Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Saturday, June 16th. It's episode 64, and I'm Dennis. Now, before you all get concerned that you're not hearing Tony do the introduction like he usually does, do not worry. This is the E3 2018 episode. We are going to have some guests on later. It's going to be a long episode, and because of that, I am recording most of the pinball segment ahead of time so that everyone can get out at a reasonable hour. So you will be stuck with me for the next few minutes. Now, since there's no real point in doing introductions, Instead, I'm going to go ahead and answer some common questions that we've received. Tony and I don't actually have a mail segment where we go over listeners' feedback. We sometimes mention some of it. We usually just respond offline. It's just how we've structured the show. And so I've been saving some items, not attributable to anyone specifically, and they all seem to be mostly around podcasting in general, and I figured I'll go ahead and stick them in as my introduction. So the first question I wanted to tackle was, what do we use to actually record this show? And the answer is, it depends, because we experiment with a lot of different things as we go along. So I can never say we're really committed to one particular setup. However, in terms of hardware, Tony uses a Blue Snowball microphone. I use a Blue Yeti microphone. These are both USB-based microphones. and I use for on-site recordings a Tascam portable recorder. Specifically, I use a DR-05. In terms of remote recording, most of the time we contact people through Skype and in that case I use another software package that is called a multi-call recorder to capture the audio. I also will use, if I'm doing a traditional phone call such as I did with the Deep Root interview, I use an application creatively called Call Recorder, and editing is done, as most people do, in Audacity. So that pretty much covers all the stuff we use for recording. Next question. Why do you guys record fortnightly? Well, it depends who you ask. I mean, in terms of why we started that way, Tony really deserves credit for that, and I'd say if you were to ask him today, it's still mostly driven by the fact that these hobbies, even the video game hobby, don't really have a lot of news constantly coming in. And so he didn't really see the point in recording weekly, because there's really just not enough news to warrant it. I know that seems a little odd if you think about it. You read This Week in Pinball, there's always news going on on pinball. There's always some news going on in video games. But we were thinking in terms of major news, significant things, like the release of a pinball machine or a brand new video game was revealed. it doesn't really work that way. And so because of that, we figured doing it every other week would work out better. Now, if you were to ask me at this point, why do we do it fortnightly? Generally, I would interpret that interpretation to mean you don't want it less often because if you were tired of hearing us this much, I would think you'd just unsubscribe. But I don't like the idea of going weekly because it doubles my work. And everything about the podcast is designed to keep me from burning out. So because I'm doing all the editing and just the effort that it takes to put together the show notes ahead of time, contacting guests when we're going to have guests on, it's all sort of structured that way. So if we were to move from fortnightly to weekly, the first thing that comes in my mind is you just doubled my workload and I don't want my workload doubled. So we stick with fortnightly because it's a reasonable work balance that I'm able to keep up with. And I'm assuming for Tony, too. But anyway, those are our two reasons why we've done it from a fortnightly basis. it works pretty well for us. I hope it works well for you. Third question, how do you select guests? I don't say there's really any particular way we select guests. Actually, all of the guest hosts have been arranged by me. So I guess the question is best answered by me. I just choose people I think have interesting perspectives. That's really anyone I think is going to have an interesting conversation with us. So I usually focus on finding people that I think have a strength in an area that we are weak. So that's why we've had a number of pinball collectors on because Tony and I aren't really big time collectors. And if I think the conversation is going to be good, I'll go that way. I've lately had a lot of people on that do their own show or podcast. And again, workload reasons. I know they all have the equipment to actually do the podcast and have clean audio. So it very convenient to know that your guest actually is capable of doing something like that or if they been on other shows you know I don like to try and get people who have been recently on another podcast because i think it gets tedious to constantly hear the same people over and over so i do try and mix it up a bit but you striking a balance there so it really just whoever i think might have an interesting story and is willing to actually come on and talk because there are people i contact who are uncomfortable coming onto a podcast they don't want to have their voice out there and that's fine so sometimes those certain conversations don't get to happen in this sort of medium. Let's see. Fourth question. What do you think of podcasters having non-disclosure agreements or NDAs with companies they cover? Okay, I'm not a fan. That's the short answer. That's up to each podcast. The thing to remember with most of these podcasts, our podcast included, is we are not journalists. So the idea of needing to be open and transparent and you don't operate under NDA, that doesn't really need to apply in the same way that you might expect of a journalistic source that would be trying to get to the truth and always get the truth out there. That said, it's very frustrating because I know on some shows, and I hear this on the video game side as well, they have these relationships, they get really close and cozy with the manufacturers, and then maybe they tell you they know things but they can't talk about it, and it's really awkward from a listener perspective to hear a show, and a show knows something, and they're willing to tell you they know something, but they're not willing to tell you what they know. It's an interesting tease. I think it's tacky. And this is part of the reason why Tony and I actually do not try and form relationships with manufacturers. We have invited people who work for manufacturers on to talk about things. We've invited manufacturers to discuss their products with us. I don't want to be in the official loop. I don't want to be on an NDA with Stern Pinball so that I know what the next five titles are. I don't see any advantage from putting together the show perspective to do that. The only value I could ever come up with is that I would be leveraging the fact that I have a podcast to actually stay officially, quote unquote, in the know. And but that doesn't serve the listeners in any way. Now, that said, there are people who will send me things and I'm sure this happens for all the other shows. And they'll say this is not for disclosure. This is not for airing. This is confidential. And a lot of times they'll say that and then immediately say what they have to say. and you just have to work within those confines because there are people that sometimes want to share information and they don't want it to be on the podcast. I've had people contact me who just want me to know because they can tell after they hear an episode that I'm really confused about something and so they're trying to educate me but they're not trying to educate the audience and that's not an NDA. That's just someone basically giving you something off the record and that's fine. You just have to accept that and then try and keep track. Hopefully, it doesn't happen too much because you don't want to make a mistake and accidentally reveal something that you didn't want to reveal. But, you know, that is a bit of a challenge. But no, I'm not a fan of entering into arrangements with manufacturers. Tony and I have no relationship with any video game designer, publisher, or pinball manufacturer with an NDA in place. We don't have any of those. We don't have any of those relationships. And the fifth and final question is, should a podcast be on a fixed schedule? There is no right answer to that. it's up to the podcaster and whatever works for them. From a listener perspective, schedules are best. And that is part of the reason why we do a schedule. In fact, when we were setting up the podcast, Tony insisted we needed to be on a schedule. The listener base is most loyal to shows that have schedules. And I really like having a schedule because it makes sure we keep doing it. It's so easy to slip and let weeks and weeks pass when you do not commit to a schedule. So for me as a planning-oriented person, I find it ideal. And from a listener standpoint, there's no disadvantage to being on a schedule for the listener from a listener perspective. So it is, I feel, a superior approach. I know some people advise differently, and that's fine. It really is. You need to be able to do – if the question is coming because you want to do a podcast, then you need to do what's going to be comfortable for you because you don't want to burn out. that's in my view that's the biggest risk you'll burn out like half these shows i've listened to that go away don't even announce that they've gone away they just sort of pitter out and it's annoying because i want them out of my phone subscription podcaster list and i want to fill it with other stuff but as long as i still see them i can't be sure if they're gone so i believe in schedules but it's up to the podcaster i can tell you there's no disadvantage to a listener for doing it however so introduction questions are done let us move to the pinball segment and start working on the news. First news story I want to touch on. This was interesting. It just came up recently. Sandra Bullock, who was one of the stars of Demolition Man, is out promoting her new movie, Oceans 8, and during an interview and a discussion with one of her co-stars, mentioned that she was annoyed that Warner Brothers never gave her a Demolition Man pinball machine and noted that her male co got a machine Now, I'm not going to go into whether or not it was just because they were male and she was female, or if it was how many different male co-stars. She cited three different ones. Two of them did do voice call-outs for the game. She did not, I believe, do any custom speech for the game. However, she should have got a Demolition Man pinball machine. Her face is one of the three on the back glass. It's silly that she didn't. So she actually put Warner Brothers on blast saying, I want my Demolition Man pinball machine. Of course, I've already seen there's a discussion thread on Pinside about whether or not they should get her a Demolition Man pinball machine and donate it to her. Some others have noted she could easily afford a Demolition Man pinball machine. It is only Demolition Man after all. It's not a particularly valuable pin. But I think from her perspective, it's not anything other than that Warner Brothers should have done it for her, and she's annoyed that they didn't. Not that she couldn't easily go out and afford a Demolition Man. But I just thought it was interesting because, hey, apparently pinball can be emotional even for actors and actresses, especially when they don't get one and everyone else does. So let that be a lesson to any of you movie studios listening out there. If you're going to do pinball machines and give them to some, you better be ready to give them to all. That said, Demolition Man is one of the better widebodies, so I would say in terms of a game she would want, there are a lot others that are a lot better, but she could do far worse than getting the game that actually has her face on it. Alright, next news item. Let's talk a little bit about some stuff going on in the industry. Scott Denisey, the creative mind behind Total Nuclear Annihilation, which Spooky Pinball has been releasing to great success and fanfare. it has been confirmed by Spooky that Scott is working on a second game and this surprises no one I know he played coy with this for quite a while that he likes his job with Pinball Life and he hadn't decided that he was going to be working on the game I thought it was obvious that he was going to do a game number two so I'm going to say I told you so it's just based off of how long and how carefully he's been treating Total Nuclear Annihilation he's been continuing to update it I don't think his interest in the design process has waned at all. I think it was very transparent that he was really, really passionate, and that passion didn't seem to go away, and it only makes sense to take that passion and put it into a new project. Of course, the question that everyone is going to be wondering, well, I think everyone who's concerned with design, is will Scott be doing another single-level game, or will he move into what is seen as the more modern design practice and start doing things with ramps and toys and such? And I have no idea because you could see it go either way. He might feel it would be fun to do something with a higher, well, I don't want to say a higher bill of materials. Well, I wanted to, obviously, but now I'm hesitating on that because Total Nuclear Annihilation is not a street-level game. I've mentioned that several times. It wasn't designed with a low cost point in mind, which is a core principle of street-level if you're following the premier model. It was just a single-level game. There are interesting challenges that single level presents. I think he could do a lot more creative layouts in the vein of Total Nuclear Annihilation if he wanted to. But that said, Spooky typically has produced games with ramps and a much more modern feature set, and he might be curious to see what he could come up with along those lines. He might already have something in mind. but those are the areas I really expect to see possible variants because Scott likes music. I think it's going to have a killer custom soundtrack no matter what he does. So that's sort of a given and I think you're going to see probably a similar light show to what you got in Total Nuclear Annihilation. I just don't see him moving away from color changing GI and everything else that he integrated. Another thing that we might see different is the screen. I don't think the LCD screen really does a whole lot that's visually particularly interesting on Total Nuclear Annihilation. I could see that being a lot more developed asset if he does something in-house with Spooky from the get-go. And so that might be something new if you really... I don't really care about that, but some people might. So it's something to consider. So anyway, good for Spooky and good for Scott Danesi. I look forward to seeing more designs from him because I think Total Nuclear Annihilation is a killer concept as a game. Let's see. let's go into software side and we've got Joe Schober. Joe, is that how I say your name? It's how I am saying your name. Feel free to write in if I'm wrong, but I don't think you're listening. So I doubt I'll be corrected, but I do get 50% of all names wrong. So we have to just accept that. Anyway, Joe has joined American Pinball. Joe Schober was with Highway Pinball working on Alien pinball. And so I think that this is pretty exciting because while I have been pretty hard on Alien setting aside the whole issue with Highway the software I think on Alien is very good I just thought the layout was a step back from what Full Throttle offered I thought it was an inferior design However I think the rules are better And I saw a very preliminary rule set. But I thought the idea behind how the shots were working was really cool. In terms of rewarding shots you need to hit and punishing you for shots that you shouldn't be hitting. So I'm hoping to see a rule set like that over with American Pinball and with Joe going over there. I think there is pretty good potential for that to happen. Final piece of industry news that I think is worth touching on is David Thiel. He is a sound engineer. He's done a lot of games. He's mostly been working lately with Jersey Jack Pinball. He's been doing their Pirates of the Caribbean game that's still yet to come out. But he also worked on the sound for Hobbit and Dialed In. And then over again with Highway, he did the sound package with Alien, which if you haven't heard Alien, it sounds great. David does good work. Everyone knows he does good work. So, he is now exclusive with Deep Root Pinball. Now, David working with Deep Root is not surprising. It was announced when the designer, the full designer team was announced that he was over with them to do sound. What was not indicated in that, though, was that he was exclusive. And now, he has indicated on Pinball Profile with Jeff Teolis that he is now at this point exclusive with Deep Root Pinball. The pinball playfield designers were all exclusive, but David was not. And that was likely driven by the fact that he was still working with Jersey Jack and on the Pirates game at the time. But apparently he has reached the point where he's going to be over with Deep Root doing their designs and only their designs to help on the sound package. It's not really very surprising when you see the additional details that he supplied in the interview because he's doing more than one game with them. He noted he can't even keep up with all of the games that are being put out by Deep Root, so there will be other sound engineers, or at least one other, that will have to help out. And so he just doesn't have the time to work for any other company while he's doing these pins with Deep Root. And depending, I suppose, on how aggressive Deep Root's schedule is, after the first set of reveals, he might be busy for quite some time to come. I just think, in terms of our perspective as a podcast watching this from afar, It's just another example that DeepRoot is convincing the industry people that they are approaching, that they are very serious about what they are doing, and they are putting money behind that seriousness. And so Tony and I have already acknowledged we've moved past the point of thinking, what is this? Is this sort of a phantom company? In the software computer game side, we would call it vaporware, and we moved past this being a vaporware thing a long time ago. It seems very, very clear that some sort of product is intended to come out at some point early next year, and we will just keep watching and waiting and seeing what happens. But it's interesting. These are all really interesting moves because these are very serious professionals that keep getting recruited by Deep Root, and you just have to expect that much talent is going to come up with something worth talking about. a final news item I want to go ahead and touch on is when we were with our guest host Zach from Straight Down the Middle a pinball show last episode he mentioned, he being Zach to Tony and I that there was going to be a podcast and we had read about it from This Week in Pinball and it turned out that Jeff who does This Week in Pinball was doing it with Zach so Zach didn't give us the full total scoop so shame on you Zach we deserved it because we had you on and we were so nice to you I let you make fun of all my pinball choices. So after the episode aired, they unleashed a preliminary episode, episode zero. It was good. It followed the This Week in Pinball format. So it was essentially an audio version of the weekly news. And then episode one just recently came out and it was noted to be the series finale. And the episode was good. It was just that Jeff said it was taking way too much time to put together the weekly podcast. And that's understandable. He's already noted that he's spending a tremendous amount of time putting together the weekly blog of all of the news. And then just having to find the time to participate in the recording is, even though I think Zach was handling the editing, it's still, it's just, it's a lot of time. It's a lot of commitment. And I saw some people online begging basically for him to go to a no schedule or to go to a slower schedule. Although it's important to note the show format would have to change if you were to do that because it was all structured around doing the weekly news. And you have to be careful if you're going to do, say, the monthly news and just go through four weeks of these weekend pinball news posts. You end up still – you don't really save any time because you end up expanding the length of your episode and all of your prep. I think what Jeff should do is you just need to go on the guest circuit tour. That's what you got to do. You just got to go. You got to pull how Steven Bowden did it for years. You just go on all the shows you want to whenever you have the time and you're interested and you don't need to do as an interview. Come on as a guest host to places and say. I just want to chat about pinball for a while. You have no prep responsibilities. You have no editing responsibilities. And that's it. And then just coast to podcast guest glory. That's my suggested solution because I would love to stop editing. So that's what I imagine would be the dream. I would not know. But that's really it for pinball news. So once we're with Tony, we will start talking about the end of the worst of the fall, the conclusion to his stunningly negative pinball tournament. Well, Tony is with us now. Welcome, Tony. Thanks for starting without me. I know, I'm such a mean person. But we have so much to talk about. There's so many video games. And we're still not even done with the pinball segment yet. And that's why I needed you. I could not do this. You're a brainchild. The darkness that was inside you. It's time to release it, finally, onto the world, like a xenomorph onto a derelict spaceship. That is, of course, the worst of the fall The worst pinball machine of 1994 to 1999 Tony, what are the results? The final results With a bigger difference than I expected By a long shot Viper Knight driving is the worst game Of this, let's face it It's the worst game of all time Well, we don't know that scientifically No We just know that in our soul In our hearts and our souls We know it's the worst game of all time. And I will now blame the total collapse of pinball on Viper and iDrive. On Sega and Viper and iDrive. It's Sega's fault. Sega. Sega destroyed everything. That's sad. Everything they touched dies. That's sad. So how badly did it beat Premiere's Shaq attack? It was a 70% win. I figured this would be tight. I thought it would be close. I thought Shaq would win. I've never heard anyone. I mean, to be fair, I've never heard anyone say anything good about Viper either. Well, sure, yeah. But because it's Premiere and it's System 3, I just thought, Shaq Attack's going to carry this. Right. But I think more people have played Viper and they know. They know the pain. Yeah. They know the pain deep in their soul. Well, this is really good. They've got that shadowed hole in their soul from playing Viper. And I understand that. And this is really good because I've been talking to local area people in the Kansas City area where we live about that I thought that whatever won this should have to be on location for at least half a year. And it was. And we already had it, so I think we've kind of met that and we don't need to relive the experience. You don't have to go buy that $3,000 shack attack. Yeah. Jason, one of the listeners for the show, sent us a link to the $3,000 shack attack. And, I mean, it was about $3,000 too much, but it was the only source I knew of. I will be fair. It was about $2,950 too much. Well, I mean, the coils do have some value. Right. There's some copper in that machine. There is. