and stuff like that. But for what I thought the gameplay, yeah, it looked really cool. Yeah, I thought it looked pretty good from what I watched. I mean, I'm not a huge JRPG player anymore. I don't do them very much. But, I mean, it looked pretty nice. So, if I'm not mistaken, Xenoblade is a spiritual successor to Xenogears? Monolith likes to just put Xeno in front of everything. That is literally the answer to your question. Okay. Because there was one Xenosaga. Yeah. There was like three of those, right? Yeah. Okay. So, they just like the word Xeno. I have not played the original Xenoblade that was on I have played Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U which I never finished because it felt like a single player MMO. It just was so long. What the heck? Yeah. What the heck? But, no, I mean I'm interested in this one. It looks pretty cool. Another game. Someone. Hit that. Yoshi. Yoshi. Yoshi. Little Big Yoshi? That was pretty good. Because that's what it looks like. It looks like Little Big Planet. It looks a lot to me like Little Big Planet is my note. And it does support at least up to two players. Yeah. Because they were showing some conflict. Yeah, I saw some go-up play on the screens. I didn't see any yarn, so I don't understand how this game's supposed to exist without Yoshi's yarn. But think of the cardboard Amiibos they can sell. Well, they've always gone with weird art styles for Yoshi games. Because they keep changing, like, the original Super Mario World 2 Yoshi title was all, like, crayon-looking. Yeah. So they keep going with interesting art aesthetics for their Yoshi games. But no, this one looks cool because you can, it has the whole layout, and you can actually, like, completely switch to see what's on the other side of everything. Yeah, that was kind of cool looking. Yeah, the one thing I noticed, the coins look weird. They don't look like regular Mario coins. I know. But I haven't played enough Yoshi games to remember whether or not they had different coins in them. That was the one thing that struck me about the art style, is the coins look weird. I'll be honest, I don't think I've ever played a Yoshi game. I haven't. I played the original Super Mario World, too. My general thoughts on it, I mean, I've played games with Yoshi in it, but I've never played a Yoshi game. To me, Yoshi, you know, you ride on Yoshi, and if you're not quite going to make the jump, you drop him in the pit and you go on. You're like, I don't need you. I don't need you anymore. Hey, I was almost in some condition. I know it wasn't, I can't say. Kirby! Let's talk a little Kirby. Four player. Yeah. It looks like Kirby. Yes, it looks like a Kirby game, and right now it's just called Kirby. Yeah. And that was basically all my notes, too. Kirby. Four player. 2018. Yeah. So I like it. I like it with the little question mark. I mean, it has a question mark right on my screen here. Well, I mean, it looks like a Kirby. I'm sure it'll play like a Kirby. I mean, the last Kirby game they put out, which was on the 3DS by Robobot. I just played through that one pretty recently and it's a nice one-curvy game. Has he always been able to transform into a curling stone? It might have been, I think in at least the last game I played whenever you had the stone ability, it was kind of random what he turned into. That might have been one of them, I don't remember. Alright, any other games? I have one left on my list. I do want to talk about a few other things. I saw a lot of this in the stream that they showed the Fire Emblem Warriors oh I did see is that a Dynasty Warrior? yes I've never actually played any of the Fire Emblem games but I have played several Dynasty Warrior games and Dynasty Warrior spin-off games including the Zelda one that was out a few years ago Dynasty Warrior Gundam I've played all of those and it looked like a Dynasty Warriors game. One thing I noted that they showed in the stream was in this one, how you always have like the other people that are on your team and AI control. You can actually direct and tell them where to go. Oh, that's nice. I like Dynasty Warrior games. They're kind of the granddaddy, I guess, of like hack and slashes for me. They're the type of, they're what I think straight pure hack and slash. I think just a Dynasty Warrior game. Yeah, because you're cutting down like hundreds of troops. And most of the time they just kind of stand there and let you wail on them for a while. And one other thing I wanted to mention before I know we get to one of the big games is New Breath of the Wild DLC. I was literally about to say that. They showed I saw on the stream, I mean they had the trailer for it, but what they showed on the stream was the one that's supposed to be coming out I think later this month. You basically go back to where you get the Master Sword from, you put it back in, and then you go through these trials. where you start out like completely naked, no gear at all. And it's... Not that naked. I'm a little concerned with the excessive nude length that we've been seeing in this game. But it looks like as you go