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I didn't think about just taking that and junking it. Right. More honorable than stealing copper. Don't steal copper, people. It's bad. You're breaking people's air conditionings, and it's very sad. I feel the pain. Yeah. All right. Well, that was really interesting. A lot of people seem to really like this contest. We don't have a new contest planned yet. No, this one's been time and old. Most of ours are pretty time consuming. But as we go along, we'll let listeners, if you want to suggest things, feel free to reach out to us, email and everything. I might say those at the end of this episode. I might not, but I'm not saying them now. So we're done with the pinball segment. So we're going to start the video game segment. And Tony and I are here before we've got our guests involved for the E3 content. And I just thought, let's take an opportunity to talk about games we've been playing. Because other than in our intros, we've had a couple back-to-back pinball guests. And so we have been very light on video game content. We will be making up for that this episode. Oh, yeah. But I want to get caught up on what we would normally do, which would be talking about what we've been playing. So, Tony, what's going on? And don't depress everyone with a sheer volume of one game. I need you to be strong now. Well. I finished Battletech. How many hours did it take for you to finish it? I know you've gone and done side stuff, so this is not indicative if all you wanted to do was tear through the story. Right, right. You can tear through the story much, much faster than I did. 128 to 130 hours, something like that. That's like Fallout levels of time. Yeah, and then I modded the game and I started a new game. New Game Plus? No, they don't have a new game plus. I just, I kept my old saves so that when there's DLC I can go back to my old saves and then I threw a bunch of mods on that just make things tougher and do some general changes to the engine It a pretty moddable system And I just been trying out different mods basically Okay And I started replaying with that So it's just been playing some mods. I haven't put a whole lot. I've only put another five to ten hours into it on the modded versions with my completely joke character who I named Rock Hardon. Tony. Yeah, it's bad. It's bad. Do you think? Yeah, a little bit. Okay. Yeah. My mercenary company's name is The Bordello. Okay. Well, at least it fits thematically. Right, right. And my guy's nickname is Playboy. I went terrible with it. It's monstrous and horrible. It's almost as if Andrew Highway picked all your names for you. Basically. That's what it amounts to. But then I decided I needed a change. So I played a game that wasn't called Battleton. Really? No. No, I did. I did. But it's not going to be super exciting because I started a new playthrough on one of my spreadsheet games, Rule the Waves, the naval simulator. And I'm doing a playthrough as Italy. I'm currently sitting about 1913. my last turn before I left the house this morning was November of 1913 I'm doing pretty well I fought a war with the United States in 1902 and it was a push because neither of us had the navies to do anything to each other it was just raiding and this and that I won a major war against Austria Austria-Hungary that lasted four years and somehow I messed up in my diplomacy while in the after the war while I was trying to rebuild my navy and I've got Russia on the cusp of war with me Germany on the cusp of war with me Great Britain on the cusp of war with me and Austria-Hungary declared war on me again so I've got three nations that are all way bigger than me about to declare war on me, and I'm at war with Austria-Hungary again, and that war started out bad. That war has been going on for about seven months now, and it opened up with me losing about a quarter of my fleet, and then I had a couple good runs that I've managed to put down most of Austria's fleet. They have no more capital ships. unfortunately I have no more escort ships I have nothing but capital ships all my lighter ships are gone except for a handful of destroyers I've got more stuff under construction but when you're talking construction this stuff's modeled semi-realistically so construction time even of a small ship runs 28 to 30 months so all this new construction I've started most of it's not the war's gonna be over before most of it's done so unless Britain and them jump on me I'm trying to trying to tone down the, the diplomacy and make them more happy with me. Cause I can't fight the British empire right now. I'm in a bad place as is. So, uh, that about does it for my video gaming. I've been doing that. I've been watching a lot of no reservations, uh, because it's on Netflix and it's staying on Netflix. And it was one of those shows I always liked. And after Anthony Bourdain's suicide, I just started watching it again. So I started rewatching like my favorite episodes of it. So been doing that. and playing as Italy mainly because there are things that are very interchangeable. I don't lose track. I can't really play Overwatch and pay attention to something else and this and that. I've had so much other stuff going on at home with everybody that that's what I've been doing mainly. Well, I have not finished Prey. I tried to this morning. I'm still just... I keep thinking I'm at the end and I'm just not. And I was having trouble with some side mission stuff that relates. I'm hoping it makes it a little easier, a little maybe happier ending if I do it. So I've been getting a little sidetracked, but I'm ignoring most of the optional stuff. But they just keep repopulating the rooms with enemies, and it's really frustrating because you're always low on supplies. So it's not my type of – I like survival horror, but not this approach. It's way too sprawling. The entire ship is pretty accessible, and so it doesn't feel like Resident Evil where maybe you're in a house and you only have access to six or eight rooms, and eventually maybe that goes and doubles in size. Instead, I feel like I've got 30 areas. and I'm getting confused all the time, but I'm trying to finish it up. It plays fairly well. I see why some people like it, and in fact, it came up at E3, so I guess more people like it than I realized. I did, as an aside, play and complete another game, which also somewhat relates to a game that got mentioned at E3, and that is I finally played Trials of the Blood Dragon. If anyone ever played a Trials game it platforming with motocross so you trying to balance on a bike and go and do the hills and stuff I played Trials HD I was terrible at it I could not finish it It got too hard for me which frustrated me And platformers do that. Yeah, I have the same issue. I fall for them still. Anything the other, I mean, like the Super Meat Boy games are probably the closest to a platformer that I'll play, and it's just because they're co-op and insane type stuff. Most platformers anymore, I can't. I don't have. I miss the jumps and I rage. Well, this had hard segments, but nothing nearly as bad as Trials HD got. So in terms of getting through the story, I was able to do it in just over a weekend. And it kind of ties as a sequel plot-wise to Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, which was a fun shooter game. This, it's not just balancing on the bike, though. it also has some run-and-gun segments to it with a little bit of rudimentary platforming, but most of those are really more run-and-gun mechanics. It's funny. I laughed quite a bit. The humor is incredibly quirky, even quirkier than Blood Dragon was. The voice acting... Yeah, you're basically playing between two twins, and whoever voiced the boy is truly awful. I think a developer must have done it so bad. Wow. It's just really bad. And it's just unfortunate because it takes me out of that kind of story. But it's really, really zany. So if you like platforming, don't want something ultra super hard, though I can't say it's easy, but it's doable. And you want a quirky, weird story that flashes back to a lot of 80s references. All the missions are sort of themed. There's like a Starship Trooper-esque mission, and there's a Kung Fu movie-style mission. It's all things that are very reminiscent of the 80s, so it works really well on those levels, and not being the sort of intensity that the pure Trials games have been known for. Yeah, I can see that. I know it was real popular, and there was a lot of talk about it, too? Yeah, I think, too. E3s ago? Yeah, they dressed up weird when they went on stage and stuff. It was a Games with Gold free through Microsoft. So I picked it up a while ago, and I was getting tired of Prey, and I needed a break. I didn't want to start another full retail game, and it's a more arcade-sized game. And I thought, let me do this and see what I think. And actually, I was like, oh, okay, I'm actually doing all right at this. I'm going to keep going. Nice. I only got about half the achievements. The other half are all hard. Won't be doing that. I've stopped achievement hunting pretty much entirely. Yeah, I don't. I don't usually, I don't worry about full clearing or anything anymore unless I'm really interested in it. But I still like to see those little achievements pop up. And so I'll still, sometimes in quick play, focus on heroes in Overwatch that I don't have all the achievements on to see if maybe I can earn them. Yeah. It gives me new ways to play and stuff, so I do like that. I can see that. I know there's been a lot of changes with Overwatch lately that I've not even looked at. the anniversary packs, I don't think I've even logged into Overwatch in a while because I've been playing Battletech and other things. I've just not had the same drive for it lately. I know because I was planning on, I'm going to play competitive this season and then Battletech came out and it's like, I don't know if I should even bother to try and get into competitive at this point. I'll be like wood tier. Is there something below wood? No, there's not. Wood tier is the worst. Okay, well, we're now actually really ready to do our E3 portion of the show. So we have two more speakers to participate with us. First up, back fresh from E3 2017's show, Eric, welcome back to provide your video game knowledge. Thank you for having me. All right. And second, we have a now third-time returning guest, thus tying as most frequent guest. He is the former host of the Link Cable podcast and former host of the Pinball podcast, Don. Welcome back to the show. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Yeah, great. Well, we're really excited. We're going to go through this chronologically by major presentation. Everyone here has taken it upon themselves to lead on a particular topic that we're going to hit. I like how you say taken it upon themselves as opposed to I filled out a form and you're doing Square Enix whether you want to or not. Look, someone makes the trains run. I'm not even saying on time. They just are running. I willed it, and that's what we need to do to make sure that they actually happen. Dennis Wilson. But we all get to participate and contribute. So nothing, no stone will be left unturned. You're not obligated to mention every single thing in a presentation, just the stuff that is interesting to you. And anyone else will chip in on things that get left off. And we'll do it by the major presentations. And then we'll have a little summary segment And so everyone knows I also want to ask at the end what do you think in terms of a game quote won E3 What major presentation won E3, if any? And, who lost or was a disappointment, in terms of presentation, at E3? So, just things to think about. But, starting chronologically, that means we start with Electronic Arts, commonly known as EA, and that means, Don, you get to lead the way. Show us the light, Don. Alright, let's do this. Three hours of FIFA. They started off with a cinematic trailer for Battlefield V. They announced the Battle Royale mode, which every game will have this year. They're going back in sequence with numbering, I guess, after Battlefield 1. But I kind of like the Battlefield games. I'm kind of interested. And they are putting a female soldier on the cover, which is kind of neat. Trying some diversity. The next big one was Respawn's Star Wars title. It's Jedi Fallen Order. and it takes place between episode 3 and 4 Respawn did the Titanfall games and Titanfall 2 was fantastic in my opinion so I am excited until EA cancels until what? until EA cancels it before it actually launches like they do half the other stuff it's supposed to come out next fall fall of 2019 so they did not show anything it was literally just an announcement yeah the dev talking about it but That should be good. It's during the Dark Period where they're hunting Jedi, so that sounded interesting. So that had hopes for it was under whatever, 1616, that dark, gritty Underworld 1 that they were developing a couple years ago, and then they shut the studio down. Yeah, hopefully they picked up some pieces from that one, because that did sound really cool. But that was the Amy Henning one, I think. Yeah, it was. Yeah, you're correct. I don't know if she's involved in this one. I thought 1616 was a different one than the Amy Henning one. I thought the M.M.H. Amy had a different, was unnamed at this point. That might be true. I don't remember. Because she was working with Visceral, and they closed Visceral. Right. The point is, EA's going to lose the license to Star Wars. Yeah. They're getting out what they can to make what they can, because they've been seen as a major bungler of this entire franchise. Right. I think we all agree on that? Yeah. Yes. Okay. And then it'll go to Bethesda, and it'll be amazing. It'll all be the same game, but it'll be amazing. Around the same time, we should get a Lego third prequel grouping. Or is it not third prequel? What do they call the new trilogy? The new trilogy or the sequel trilogy is what I've been hearing a lot. Okay, well, we should get a Lego. The original trilogy, the new trilogy, and the sequel trilogy. Yeah, that should be good. The Lego games are always competent. Yes. One of my favorite things about E3 is when games are announced and are released at the same time. And that happened with Unravel 2. So it was announced on June 9th and released at the same time on PS4, PC, and Xbox One. I played a little bit of the first one, and I liked it well enough, but not enough to finish. And I have that EA Access, so I'll probably try this at some time. It's a co-op game where the two characters use the same piece of thread, so you're kind of tethered to each other. which supposedly it has some cool integration of that gimmick or mechanic so I don't know, we'll get there eventually but either way it's cool when stuff is announced and just drops. Has anyone else played the original Unravel? Yes. What did you think of it? I think it's a good platformer. I think it controls well, the yarn gimmick is good it's not... So I haven't played all the way through and in fact I have literally played it this week because I'm like, oh, I really thought that was an interesting looking game. Oh, and they're making another one. And I showed the trailer to my daughter and she's like, let's get that. And I'm like, well, why don't we play the one I already have? And so we played a little bit and it is really sweet and mellow. Okay, I don't like it. Yeah, it sounds horrible. But thanks for describing it so deeply. And we do have to deal with the other larger problem here. You actually pay for EAL access. I didn't know anybody actually did that. Yeah, it goes on sale all the time. It was like $25 for a year or $20 even. And so I really wanted to play Star Wars and Need for Speed without buying them. I can see that. Now they're free. As much as you want to play, you can play. Yeah, yeah. So if you want to play the fourth or fifth best car racing game out there, they've got it for you. I love arcade racers, so I like a lot of the Need for Speed games. I know a lot of people who do that. One last thing on Unravel is that so many of the big platformers lately are super hard, like Celeste and Bloodstained are trying to double down on how hard can we make these platformers, whereas Unravel, like Eric was saying, it is kind of just chill and you can kind of enjoy yourself and not feel like it's all Twitch gaming It's very generous with checkpoints Yeah, that would be nice Because I can't do platformers anymore. I got the Mega Man Super Pack that has all the Mega Mans in it. And I know I used to beat Mega Man. I can't get past a single level on Mega Man. I apparently fail as a gamer at this point. I don't blame you. It's tough. Back in the day, you could just play the same game over and over. Yeah. That's all you had. But now you got to get good. Get good, son. Get good. Yep. They announced another Madden. It'll come out August 10th. I haven't played one in a few years. They mentioned Star Wars Battlefront 2 is getting new updates. So you're going to be able to play as Count Dooku, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and General Grievous. And they're going to add Clone Wars mode, which could be cool. I don't know. General Grievous, he's got four lightsabers. That could be fun. Not my favorite thing, but I think Battlefront is a pretty fun series. So I'll probably give that a shot. And then the big one is Anthem. They gave it a release date. It's going to be out February 22nd. PS4, Xbox, and PC. They put it in a trailer. There's a lot of gameplay videos up now. Exploration videos. That's supposed to be the next big, huge game from Bioware, but it looks... To me, it looks like the Titanfall. It looks like Destiny. It's supposed to be a Destiny killer. I'm not totally sold. I don't know if you've played Destiny. I played the demo of the first Destiny. I've not played Destiny 2. I know a lot of Destiny 2 fans have been pretty disappointed. I should say Destiny fans have been disappointed with Destiny 2, but they still play it. Well, kinda. I mean, they still bought it. I'm just curious. They feel obligated to play it. I'm just curious. Will Anthem displace that? I think that Destiny put itself in a bad position. I think that it didn't resonate with a lot of the hardcore fans, and I don't know that it attracted a lot of new players. So I'm wondering if maybe the positioning's good for the Anthem to sort of displace it, even if it isn't the same, totally same style of game. It's possible. If they put enough of a hook in there where you're getting loot, and it rewards you for playing together, maybe. It looks like Iron Man in a jungle. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. That could be fun. I mean, who doesn't want to fly around in Iron Man armor? Right. if they push a beta, like a public beta that could get some traction Destiny tried that and that kind of got me interested in Destiny but I only put maybe 70 hours into it, which in terms of Destiny is hardly anything yeah, you might as well not even tried it I don't know but, yeah, we'll see I'm sure it'll be big, or at least there'll be a lot of advertising for it Sea of Solitude is the next EA original game it's an adventure game focused on emotions, supposed to come early next year on PS4, Xbox, and PC. I think it looks really cool. It looks familiar to me. I feel like I've played this game before, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It looks kind of like a Gorillaz music video. Hmm. Yeah. It does have an animation style that's somewhat reminiscent of it. All the shadowy things actually kind of remind me of Kingdom Hearts, the shadowy characters. Yep. Or even Inside. I don't know why I love that. with the sirens trying to drag you down into the water. I don't know. I definitely want to try it, and hopefully EA Originals take off because they've got the money. They could make some really outstanding indies into top-tier games. Well, they've been sticking with it so far. I mean, this is, what, the third year that they've done it? Yeah, but Fii kind of crashed, I think. Nobody's really talking about that already. Yeah, no. That was kind of their big push. Maybe it sucked. I don't know. You know, I actually started it this week, and it doesn't tell you anything. It just throws you in and you figure the game out. I think that kind of throws a lot of people, but it's okay so far. That was about it as far as stuff I'm interested in with EA. Well, the only thing I would go back and touch on a bit more is Battlefield V. I've been a pretty big fan of Battlefield. I like the look of it. I've often liked the look of it. I really like how DICE executes its multiplayer. but the only real new thing I noticed was now what used to be the fixed place defensive weapons like cannons and such can now be moved around with vehicles so that's an interesting change because I've always felt most of those fixed placement guns were pointless well pointless is not quite right but a lot of times where the battles end up happening naturally aren't around those weapons so no one uses them so now that you could be able to move them, I think will let them actually be more meaningful. People very rarely bother with fixed placement guns in the prior Battlefield games. It just makes you a sitting duck. So, so that'll be nice. And they emphasize the destructive elements again, which is something Battlefield has been known for but I felt they got a little too large scale lately with Levolution which was like Battlefield 4 thing and then the massive behemoth fights in Battlefield 1 which was better executed than Levolution but still not I didn't love it. I didn't love those aspects of it. And being in World War II will help because the technology is better. It was a bit weird with World War I. I'm glad they did it. But there just wasn't very much weapon diversity, even with them being super liberal and giving you every experimental weapon that was in development at the last week of the war. So it was still pretty rudimentary. So I'm looking forward to that. Do you think Battle Royale mode could be a lot more interesting with vehicles now? Yeah, I mean, Battle Royale, to me, the big question is that game type with the shrinking area where you're just forced to fight more and more. I'm not super attracted to that concept I think with vehicles and such because I know there are vehicles in PUBG for example and while those were basically death sentences on the PC version, vehicles are the way to get kills on the Xbox One version just because of how the controller mechanics are versus mouse mechanics so Battlefield is very vehicle rich normally so I think my thought will be it's probably fun to play I don't see how it's any more interesting to watch than any other battle royale, which I think is the most boring thing in esports. I don't know if I would go that far, but yeah, pretty close. Watch a guy crash behind a wall for 20 minutes? Yeah. Now, the only times I've watched any of those, the person I've watched has been drunk and playing in the group play with like four friends who were also drunk, so it was always much funnier. but no those games don't really have any real watchability alright anyone else have any thoughts on EA they should have done a Battlefield that went to like the Zulu War or the Boar War or something like that that would have been interesting because of those because there's just a huge passion for the Boar War yeah I do appreciate that in Battlefield 5 they did give it a B instead of 5 I's also a couple quotes from the Battlefront 2 presentation the presenter there said both clearly we didn't get it quite right and we had a rough start but I really think this game has a bright future that is extremely telling that in a press conference where you are basically cheering about everything you do that they had to address the elephant in the room there yeah they learned their lesson the hard way I think it could. They've got a rich universe to draw from, so it could be something special over time. But also, in that vein, several of, like Battlefield V, they announced there will be no loot boxes and no premium pass, and also Anthem, they announced no loot boxes. Just cosmetics or whatever? Yeah, on Anthem it's premium cosmetics. They really didn't cover, I don't think, Battlefield V, what their ongoing monetization strategy is going to be. microtransactions, but they're not hidden as a random loot box. Yeah. Be slightly more honest, at least. Yeah. At least if you wanted to buy, it's like, I want that rifle that is just titled God Mode. You can just pay your 50 bucks to get your God Mode. Not have to pay 300 bucks hoping to get God Mode in a box. Right. All right. Well, let's move on then to the Microsoft presentation, because chronologically it was the next major one, and I will go ahead and take point on that. There was a lot of announcements. Microsoft went in saying, we are going to talk about 50 games. They made it, though that required a little bit of creativity in terms of a montage. And when you're sitting there, you realize that that was going to be necessary. But they were not messing around. Their presentation was 90 minutes long, not the usual hour they take. It opened up with Halo Infinite. There was really just a trailer. and what that trailer told you is this will be a Master Chief game, which you would expect because it is a numbered Halo. They went on to Ori and Will of the Wisps, which we saw a little bit at the prior E3. It showed some of the platforming mechanics that will be involved in that game. Next up was Sekiro, Shadows Die Twice. And I know I'm kind of tearing through these really quick and then I'm going to pause and if we want to talk about these games, we can, just so you know. I just have so many notes. This is a From Software game. From Software is best known for Dark Souls at this point. And it looked aesthetically a lot like Dark Souls, but also that it had a very different tone. I just mean the art direction seemed very similar to me. So were there any thoughts on any of those three games I had the exact same feeling you had on Sekiro That was my first thought as soon as I saw it was I thought Dark Souls Okay I hate Dark Souls I think it one of the most overrated games of the last generation but I love the look. Yeah. Yeah, this looks great, but I can't deal with the difficulty of a Dark Souls. Yeah, I think there has been some reporting after this where they're trying to get in front of that and saying that it's not really Dark Souls. I think they're trying to compare it possibly more to Tenchu, which I have zero experience with. So I don't know if that helps anyone else. It's not Dark Souls hard. It's Ninja Gaiden hard. Oh, okay. We're all better. Everyone's happy? Okay. All right. Next, and I know this one means something if we hadn't all already played it, I think, and that is Fallout 4 is in Game Pass. Yay! So, skipping past that. There was some talk of Fallout 76 at this conference, which was preceding the Bethesda conference. Fallout 76 is a prequel in terms of chronology. It's about four times the world size that Fallout 4 was, and it takes place in West Virginia. And that's really all we got at this point about the game, but a lot more came out a bit later. And I think we'll probably touch on that more in the Bethesda conference. then they talked about The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit which is a free game as of June 26th it takes place in the Life is Strange universe and there was a bit more about this at the Square Enix presentation and then what's starting to feel like the Duke Nukem Forever of the Microsoft world, Crackdown 3 it had an awesome Old Spice over the top trailer with Terry Crews it showed some gameplay features and now they're saying February 2019. Yeah, sure, whatever. What was the original date that Crackdown 3 was supposed to come out? It was supposed to come out with the Xbox One X. That's what I thought. I don't think that's even the original one, though. I don't know. That's the last one I remember. Around the time they announced the Xbox One. So this has been in development in some form or another for close to five years now, I think? I think that's right. Separate from this, but I'll put it in now because I don't think we'll talk about Crackdown later. I did watch an interview that took place later at E3 with Phil Spencer, who runs Xbox, fully runs it at this stage. And he was pretty candid about it. He said that he tried, he playtested the game himself. And while he likes the items and the integration, he doesn't think they got the agents. They're not moving. They don't feel good to play. And so they're holding back on the game because it's still not feeling like a crackdown game. He says it will not take until February to get that game ready The problem is This fall is so crowded He didn't name it but we all know it's Red Dead Redemption 2 Right You don't know against Rockstar That they're pushing it to February because they think it'll be more competitive That's okay Take your time as long as it's fun That's right I played the first two Crackdown was a fun game Crackdown 2 was okay But