through each different trial, you'll end up getting more gear as you go along, but the whole goal of it is to get through all of them, and that will make it so whenever you're using the Master Sword, it will be fully powered up, as opposed to when it is only powered up when you're in Hyrule Castle. So it will do 60 damage instead of 30. At all times. I'm sure it will still lose energy, like it does normally, but at least it doesn't break. And that does have a release date of June 30th. Yeah. And then the other one is supposed to be out on holiday, and it sounds like it's going to be more story-driven. Here's the important question. Are they going to put out a Skyrim amiibo so you can just link up as Dragonborn? That would be interesting. June 30th. That's the release date for the first DLC. What's the... Do we know the release date for the second? Holiday. Holiday 2017 is when it goes. Which means any time from, like, late September through... Right. I really don't be a Korean-thing, even for some reason. That's why I got my notes. Well, it has been the main game, though. Oh, I see. Have you not played it? I have not played it. You've apparently not played the game. I have played some of the game. That's okay. I haven't played any either, so it's okay. Oh, and Switch is getting rocketed. you got Dave mentioned that yeah with cross play yep we touched on that earlier everyone except Playstation everyone except Playstation supporting cross play and then exclusive items and cards so you can get a car that has a Mario account can you have a car that looks like Link that looks like the Dragon Ball has anybody here ever played Rocket League I'm waiting for it to go on PC I wonder if anyone has it on PC I own it on PC I have played it as a tiny tiny bit yeah I haven't played it I've heard really good things it looks great it looks fun I'm waiting for it to be on a significant sale. Right now, Microsoft has a deal where you buy three months of gold through their system. So not the cheap gold I get through Amazon. You get the game for free. So the rumor mill is, games with gold. It's probably going to get this soon. Sony already had it as a free game one month. When it came out. When it came out, it was part of the... Which was before I had a... I'd be willing to pay for it, but I want it half off. That's kind of my point. And then, we watched... Mike and I one time put on Twitch and watched a stream of it. for a couple hours of the tournament thing. It was amazingly engrossing for what it was. Yeah, I didn't think I'd like it, but no, yeah, I'm interested. I found a lot of stuff that you put on on Twitch that you're like, why would anybody watch this in like three hours? Yeah, but it's made me want to play it. There are plenty of things on Twitch I'll watch that I'm like, I'm perfectly okay not playing. Collab Edition is $25 on... I want it less. I want it less. Listen, bro, I need it less. I got to send my money. You look like a reed. now. That's true. You get special hat feels. Well, let's get Super Mario Odyssey, because that's the big elephant and the big Mario in the room. Yeah, the big elephant. If you're not here, you'll take him over. I've got a list of here are the things. It looked to me that the Mario games often seem to have some sort of gimmick each time. This one's gimmick seemed to be that Mario is like a reverse Kirby. He throws his hat on things and they become or he infects them. I wrote, Fusion! He takes them over. He crushes their souls so they're trapped in the back of their head and they have no control and they're screaming as he uses their bodies to do whatever he needs even though they're trapped. It sounds terrible. I mean, it sounds horrible. It's colorful yet dark in tone. Eric, you said you had some notes on it. Yeah, so the things that I noticed that they showed during the Cryptool Show is the T-Rex. So you can become a T-Rex. You can become Sombrero Mario. That's just an outfit you buy. Oh, is it an outfit you buy? Because I saw it was a shop later. There's the golf hat Mario. And those two, interestingly, both reference earlier appearances of Mario. Like all of his outfits do. Because I think there's like a referee one from Punch-Out! And I saw one other one. I don't remember what it was. But everything seems to reference from a past game. Right. So, took over a frog, took over a Koopa Troopa. I have moons listed. Did he take over a moon? No, he collects moons. Oh, okay. That's what it is. Because they power his ship that takes him to a little world. Right, so these were the giant... So, Moon Get. Yes. I fully expect the screen to say Moon Get at some point. Yeah, he took over a taxi, he takes over a tank, and then I'm pretty sure that was Paulina. Same name. She's the mayor of New Donk City. Yeah, New Donk City is pretty amazing. Yes. The song is amazing. Yeah, the song was solid, but I was trying to pay attention to what's on screen. So, yeah, New Donk City was pretty good. New Donk City is up there with the, in the, going back to Spider-Man's room, where he crashes through the billboard that says, Osborn for Mayor. I