disappointing. And in that interview, Phil said, I don't want this to be Crackdown 2, a.k.a. Crackdown 1.5. So he acknowledges that that one was a turd. Good. Another announcement that I imagine Don is familiar with this, Nier Automata is coming out to the Xbox with all the DLC. Yeah, quite a bit of it. That was one of the big PS4 exclusives of the last generation. Console exclusives. Console exclusives, yes. Console exclusives. And yeah, it was interesting I think, the only reason I can think A game this old was on stage was two-fold One, it was to show, hey, we actually took A console exclusive and we've brought It over here, and it was a well-regarded Game. It was, I enjoyed it a lot I don't think it took home very many Game of the Year Awards, but that's just because 2017 Was so crowded with great games And it grabbed, I think it grabbed a couple Art on its arts And this and that. Soundtrack Yeah, it had a great soundtrack Eric, did you play Nier Automata? No. I don't have a PS4. I don't have a PC capable of running it. No, I haven't played Nier Automata. Oh, is it Automata? Am I saying it wrong? Almost everyone calls it Automata, but it's Automata like Automaton. But don't I sound better when I say it wrong? I'm saying most people say Automata. Or most people say Automata. But I think it is actually Automata. I don't want anybody to fix this. I'm getting ahead of it, yeah. Yeah, it's already fixed it, so I don't want to hear it. No corrections on it. I'm just going to call it Nier. Am I saying that right, or is it Nier? But there's already a game called Nier. That's where things... So Nier Atomic Hot is actually a sequel. Can we call it Nier? I wouldn't recommend that. Okay. Next. This is a game I'm excited... I been excited about since I saw it last year Metro Exodus They had some more in footage That looked cool Have you played any of the Metro games I never played any of the Metro games Oh, they're so good. I've seen them, and it's like, this seems like really grimdark Fallout. I would probably like this game, but I've never played any of them. It's, yeah, grimdark Fallout, the aesthetic is very much that. Think of it as sort of post-apocalyptic Soviet sneaky FPS. Yes. There's a lot of reliance on... It's not a stealth game, but they allow you to stealth past a lot of segments. There's a lot of advantage to staying hidden as long as possible. You can do things in stealth, but it doesn't work on the same, like, oh, you've been seeing meters, and it's a little different than that. But it is a really competent shooter. But unlike Fallout, the games have always been very linear. They're pretty linear. It's not all about exploration. You're underground in subway tunnels. Yeah. Not a lot of movement. And bullets are currency in those games, Tony. Not bottle caps. You're broke. That's right. Yeah, no, they sound, I've always thought they looked, and then it was the trailer last year where the guy fought the bear, like on the edge of the cliff or something like that, as I recall. Yep. Yeah. It all looked amazing. Yeah, this one's exciting because so much of it is taking place outside. And in the prior two Metro games, outside was a sometimes. It's like a sometimes food. It's a sometimes place. But it was always really hard to see out there because of the fallout, and you always had to wear a lot of protective gear. This seems to be indicating there are going to be areas that are still pristine on the surface, and it's going to feel bigger. So I think it looks cool. Yeah. Kingdom Hearts 3. Next thing. It's on the Microsoft stage, I'm sure, because it's the first time a Kingdom Hearts game will come out for a Microsoft console. Yeah. I know there's people who are deeply in love with these games and they're so excited that this is finally happening because the last Kingdom Hearts game was, what, like five or six years ago? No, like 15 years ago. Well, they make a lot of those, like, spinoff ones. I thought there was a spinoff one not that long ago. There have been many spinoffs. Things like Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance or Birth by Sleep or there's another one. that I can't... There's been like four or five Kingdom Hearts games that are not, you know, numbered sequels, but remarkably still fit into the story. So, yeah, it's probably been about five years since we've seen one of those, but since Kingdom Hearts 2, it's been... 2003? It's square. They're slow. They're always slow, and it's not... It's never worth the wait. I'm not at all excited about this game. Not at all excited. I played the first Kingdom Hearts, and it was okay. I played the first, I didn't finish it. And yeah, it was okay. I was glad to see the gummy ship again. Yeah, gummy ship was cool. Yeah. All right, let's see. Then their presentation touched on that there are a couple DLC packs coming out for the recently released Sea of Thieves. Translation, please, please, please play this game. We know it's crashing, burning bad, and everybody hates it. Please play my game, please. There's nothing to do in Sea of Thieves. It was obvious from every trailer. I don't know why IGN was losing their minds over how awesome they thought it would be. I thought it looked really boring. I did, too. And the numbers I've seen online show that they had a steep drop-off right after it came out. Maybe this will fix it? Maybe. Maybe. I think it needs more direction. I got the idea. They were like, here's a playground for you and your friends. This is not enough toys. It's like there are two slides, and I am water slides. Yeah. It's just got to be more than that. Then there was some more talk about Battlefield V. We already touched on that. And then, of course, what surprised no one, because it's that time of year again, Forza Horizon 4 this time. Now set in Britain. It will be in a shared world. So it felt like, if you haven't played Horizon 3, it feels like a shared world, except those are all these Drivatars, as they call them. They're just AI interpretations of actual people's real profiles based off of how they've played. now it will actually be the real people who are driving around on the same open area. Yeah, that's not going to backfire at all. I don't know. It's arcade-y so I don't expect it to be too bad in terms of like if people hit you and stuff it's not like your car explodes, it's not burnout. So and they showed some of the features like how you could, if you want to choose to group up and participate you can. They can't like cut in and make you do multiplayer stuff with them if you don't want to. 60 FPS mode that excites some people the big change is that they added seasons yeah it's an interesting idea they did a few neat things with some Carl Weathers in packs in the last game but this is obviously taking that a step further at this point And so, anyway, look, I think Forza, both Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon rule the racing game universe at this point. I don't think any other games are coming close to their pedigree at this stage. Gran Turismo is a joke. And Forza Horizon is actually better than Motorsport. So it's the best racing game there is. So are you going to get a game of this, though? Are you going to get it? I probably will, but I'll wait until it's on sale. Dude, get Game Pass. It's free. I'm not doing your filthy Game Pass. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I have Game Pass, so yes. $30 for six months. $5 a month. Yep. So much money. I got too much stuff to play. Look, I haven't even started Dead Rising 4 yet. I have too much stuff to play. I guess I've got to pace myself. I'm pacing. I do like the whole EA All Access, the Game Pass concept. Honestly, I like the concept with how hard it is to buy all the games. If you can just play a game for a little while and decide, oh, I hate this game, and dump it. It's a good concept. It is. And they touch on it a little bit later, and I'll bring that up then because they did have some news on it. But after they talked about Forza, this is where the big announcement came in. This is the one to address all of the concerns that defined Microsoft for 2017, which was, you don't have any exclusives. Why would we ever buy your product? Sony's got all the exclusives. And so Phil Spencer came on stage and he said, all right, we are going to have five studios now. We're starting a new one called The Initiative. This one was known because the hiring notices were seen. So it's a brand new upstart Microsoft studio. So it's also the one furthest behind. But they also acquired four existing studios and put them in as first-party entities. So that's Undead Labs. They are who make State of Decay. Which was a solid game. Yep. I mean, it got boring and repetitive after a while, but it's one of those open-world games, and a lot of them do that. Right, but the second one just came out, and I believe they've already got 2 million players in it. So it's going over very well. Then they acquired Playground Games, which does Forza Horizon. They also have, my understanding is, hired up a second development team. The rumor mill is Playground is going to be doing Fable. I hope so. And, yeah, it would be nice because they still have that IP after closing Lionhead. Right. And it's just a question of, I mean, everyone out here at Playground, they go, well, all they know is racing games. But it's a whole separate, different team. Fable racing games. Who cares? Yeah, Fable racing games. Fable carts. Fable carts will be better than the Kinect. You can throw chickens instead of turtle shells. The fourth studio, third acquired, was Ninja Theory. and they are who make Hellblade. Right, and they made that what starts with an S was that psychological Viking... Hellblade, Sinuous Sacrifice. Yeah, that was... I've heard good things about that. This is the one I've heard with the most buzz in terms of I guess I'd describe it as Sony fans being upset about it. Right. Because they felt this was a studio that was making good games that the PS4 was getting. And anything that's currently in the works incidentally will still come out. They didn't buy any of the games up. Anything that was being published by someone else is coming out with that publisher. It's just their new... And the last one was Compulsion Games which is doing We Happy Few. Anyway, that's an attempt. From what I've read, Sony operates with 15 first-party studios. This, I believe, brings Microsoft up to 12. They did have a significant lag just in terms of the quantity that they could produce. That was pretty big. That was also really the only non- game stuff they talked about at their press conference. After they got done announcing those studios, they went in and talked about We Happy Few. They gave a trailer which gave a better sense of the single player. It's been in early access for a while now. It's really been the multiplayer sort of stuff. And I still think this looks really weird, so I'm very interested in trying it. I'm not interested in the multiplayer, but I am interested in the single player. Is it actually multiplayer, or is it I have played the demo. And so after that initial thing that we all saw at E3 that made it look kind of like a 1960s mod Fallout, then it kind of dumps you into very much a survival sim. And so I think that's where a lot of people had concerns about it is, well, it's just one of those games. And there is sort of a story, but it's very much, or at the time, again, I only played the original demo, at the time it was very much the story was kind of the okay you found a note here or you know audio log kind of stuff not a core plot to it So it seemed like they were spending a lot of time getting all the mechanics down all the systems in place and so this seems like a reaffirmation that yes, we're going to make a story-driven game. Okay. I think they pushed the beta too early. Or not the beta, the demo. I played it too, like a year ago. Yeah. It didn't do much for me. Yeah, I've not been a fan of it being in early access, much less as long as it has sat in early access as well, because I thought that would perhaps sabotage. It hurts, I think it hurts the expectations for the game. Actually, Phil Spencer in that other, in the interview was with Jeff from Giant Bomb. Yeah. That's who he interviewed with. It was an hour-long interview. Touched on this as well, and he said that is an example of, with their acquisition of Compulsion Games, Microsoft will fund everything for all these studios now. It's not supposed to be, how do we keep the lights on? It's supposed to be, you make games, we keep you afloat. and that We Happy Few is in early access because they probably needed to do it just to fund the game development. That will not be a problem going forward. But that doesn't help this game. So it is what it is. But also, interestingly, at that We Happy Few trailer, it looks like Gearbox is publishing it. Yes, and that is going forward. Phil confirmed that. He said, I'm not stepping on Randy's toes. They're going to still publish it. We are interfering with no existing arrangement. Yeah, it was just sort of a weird juxtaposition of, hey, we just acquired this studio, and look at the game they're putting out, but we're not publishing it. Yep. And he said he didn't want to upset any Apple carts. He wasn't about trying to steal games away from any other publisher or any other console maker. It's just for going forward, he wants those creative talents at these studios. That was why he made his picks. And the Microsoft CEO said, okay, here's your bucket of money. Do it. Bucket of money. I need a bucket of money. I'll start a studio. Well, that's what he indicated. It's been like all this stuff started up in September when he got promoted, and he only answers to the CEO now of Microsoft. He's not beneath anyone else anymore. He's got Microsoft to buy in that they want to stay in the video game side. They're not spending it off. And so now it's time to compete for real. And what do they have that Sony doesn't? Oh, yeah, money, lots of it. And this is just a little flex. And he played coy when he was asked because the rumor mill is, There's a sixth studio, and it's big, and it's not been announced yet. And he wouldn't answer that question. I still hope it's Capcom. I was going to say, does it rhyme with Mapcom? Or I would tolerate if it rhymes with Mamkai Camco. I just think they need a big Japanese studio to round out their portfolio. They're two bro shooters still. This helps, but I want them to get some JRPG stuff or something going on. Not that I would play it. No, but I'm just thinking for long-term health for the console. War Mode for PUBG. That was next up. Does anyone care? No. Do any of you play PUBG? Okay, good. Nope. Let's not talk about it then. Tales of Vesperia, definitive edition. So this was the version that was put out only in Japan, only on the PS4. So it's going to come to the States finally. It's going to come on Xbox as well. And Tales of Vesperia was on Xbox. But this added a whole bunch of content. For whatever reason, they never put it over in the U.S. on anything. Yeah. It's one of those weird things that they do that there's so many games that come out in Japan, and they'll come out with, like, five DLCs and 13 sequels, and in the U.S. they'll not get any of it. And then they'll put out a new game. It's like, yeah, this is whatever, too. And it's like, yeah, this is like the ninth game in the series. Yep. next up was another sequel, The Division 2, which they showed some, they gave some basic plot summary of what the idea is behind The Division 2, and showed some gameplay footage. Did anyone play The Division? No. A couple hours. What'd you think of it, Don? I'm guessing by a couple hours that you didn't think much. It's not for me. It's okay. There was a very difficult boss early on, and it kind of just blocked everything. I had to have a friend come in and tell me what needed to happen. It just was too early in the game for that kind of challenge for me. So it should have been a Dark Souls boss is what you're indicating. Not that bad, but it just reminded me of the very last boss of the first Gears of War, Ram. Oh. Ram was terrible. Yeah, okay. I get it. Yeah. I guess I shouldn't be surprised given how much money was put in the division, but whereas Rainbow Six Siege did really well for Ubisoft. I heard the Division didn't, and so I was a bit surprised. I honestly didn't expect anything more from the Division other than maybe DLC type things. I didn expect them to sequel it with all the various issues I did see they still fell into their trap of hey let write completely unrealistic video game chat dialogue Oh, it was so cringy. And have people read it with, like, zero inflection for half of the people. Where's Bob? Oh, he's always late. Oh, we need to get him leveled up. No one talks like that. I'll tell you, you listen into one of my Overwatch sessions, and you'll know how I talk. I can't do it here. We'd have to bleep it. Because I'd have to write on the snow pad. There's so much bleeping. Yes, there would be a lot of bleeping, because all I do is get mad and swear. Or when we win, I say, I really like winning. Yeah. I say that a lot, too. Or like, yay, we beat the boss. Good job. Let's go to the next thing. Yeah. No, there's nobody cheering and screaming so you can't hear what's going on because somebody's just screaming because you finally just finished something cool. Yeah. And it could be just because there was absolutely nothing cool. Yeah. But. So, now, Game Pass. They touched on Game Pass. mentioned some more games. So Master Chief Collection, Forza Horizon 4, Crackdown 3, those latter two are going to be available day one in Game Pass when they come out. So as Don noted with Forza Horizon, it's a great opportunity. If you don't want to buy the game, you can do it through this very affordable mechanism and get a chance to try it out or play it as much as you want. So that was pretty cool. They mentioned there will also be more games coming from other studios that will have same day release. Yeah. So it's not going to just be Microsoft Studios releases. They mention now that Game Pass has Fallout 4, Elder Scrolls Online, and the original Division. So those are available for people who have that option. And they also talked about later here in June releasing Fast Start, which is supposed to be two times faster in terms of letting you actually start playing the game. which I don't the fast start idea where the game was supposed to be able to be installing from a disc and you could play it I quit relying on it because all it looked like in most of the games when I tried it was I can sit and look at the menu so this should actually be meaningful if it actually does what it says because I don't start games when they say ready to start on my Xbox I wait until they're fully installed because half the time I ever tried it, I can't actually play anything. Right. Another example of that is I think it was the original Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare. It would say ready to play, and you could launch it, and it would actually put you in a unique area that doesn't exist anywhere in the regular game, and you could just wander around. There was nothing to play. You could just wander around and shoot for a little bit. So it was almost kind of like a pre-game lobby. But it didn't do any good. Right, exactly. I'd rather just play something else. Don't tell me you're ready to start if you're not ready to start. Well, they're trying to make the ready to start be smarter so it actually will be twice as smart. Is it Galad or something? Yes, I started installing you, and now that you're installing, I'm going to go ahead and go play the Switch now. Yeah, exactly. The geometry wars, like what Midnight Club used to do. The geometry wars with the load screen, that's where it came from. Mm-hmm. Pretty cool. I thought it was Project Gotham. Oh, Project Gotham, maybe, yeah. Oh, yeah, you thought you were so smart. That's what I'm here for. Keep you honest. So after that, we talked a little bit about indie games when we were talking about EA originals. So we'll talk now ID at Xbox. What, if anything, caught your guys' eyes during the... This is where that montage came in to get their game numbers up. I wrote down three that I thought looked interesting to me. And the three I chose were Fringe Wars, which looks like a space battle game. Anything that reminds me of Wing Commander catches my eye. Super Meat Boy Forever, because I did finish Super Meat Boy, not Cotton Candy Alley or whatever the super uber hard was, but I did finish the regular story. And Generation Zero, which in my notes all I wrote down was Robo Dogs? So those were the three ID games that I thought looked interesting. The big one that jumped out at me was Super Meat Boy. We did that co-op Super Meat Boy stuff, and it just jumped out at me. Okay. Also below, which is Capybara's game that has been long in development. I believe they announced that also when they announced the Xbox One. Okay. Don, was there anything that caught your eye that we haven't mentioned? I saw Super Meat Boy stuff, but I haven't even heard of the other ones. Well, they didn't. It was literally just a montage where they threw the title up in the lower corner. I actually sat there with my laptop, and I was typing them as I saw the ones that I thought looked interesting. They each had about two seconds. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. No idea. I'm just that good. Yeah, it was one of those things that it was flying, and I was just like, okay, what? Ooh, Super Meat Boy! Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. So after the ID section, they touched on Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I pretty excited about it I liked the first two reboot Tomb Raider games Lara Croft is a murder bot now Yeah I noticed that That what I hate about it The last one you just killing guys all the time But she was reluctant. Now I think she enjoys the taste of humor. So she's a murder bot. Yeah. So anyway, so there's that. Lara Croft, murder hobo. A game called Session, which is a skateboarding game. So I have no interest in it. If it's not skateboard... it seems like it might be kind of a spiritual successor to Skate. I'm saying that without any experience with Skate at all. I'm into it. I'm looking forward to it. I guess it was $20 if you kick-started it. And they said it's really rough right now. So, that's what happens. It might still, I mean, with Microsoft and E3, it could be baking for another three years. Yeah. If it goes the way that the senders went, where they're constantly adding updates and it's kind of like early access thing, it could be really cool. The Ascenders, there's enough meat there that it's compelling, keeps coming back, but it's still super rough. But it keeps your eyes on the prize. This is what it could be in your head. I don't know. If they build up steam like that, I think Ascenders is the type of game that will keep getting bigger over time. They could roll it out early and just keep building up. I don't know. I can see that. Next was a game called Black Desert, which I really like the look of, but then I saw it was an MMO RPG. Yeah, it's been on computer for years. They came to PlayStation last year, as I recall. So they just had an Xbox. So it's just another one of those. We finally got it. Right. Because remember when we had our dinner with our friends who live in Dallas, the first year we went to Texas, they were talking about it. Because they played it on PC then. Okay. And then like last year it came to PS4 and now it's coming to Xbox. It'll be on the Switch next year. It'll be on your phone the year after. it's the new Skyrim. Well, they did announce it at last year's Xbox briefing as well. Okay, I didn't write it down last year, but I've written it down now. Okay, so after that, we had a very interesting trailer for Devil May Cry 5, which apparently is a sequel to the fourth one. They did a remake, and the aesthetic kind of reminded me of that, but I guess they're chucking out the whole different-looking Dante sort of stuff, but they're still trying to keep this more modern vibe, not go back to the old vibe. I have never played A Devil May Cry. I thought this looked fun, but I don't want to weigh in more on it. I played, like, the first one, but, again, that was, what, 20 years ago? Pretty close. Yeah, so there's no way it has any real ties to what this one's going to be other than, you know, the character type stuff. But it was a fine game back then. I think I've played all of them except four, and they were all fun and this trailer looks bonkers. It looks like Dead Rising 4 or something. Yeah, it was cool. So Don, maybe you can answer a question I had. Is his arm not normally missing? Is his arm not normally missing? That doesn't ring a bell. It's been a long time since I played, but yeah, I don't think he had a missing arm. Yeah, I think when I was speaking to Mike, who was on last year's E3 and is furious that he is not at this year's E3 podcast, is that in 4, that arm is lost. Okay. So it's a continuation, but it wasn't something historic to the series. Well, they seem to be focusing an awful lot on prosthetics. Right, and that's not Dante, by the way. Well, that's not Dante. Dante's who rides up at the end. He's a different character. And that was confusing, too, because they kind of have the same face. Yeah. So anyway, the crowd reaction was really positive, probably because the original creator came out on stage and was like, this is a real sequel. And people were like, yeah, we love you! Kind of like how Miyamoto always is treated. Okay, so let's see. After that, Cuphead. The DLC, a new aisle with some new enemies and a new playable character. So they mentioned that. Just to remember. Hey, remember Cuphead? It was our one good console exclusive we had last year. Tunic. Zelda. Fox Zelda. Jump Force. What in the world? There have been jump games before. This isn't something that... They've had jump fighting games before. It's just this is the current generation. So I take it this is just like a mix of Shonen Jump characters. It was like, hey look, here's Frieza and here's Goku. I'm thinking it's DLC for Dragon Fighters. Yeah. And then they brought in Luffy and yeah all the others I see Kira from Death Note and I'm like what oh is that who showed up at the very end with the Shinigami yeah okay I'm like I don't I recognize Naruto I recognize somebody from One Piece I recognize Dragon Ball characters but I don't know who that is oh Death Note. Ooh, that's good. It's good. It is good. Okay, so that looked interesting. Dying Light 2. Has anyone played Dying Light? I have, and I did not like it. It's on my wish list, but I've never gotten it. Well, Don, what did you like about it? Because I thought it was boring. I thought it was super interesting. You're just constantly trying to... There was enough survival, but it was arcade-y enough so that you weren't feeling bogged down with trying to keep yourself going. I love the first-person parkour stuff. I was a big Mirror's Edge fan. and then yeah, throw zombies in there. It was fun. Well, I thought the parkour was pretty good. I didn't like the emphasis on melee combat and there was no point in ever being out at night. So it was like, just don't do it. Just don't go out at night. It's bad. You just die. It was interesting, but it was rough and I didn't finish it. But the parkour system was good because that was something that they were trying to do with a lot of games for a while and some games pull it off okay and a lot of games were... Like Brink, it didn't really work. I've not played Mirror's Edge, though, so I can't weigh in if this was better or worse or the same as Mirror Edge's parkour, but it was one of the better parkour systems I've played. Yeah, it feels really good. Nice. So anyway, Dying Light 2 looks like it's still got its patented fluid parkour system. First-person melee combat is still present, so I will probably not try this game. But they emphasize that choices will have consequences. And they walk through some examples. It's not just visual, it's how the NPCs and such will interact. So it sounded really, really interesting. It's too bad that I can't trust the combat. So did you not like the first-person melee combat in Dead Island either? No, that one I thought worked fine. Okay, because Techland is who develops Dying Light. They developed the original Dead Island. I like the Condemned games. They're very melee-heavy too. For me, it didn't work in this one. Okay. Probably because I'm climbing up on things, so I'm like, why do I have to drop down and fight now? I should be being able to blow people's heads off. because they're zombies and they don't deserve dab heads. That was my logic. Anyway, it just didn't resonate with me. Then there was a trailer for Battletoads. Why do we have to bring this back? Why do we care? Does it count as a trailer? Yeah, as a teaser. It has broad, non-specific feature declarations. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't help but think of all the IP that Rare has that they don't do anything with anymore. This is the one. It's because of the meme. It's because of the meme. That's the only reason. Presumably they got some positive feedback when they added Battletoads into Killer Instinct. Okay. It's a rose-colored glasses situation. I mean, it's fine. I just thought, you know, people wanted Ratchet and Clank more or something. Right. Ratchet and Clank's not a... Oh, I mean the... I'm sorry. I mean... Well, yeah, I did... Double Dragon? No, no, I meant... Oh, Double Dragon. Or Conker's Bad Fur Day. That's what they want. Another Conker. Viva Pinata? No. Nobody wants Viva Pinata. And in fact, in the interview with Giant Bombcast, Phil confirmed we are not doing another Viva Pinata right now. Because there's a rumor going around that Viva Pinata Island is being made for Sea of Thieves. Because it's the only way people will play it. That'd be cool. It'd be creepy. Keep those pinatas out of my sea. And keep my players out of that sea, too, because no one wants to play it. It's filled with fun. Just Cause 4, this showed up a couple of times Elsewhere during the release Oh yeah, Just Cause 4 was like everywhere Yeah, it's like Rico's Back, baby I've played Just Cause 2, it was neat But I didn't love it I've played Just Cause and Just Cause, I think I've played all three of them They kind of all blur together for me Because They're just about doing crazy silly stuff That's all I ever did Was do crazy silly stuff I didn't really follow story very much I mean, I did what you had to But most of it's like, unlock this to unlock that. Unlock this, do this special thing to unlock that. Okay, now I'm just going to chain stuff together and put rockets on a car and see if I can't blow it through a wall or through somebody. Yeah. They've been fun games. They are time wasters that are not ones that you get really, at least that I would get really involved in. I didn't actually care, but it was fun to just mess with the systems. Yeah, I'm a fan of the series. and it's one that goes down in price really quick, so I'll probably wait for it to price. Yeah. I want to play it again. After that, they did three Gears of War announcements. Which was awesome. It was really clever how they ended up doing it, because the first one they announced was an adorable mobile game involving Funko Pop-looking Gears characters called Gears Pop, and the audience was dead silent. I laughed. I was laughing out loud so hard when that happened. They were so mad. They all cheered when that cog loaded up. And then when the little Funko guy popped out. Yeah. Oh, that was so good. That was so good. They followed that one up with Gears Tactics which is basically Halo Wars for Gears I fine with that I like that type of game And so the crowd got a little more warmed up but it was still a lukewarm applause And then... That seems to be PC only. Yes. That's the implication. Because nobody wants to play RTS without a keyboard and mouse. Still touched on these as well during his Giant Bomb interview. And finally they announced Gears 5. Now, it's not Gears of War 5. That was just called Gears 5, apparently. And that's the traditional third-person cover shooter. Yeah. And the crowd was like, you have redeemed yourself. We will forgive your mean joke on us. I was kind of sad that they actually announced they re-upped the Gears game. I knew they were going to from the beginning. It seemed obvious that there's no way they misread their crowd that badly. But then, you know, it is Microsoft. It was possible that they misread. Yeah. I feel ice parasailing in that game. So, Don, are you a big Gears fan? I've enjoyed all of them, but I don't know. I just play them because they're fun. I don't care about the world or anything. Are you looking forward to trying Gears Pop? Nope. Or the tactical game I couldn't care less about, but Gears of Evil. Well, Halo Wars was a fun tactical game. Yeah, it was. I'll have to think about if I want to. Most of the time I have played RTS on the computer, and since it is a computer game, I may get it. I'll have to see. I'll have to see what the price is. that was pretty much it. A few things at the end they touched on in terms of some other stuff. They mentioned that they're working to integrate Microsoft's AI technology that they've been researching into putting it into the actual video game NPCs and enemies to make the games better and more complicated, I guess. They talked about that they're working on figuring out better ways to stream console quality to any device so you can start letting console quality games be played on your phone if you want to. That was the main example. The Microsoft version of Steam, like. Yeah. They did confirm what was already known for Sony, and I think surprised no one, that they are actually in the process of building the next generation of console. Their hardware team is active on that. And that obviously, that they're working on building up the first-party system of studios, which was clearly indicated when they mentioned the five, the four acquisitions and the new one earlier. And then at the very end, they did the teaser trailer for CD Projekt Red's next game. They're who did the Witcher series, and it's Cyberpunk 2077, which a lot of people have gone bananas over. Because there was no gameplay, I didn't really get excited about it, but I really liked Witcher. Witcher 3 was great. Witcher 2 was a lot of fun as well. I've not played the first one. It's also notable because they announced Cyberpunk 2077 like five years ago. and there was a tiny like I don't know, 10 second or less teaser and that's literally everything that they have publicly released up to this point so this was a huge amount of content relatively speaking actually Game Informer podcast my other favorite video game podcast they got to play it and they could you know, you can't see it but they were able to talk about it all and it sounds really interesting I wasn't that interested until I heard them talking about it Yeah. But they seem to believe that it is not going to be on the Xbox One. It's going to be on Scarlett and whatever PS5. We'll see. Now, I did see an article that CD Projekt Red said it is being built for this generation. Oh, okay. But, I mean, that article came out after that podcast because that article came out like yesterday or the day before. Okay. Maybe it'll be a dual thing, kind of like Destiny was. Yeah. So anyone else have any thoughts about the Microsoft Press Conference? One thing that I thought was a little odd is on stage they had like dozens of demo stations, and yet they only used them once during the entire presentation for that one demo. Yeah, that was really weird. So I'm wondering if there's probably an explanation for it, and it's probably that they were holding FanFest or whatever their fan gaming convention there, and they just reused the stage. That's the only logical explanation I can come up with Because otherwise, that was super weird It was weird no matter what It would have taken 10 seconds to say All these consoles behind me will be used later For all of our fans to play our games They didn't even acknowledge it That was weird They could have just walked back there and started grabbing consoles And pulled the whole opera thing And you get a console And you get a console They were all dev consoles too They were XTKs, they were not production consoles That was another interesting aspect of it which makes sense if they were showing off early gameplay, because you need an SDK to do that. Did they have a car on stage? No. No. What a mess, huh? First year they haven't had a car on stage, maybe that was just the filler then Yeah it was surprisingly low in terms of just like pomp There wasn a whole lot They were you know and Phil announced it at the beginning they were absolutely focused on, we're going to talk about 50 games, and that's what they did, and then they left. Yep. Yep. All right. Eric, let's move on. You get to take point on Bethesda, the single-player champions of this generation, some have said. In fact, they themselves said back at the game show when they got Linda Carter of Wonder Woman fame to do a funny sort of spoof medical commercial about how you need single player games in your life. Yeah. So tell me about Bethesda. Linda Carter is like married to one of the higher ups at Bethesda. That's part of where that comes from. And she also appears in Fallout 4. Yes. I remember her in Fallout 4. Yeah. She also appeared as Wonder Woman. She did. So you give her credit for it. I wouldn't want to take that away from her. If she were in a Hideo Kojima game, she would probably appear as Wonder Woman. Or as a fetus. Yeah. Okay, so I actually watched a good... Well, no, I don't know if I watched the whole thing or not, because my please stop for this E3 is pre-shows. So I did watch part of the pre-show for Bethesda, and it was cute. and there was a bit of a recruitment video similar to the pre-show for EA and I have concerns there but that's neither here nor there. So the theme for this Bethesda E3 showcase is Create. So that's presumably what the through line is for all of this. So the first game that they go and talk about is Rage 2 which they They did actually make a call out of thanks to our friends at Walmart Canada for helping us announce that. That was humorous. That was pretty good. Then it was ruined by the music. Andrew W.K. is Andrew W.K. So I do have a note on that. That's probably the chillest audience for Andrew W.K. ever. Because people were maybe swaying in their seats a little, but I think he probably expects a little more activity out of the audience. It was the most pop-sounding heavy metal lyric thing I've ever heard in my life. You think that's kind of his thing? Don, are you a big Andrew W.K. fan? Because you like awful music. Yeah, I saw him live 20 years ago or so. Oh, I didn't know he was that established. Wow. But in terms of Rage 2, the actual game, it looks like Rage. Whatever version of id tech that they're dealing with at this point looks real good. then 80% of its population is dead there's a lot of driving it's a seamless open world I didn't realize at the time but I understand it now there was a weird commercial break in I thought that was supposed to be part of the game but that was just them announcing the special edition where you get the Billy Bass style mutant thing basically it's like Mad Max 2 who here has played Rage 1? I have not Very, very briefly. Okay. I won that game. There is no reason for there to be a sequel. Okay. It's shooting mechanics were very tight, and this looks like it's still going to be really tight. The story was terrible, though. And so all it had were its visuals and its mechanics. And maybe that's enough, but this isn't a pinball machine. So I really was surprised that Walmart indicated that there would be a Rage 2 because I didn't think that Rage deserved it. And when I look at Rage 2 and what they've shown, it looks like they've changed the tone. Rage 1 was not silly. This looks like Dead Rising levels of silly. I seriously thought that it felt like somebody started developing a sequel to Mad Max and they didn't get the license and then they just rebranded. I don't think that the original Rage was that far off of that anyway No, I mean it was post-apocalyptic But I guess they've decided We just have to add humor to this Because we don't know how to write a good story for it Also, it doesn't fit so well In Bethesda's catalog To have two super serious Post-apocalypse Open world games What's the other super serious post-apocalyptic Open world game? What? Are you serious? I don't consider Fallout Better dead than red you have the giant robotic Abraham Lincoln. There is nothing serious about that series. It's not as silly as this was. It seems like they just wanted to make a crazy, silly, over-the-top action game. And if they had made Fallout 5 like this, it would have been... That's true. That's a valid point. Yes, these are relative positions here. I just thought it was interesting. Okay. Yeah, so, no, it is super interesting that they're making a Rage 2. I don have enough experience with the original one to say whether this is a good idea or not but it looked fun It looks fun yeah The shooting looks good and big boss monsters We'll find out. Yeah. So I think the next thing they talked about was Elder Scrolls Legends. That's the collectible card game? Yeah, that's the collectible card game. I was a little confused. Yeah, it's like on four Elder Scrolls games during this whole thing. Yeah, Legends is their, hey, look, we can be Hearthstone. Yeah. Yeah. Or we can be Gwent. It apparently will put a beard on you. So, yeah, that's going to be available later this year for consoles. It's currently available on mobile and PC. Then they did kind of a, hey, Elder Scrolls Online is still a thing. It's super popular. We're going to make it better. More stuff. so I don't know that anyone's tied to that one anyway then they announced Doom Eternal so a sequel to the Doom 2016 reboot yeah, Doom 2016, I guess that's the best way to put that says there's going to be twice as many demons I guess it is going to at least partially take place on Earth so that fits in with Doom 2 they didn't really have much to show, just that they're going to debut that at QuakeCon in August It looks awesome. Without seeing it, yeah, the teaser was super awesome. Doom was such an amazing game. It was such a perfect throwback to the old, and it made me happy in so many different ways that, yeah, I look forward to this. Yeah, no, I've enjoyed my time with Doom 2016. I've just sort of gravitated more towards Wolfenstein, so I haven't gotten back to it. They talked about Quake Champions a little bit, which is still in early access, and you can go sign up to play it. It still looks like Quake 3 with a bunch more characters. It seems a little bit like their attempt to do Overwatch. It's just like a hero shooter. It looks very much like a hero shooter. It looks like a waste of assets. You don't compete with Overwatch. Right. I think their whole thing is, hey, this is super fast and it's got all the crazy Quake stuff that you remember and liked back in the day. Except for the thing is, everybody who remembers playing those Quake games back there don't have the reaction times to play those games anymore. I thought it looked really desperate, actually, for them to bring this back up. Yeah. Because they already made, I think they misread the market on this one. I think it was a huge mistake on their part to make it a PC-only release, so they already alienated a lot of shooter fans by being elitist. And it just, it's in a market where there's already a quality saturation. So they're trying to compete for space on an old IP, and I just don't think it's going the way they want it to based off the early access numbers. And this was an attempt to remind people that it's out there. Just wait until they announce the Battle Royale mode. Yes, I'm sure. Yes. Because everything needs a Battle Royale. Yes. That seems likely. It does. I hope the new LEGO game has Battle Royale. Battle Royale Overwatch. I would probably be in for a LEGO Battle Royale. Okay, so next they talk about Prey. and there's going to be a huge free update, and then they talk about some... So they're adding some new modes with the update, a story mode, a new game plus, and a survival mode, which I think the survival mode... Well, no, it looks like the... So they're also announcing some DLC called Moon Crash, which appears to be more of a roguelike with randomized runs. I thought that looked really interesting, the way it's just... both the trailer, how they put it together, and because I like roguelike-type games and this and that, I thought that looked like a really interesting little thing. But I think it could also be something where you get real sick of it real fast. It is out now, but unfortunately you do have to buy that. Because I'm seeing it, as I'm trying to wrap up Prey, it's trying to get me to buy the moon thing, and I'm not, because I don't want to spend more money. But, yeah. And I think the free update stuff is also out already. as well. So I think I already installed it. Yeah, they also talked about a multiplayer mode called Taipan Hunter, which I don't know if that is now or later. Probably later. I don't think I've seen it in there yet, but I may be wrong. It was later this year. Yeah. Alright, so next up they talk about Wolfenstein. And first announcing, or not really announcing, but confirming Wolfenstein 2 on the Switch is coming June 29th. which if you haven't played that game and you've only got a Switch, then I would recommend playing that. However, if you have any other console, I'd probably recommend playing it on that instead. I don't know that there's a whole lot to be gained by playing that game portably, and I feel like there's probably going to be a similar problem of the cartridge on the console. It has half the game on it. But they did announce a new game called Wolfenstein Youngblood, which is set in the 1980s and stars BJ and Anya's twin daughters. It looks like it's both a single-player or co-op game, so that's interesting. And not a whole lot more information on that. I will say that I was hoping that there would be another game before they did something like this. I don't think that this is necessary. I think this might be one of those things where they're throwing out, they're throwing out, somebody had an idea for a sideline game, so they're throwing out a sideline game. But that doesn't mean there's not going to be another game that potentially takes place before this or potentially slides in somewhere else. Because this feels like they're just, it's like, hey, we've got all the assets, we've got the engine, and we had this idea, and people want a co-op version, so we'll make a co-op game and roll it out there. Right. So, yeah, I hope they get back to and round out the trilogy that they've started there. Then they talk about VR for a little bit, so that's going back to Prey. That Typhon Hunter is going to be available in VR, and there's also going to be a Wolfenstein product called Wolfenstein Cyberpilot. Then they have a brief interlude for a very expensive joke, Skyrim Very Special Edition with Keegan-Michael Key and he's playing Skyrim on his Alexa. They also make jokes about playing it on Etch-a-Sketch, Pagers, and Smart Fridges. At least they can embrace the joke that their treatment of Skyrim has become. Right. Though my understanding is Skyrim Very Special Edition on Alexa is actually a thing. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Don's probably already won it. I have not tried it, no. I've played other games and I like saying it's not working. Yeah, him trying to shout, Fuss Roda, I'm completely messing up his coffee table was a pretty good bit. Right. Then they spent a good long while talking about Fallout 76, which I think that's where most of our discussion is probably going to center around from this. There's a lot to say here. I think we've already covered it's four times the size of Fallout 4, though how you can multiply 4 by 4 and get 76. It takes place in West Virginia. There's a lot in this. Key elements are that it appears to be a primarily multiplayer-focused game. And that's probably the thing that's going to be most divisive for fans of Fallout games. That's definitely my biggest issue with it. They did try to get in front of that and say that you can absolutely play that solo. and also talk about that we're talking about dozens of players, not thousands of players in a given world. Which is smart of them. I think even a dozen might be heavy, but it's definitely, I mean, because if it was like Elder Scrolls online level of players trying to play, no, no, no, no. And, you know, the idea is that the multiplayer part is going to be seamless. It seemed kind of like how what we were talking about with Forza Horizon 4 where people just come in and out. There's not going to be a so-and-so joined or no lobbies or anything along those lines. They had some cute Vault-Tec videos to explain some different concepts like base building and working together and you can call nuclear strikes and apparently make, I don't know, permanent changes to the map? because if you nuke a city, it's not going to be... You know nobody's going to nuke this city. They're going to nuke Bob's house that he's been playing by himself. He built up his own little base. He doesn't want to interact with anybody. He's just a good old boy, and then they're going to drop a nuke on him because it's multiplayer stuff on the Internet. Yeah, that would be the question I would have, is if you've got 12 people in your game, whose world is that? And if you make a change like that, how does that affect everyone else? They said you can block that stuff too. Okay. You don't want it. I mean, if it was something where you could set it up so, you know, you played with you and your buddies and that was it, that would be awesome. But I don't want to be walking around and have just random people come in and smash my stuff up and gunning me down in the middle of a big old fight with crazy monster badger things. So, I guess, what's everyone's thoughts just overall based off of all that information on Fallout 76? Are you excited about it? I'm a fanboy. I'll play it. I'm not necessarily super excited about it. Are you a day one buyer of it? Probably not. Now I did day one buy Fallout 4 for the disappointment As I say I have like 200 hours in that game Yeah so disappointing Don look at me Don look at me Don look at me You really showing your frustrations with it Don, what's your inclination on Fallout 76? I'm a fan of the series. I have almost no interest in this. I don't like playing online with people. I don't like the base building stuff in 4. I don't like survival games. I kind of liked Red Dead Redemption online. and this kind of seems similar, but I will probably wait. I'm not interested in it. It's just not for me. It's probably cool for other people, though. Yeah. I guess my thoughts probably most closely align with Don's on this. I'm not actually inclined to get this one. I may eventually, but the... And I like Red Dead online, but I didn't like the base building in 4 at all. I found it frustrating. I only did it for achievements. I didn't actually enjoy doing it. And I liked everything else about 4. I thought the nuclear missile strike addition to this is silly, and I didn't think it deserved to even be pushed as hard as it did. Some people may really like doing that sort of stuff. I just didn't think it was very interesting. And the big thing for me that I like, what pushes Fallout over the edge for me over Elder Scrolls isn't that it's sci-fi versus fantasy so much as VATS. And if this is like an online cooperative thing, I can't imagine VATS is in it. No. And if there's no VATS, I don't want to play it. Right. That was something I noticed is they never showed VATS during any of it. Because how could it work? If you're working together, you can't be having everyone pausing each other's game. That sucks. That is just griefing waiting to happen. Yeah, exactly. So I can't imagine it has VATS. And VATS is Fallout for me. That's how I do all my combat. Right. It could set a 10-second timer or something like XCOM where everybody makes their move in these 10 seconds, and then it completes the move. Yeah. It's something they couldn't have done with Fallout 3 or New Vegas, but Fallout 4 does have a better shooting system. Because playing Fallout 4, there was not always, but there was more time where I would spend time not using bats in combat. Well, Fallout 4 just had a better engine. Right. The people didn't have creepy plastic face syndrome either. Right. See, my hope was for them to use the Fallout 4 engine setup to do re-releases of, like, 3 or New Vegas. Because my biggest problem with 4, and which is going to be the problem here, is the story mode losses and the skill mode losses. And the not being able to talk to people and have, oh, I have this skill, so it gives me lots of extra choices. Or not being able to do