thought that was a nice environmental touch. So, and Mario Odyssey, October 27th. So there's like three major games coming out that day. It's coming out a bit earlier than I had expected, actually. I thought they announced before that it was going to be October, but maybe they just announced. I thought... Yeah, I think they just originally said holiday, so I would probably assume November. Yeah, so we'll be finding the new Colossus, Mario Odyssey, and then one other one that is significant that comes out on October 27th, but I don't remember off the top of my head. I haven't played a Mario game in so many years that they're still good. Yeah. They look good. They're always solid. I mean, the Galaxy games were amazing. I played all the way through the first Galaxy. I did not play through the second one completely. The second one is just as good. Kind of like Yoshi. Yoshi! Yoshi! Yeah, I'm really looking for an Odyssey. It's annoying. I'm really looking for an Odyssey. Yeah! I do. I practiced too. In terms of things that I would have liked to have seen at the Nintendo conference, I would have liked to have seen Mario Maker. Yeah. I would have liked to have seen a... Golden Sun. A new Golden Sun. No, no, no. The one thing that would have made it amazing if they had announced it was a new F-Zero. Yeah. I really wanted a new F-Zero. But at the same time, Nintendo takes the opportunity to announce things at E3, but Nintendo announces things all year long. Yes. And more companies are doing that, but Nintendo is very much in that mode. So when they have something to talk about with Mario Maker, when they have something to talk about with Animal Crossing, they're just going to come out and announce it. They do stuff practically every month, it seems. Yeah. Sometimes it's really small, like huge five minutes about this thing. Or sometimes it's really long, like we're going to talk about the update to Animal Crossing on the 3DS that came out six years ago. Not six years ago. Yeah, I think it was. It came out six years ago, and we're going to talk about it for an hour. Yeah, they're doing a lot of Nintendo Directs just throughout the year. And sometimes it'll be about just one specific game that might be coming out soon, and sometimes it'll be about a bunch of stuff. Right, so going back to what Tony was saying, that he probably doesn't have to worry about Animal Crossing for a year. that's fairly true. I know. We can't most of the time anyway. Yeah. I see my target every once in a while. Does anyone have anything else from the Nintendo presentation? That's pretty much covered everything that was on it. Okay. So, does anyone have anything that wasn't in a major presentation that they want to bring up? I do not this year. Oh, I have one. Eric has one. It's a very small one, but it's an interesting one and the last is that Microsoft announced new avatars. Oh, yes. That's right. And they're coming to Windows 10 first, which is kind of weird, but they've kind of done that previously. But they complete their immunity, weirdly enough. But they've completely redone. The art style is not wildly different, but it's different. But the number of customizations you can do. Like, you can have amputees now, which is sort of interesting. Wheelchairs are in. Wheelchairs. There were other vehicles shown. Like, the colors are not. here's a palette of colors, here's a bunch of spiders. So it is like a, it's a pretty robust character creator. So I can get my skin tone just right. Exactly. Or just wrong, if that's what you want. So I thought that was kind of cool. It was interesting that they buried it outside of the main thing, but I know they were trying to focus on games, plus the Xbox One. So, that's really the only thing that has kind of struck me, is like, well, that's kind of cool. The Ace Combat 7 trailer was amazing. Yeah, it was amazing. I wish we'd learn more about the game if we're still not coming out until next year. Yeah, I know. The race scenario needs us. I know. You know how happy I am with the return to the old Ace Combat to get away from this, oh, we're in the real no, I don't want the real world. I want to fly through a tunnel, like 15 miles of tunnel that's barely bigger than my airplane, shooting at stuff and trying not to hit the wall so I can fly out the other side and fire off 400 missiles at a target. I didn't fly away. Yeah. Yeah, that's all we want. That's all we want in life. That's all I want in Ace Combat. I bought a PSP for an Ace Combat game. That was the whole reason I bought my PSP. And my PSP, I only played four games total on it. I used it as like a media device more than anything else. But that Ace Combat game, the R-Type strategy game that I can't remember the name of. it was R-Type Leer or R-Type Command or something like that? It was R-Type Command, yeah. I played the heck out of that game, and a little bit of a Star Wars, because I had the Star Wars Battlefront Edition, or whatever it was called at the time, where I'd be white with Vader on it, Vader's helmet on it, PSP. I wonder if I can find a new battery for my PSP. My PSP battery, I