the, hey, I'm doing a moron run. so I get tons of extra special choices because I've got an intelligence of one. But I don't know. We'll see. So that's all I've got on Fallout 76. Then they talk about the Elder Scrolls Blades which is a new Elder Scrolls game tailored very much for phones and tablets. Right. They even go out of their way to say that it can be played in portrait mode. Yeah. it looks like it would be a good version of one of those things. It's also coming out for consoles, PC, and VR, so we'll see. It's coming this fall. It's going to be free. I don't see myself playing this, but I'm also not much of an Elder Scrolls fan. I have not played any Skyrim, and I have played just a tiny bit of Oblivion. So, Don, you're going to get this, huh? Yeah, I'll definitely get this. It looks like they kind of dumbed it down enough for mobile, and it looks fun. See, that's my concern, though, is so many of these mobile-ish games I've played have been just so terrible. I'm getting burned on mobile games, period. Yeah, we'll see what it ends up being. If they thought far enough ahead you can play it in portrait mode, then it's got to be pretty simple. Yeah. You can just explore. I don't know if I can explore that world on my phone on the go if I've got five minutes here or there. That's why I put more time into Elder Scrolls or Skyrim on Switch because I could just play it whenever I wanted. I didn't have to turn on the TV and all that. Same kind of thing. Yeah, it makes sense. Then they announced their first brand new original franchise in 25 years. It's called Starfield. It takes place in space. That's pretty much it. Yeah. And then finally, they announced Elder Scrolls VI and gave even less information than about Starfield. That's because Elder Scrolls VI was, that's what everything online was, and they're like, oh, God, if we don't even say something about this, we are boned. Yeah. Yeah, online does not interest me, and I'm a huge Elder Scrolls fan. So yeah this is on the next console Obviously it needs to be It been almost eight years since the last one came out or almost seven years since Skyrim came out Well and the way they were talking because they said that Elder Scrolls VI is the game that coming out after So we're looking at least another four years would be my guess. They launched Oblivion about eight months after the 360 came out, and if it's in a similar ballpark for whatever the next, you know, for Scarlet, Well, do we have a timer on the next generation consoles? The last I heard was still they're talking four to five years yet. They're saying 2020 now. 2020 is the current. That's what they're saying now? The manufacturers have not said that, but that's where all the rumors are, unofficially, 2020. And given how long the architecting period is, because they can only go so, otherwise technology falls too far behind. So I think 2020, that's the number I'm operating under at this point. This 2020, we'll probably see the announcements at E3, and they'll be out for the Christmas season. I could see that. That's my guess. I think Sony and Xbox will both do it. 2020 and Nintendo will not. That's my guess. I think we'll see a Switch, like a new Switch. A Switch Switch? New in quotation marks. Kind of like they do with the 3DS. Yeah. Oh, sure. I won't be surprised if we see like a Switch S where it's got a better battery life or something going on with it. Yeah. It's got a lot of problems that need fixing, and I can see them fixing them. And you guys didn't really say anything about Starfield, but we all want it to be Fallout in space, right? That's what I want. In my mind, that's what it is. It's the Fallout games, but in a sci-fi world. Like in space sci-fi level world. Yep, that's what I want. Yeah, I would like it. I would like it. Or if it's not that, then Wolfenstein in space. That would be acceptable as well. Yeah, that's fine. Any other thoughts on Bethesda stuff? No? They're not there. They did a better job than some of the people, but they need to learn. Somebody needs to sit them down and talk to them. It's like your developers and head people are obviously all completely terrified of talking in front of large groups. So you need to either bring in people who actually are used to talking to large groups or get every single person up there valiant before you put them on stage because they all look like they are about to crap themselves. The ones who didn't look like they were just stammering because they could not continue in front of so many people. You're talking about right after Andrew. Yes. Yeah. But he wasn't the only one. Several of the people who came out to talk, you could see them physically shaking. and having issues up there with the talks. I think they need to either do some training or find community managers, and instead of just rolling, well, this is our lead developer, this is a community manager, because the community manager guys they brought out, they were all solid in front of people. They moved freely. They talked. They didn't look like they were about to stroke out. Yeah, they need a major Nelson. Yeah, they need something. They just can't have Todd Howard do everything. Yeah, well, he was fine. Yeah, he was fine. But yeah, I mean, like Tim Willits and then it was Magnus was the guy. Oh, Magnus. I felt bad for Magnus. Yeah, he was struggling a little bit. Part of it could just be, I think there are too many people at that thing. Probably. I think they have scaled up too far. I think they need to scale back because there's just too much. They're trying to make it in too much of a, like, arena event. And I think they would do better to go with something a little more intimate if they're going to continue. using the developers, which I prefer, personally, because, again, although they were community managers in the pre-show, they were fine. There are a lot of, like, EA's pre-show hosts were very, very Access Hollywood talking heads. You don't want that. I don't need that, no. So, yeah, I mean, that would be my thing, again, is, yeah, if they can find a way to make the presenters more comfortable, that would help a lot. They spent a lot of time kind of begging for applause. There was a lot where, like, I say something, now I'm holding my hands out, clap please. And that made it more awkward than it needed to be. I understand that sometimes you have to pause because you're expecting people to clap, but they're also expecting you to keep talking, so it is a skill they need to work on. Okay. Well, the next major presentation was Square Enix and Tony. I think major is a terrible word to have used right there. They were on the official big schedule. They should not have been on the official big schedule. They were. So you will help us. I will help you. I will cover Square Enix It was 30 minutes of them showing stuff that they showed more of with every other place than they did on the Square Enix panel Except for maybe John Rambo Raider. But, we'll start at the beginning, which was Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Which they showed a fair amount of gameplay. They showed like an opening fight sequence and this and that. It looks cool. I did put down in my notes that it feels like they turned Lara Croft into John Rambo. I mean, I was waiting for her to come busting up out of the water with a knife in her teeth and a machine gun to hose people down. Yeah, murder bot. Yeah, but it looks interesting. It looks good. I've played the first of the new Tomb Raiders and it was fun. But again, we've talked about that in Xbox already. The next one was something that makes more sense for them was the Stormblade expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, which made me realize that Final Fantasy XIV is still a thing. I thought that was done and gone. It's an expansion to an MMO that none of us play. Well, maybe Don plays it. Don, do you play Final Fantasy XIV? No. Okay. Now Ryan Toney's right again. Yep. And then there was the weirdness that I actually had to back up the video and re-watch it. They have the Final Fantasy XIV Monster Hunter World crossover thing. I'll be honest. I did not look any farther into this to find out what that was because by the end of the Square Enix show, I just decided they were mainly high. But it looks strange and weird because this isn't the only weird crossover thing that was shown as a little clip at the end of showing something major. And they didn't really go into any of it in the show itself. So I don't know if somebody else found something in the news later that they looked up and saw, or if they had a huge interest in it, but it was just weird looking. Then they talked more about Life is Strange, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, which we talked about with Xbox. And then they announced Dragon Quest XI, Echoes of an Elusive Age. It's a new Dragon Quest game. I thought it looked kind of cool. It looks a lot different than how I remember Dragon Quest back in the day. Right, but I haven't played Dragon Quest. I know there's been some newer ones that are supposed to be really good, but I've not played Dragon Quest. Where was the metal slime? I didn't see a metal slime, so I wasn't interested. I bet there's a metal slime in it. Well, they didn't show it in the trailer, so I wasn't interested. Yeah. Yeah, the art style, that is consistent with more recent ones. Is it? And it is consistent with Akira Toriyama. Yes, that was very sure. So that has been the character artist for the entire series It's just a matter of technology Had to catch up I understand I don't play Dragon Quest games Other than Dragon Quest Builders on the Switch That's the first one I've played Since maybe Dragon Warrior 2 Yeah I haven't played one in so long It's not even a real thing Don, did you pre-order this? I will definitely buy it probably day one But without pre-order I could tell by how you were quiet that you were a big Dragon Quest. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I feel it. I agree with Eric. Builders is probably my favorite, but I like the series quite a bit. Well, they followed that up with another weird crossover thing, which was the Final Fantasy Brave Exvus, which is the mobile game. I've played it a little bit and quickly deleted it because it's like, no, I don't want to do this because it's a very formulaic mobile game where you get characters and get stronger characters and pay money to get better characters. And that's with a Dragon's Quest crossover. So, yeah, it's just one weird crossover thing. Then they announced Babylon's Fall. They didn't really show a whole lot. I mean, enough that you tell it was like this fantasy thing, but I couldn't get a good feel for what it was at all from the trailer I saw. Yeah, I don't have an opinion on this post, after the show. Right. Yeah, it was like, I was like, okay? I mean, that's, I don't know. Yeah, they did announce that Platinum was working on it. That's all you need to know? Well, but is it good Platinum or bad Platinum? Yeah, that's the thing. That's exactly what I thought when I saw Platinum, because Platinum is very hit or miss. They either seem to have a very successful game or Turdburger. Right. It's like there's no in-between. I think he was a joke about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That was the bad one. I hear that was a bad Platinum game. I have not played that one, so I can't say. The Transformers one was good. Which one was good? The Transformers one. I liked that one. And I liked it. Yeah. Well, it looked interesting. Yeah, no, it looked interesting. There just wasn't a... It was a teaser. I don't think there was any gameplay. No. That's the thing. It doesn't matter. Don is going to get this game. He's going to tell us if it's good. Okay. If it's good plot. That's your homework. Thank you, Don. They talked about the near-automata coming to Xbox. Automata. Like I said, people say automata. They talked about semi-naked 2B coming to Xbox. And then they showed something that actually caught my interest. Octopath Traveler. Oh, this looked cool. It looked cool. It kind of had the old-school Final Fantasy feel to it. From what I've seen from the other stuff is it's actually a turn-based style of RPG like we had back in the day, as opposed to the real-time stuff that's become the norm anymore. And it looks cool. I mean, wow. You have a Switch, right? Oh, yeah. No, it's on my list. It's on my short list. Well, if you have a Switch, there's two demos for it. One that was released this week, the save carries over. It's called a prologue, I think. I'll have you. It's about an hour of it. It's a three-hour demo. I'll have to grab the demo. You can pick whatever character you want out of the eight and start playing. I picked a hunter, and I did not like her, but I liked the last demo, and I'm really excited for this one. Yeah. I mean, I hadn't even looked for a demo. The only thing I've been playing on Switch lately is Stardew Valley. Which is why I don't own that on the Switch. Because I have to water my crops and turn my eggs into mayonnaise. You don't have to, though. There's no... I know. It doesn't go away. Yeah, there's no progressive timer. It's just sometimes it's like I want to play a little something, and that's what I play. I hear you. Yeah. I'm trying to get the demo for that. Her name's like Hannah or something. Don't be the hunter shit. She's no fun. She's way too serious. Well, see, and I normally jump to radiate to a hunter or ranger type class for. It doesn't always work out for me, so it's not a comment for me to find something else. We have different tastes, though, so you might like it. I like the, there's like a prostitute, she was pretty fun, and there was, I think there was like a thief or something in the other one. You could only be two of them in the last demo. It doesn't matter. I have to play a prostitute now. I believe she's officially a dancer. I think it's like a simony or something. She's a dancer. Dancer, yeah. Exotic. Regular dancer. There's actually a history of Final Fantasy games. With the dancers, yeah. renaming things that are very much not just dancers into dancers. Right. She's a prostitute. I'm going to play a prostitute now. All right. No, it's something like that. They don't call her a dancer. I forget what they call her. Well, maybe it is a dancer. It's not sex worker, but I don't remember. I downloaded the original demo, but I have not played it. She is a mattress tester. She's a cool character, though. I like playing her in the last one. I'll give it a try, because now I have to. They talked some more about Just Cause 4. They talked about the... Now, they did talk about what I didn't notice in the trailers and stuff, some of the extreme Carl Weathers stuff, like the tornadoes wiping out and shooting cars into tornadoes. Okay, that could be cool. Like we talked about with Just Cause. For me, Just Cause is a screw-around simulator. So that just makes it more fun to me. Then they talked about The Quiet Man. And it was, again, another trailer that seemed to show... non-gameplay and didn't really tell you anything about it, except you play like a deaf guy and you beat people up? I think part of that was gameplay, actually. Was it? So there is a transition, sort of like how Tekken 6 does it, where it transitions from a cutscene to gameplay seamlessly, but the only key that kind of helped me there is that the faces got flatter. Because it almost looked live action in the beginning. Right. and then suddenly everyone's face was a little less detailed during the actual fight. Maybe, I mean, that would make sense. So I think that might be how it goes. It feels a lot like, what was the game on the PS2? It was near the launch, The Bouncer. It felt a little bit like that to me. And that was a Square game. So if they're still working with that studio, then that would make sense for that studio to make something like that. But that is entirely speculation slash wishful thinking on my part. Right. That's one thing when these games, and they do all the, I understand why they do this stuff when they show it and they show the tech and there's no UIs or anything. But at the same time, it really annoys me because I feel like having an idea of the UI would give you a better feel for the game itself. Maybe it won't have a UI, though. Right. Oh, geez. That's a thing now. Maybe I won't play it. That's very much a thing in the Metro games. Yeah. Sure. Small callback. That's right. Don, are you going to get the Quiet Man? Nope. Me neither. live action trailers. Let's just stay away from it. Yeah. And then they talk more about Kingdom Hearts. I mean, Square Enix entire show had no reason to exist It feels like they went this is our stuff And we kind of just making sure you know that we still exist as a company and we're holding this position so next year we can do a show again that maybe will actually show something. Because all they really showed that wasn't shown elsewhere that I know of was, what, the Babylon's Fall and the Quiet Man? Or did I miss those in somebody else's show? No, I don't recall anywhere else. Oh, and of course, Final Fantasy XIV. Was Dragon Quest XI shown elsewhere? Not that I recall So okay they showed some stuff that wasn't shown But they didn't really show much of anything Well it was only a 30 minute presentation I know that's what was shocking Because they spent a lot of that 30 minutes On the Shadow of Tomb Raider stuff they showed Right at the beginning So It's kind of hitting on something that was a theme through all of E3 It was so much stuff was leaked Like there wasn't that much punch in these But hasn't that Don don't you think that's been a problem in recent E3's in general Or did you feel it was worse I'm sure there was really very little hype, especially Nintendo. There was no hype for anything. I agree. Which we'll get to, I'm sure. But yeah, Shadow of the Tomb Raider was supposed to be this huge boom, here's all the information, and then it's like, yeah, we know. Yeah, it's a good point. So yeah, I think that expectations were so flattened that it's hard when it's not a surprise anymore to interpret how they're revealing something. In reality, to us, it was already revealed. Right. Anyone else have any thoughts on Square Enix in general? I have a quick correction. Yeah, fix it. Fix Tony's mistakes. The Octopath character is named Primrose. They do have her class as Dancer. Her path action is Allure. Maybe that's what I was thinking of. Yeah, I seem to remember from the original thing last year, where it was kind of like, here are your seduction powers. And Primrose, that's a little bit of Hunger Games call out there. Probably not. It's probably, they want all the Hunger Games fans to buy that game, and I won't fall for it. You're a Hunger Games fan? No, but I've seen them all. They're fine. So let's go to Ubisoft, and I'll walk us through this one. All right, so I turn on my Ubisoft stream. I want you to imagine this. It's dark out, except it was bright out, but it was dark out. And I look, and like they always have to do, this was probably the most traditional press conference of all of these press conferences. Because they opened with this weird musical number with a panda band leader and a marching band and dancers who were real dancers, not prostitute dancers. And, of course, it all was really just a Just Dance 2019 promotion. So it was weird. Ubisoft loves to do that. Moving on. They actually went right into what I think is the big game that a lot of people wanted to talk about that wasn't covered on other stages, and that is Beyond Good and Evil 2. Who here has played Beyond Good and Evil? I haven't played part of the tutorial. And Tony, have you? No. Okay, I've played all the way through it. I found it fun, but it was like a remaster on the 360, so I didn't play it when it came out, and to me it wasn't anything special. I played it when it came out and I don't imagine it would age very well it was really tough especially on console for me because they did not allow me to invert the y-axis which since I'm a professional gamer I have to do that and so I really struggled with the controls all the way through but I was able to finish it anyway so cinematic trailer in this case shows a massive craft coming in and it eats up a little smaller craft full of pirates. And so you get this sort of feel for the world to a degree through that trailer, I guess. It's clearly set up as a space opera. They indicated it will be an action RPG in terms of the game mechanics. They did give a basic plot summary, and they showed some pre-alpha gameplay as well. Then they also drug out from Third Rock from the Sun, because it's the only thing he's ever done, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and he talked about his company, HitRecord.org, and how they're doing some fan-created art. They want fans to make art and submit it through a process which will then allow that art to be applied in the game world. And so his company is working in partnership with Ubisoft on this, that it's a collaborative process with the community. It's not like trying to get, hey, I want to submit a bunch of art, and who wins to be the big billboard on this one planet sort of thing? after the press conference, he did clarify on social media, people will be paid for this. It is not a let's find a bunch of people and then say you'll get exposure and not get paid. You will be paid money if you're an artist. That was the question I had. It was not covered in the press conference. He realized that because people, artists get really sensitive about that stuff. Understandably. Oh, I should have said it. I apologize. You will get paid. Everyone art who will be used will be compensated And we want actual real art Please don just send us pictures of penises Yeah Also I think you being overly harsh at the breakout star of G Joe Rise of Cobra That is true. Hey, his Roland Looper was really good. I'll give him that. He's a good and prolific actor. He is. Third bar from the sun, little kid. That's all he is. We all know this. So I thought this looked neat. I can't say I'm sold on wanting to get. I'm not a day one Beyond Good and Evil 2 person, but it's definitely on my radar after hearing about all of this. I just wonder what everyone else's thoughts were, because we're not really going to touch on this game in any other part of the series. Right. I have some interest. But like you, it's not going to be an immediate grab. For me, I'm going to see how it... the buzz it gets, basically. I thought it was pretty cool when Unicron showed up. You like the Unicron? Yeah. I feel like we've seen this kind of stuff for like five or six years in this game it always looks good, it always looks interesting I don't know if it's ever going to come out I liked the first one enough, I would definitely play a sequel but you're smelling a little bit of the vapor here dude, it's like literally I've seen the same talking pig in three different more than three days, three years so does anyone know, is Michel Ancel still involved with it at all? because he did not come out to talk about it. I don't know. Last year he was, anyway. Yeah. So it was odd that they didn't bring him out. Yeah, for sure. Well, after this was Rainbow Six Siege. It's already out. It's done gangbusters for Ubisoft. They gave some stats on player counts, some DLC release stuff, some new operators, and they outlined a bit about the eSports side and showed part of a documentary, but I didn't think there was really much else to say here. That game is old. they did follow it with another upcoming game, Trials Rising so as I would initially describe it, guy comes out on a motocross bike, then fell over on stage on purpose, that was the presentation it was weird, just like Trials of the Blood Dragons presentation was weird a couple of years ago I think it was the same guy so they showed some footage and announced a closed beta I have and in fact, though Eric and Don don't know this before we brought you guys in, Tony and I took care of what we've been playing, and to take a break from Prey, I took a weekend, and I won Trials for the Blood Dragon. So I've played that one, and I've played Trials HD before. I was not good enough to finish it. I was just sort of curious if any of you have played any Trials games, and if Trials Rising looks interesting to you, because in some ways, this looks like a cross between Wacky Trials and more traditional motocross stuff to me. it looks like a more typical Trials game, where Trials of the Blood Dragon seemed like they were trying to do something different, because I guess there's platforming sections? There is. And I hear it is bad. The voice acting is terrible. No, I hear the platforming is bad. The platforming is not hard. It's built on the same engine. I mean, you could build those levels with platforming. You could build first-person shooter levels in Trials Evolution. It just uses that same engine that was built on a motorcycle. it's almost bad on purpose but it's not unplayable the segments where you're not on the bike are rudimentary they're not challenging but it's not incompetent it's not like you're going to struggle with the controls and not be able to finish it if anything if it was like me it would be I like the parts that weren't on the bike because I know they'd be easy it's a little floaty but that whole thing is so tongue in cheek I loved Trials of the Blood Dragon I love all that series Because it's actually Trials Rising is the first thing I wrote down when I was thinking of my favorite things from E3 this year. Okay. I can't wait. Okay. Yeah, I'll be, because I played a couple of them. This one is one of those where I'll keep my eye on it. It's not one I'm super excited about, but the platforming on the bike stuff has been really good from the get-go. So that's the sort of thing that you like to try and stick the landings and go and do these zany jumps and stuff. It does it really well. They put so many secrets in them. It's like a game within a game. Now that you can do whatever you want with the engine, it's going to be sweet. The last one had a weird tone to it. I can't remember what the last one was called. The last one just had this weird, serious tone to it. Yeah, I think it was Trials Fusion, Eric. Fusion, yeah, you got it. Thank you. Tony, any thoughts? No. It's not my style of thing. They talked about the Division 2 after that So we've already discussed that one They gave a little more details Like 8 players will be able to team up and participate in raids The crowd seemed to like that because that's a new feature The Division didn't have raiding I remember raiding from World of Warcraft days I don't need to relive it And 3 DLC packs And they all come out in the first year And they will all be free So it sort of an emphasis on not trying to gouge I noticed that on a number of games from a number of studios at this E3 Next was Mario plus Rabbids Kingdom Battle adding in the Donkey Kong Adventure, which this... See, they had a live band, but this made sense, because they had the live band while the gameplay was being shown on a screen, so you weren't just sitting there listening to a band for no reason. And this DLC pack is out later this month. So, now I know, Tony, you have Mario Rabbids. Are you getting this? Yes. Eric, I know you have Mario Rabbids. Are you getting this? Probably after I finish the main game. See, that's the one thing. I want this, but I want to finish the main game first. Don, I do not know if you have Mario and Rabbids, or are you getting this? Same boat as those guys. I'd rather finish those main story first. Okay, I don't own this game, so I'm not getting it. It's a good game. It's a really good game. I don't own it. We're not talking about it. We're marking it out. Not talking about it. Dennis does not have it. It's Mario X-Com. I like it a lot. except unlike XCOM you get to move a lot right I mean just as a quick float this is the game I played the whole time when we were going to Texas and back from Texas Mario Rabbids that's the game that I had where I was hanging it up on the I had a ram mount so I could mount my switch off the windshield so I could use my pro controller because my hands are too big for those little joy cons so I could play it while we were driving to and from Texas when I wasn't driving. Emphasis on the when I wasn't driving. I wasn't driving and playing Mario Racer. That is pretty much a straight science. Everyone knows that when you're driving, you play Mario Kart. Well, yeah. So, next game. Skull and Bones. Also known as Sea of Thieves, but for people who actually like to play games. There doesn't really appear to be any parts where you're not on the ship. Yes, that's true. So, in reality, it is in no way like Sea of Thieves. I was just kidding. That makes it bad dirt. For not making a good game. I think it showed the bow docking. I saw some boarding, but that didn't seem to be interactive. We saw the Cinematic trailer to give us a sense of the world. We know it's not going to take place in the Caribbean. It's going to take place in the Indian Ocean. The era is at some point after Caribbean piracy died off, but Indian Ocean piracy was still around, apparently. Game will require you to take into consideration environmental factors and some other variables. So you're selecting a ship you need, what type of crewmates you bring, and the gear to equip them with. And it all makes a difference depending on what targets you're going after. Then they indicated it's another shared world game, so it's going to be that. And another video followed up explaining the mechanics of how the game works a bit. And they showed some gameplay, like how you take out a vessel, how you form a group to team up to do a harder vessel. and that the ships have special abilities. So it's supposed to release sometime next year. As my bad jokes have indicated, I think from a piracy perspective, this looks more interesting to me than Sea of Thieves, but this is not on my list because I'm not that into playing pirate games. I love naval games. I love pirate games. But this doesn't, it's a little too, I like my stuff to be real serious, kind of more real-worldy, hardcore feel, I guess. Okay. So it just doesn't have it for me. What were your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, it feels like it's trying to straddle a line between, you know, we're dark and gritty and realistic, and also the ships have special abilities. Right. So, like, you can charge up a meter and do a special attack. Right. So it looks really cool. It also looks like, in the same vein as The Division and Destiny and Sea of Thieves, it looks like one of those games that if you get the right group of people and have a regular time to play, it would be fantastic. But that is not my life. Okay. Don, what were your takeaways on Skull & Bones? Yeah, what Eric said. Looks cool. If I get into it, great. If I don't, there's a lot of other games. Okay. They followed Skull & Bones up with a weird game called Transperance. Now, first they brought up another washed-up actor, only known for his role in The Good Son, Elijah Wood. He came out and talked about a partnership between his group, SpectraVision, and Ubisoft for this game. It's a first-person exploration game. It seems to take place within the brain of someone who's disturbed. It involves puzzle solving. It allows you to shift between different family members to get different perspectives to figure things out. The overall genre, not gameplay genre, but sort of thematic genre, is that of a psychological thriller. And the footage looked really surreal and creepy. I like horror games. I cannot tell, though, if I would like this. It just looked really weird. But Frodo... Really tried to sell it. Yeah. This seemed like it had some shades of maybe PT, you know, and walking down a creepy hall. They did actually announce this last year. Okay. But there was little more than here's a short video of Elijah Wood. Yeah. So that was the only reason I even remembered. Because on my notes, I said it's that weird Elijah Wood game. And it was Macaulay Culkin who won in. He was creepy because he was hanging out with Macaulay Culkin. Yeah, but he was not the problem. Tony, any thoughts on this? It doesn't look like anything that really interests me. I mean, it's, I don't know, something about it just didn't really. Maybe it's the puzzle-solving part or something, but it just didn't. I don't know. Don, anything about it? What I saw kind of reminded me of Tacoma or Gone Home. And if it's that but a little more in-depth and a little horror and I'm in the mood, then, yeah, maybe. Okay, so no If it's two or three hours Yes If it's ten hours, no Okay, the next thing up was the Hey, apparently we still think we can sell toys Though I guess you don't have to buy the toys to do any of this It's Starlink, Battle for Atlas It's out this October Open world setting You get to build toy spaceships and attach them to your controller But You're only on a one-day-of-your-own-a-switch Because that's the only way you get in Star Fox That was my summary Right. That is the right answer. So it was a, get this game if you're a Star Fox fan. Do we agree on that? Yep. Okay. Sure. I swear I've seen some other stuff on this game before E3. I know I have. They announced it last year also. Did they? Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, the toy, I know they say you don't have to have them, but at the same time, I just don't see a reason for it. Yeah. I appreciate that Ubisoft is making a Toys to Life game in 2018. Yes. Yeah. It's so timely. That's the Ubi way. That is very brave. Not brave like I removed the headphone port. Like, literally brave. The next game was going back into the stable of already out stuff, Thor Honor. The PC version of the starter game, incidentally, is free until Monday via UbiPlay. So people listening, you have a couple of days where you can still actually get what's considered the starter game on PC version only. Then they announced For Honor Marching Fire. It's going to add the Chinese. So there will be four new fighters coming in to represent Chinese combat. And there will be a new 4v4 multiplayer mode known as Castle Siege. Well, it's called Breach, but it's a Castle Siege is what's going on. And that's going to come out in October. you know, I honestly, the only thing I remember about For Honor is Tony saying he was going to get it and I don't think he ever did. I was going to get it when we saw the original stuff was it last year's E3 or the E3 before? When I saw the original stuff, yeah. When the game actually came out my interest was all gone. Okay. Does this change your mind? No. Eric, does this make you want to get this? It's another one of those games that with the right set of people would be totally a thing I could get into if I had time. So no. Don, are you playing this? No. Nor for me. And it's too bad because I like the idea of the Chinese combat. The Crew 2, open world beta, a couple of weeks from now. The game's going to come out a little bit after that. We talked about this from last E3. This is the racing game that has cars, planes, boats, and motorbikes. I'm still not personally interested in it, though it looks pretty good for that sort of game. Don, I know you like Need for Speed. I don't know if you played the first crew or you're interested in the crew too. I played a little bit of the first crew and there was a good nut there, but the surrounding packages didn't really work. Amazon made a price error when they posted this like six, seven months ago. So the gold version was the regular price, so I did preorder it and I had not canceled it. So the $110 version was $60. Is that going to come with like a model? No, it doesn't. It's all DLC stuff, I think. Ah, so it's another one of those games that you only get half the game if you don't buy the special version. But to be fair, they only release half the game at the beginning. Yeah. You get the whole game at the beginning. Yes. It was fun, and I've been really wanting to play another arcade racer. I've been literally having dreams about Horizon 4, so this might scratch the itch into it. That's true. Good point. I don't often get a desire to play racing games, but this one could be interesting. But it's probably not going to happen. Okay. Eric, any thoughts on it? I never played the original one. The original demo for it looked really fun but yeah I got plenty of Forza Horizon games to play so it not on my radar It probably show up in Game Pass at some point, and I can try it. Final game Ubisoft talked about, the big one that everyone knew was coming, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Ancient Greece setting. Are you saying they put out another Assassin's Creed game? Yes. Now, to be fair, because I know that's, and we can talk about that, my understanding is they're using two different development teams now. So the teams are getting two years to work on the games. It's not... But they're going back to putting a game out every year. Well, at least they have as of now, because they put out an Assassin's Creed last year. Right. The only real changes that I saw were, besides that you can pick between having a man or a woman as you, as the protagonist this time, which is a first, is... No, Syndicate, you could do that. Yeah, Syndicate, you could do that. Oh, okay. Could you play in Syndicate the entire game as one or the other? I don't know. Can you play as a prostitute? Not that I'm aware of. No. I've played a lot of Syndicate, and I don't know if it made you be the brother or the sister at any point. Okay. Okay. All right, so that is not new, but they brought that back, so you can choose male or female. And also, they are doing that whole impactful choice system thing, kind of like what we saw with Detroit. well, I doubt it will be that deep. I was thinking more along the lines of, what's that game? The parkour game. Yeah, like that. They emphasize the impactful choice system. But in this game's case, how much impact that's going to have wasn't really clear to me. And it's out at the start of October. I haven't played an Assassin's Creed, a main, a real Assassin's Creed, because I've played one of the Chronicles games. I've got another one waiting to go. But I haven't really played since the end of the Ezio storyline. So I'm not interested in that. I love the Greek setting. I think it looks really nice and polished. I just lost my will for Assassin's Creed and it has never come back. But I wondered what other people's thoughts were about it. So Eric... Don, go ahead. No, no. Go ahead and start off. Wasn't Syndicate free on Games with Gold a couple months ago? I may have it. If it was, I should have it. If it was, I would quote-unquote buy it and have it ready to play. I played the China Chronicles one when it was free. Just like half a month ago, the Russia one was free, and I've downloaded it, but I've not started it. There's a third one of those as well. There is. I have it, and I know I can pay money for it. India. So I guess I've done them all then. Yeah. Nearly every Assassin's Creed game has shown up in Games for Gold at some point. Okay. Well, I probably own them all then. But I don't think Syndicate did, and I don't think Unity did. Though I understand if there's one to skip, it's Unity. That's what I've heard, too. Yeah, it's Unity, too. Syndicate was actually really good, though. If it was free or whatever, check it out. It's worth a look. And Blackfire, of course, was really good. Did you play Origins, Don? I rented Origins from Gamefly, and I wanted to raid tombs and check out pyramids, and there was not enough of that. I played like 10 hours and I don't think I saw any. I don't know if the map system just sucked, but I got frustrated that there wasn't any cool stuff. It was just the same old Assassin's Creed stalking around in a little city kind of hiding in hay barrels thing. I don't like that part. So I sent it back. Okay. I wanted to like it. Anyway, the Greek thing is fine. I'll wait. I'll wait until it's free on Gold or whatever. Now, have any of the previous games ever had dialogue trees? none that I played had them. Okay, because most of the coverage I've seen of this after the announcement dealt with the idea that it is a more RPG-style game. Yes, and they've been emphasizing that they upped the RPG elements even more than Origins had. That's the route they're moving. Yeah, they're moving from action-adventure to the more action-RPG style. Or, when I saw it on the stage at Ubisoft, I thought, oh, it's Mass Effect Assassin's Creed now. which honestly makes it more interesting. This is my favorite assassin on the Acropolis. I'm Commander Assassin. Commander Assassin. Femme Commander Assassin. Did you catch that the characters you are playing are the grandchildren of King Leonidas? Yes. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And there was a good amount of kicking people. Yeah, I noticed that one of your superpowers is well kick, which I approve of. The powers were what I thought made it look good. I just don't know if I'd enjoy playing it all the way through. I haven't touched an Assassin's Creed since the first one. And I didn't finish it. Yeah, the first one sucked. I can understand that making you not want to play any of them Yeah It just a tech demo That all it is It like the Force Unleashed first one just a tech demo I like the first one I knew you'd like one of these things. I just have to poke enough of these bears. I'll find the one. Also, I think near the very end, we saw kind of a silhouette of a minotaur. Oh, I hope so. That'd be rad if they have, like, legendary stuff. Oh, mythology, yeah. So I'm wondering, are we going to see a skeleton army at some point? because that seems like they should totally do that. That or it's just a huge do-it-all. You have to help Jason get the golden fleece. Yeah. It seems like you could throw some mythology in there. Yeah, if you could be friends with Ben Franklin and George Washington and whatnot, why not? Well, they showed Socrates or Aristotle. Yeah, it was Socrates. Okay. Cool. I used to read a lot of Greek mythology, so I love the setting, but it still doesn't, it's not enough. Because I don't know that that'll be in there. I don't get to help Perseus, I don't care. If I got a war, get a PS4. Does anyone have anything else about the Ubisoft presentation that we haven't touched on? I miss Aisha Tyler. I do too. Yes! Why is she not doing it anymore? Aisha Tyler, she used to be the emcee for the Ubisoft show and then they took her away last year and she's still not back. She's a really busy person. I don't care. This is E3. I know. And I have needs. It was one of the reasons I always liked the Ubisoft. She just feels really natural. Yeah. Like, she really actually cares about all these games. Even though she probably doesn't play any of them. Yeah. But she fakes it so well, I can tell. And that's all I need. You don't have to be a gamer. You just have to pretend to be one. Right. And convince me. It can't be like that Big Bang Theory where they don't plug in the controllers and they just click things. Who plugs in controllers? I mean, I slide the Joy-Con. You know, quit trying to, quit getting, all right, we're moving on. Tell me, lead us through the PC gaming show. Okay. You're the PC master race. I am putting this out right now. I'm not touching everything in the PC show because it was like an hour and a half long, and they moved fast, and they covered a lot. I'm only going to hit the highlights, so if you watched it and I skipped something you wanted to talk about, interrupt me, that's fine. And realize that 99% of the time, if it's pixel art, I'm not talking about it. Because I don't do the big pixel art thing. Are you going to cover every roguelite on Steam? No. Oh. I'm going to take a nap. Yeah. Now, the first thing I did notice right off the bat was this was, the PC Gaming Show was hosted by Day9. And he had this enormous stack of cards, of note cards. It was like three inches thick of note cards that he went through just standing on stage. No teleprompters, no readers, no pull a card out. He just had an enormous stack of cards. And every time he came back on camera, it was a little bit smaller. I just wish they'd shown him just flicking them into the crowd. That's just a me thing. But the very first game, which is the very first one they talked about, is the first one I'm going to talk about. It was called Satisfactory. Now, I like Factorio I'm not very good at Factorio Factorio is a whole Building slash management game And resource collection It's all top down Satisfactory is the exact same thing Except for it's first person Which I think will make it even Harder Which, yeah, I mean Factorio is already really hard And, I mean, it's enjoyable But it's a game that I can't Some people can bury themselves in that game for extended periods of time. I cannot because it's just a little too much for me. But it's definitely, it could be interesting. I have hopes for it. We'll just have to see what comes as it actually hits the real world because it's one of those things that's in alpha, like early alpha from the way they talked about it. I don't know if anybody else had any thoughts on Satisfactory. No, not on it, no. Alright, I'm skipping the next several games because one of them is a battle royale and I didn't like the art of one of them and the other one's mod being reimagined, so I don't care. Star Control Origins. Now, the Star Control games were pretty good, but it's an open universe action RPG. What's interesting about it Is they are trying to do In their own special way The infinite universe thing That crashed and burned so hard With the game that should not be named We'll see how it works The gameplay they showed looked really interesting But it pretty much your standard Sci RPG game I mean it not super tight It didn look super tight super buried into it type thing You're showing clips of ships going around a planet, just like zooming around a planet, getting resources or exploring. I don't know. It looks interesting. I'm not going to put it on my immediate list, but it's on my watch list. So skipping several more games Because it's all Warframe patches And Other Open world type games that are just They don't look like anything special They look like just the type of stuff we've seen before Sega is Did make the announcement That a lot of their old games Are going to be coming to PC They're putting PC ports of Like Shenmue and A whole bunch of other games I know one that Don likes quite a bit, Yakuza 0 is in that list. Yeah, great game. There are good things about it. I've never played a Yakuza game. Start with that one. Start with 0? Yep. Let's see, there's another add-on coming for Killing Floor 2. I don't know if anybody's ever played the Killing Floor game. I haven't played 2. I played a touch of 1. I had no real interest in it. Now, the game that had actual interest for me, Man Eater. You play a shark You swim around the beach and you eat people You jump over piers and eat people It's an RPG Where you level yourself up as a shark And you eat people and stuff Now should I not be the ranger shark Because that's too serious of a character Probably you need to be the prostitute shark Dancing shark The nurse shark Hello nurse And they also Jurassic World Evolution where you're building your own Jurassic Park because nothing can go wrong with that. It is very much a... It gave me the vibe of like Zoo Tycoon. Oh, yeah. That type of feel and building game. Yeah, I'm interested. I watched Scott Manley played it, did a stream where he streamed it. He is typically a Kerbal Space Program streamer and does science-based stuff I watch a lot of. So I actually watched a fair amount of gameplay of it, and it looks pretty interesting. But it seems very formulaic, Zoo Tycoon-type game. So we'll see. My wife's not interested. I thought, hey, you like Zoo Tycoon. Maybe you'll like it. No. No, not interested. And then there is a VR game coming out, Stormland. Stormland is by Insomniac And it looks interesting But I don't know how it's going to fare as a VR game I haven't played any VR games yet So I don't know how they fare overall But something about it feels I don't want to say I don't know how well the movement is going to work Right Yeah, I noted this one because it's an open world setting And that was where I got I mean, I like the idea that you're a damaged robot piecing yourself back together. And, like, launching a robot overthrow of other evil robots. Well, sure. But that was a gift. That's expected, yeah. No, I don't, because I haven't played any VR. But, actually, the other thing that caught my eye is that Insomniac is doing this game. Right. That's what I thought. So, big pedigree. So, they've got some hope. I know, because I know when they were showing the thing that it involved a lot of climbing, so you could actually use, because it's got lots of hand controls and this and that, which being VR, obviously, is going to have stuff like that. I don't know. It's got some hope. I just don't know. VR has not taken off, I think, like people hoped it would, because I don't think we're there yet. I think we're in the alpha stage of the technology. But I think there's a very telling reason why, even though the Xbox One X could power an Oculus or whatever they want to tie into, that they haven't bothered to push the VR anymore. And everyone was thinking that that console launch was to compete against Sony. I did. It is to compete against Sony, but they apparently have felt that there's no point in going for the VR thing yet. I know some of the rumors swirling around is they are waiting for the next generation of VR where the equipment can be wireless. Makes sense. That's currently the big problem that people are having with it. And so that may be, but there's also perhaps no real killer app on the VR side. Beat Saber. You said Beat Saber. That looked interesting. Beat Saber is awesome. I haven't played it, but I've watched tons of videos of Beat Saber. I saw a video of it. Don, do you do VR? Nope. Okay. See, to me, the opportunity cost is still too high. Right. Yes, I agree. And my notes here just says Star Citizen, and then it's just me repeatedly laughing. Okay. Because it still exists and it's still coming, they swear. They swear. They just did another big sale where if you've spent at least $1,000, you can go buy a special $27,000 pack. Yep. I don't. Now, maybe Amazon listed that at a low price and Don might be locked in. Yeah, no, I... He did take a nap. Yeah. Yeah, no, Star Citizen is one of those things... The gameplay videos look beautiful. The latest version they put out of their alpha has been getting horrible stuff, and people are up in arms about it. I'll believe Star Citizen happens when it happens, but I think they made a ton of money without actually doing it. No matter what, they made a ton of money. More Just Cause 4. There's a new Don't Starve game coming out called Don't Starve Hamlet. The big games that are coming, though, or the next big games on my list is The Walking Dead. Not Telltale's The Walking Dead, though that was announced also. The first thing they announced, it is a co-op first-person shooter Walking Dead game set in Washington, D.C. It's being done by Overkill And it launches on November 2nd And it doesn't look terrible My concern though is Will it actually be any good? Because Walking Dead games have been very hit and miss They might I don't know This was on the PC Gaming Show I don't know if there's going to be a Some of the games announced I know are console games I did not check to see if this went well I don't know, I didn't check I've seen some of the rest of them But I don't I mean, it looks good. It's just, I mean, Walking Dead games have been almost as hit and miss as Walking Dead the TV show. What was the developer on it? It's Overkill. Hopefully this is one where they spent three or four years working on it. I would hope so. It's a great IP. It would be a really good game. I did a quick search, and it is saying PS4 and Xbox One as well as Windows Space Systems. So, yes, console. I'll report back. So that'll be good, hopeful. And Telltale announced that they are doing the final season of Telltale's Walking Dead. Yeah. It's been known that they're doing it as a trilogy. And the new, this is fourth. Well, the Michonne is a side story. No, no, no. They did season three, A New World, or something along those lines. I thought they did, yeah. Oh, okay. I just haven't played it. I've played two seasons, and there's a season I haven't played yet, and this is beyond my hour. So I believe this is season four, yeah. Yeah, I've only played the two with Clementine. Yeah. I don't know if they have put a new engine in like they need to, but they've made modifications to the engine. It does have unscripted combat now. They are adding unscripted combat to it, so it's not just quick time events. And they have given it, they have put together a new camera control system So you can actually control the camera, and you can look around and move around that way, which are two things that Telltale Games have never had and they've needed forever. Because I like the stories