found my PSP the other day, the battery was about this size of a, I don't know, a very large crony. I'm pretty sure I just pull it out and see what it is. It had expanded quite a bit. Like, huh, I should get rid of this before it burns my house down. eBay. I eBayed the one that had expanded. Okay, well, I have two questions then that we've run through, now that we've covered all the things. First one actually is from one of our listeners, Don Walton, co-host of the Link Cable podcast, posted on our Facebook announcement about our E3 episode. Wanted to know, he's very insistent with all caps and stuff, but I'm not looking at it directly, but he wants to know what games that were covered on E3 will you absolutely buy day one? I'll start with Jake and we'll go around the table. Assassin's Creed Origins. Assassin's Creed Origins. A day one buy for you for sure. For sure. For sure. Okay. Eric. We'll sign the new clauses. Okay. And probably, well, no, it's going to happen. Mario Aussie. Be honest with me. Absolutely definitely. That's what Don wants. Tony? Dragon Ball and Warlord. Shadow of Warlord. Mike? Dragon Ball. I will probably get Marvel vs. Capcom day one because I like fighting games so much. I need absolute definites. That's what Don insists on. I will get Marvel vs. Capcom. Thank you. 8 combat in a year. And honestly, most of the Nintendo stuff I will probably get day one. Okay, that's... So Galaxy, Kirby... Odyssey. Or if Amazon has anything, say, Yoshi. Yeah. No, I mean Odyssey, Splatoon 2, Xenoblade Chronicles, He's going to put on Metroid Prime. No, that's going to be day one. Both Metroids will be day one. Okay. I guess, in terms of Don's question of absolute, I'll have to say none. I won't absolutely get any of these day one. Yeah. No. The closest, the only one would be Wardor, but that release is on my birthday. So, I'll probably wishlist. I've already put it on the wishlist. And will I get it? Maybe. Yes, yes. Maybe. So, if I don't get it on my birthday, I will buy it. I will buy it that day, probably. But I won't have it day one, so technically I don't qualify for this condition. But it is the only game that I want day one for sure. Before E3 started, the only game that interested me so much to buy immediately was Shadow of the World. And it's starting on, I mean, I lean heavily, you know, if I, it's so, I'm fine with things being Christmas gifts. So I'm really excited about the new Wolfenstein. I'm really excited about the Dragon Ball game. I'm okay waiting a month plus on those. So they're not date-wants. My second question, which is the obvious one, and we'll go the opposite way around the table, will be who won E3? And I guess I'll start. I feel bad because I didn't see all the presentations fully. I lean towards, based off of audience reaction, genuine surprise, and being impressed, it'd probably be Ubisoft. Their genuineness, coupled with the reaction to the Mario plus Rabbids game, makes me think that they surprised me. They exceeded people's expectations. If I was going to zip go off of game content, it'd probably be Sony, even though I don't think their presentation was very good. The bottom line is they own that chamber when it comes to exclusive titles. They know what to flaunt. There's a reason why they're winning this generation, and they show it on the screen year after year. So that would kind of be my secondary pick. I didn't think anyone had a disastrous presentation. The closest would be Bethesda. I think they kind of missed the mark on a number of ways. The best part about Bethesda's presentation was the opening part where they had all the kids saying what their parents do. And then the rest of it was pretty much correct. Oh yeah, and Wolfenstein. It was good. But everything else was terrible. Mike, who won? Nintendo. I knew you'd say it. Is it just because the Metroid problem showed you nothing? Is it just that, Mike? No, it's not just that. I will say there was a huge factor in it because Metroid is my favorite Nintendo franchise, and it does not get games the way like Mario and Zelda. Is Metroid your favorite game series of all time? Maybe. I could see you saying that, because I still think Super Metroid is one of the greatest games ever made, and the entire Prime trilogy is solid. The only bad apple in the entire series is Other M, and that was mostly just because the story was bad. The gameplay was fine. Okay, so Nintendo's your winner? Yes. Do you have any losers? Probably Bethesda. Okay. But, I mean, you have things you want to touch on. Yeah, I mean, I thought Sony's conference was pretty good, but my biggest problem with Sony's conference is a lot of it is stuff we've already seen already, and a lot of it doesn't come out until next year. That's a fair point. Whereas my thing with Nintendo conference is a lot of it's coming out this year, and pretty much everything they showed, I want. Tony, I thought Sony put on the best spectacle, which is what Sony does. That being said, I think Microsoft probably had the best recovery compared to last year. And that alone makes me think that they came out on top. Because I think Sony is on par with what they did last year. Microsoft last year had a terrible show, and they looked bad. This year, it was a solid show. It looked a lot better. They played to their audience better. and, yes, they're still losing the generation. The Xbox Max isn't going to save it. But I think they did a really good comeback. Okay. And Bethesda went from awesome last year to just junk. Eric, who won? In terms of generating the most excitement about what they're announcing, I think Nintendo probably wins in that regard. Okay. Because I think they announced the things that people were most looking for that weren't previously aware of. Whereas, like we said, Sony mostly announced things people knew about. There were no surprises in the Sony conference. I think on the other end of the spectrum, I really felt like EA had the weakest. Not that they didn't have great things to announce, but just in terms of how they laid out their show and how they were trying to appeal to people watching, I think they had probably the most cringeworthy of the sets. Also, you know, in terms of announcements of things that are exciting, I think Ubisoft probably comes in second on that. Okay. Could it be, just touch on the EA thing real quick, and this is just kind of a feeling I've got compared to, like, especially to, like, Ubisoft. Ubisoft feels like they are actually gamers and actually in touch with their fans and actually in touch with stuff, and EA is just corporate feels just like this corporation trying to act like they're actually in touch with. EA, in part, felt the most inauthentic. Also, just in terms of production value, they felt the most kind of haphazard. Yeah. Because all of them were doing the, let's cut to this angle and this angle and this angle, which on the Sony one, that was probably my biggest complaint on that one, is they kept cutting away to showing me the screen and showing me the thing, instead of, just show me the audience in between clips. Don't show me... We had that complaint last year. It was worse last year. It was way worse last year. But that's a stream director problem. That's not... I blame the cameramen and the people in the booth making those decisions. Yeah, that's a... It's not normally the cameramen that make the decisions. It's always the person in the booth that makes the decisions. The booth has decided to cut away and not thinking about what... We don't care about the audience reactions in the same way. This isn't the Oscars where you can kind of wait on... several shots where I couldn't see the audience either. I was just seeing a far away shot of the screen. No, no, it was just, I think they were trying to show you, like, the zombies on stage and stuff, but I couldn't tell exactly what was going on that zoomed out. Yeah, when, sometimes when that was happening, that was cool, because I could see, you know, there were the zombies hanging there, or the other screen sliding in, or the snow, or the stars, or the pyrotechnics, or that kind of thing. But there were definitely a few shots where it was just the trailer was playing, and we just cut away to a camera that was far away for some reason. Which you're not supposed to do Right You are not supposed to do that Jake Who won? Oh So I'd say The one that had the best spectacle I would agree Is PlayStation Although I didn't I don't enjoy the actual The host coming I don't enjoy the actual host Standing there saying Hey this is what's going on Actual human figures Standing in front of you Saying hey this is what's going on Because of these I just I don't know I just like hearing things a lot better From an actual person That I can see You prefer more of a Got it. Yeah. Yeah, I do too. That's more of mine. But I think the ones who have actually won is Xbox got a close second, but I think Ubisoft got it first. I mean, granted, Xbox has a partnership with Porsche, and they brought an actual car on the stage, and E3 was the first to see that car and know what it is and everything else. The Porsche Hyper Midlife Crisis Edition. The 911 GTR2. Yeah. Yeah, I'll have to see if I can afford such a crisis or not. I don't know. I'm so rich that just getting a 9-11 isn't enough to cover my midlife crisis. But I can't get Bugatti. Exactly. Okay, well, that's it. We're already over three hours, so I don't want to drag it out anymore. But I want to say to Mike and Eric and Jake, thank you very much for taking this much time out of your days. enjoy the shirts for coming on. We really appreciate it, because we know that the E3 episode is a slog to get through. And with this many people, as I suspected, we actually ran longer than we did last time. I think we talked about the games we really cared about to talk about, either to make fun of or more often to celebrate the ones we're excited about. I'm not going to plug anything in terms of social media and stuff, because my voice is shot. You know where to find us. We're on the social medias. See you guys in two weeks. Thanks a lot. Bye. do it bye

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 7f3136f8-8b61-403e-a9ac-9ff9559c426f*