in Telltale Games, but really, QuickTime Events, just... Yeah, but I'm not sure unscripted combat's the right answer either. It's not why I play those games. Well, it's unscripted. They've got unscripted combat from the looks of it. It's not like a battle system. It's not like a hack and slash or something like that. It looked a lot like the systems that they used to have, but it wasn't just spam X as hard as you can. It looks like you could do different things with still a similar system. As I said, it looks like the same old engine. I could be wrong, but it looked like the same old engine. I think they changed the engine with Batman, didn't they? I thought they had as well, but when I played it, it still felt broken. So if they did, I don't think they got it. I mean, like with weird lag and stuff and sometimes the sound and the mouth's not matching up. Maybe that's a feature. Yeah. But now Batman overall I thought felt pretty polished, but I had other – I'm trying to think. Maybe that's the only one on the newer setup I've played. Guardians of the Galaxy. I haven't tried that one yet. Guardians of the Galaxy has many of the same problems. Okay. Well, it's an interesting take. As long as they don't... I like this being a point-and-click adventure. I get the idea of the combat and the quick-time events. We always there to sort of put a little more excitement and a little more game in it So as long as it stays primarily point adventure I interested Right I mean I like the first two I liked the chapters of The Walking Dead I played I mean, they've been fun. Well, maybe fun's a strong word, but they've been good because some of the stuff that happens is not fun. Not at all. But they've been good. I've enjoyed them. And I know I made a joke about pixel art, But there's one pixel art game that looked weird. It's called Noita. And what's interesting about it is it's pixel art, but the pixels are actually rendered in the game engine and are affectable. Like everything is destructible. It's not actually art. Every pixel that you see is an actual rendered object in the game. Okay, so more like almost like particles. Right. Okay. Right. So, I mean, and in it, you're a wizard and you blow stuff up. I mean, it looked okay. I don't really like the pixel looks of games. I don't like it. And the fact that he was literally just, okay, I'm just blowing my way through this giant wall, that was kind of cool. But I'm not really too interested in it. There's a new jokey, like, Sim Hospital-type game coming out. It's not called Sim Hospital. It's called Two Point Hospital. But it's basically Sim Hospital with lots of jokey play stuff, which is more like Theme Hospital, if you ever played Theme Hospital. Same team, I think, right? Yeah, it's the same team. I think it's the same team. The big thing there was they had all sorts of mic problems when they came out and started talking. So there's another Battle Royale game Except for it's fantasy based And I think it's out now, Realm Royale If it's not out there's been some beta play out That's got some Twitch play that I've seen But again it's a Battle Royale game And I don't have any interest The new Double Fine game Ooblets It's like a Pokemon Animal Crossing Hybrid Farm Breeding thing I don't really know for sure. I mean, it looked okay. It's not my style of game. As I say, I play a ton of Stardew Valley, but this didn't really trip the kind of trip. Double Fine does some pretty weird stuff, but I can't think of anything that they did that I didn't end up actually enjoying. So we'll see. I don't know if I'll get it, though. Also, I don't think I've ever bought a Double Fine game that wasn't on sale. Right. Anno 1800. It is a sandbox city-building game. It's set in the 1800s, obviously, so it's called 1800. And it mixes, like, city building like you would see in, like, SimCity or games like that with the kind of economy stuff you would see from some variants of, like, Civ and stuff like that and heavy naval combat. So for me, this ticks, like, every box I have. So I'm going to at least take a look at it when it comes out. The only thing I know about the Anno games is that the number always adds up to nine. Interesting. I did not know that. Yeah, because I was listening to a podcast the other day where they were talking about that game being announced. Yeah. And they're like, I am waiting for the Anno 2007 game. And they actually had a real reason for it. I've seen those games before, but I didn't realize they all were that up to nine. Interesting. Yeah, no, I've never played a nano game, but this one, because of the way it ticks the boxes and it's an era, it's that the 1800s Industrial Revolution naval stuff is right up my alley of insanity. So I'll probably give that one a try. And then there was a battle royale game that I actually might do, Rapture Rejects. And the reason is because it's by the Cyanide Happiness guys. Yeah. Even if you don't play the game, the trailer's amazing. You should watch the trailer because it's hilarious. But we'll see. It's a Battle Royale game that I would probably be willing to try. But everything the Cyanide Happiness guys do, even the really bad stuff, is still fun. So we'll see how it turns out. And that was it. Oh, no, that wasn't it. It was not it. There was the main announcement of the PC game show, what was probably the biggest thing. Yes. Spider-Man. No, it's Hitman 2. Yes. Hitman, finally. Oh, yes. Yes. I'm very pleased. And, yes, this will be PS4 and Xbox One, of course. Right. As the first one was. Now fully under the control of IO Interactive. Good. Hitman was a great game. It was. Like the latest Hitman All the Hitmans have been great games The latest Hitman was a great game But what I like about this one is it has co stuff Yep And I always thought that would be what would make the Hitman games bloody near perfect is having co In fact, that mode, Sniper Assassin, it's already out. Yeah. The main game isn't out until November 13th, but Sniper Assassin is available now. And they're not going to do it episodic this time. Hmm. when Square Enix had them I was aware and I heard that that was one of the things that really worked well because rather than having this giant amount of content to go through it was more okay I'm going to spend time in Sapienza and I'm going to do that one over and over and over again and then I'm going to be done with that and then later they're going to release the next level and then I'm going to do that same thing again rather than okay I start at the beginning and I fall off of it and never get back to it. Right. I think the idea behind it made a lot of sense, and some people really enjoyed the episodic side of it. However, it being episodic also caused some complications for them. For example, I know some in the games industry didn't consider that. Altogether, it would have been a Game of the Year worthy game, but not when it was sold out to them in spoonfuls, that there wasn't enough content. When you just first get Episode 1, you're like, why did I buy a full game yet? I don't feel like there's enough newness to it. They have that whole sandbox thing that you had to... It just depended if you wanted to do that or go through the story. And so they've decided this time they're going to let you have the... There'll be the whole story mode thing to advance that plot, and they're not going to make you wait to experience it. That's something that Telltale struggled with, too. There are people who get really mad or do like what I do. I don't buy Telltale until the whole episode set of the series is out. Yep, that's what I do. I don't want to have to wait two months to try and remember the next part of the... And that's what I did with Hitman also. I waited until it was done. And so, anyway, so they're not doing that, and I know Warner Brothers is who will be doing the publishing. I'm surprised. Giant Bomb gave Hitman Game of the Year 2016 or something. They played the heck out of that game. I think 16. Yeah, it would have been 16. But I think the episodic thing really put it on the map. Yeah, they're just not. I think IO's responding to a lot of fan complaints. It got enough attention now that they probably feel they don't need a gimmick like Episodic to sell it. They're going to have the same sandbox stuff in it. All the core features will be the same. Keeping the elusive targets and all the special stuff. If you want to focus, there's no downside to doing it this way. Because if you want to just focus on Italy for a month, you can do that still. No one's going to do that, though. I know, Don, because it's dumb. so I'd force them to have to enjoy the content for a month they're like me they're going to play it for three days and then I tried to remember when there was a new episode that came out because I had it about half way through and I would download the new episode make it an event first week of the month new one comes out they finally got onto a system where okay every six weeks a new episode came out but people aren't complaining yeah I think beforehand they just had fallen behind was Telltale's problem. I think they always originally intended to try and put one out a month, but they just couldn't do it. Yeah, now they can. Well, did anyone have any other things from the PC gaming show that they wanted to talk about? That is the one that I did not watch. You didn't miss much. Don, anything? You're a huge Day 9 fan. Oh, yeah, I have a bunch of stuff I want to talk about for a PC gaming show. You seriously don't know who Day 9 is? I don't know who Day 9 is. He's a local boy. He's from Leawood. Ah, well, with that said, Don, you can now take over. So other people can come talk, since I'm the only guy who plays PC games. And Sony. I think you have a Sony, Don, so you might be able to talk about it. Lots of people play PC games. I'm in this group. Yeah, there's not in this group. Yeah. PlayStation, though, I'll be the only one talking. Well, I will say I always watch the Sony presentation. Yeah, me too. And the PlayStation 4 is my shortlisted major console. If I hadn't ended up getting the Switch when I got the Switch, I probably would have had a PlayStation 4 by now. But I went with the Switch instead. Well, it's a good one to get, and I'll tell you why. Some of the reasons include first gameplay of Last of Us Part II. It's on the release date, but first one was fantastic. Second one, they kind of did this, I don't know, romantic, chill kind of cinematic. The cinematic was good, and I liked the way they cut to the gameplay. Yeah, super brutal. The gameplay was way brutal. Yeah. But I sure it be good It cool that Ellie still around and we see when it comes out first one was fantastic so we see they announced Game of War or Game of War God of War is getting a new game plus mode there is a lot of meat in that game I'm surprised they're adding a new game plus but they didn't announce when it's coming or what it will entail so look forward to that, I actually just finished that game about a week ago and there's a lot of end game there so I guess it's cool if you want to do the end game twice this was actually really cool they announced that Black Ops 3 would be free for PS Plus members and then bam it was free at the same time they announced it which I watched that game price wise for a long time and it was just stuck at $40 for like years so I actually bought it this past Black Friday when it finally dipped down to $19 and now it's free and now it's free and I still haven't opened the one I bought for $19 there you go Ghost of Tsushima Showed some gameplay That's from Sucker Punch The team that does Infamous And Sly Cooper That game looked awesome It does look awesome There's no date for that so maybe holiday next year Yeah I was really impressed by it Because with the flute and everything I was like okay I'm going to go even further out I think this is launch title PS5 Really? Sony has no qualms about giving you a game four or five years in advance. That's true. And that looked so sharp. It was clearly being rendered on a PC. So I'm thinking it's going to be a showcase to show the graphical fidelity on the new system. But just a guess, because that was pre-alpha footage. You could see it. Infinite Second Son was pretty early in the PS4's run. So that's what I'm thinking. But I will go ahead and just say at this point, it was the most impressive game to me of the Sony show. Agreed. I'm not going to disagree at all. Yeah, so that'll be good. And they haven't released a game in a long time. I'm surprised they haven't done another Sly Cooper. If they wait until PS5, that will be a really long break for them. They're going to get it right, though. You know they're going to get it right. Yeah. Resident Evil 2 remake. Everybody is creaming over this thing. No, not me. I never do over remakes, even though this one clearly had more work put into it than the typical, oh, let's just bump up the assets. Right. smooth out those sharp polygons. He's got some Capcom face issues. Capcom. Capcom and their ugly face. Ugly stick hit everyone in the face. I'm kind of with you. Remakes do not get me excited, except like Ratchet and Clank when they kind of rework the whole game to make it a better experience, and I think that's what they're doing with Fist. They're using them from Resident Evil 7. They're changing some of the jump scare beats. They're adding and stuff that fans have been asking for for that particular game for a long time. So this might be one to watch. It might not feel dated like a lot of the remakes do. This one might just feel like, boom, Resident Evil 7 side project, part two or something. I don't know. Remedy announced Control, which is another one I wrote down as being one of my favorites of the show. It's coming next year. It looks a lot like PsyOps to me. Did you guys ever play that? No. What was Remedy's last game called? Was that Quantum? Quantum Break, yeah. It looked a lot like Quantum Break to me. Yeah, Quantum Break kind of had that Tomb Raider problem where I was just like a college kid running around shooting everybody, and it took me out of what I was supposed to be doing, smothering people. I don't know. This one, because of the PsyOps angle, it could be really good. uh psyops actually to appeal to the pinball people is uh I know Greg Freres worked on that I think George Gomez did it was a midway game on PS2 but yeah you had psychic powers and it was super fun uh hopefully they don't go too serious with this but it does look pretty serious right now uh Kingdom Hearts 3 announced Pirates of the Caribbean I don't really care but yeah they kind of milked it throughout the whole D3 yeah I thought it was telling that that seems to be Pirates of the Caribbean 3 that they are referencing in that. Not any of the further adventures. The further adventures of Pirates of the Caribbean. Maybe this is the secret. This is why there's a Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine. This is what will bring Pirates of the Caribbean to the modern age. No. I don't know. Have you guys played the pinball machine? Is that a topic for a different day? Which one? The new one. Yeah. Back when it had the triple disc. Yeah, I played it this past week, and a lot of the characters I didn't know because they're from the last two movies, but man, it made me want to watch them. It sucked me in. So you're right. Maybe Kingdom Hearts 3 will revitalize The Pirates franchise. Yeah, that's the whole plan, I'm sure. Right. Death Stranding, the new Kojima game. I don't hear enough excitement. The gameplay looked kind of cool. Just wandering around delivering packages. It looked like Prometheus or something. Yeah, it was like super UPS, man. I liked when he had all the packages on his back, and he was trying to cross the little rickety thing, and I'm just sitting here going, you know, I think this is every RPG character I've ever played. They're just actually showing all the crap that I carry. Yeah, totally. That's a great idea, though, right? Kind of like a program's progress. I don't know. I don't understand. I mean, other than the graphics look incredible, I still don't know what's going on. And the gameplay aspect that they showed made me think, this is what? This is Trade Wars? What is this? I'm just going to go buy low and sell high? I'm not. What a miss. That's the case. Surely that's not that. There are these mean alien things, or are they mean? And what's with the fetus? I don't know. I just think this was announced way too early. But because of who's behind it, it will be given a pass forever and ever. It's almost guaranteed to win the game of the year, the year it comes out. What year do you think it's coming out, Tony? I would not expect it before next generation. That's right. I'm going to say 2020. I'm going to say 2020. This is the 33 we've seen it at. Is it the third or second? I feel like it's gone a long way since last year I think it's the third I get confused because they also show it at the game awards and I watch those I've never drank the Kojima Kool-Aid so I don't have the like deep super he's the perfect god of a creator thing that a lot of people seem to have so for me it's just like okay this looks like it could be weird and interesting, but I just don't I really can't bring up anything to care. And the more stuff I see and the more rabid the fans get, the less I care. Yeah. The fanboyism about it is a turn off. That's probably actually my biggest negative on it. I still can't tell what's going on. Right. I guess I'm not playing from a first person perspective. That's about all I know at this point. And that's fine. It looks good. I mean, graphically, it looks good. If I'm carrying a bunch of boxes, that could be fun. I just don't know how that integrates with anything. Right. What is the game about? Right. Yeah, no, that is a core problem. And there seem to be a lot of games this year at E3 that after the trailer and they talked and they went on, the whole thing was, what's that game actually about? Or how do I play it? Right. Yeah. I'm kind of in the same boat. I appreciate what he is, but I never drink Kool-Aid either. People will love it, and that's fine. I don't think it'll be for me. But it does look cooler, yeah. Yeah, and it has Lindsay Wagner in it. It does, and they haven't emphasized shared world, so I give them points for that. Yeah, no, this appears to be a deeply single-player experience. That's even better. Well, that's Sony's exclusive Red Butter. No, that's all. As I was mentioning, that's what Sony's exclusives really seem to focus on, single-player experiences. That's okay. Speaking of focused single-player experiences, Spider-Man got a new gameplay video introducing the rest of the Sinister Six, basically. I think it's going to be a fantastic game. Insomniac doesn't do wrong. It looks good. Like, really good. It looks good. It's fun. The web slinging actually looked like it would be solid compared to some of the other Spider-Man games I've seen in the past. Sunset Overdrive refined. Yeah. I don't think there's any way this is going to be a dud. No, no. They were even happy to show some gameplay last E3. so I think they're really comfortable with how the game's executing in their engine. And it comes out in like two months or something. It's August, I think. Yeah. Yeah, I think it looks cool. That's about it for Sony. There's a couple other things like Nioh 2, but nothing that really piqued my interest. Yeah, you hit on all the games that I would have mentioned from the presser. Eric or Tony, do you have anything to add on Sony? No. Yeah, on Spider-Man, I am not feeling the character designs for the villains. You don't like Electro? They feel a little too rock-steady Batman villains for me. Yeah. I could see that. I could see that, yeah. Sure. I'd rather they have classic character design. I'm not. Spider-Man looks fine, but the villains are like... I mean, Rhino looked fine, except then they're like... It felt like they had to raise the edge factor a little bit. But yeah, Electro. I don get him at all It better than Jamie Foxx Electro but not by a lot We have one last major presser to go through that Eric will walk us through and that will be the Nintendo one And we see if he does more than just the which listeners cannot obviously see because we are audio the comic that Don shared with us, which I think properly conveyed all of E3, at least in terms of Nintendo's strategy for it. But Eric, go ahead and take it away. Okay, so for Nintendo. they announced a good amount of things. They did not spend very much time on most of them. So they led off with a game called Demon Ex Machina, which looked very virtual on to me, if anyone remembers those games. I only remember them from the arcade. Do you think that it's pronounced Demon or Dew? Dew? That's a throwback joke to my 2016 E3, where I said D-U-X Machina the whole time instead of Deus. Yes, yes. All three old school listeners will appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, no, I gotcha. Yeah. No, I think that is pronounced demon as opposed to what, in my mind, it reads as Damon. Oh, yeah, I always think that too. But, you know, I think it's demon, which then begs the question of why there's an A there. so yeah that looks if you like mechs that looks like a game that people who like mechs would like there wasn't enough for me to form any sort of an opinion yeah then we they showed off a I believe it's a expansion to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 it's called Torna the Golden Country I don't know anything about Xenoblade Chronicles or Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for that matter but it looked to me like the art style might have changed but that could be just me being unaware of what Xenoblade Chronicles looks like it looks very much anime JRPG yep that's what it is then they spent a little bit of time talking about Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee which look like pretty solid Pokemon games but not a core Pokemon game, if you will. Right. So among other things, you can transfer Pokemon from Pokemon Go, notably not to Pokemon Go. They also talked about the Pokeball Plus accessory, which is kind of like a Pokemon Go Plus accessory, but it is more Pokeball-shaped, and you can use it with this game. Apparently you can use it like a Joy-Con, and it includes Mew. A prisoner comes with it? Yes. Wow. A very special prisoner. Then they showed off Super Mario Party, which looks pretty cool, if I'm being honest. So it's using... So a while ago there was a patent that got spread around that Nintendo had filed about lining up two screens by orienting them and then swiping across both screens so that both of them know where they are relative to each other. And they showed that off a little bit with one of the game modes in the video where there it's, you know, because it's Nintendo, it's Millennials at some fancy place and someone walks up and like, hey, can I play? And then they rearrange the switches a few different ways and it's like an overhead level of, I think, like a tank game or something. And then you see someone swipe across both of them and it draws a line and that goes back to, like I said, that patent. but they have worked out a way to do that, and apparently think it's special enough. So that looked cool, and then there was another mode using two switches where it was very much like the classic board game Battleship, where each person, or each, it was a 2v2, so each team had a screen facing them, but the other people couldn't see that screen, which that seemed kind of cool. hopefully those are the exceptions rather than the rules for that game. I don't think it is terribly difficult to find another Switch to play, but I also don't assume that most people would want to buy another Switch just to play Super Mario Party. Otherwise, there was some footage that looked very typical Mario Party-style games. You know, mini-games moving around a board. it looks like they dropped the thing they were doing in Mario Party 10 where everyone was always together so that could be better or worse I'm not really sure but that's coming out in October then they showed off Fire Emblem Three Houses which looks to be a very typical core Fire Emblem game which is very much an anime tactics RPG so it looked like there was some cool stuff I am not a Fire Emblem person so I can say that this is the one that going to draw me in either And that's coming out spring 2019. Then they announced and showed off Fortnite, which they did not during this, but it has become clear since then that you can play cross-play Fortnite with everybody except a PS4. and also if you started or have ever played on a PS4 you cannot play on anything else most notably the Switch so if you are a PS4 slash Switch person pick one I was going to bring that up when we got done with all the big things that whole controversy yeah it boned me, it pissed me off this week yep and in fact it's actually as just a point of clarification it's not having play it's not specifically the fact of playing already on the PS4 it's if that account has been used for any game on the PS4. Oh, it's not just Fortnite. No, if you've used that account for... What other Epic game would you play on the PS4? There's another one, but I don't remember what it was called. But basically, if you've ever used an Epic account on PlayStation, you are locked out. You can't use that Epic account on any other machine. Some other people have come out and said they've never played Fortnite before on the Sony, but they did have an Epic account that was leaked for some other... They had a hero shooter. What was that thing called? Who knows? There's only one hero shooter. We don't talk about it because it upsets Don. Okay, so, and Fortnite's available now. So, I have not downloaded it. Over to... That was something I was not expecting. And it looks to be overcooked with some significant improvements. Most notably, you can throw things now, which could make a big difference. Has everyone here played Overcooked? Yeah, I've played Overcooked. Can you catch things? Hopefully. In the video, I just saw it being thrown and then it lands on the floor. But even then, that could still be useful in some of the levels where you are separated. Oh, I see. It's going around the other side of a table or something. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds real sanitary. It's going to get boiled. It would be nice if they added a gameplay system for the three-second rule. So the other thing is there will be dynamic kitchens. In some other footage I saw, it showed that the level starts out that they're on this hot air balloon. And so the kitchen is inside of the basket of the hot air balloon. But at some point during the level, the hot air balloon deflates or pops. And so you land, but the kitchen lands in pieces. So now you have an entirely different pattern to deal with. So that's pretty cool. It will have online play, which the original one did not. it will also have local wireless play, which I believe is exclusive to the Switch. So I had a lot of fun with the original Overcooked. I know that game can be tricky. It is kind of a hot or cold thing, particularly if you've got a young child that is constantly spamming the dash button. That can be frustrating. I can feel the annoyance just radiating off of you. for someone else here. So then they showed up again, Killer Queen Black, which I guess Killer Queen is a game that originally started out as an arcade game? It's a very popular arcade game. A lot of venues that want to be successful will try and get a Killer Queen. They're fairly expensive, but you can do tournaments around it, and it's like a six-person game. I think Don may know more. Yeah, I think it's six. I've played it quite a bit, and it's awesome. I hope it translates well to a home environment. It looks a lot like Joust to me, which is not a bad thing. It is a lot like Joust. Okay. With different roles, though. Yeah. So it sounds like this is a... They redesigned it for home consoles. It's coming first to the Switch. It's going to have 4 vs. 4. It's coming out this year. Cool. Then Octopath Traveler, which we've talked about pretty extensively. I don't think there's really any additional information that was shown at Nintendo's direct other than maybe some different footage. Then they had a whole sizzle reel. So just real briefly, they showed Starlink. They showed Arena of Valor Fall. Oh wait, no. Fall is when it's coming out. Arena of Valor is the name of the game. Arena of Valor Fall. Yeah, it fits, surprisingly. They showed Minecraft, which I was not aware was not on the Switch. It has been... Yeah. There's like a new variant coming out that is supposed to... Is this the Minecraft versus Minecraft Switch edition? Kind of like what they've done on the Xbox. There was a Minecraft Xbox. I not positive but isn this the version that will give it the full cross capability and it up to the Because they did a big thing where Minecraft did a split between the old Java Minecraft and then they basically rebuilt Minecraft Yes. And I think this might be the Switch part of that changeover. Because that changeover is also where they started enabling all the cross-play between all the disparate systems. They did that on Xbox as well. Okay, so that makes sense. So then Sushi Striker, which is available now. I've heard good things about the DK Adventure for Mario Plus Rabbids Kingdom Battle. Something called PixArc, which looks like a voxel version of Ark Survival Evolved, but it was on screen for like three seconds, so that could be me misinterpreting. Just Dance 2019, they actually showed some gameplay footage for that. It looks like every other Just Dance game. That's not a bad thing. Just a thing. Dragon Ball Z Fighters coming out this year. The Octo update for... Must be Splatoon 2. I just wrote Octo there, and I could not remember Splatoon 2. Yeah, so the Octo update for Splatoon 2 is coming out this summer. Nope. Is it already out? Launched the 14th. Okay. They didn't announce the date at the thing because they were holding it, and they announced it at the end of the competitive finals. match for it. Because I saw it drop and my daughter lost it. And then she spent all day on the 14th staring at her thing saying, it hasn't updated yet, Daddy. It hasn't updated yet. Why hasn't it updated yet? And then once it did update, she stayed up like, oh my. Gotcha. Okay. They mentioned summer during that sizzle reel, but apparently something's happened. Because the original, the date that's been floating for a long time for that was July 14th. But yeah, no, it came out June 14th. Okay. Cool. If I played Splatoon, that would probably be pretty awesome. Captain Toad, which I don't think they listed a release date for that one. And then something called Crash. Then FIFA, Actual Arc, Wasteland 2, Paladins, which is available now. Fallout Shelter, also available now. Dark Souls Remastered, coming this summer. An SNK Heroines game, Monster Hunter Generations game, Wolfenstein 2, The World Ends With You, Mega Man 11, and Mario Tennis Aces, which comes out the 22nd this month. Then, the... I believe the rest of it. Yeah. All the way to the end. Super Smash Bros. Ultra. Ultimate. I must have misheard them. My notes are flawless. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, thank you for the correction. And they only talked about this game for like 45 seconds. So it was just a teaser. Yes, very, very briefly. I will not go over the fighters that are present in the game. You're not going to tell us about every final move? No. Oh. They spent a lot of time talking about the characters. The short version is it is every character that has ever appeared in another Smash Bros. game, including the cameo characters like Snake and Pac-Man. Sonic. And Sonic, yeah. MW, Bayonetta, Cloud and so in some cases they are modified characters they're not exactly as they appeared in those they have changed things they spent a significant amount of time actually detailing some of those changes which is not my jam but that's cool that they were being transparent about that stuff there are three new fighters Daisy, Inkling and notably for the internet at large Ridley from Metroid. Now the trailer for bringing Ridley in was awesome. But it also had a not gameplay footage tag on it. So they specifically said the most Smash for your buck. It's only going to start with 12 characters. There's going to be 8 player battles and it's going to be compatible with GameCube controllers. It's going to be compatible with all of the existing character amiibo. Whether they are part of the Smash Bros. series or not. So for example, there are like 17 Mario amiibo. all of them will be equivalent to this game. And that's about it. Are there any details that I may have glossed over on that? There were a lot of details in the Smash part of it. I don't know if there's a lot of details that are really worth sharing specifically. Go watch the thing. It's only 45 minutes. Or don't. Here's the whole thing. It felt to me like the hit of Super Smash's primary point was just to try and cover the fact that they didn't really have a lot. Sounds like Don agrees with you. It was a bummer. It was like they're hitting Pokemon and Smash really hard, and I get those are the big Tellers, but I didn't know I should need her on them. Yeah. So for me, it felt like Overcooked was, or Teller Queen, those are like the two big ones that you didn't really know about, and those are tiny little summer of indie Xbox type titles. So there's a little bit of a bummer. I think, I agree. I think, actually, it doesn't matter that I agree. I think what's important to note is that Nintendo's shareholders agree. Yeah. This was a miss. They've revised their the stock value has fallen because they I found some more details after I think I shared on our Facebook page one of the articles but I found one with more detail later and the issue here is hardcore Nintendo fans hardcore Smash fans they're going to buy Smash. That's not it's not a question that Smash will be all the Smashes have been successful. There have been five Smash games. They've sold over 40 million units. Smash is going to do fine. The issue is that they were looking for Nintendo to announce some sort of mainstream appeal game, and there was nothing in this conference that really stood out. Mario Party was the closest thing that they found. Mario Party games all suck. And the franchise has been hit and miss. So it wasn't solid there. And then I know some people who are big Nintendo fans were very upset that there wasn't more information on Metroid. Yeah. They didn't. I mean, any announcement on Metroid would have been huge. And I did read on the math, they did spend more than half of their 40-some minute press conference on Smash. In my opinion, it was just too much time. Way too much time. What a waste of their Treehouse stage. Because I know that they did a bunch of gameplay afterwards. I only care about the press briefings. That's all I watched. And I was like, I'm glad that you're really proud of this. But in terms of doing deep dives on games, you should have looked at and see what Sony did and have a better sense of how much time you should have spent on a game. They should not have spent more time on Smash than Last of Us 2 had. And all of it, when you're sitting there watching a developer walk you through the change for every character, I was like, is this still the actual press conference or did we move into the Smash after party? Yeah. It was a mess. Nintendo had four games that they needed to say something about, at least a couple of them, to have kept to have done everything that people wanted to keep them alive Smash, congratulations they talked about Smash way too much Metroid information didn't happen Animal Crossing information didn't happen Mainline Pokemon information didn't happen And those are the things that people really wanted to know and people really cared about. And they didn't do any of them. And they could have worked around it if they hadn't spent, like you said, over half the time on Smash. Because it doesn't matter. Right. And from the shareholder perspective, the issue is simple. They don't think Smash will move units. Because they think most of the people who will buy Smash already have the Switch. Agreed. Animal Crossing would have moved units. Main game Pokemon would have moved units. I don't honestly think Metroid would have I think people who No I don't either That's one for the hardcore But the hardcore people were upset Because Metroid was mentioned last year Well It was a teaser But why was there not a new teaser Their reasoning was that They had to announce Metroid last year To keep the momentum of the new system And help build up that first year For the Switch now that people know it's being made they still don't have anything to show so it's still coming I get it they have fairly aggressive console sales targets for this year the investors are questioning if they can even meet that they think that the sales will drop off drop off more than projected I think it's possible they could be right they could be wrong I don't know but I agreed that I didn't like how it was done is anybody excited about, and I don't mean necessarily out of the four of us, but just in the larger stream, was any outlet excited about any of Nintendo's stuff over the games announced for Xbox and PlayStation? I don't think so. Well, again, before Mike, who couldn't be on today because he's off doing family stuff, he mentioned to me, I asked him, I said you know, we're going to talk about what was the best thing what's the best game and we'll move into that in a little bit, but in terms of best game of the show, he said Smash. How? I said, really? And he goes, well, I am a Nintendo fanboy. That's true. I mean, part of the thing is, I mean I like Nintendo too but I hate the Smash games I think they fun to play with friends but they been ruined for me because competitive Smash is like super boring to watch I wish they would put that level of fan service into a Mario Party game. Yeah. I want to be Mr. Game & Watch in Mario. I want to earn a Luigi Cup and earn a Samus Cup and all that stuff. I love the level of fan service, but I'm not a shouldn't-been type. Right. I meant more like if you're a hardcore Switch guy or Nintendo guy, that's fine. Is Smash going to really touch Cyberpunk 2077? Is it going to touch Last of Us 2? I don't see it hitting some of the big ones. I don't think so. Spider-Man, Forza 4, whatever. No, I agree. I agree on that. Before we go to our winners and losers, let's go ahead and see, was there anything else that wasn't in these major presentations? And I have one, so I'll lead off with it. I want to talk a little bit about Devolver's presentation. Yeah, I can bring that up as well. I did watch it. Did you? Yes. I didn't. It was weird. It was a spoof of E3 presentations. I thought it worked pretty well. I thought it was funny. Probably could have made it maybe five minutes shorter, but we're already talking something that was barely 20 minutes. It was very short. They showed three games. I only want to talk about two of them. One was My Friend Pedro, which will be out on the Switch and PC, and it is a bullet time, run and gun ballet game. Where you are trying to gracefully kill people while jumping and dual wielding. Yeah, at one point the character jumps out, shoots a bunch of people and lands through a basketball hoop. At another point he gracefully lands on a skateboard, flings the skateboard and kills the guy by hitting him in the head with it while he shoots another guy and then uses a shotgun and blows the guy's head off and then kicks it like a soccer ball to kill someone else. Too classical music. Well, then Anna tells him what to do. I don't know how this thing's going to control. I was trying to figure that out. How are you going to aim with two different guns at once? I don't know. I don't know. The gun kata will teach you. I mean, I guess if the actual movement is on rails, then you could use dual sticks for the two shooting. You know, it's Robotron style. We'll have to see. It's weird. Anyway, so it was odd, and so it caught my eye. And then Devolver is the studio that is releasing the remaster of From Software, again, From Software of Dark Souls fame, their Metal Wolf Chaos XD mech game. They upped all the graphics, where the president of the United States is in a mech. Oh, yeah. They are the ones behind the new iteration of it. They kept the same horrible over-the-top voice acting, but they touched up everything else. Nice. So I think that game was originally from 2004 or so. So they showed footage of that, and they worked it into their show. And other than that, I just thought the show was, I really liked how they spoofed it. They made fun of Loot Crate. They made fun of Bitcoin. They made fun of everyone buying these classic console edition things and how people just throw money at nostalgia. And it was all really very much on point. I might have to go back and watch that. It's real funny because they're just on a stage. There is no audience. The audience is cutaway stock footage from movies and stuff. It's weird. No, I think they filmed specifically for this. There were a few segments that were filmed, but there were other parts. There were a lot of people eating bananas. That part was true, but there was also a part where there were these old men clapping, and you could tell the film grain kicks in there. Oh, does it? That is from something. I don't know from what, but it's from something. So anyway, I thought Devolver was something just to mention on the Anything Else. And those games actually look like they're quirky, but they look fun. So I thought it was worth talking about. And I didn't really have anything else other than we already talked about the Nintendo shareholder disappointment. We already touched on the Fortnite issue that Sony ran into during their segment. So, Don, did you have anything else that we didn't hit on the major presentations? A couple things. I'm still looking forward to Days Gone. It's like Walking Dead meets Sons of Anarchy. I was surprised that didn't get a mention during the Sony presser, because they spent a lot of time on it last year. It was during one of the sizzle reels. Right, I meant time spent on it. Oh, yeah. I think they are. Because they spent time on it. Because they just put out a new trailer for that before E3, and it looked good. Yeah, it looked good last year. Yeah. Okay, so day's gone. It's not new, and it's not coming out, so that's why I kind of got stuck in that middle period, like the Nintendo stuff. Spyro Reignited Trilogy, I'm still looking forward to. That could be solid, the way they're reworking the whole thing. Did you say Spyro? Yeah, Spyro. They're redoing the first three games as a trilogy. Remastering. And LEGO DC Villains will be cool but not a LEGO game It a LEGO game Yeah we can trust it Even the worst LEGO game is still a pretty good game Yeah it still pretty fun So I look forward to that Eric anything else I don't think so. I think I've covered pretty much everything that I noted, other than random fashion choices of different people. Okay. So, Tony, was there anything? No, I've covered it at the time or elsewhere. Okay, so let's move to victory. victors and losers. So, game. What game won E3? And Don, I'll let you start because I think you already mentioned which one you thought won. Spider-Man. Was it Spider-Man? I wasn't sure it was that or it was back on the EA segment if it was something. Game of the show, basically. I think Spider-Man kind of falls in that same period where it's probably the most exciting thing they showed, but we've seen it before. Right. But hey, If you thought it was the game that stole the show, then, hey, it's the one that you thought. Sure. Okay. So, Dawn Goes Spider-Man. Tony, what do you think? Shadows, I think. I can't pronounce it. The Samurai game. Oh, Ghost of Tsushima. Yeah, Ghost of that game. That's the one that interested me the most for, once again, of a system I don't own. there's now like five games that make me want to own a PS4 so it might actually happen at some point. Actually, I agree with Tony. Ghost of Tsushima is my game of the show. I thought it was the most impressive. Eric, what do you think? Smash? No. Overcooked 2. Yeah, no. Overcooked 2 is definitely of the games that I'm most likely to play that is probably highest on my list. That and Super Mario Party. How can you like a Mario Party game? They're so bad. I have a young daughter, and she really digs it. I have young daughters, too. Yeah, me too. They haven't made a good one in, like, 15 years. They haven't gone back to the old ones yet. Yeah, no, so probably Overcooked 2, because we had a lot of fun going through those. It is a good couples game, as long as you're okay with riding that razor's edge. Of divorce. Good divorce game, yeah. Yeah, it's a divorce game. All right. So moving from that, let's talk about who won E3. And by this I mean you don't have to pick anyone. You can say there was no winner. Otherwise, it needs to be one of these main presentations. So are we talking Big 3 or are we talking... No, it doesn't have to be Big 3. You can include Square, Ubi, the PC Gaming Show. Those can be included. You would be wrong if you include Square. I want to know what presentation won E3. Or if you include PC Gaming Show because the presentation wasn't great. You can put a qualifier if it's different than the Big 3 and you want to name a Big 3 as well. feel free. Hey, it's, it's our show. We do what we want. So I'll let Don kick it off again. Don, what do you think? Who won? I feel like, uh, Xbox one, eight, three. Okay. They finally showed a lot of games that a lot of people want to play and it's something they haven't done before. Okay. Tony, what do you think? I was thinking the same thing. I think Xbox did the, the best job of showing future growth and showing that they've actually put their money where they've always talked about and what they've needed. I think I liked more of the games that I saw from like Sony But I think that Xbox did a really good job I will I'll go next again like I did last time And I have to concur The Microsoft press conference I think this is the first time I have ever said Microsoft is 1E3 But I think they really really did I mean last year's show was definitely an improvement from the show before I think this showed why those of us who, and I'm the only one at this table that has solely invested this generation in the Xbox architecture, and it's been rough being worried about, okay, I might just have to accept that I'm going to transition back over to Sony, which I haven't been on since the PS1, in the next generation. I needed to see growth in the first-party side. I'm totally cool with them letting PC have it and it just being console-exclusive, but I need to see that they're putting out something that makes me want to play the machine besides third party and the fact that I just like their architecture better. They did that. And it was a good case in point about why people have been saying, in Phil we trust, because he gets it. He's not Matic. He's fixing everything that went wrong. And finally, he's high enough up at Microsoft that he has the power and the money to implement these changes. And when you hear him, you know that he, much like Alicia. What's her name, Alicia? Aisha. Aisha, thank you. I don't want to say it wrong. Like Ayesha, he's a real gamer, except when I see him sit down in interviews and he talks about specifically what he plays and what he plays on, I'm really sure he is. All that aside so they did two things They announced a bunch of games which was good They showed that they made inroads on bringing things that were formerly and often heavily implied by Sony as being console exclusives were clearly timed exclusives like Nier, and they are coming over now, and bringing their stable of first-party studios up to Nier Parody. And I don't need them to be as big as Sony. They just need to be close. So this was enough information, even though I like Sony's exclusives better, exclusive announcements, definitely, that when it comes to the next generation, which then these studios will be putting out new products with the Microsoft money behind it, I feel confident enough that I would be okay buying an Xbox 2 versus a PS5 as the first console. That they've reassured me that they're serious. Next year or the year after could be a huge lineup of great games for all these new studios. Yeah, but we'll see. Eric, who won? I'm going to say Xbox as well. Um, to me, the, the, the point of E3, or the thing that I am most interested in, anyway, is getting the information out. And I appreciated that he came out and said, we're going to talk about 50 games. And then they spent time, they, you know, obviously there's a little bit of trickery that they didn't spend time talking about 50 games. But they showed off 50 games. And then they were done. there wasn't much in the way of, you know, glitzy ceremony. They didn't put everyone in a tent and then spend half an hour moving everyone out of the tent. They just came out, talked about it. There was no car on the stage. There was none of that, you know, basically none of what got parodied in that Devolver Digital was part of Microsoft's presentation. Right. and that to me made it the strongest because they just did what they set out to do as opposed to trying to create an atmosphere or talking about... There was a lot less silliness, I guess. They stripped off the theater. Yes, a lot less theater. That is the word I was looking for. There was very little in the way of theatrics other than the cyberpunk part. I do, however, want to give honorable mention to Ubisoft because I think they did a really good job of also getting out a lot of information about the games that they have upcoming. And not everyone may have appreciated it, but I did appreciate the Just Dance opening because it is on the entire opposite end of the spectrum that it was entirely theatrics, and they showed nothing about the game, which is perfect for that game because all that matters about that game is the music. Well, let's go in reverse order for our final thing to talk about on E3, and that is, do you think anyone, quote-unquote lost E3 and or was disappointed. Maybe think about who lost E3 and who had the most disappointing press conference at E3, because those aren't necessarily the same thing. And you can say you don't think there's anything on either of those topics, but just think negative. I want negative. Again, we're going to stick with the whole list, not big three, per se. CERN. Come on, Iron Maiden, Don. Iron Maiden just kidding. No. So I don't think anyone really truly lost as such. I do think that the worst of the ones that I saw was Square Enix. And that just has to do with it was incredibly short and they spent almost all of their time on Tomb Raider, which was shown elsewhere. So there wasn't a whole lot of exclusive content to that one. Because Kingdom Hearts 3 was shown at Microsoft and Sony. Right. So, you know, they didn't have a whole lot to show. And to be fair, they didn't spend a long time showing it. So, you know, there's bonus points there. But what they did show, it didn't really deserve its own thing. Okay. And definitely it is disappointing to me that Nintendo did not show off more of the things I wanted to see out of them. But I will concede that regardless of what they showed, by showing Smash and Smash being as big of a deal as it is, that it would have taken all the oxygen out of the room. So I have personal disappointments with Nintendo's presentation. I just don't know that there was a better way to approach that. Okay. Well, in my case, I'll say, in terms of disappointing, I will say Nintendo. I think that spending over half of a press conference talking about a single game at the biggest gaming event of the year is a miss, no matter what your lineup and expectations look like. They didn't lose E3. It was just, as a press conference, Conference goes, it was the most disappointing on the grounds of content. Now, I want to say, while I agree Square Enix's presentation was pointless, it wasn't a bad press conference. It just didn't make any sense to do it, given everything else. But there was nothing structurally bad with the conference, so I don't have them in my list. In terms of who lost E3, Sony did. And it's interesting because I thought their game presentations were very good. There are two factors. On the disappointing side, but again, I think Nintendo was overall the most disappointing, watching their press conference live was offensive because of the decisions they made that catered to the live attendees without any regard to the people watching it on screen. You had a musical number with no game playing in the background, which wasted everyone's time, followed by a really good Last of Us 2 presentation, followed by them moving from a tent to a theater. And while that's happening, they have a desk of four people not talking about Last of Us 2. They're talking about other stuff. They're just talking, wasting time. And then you come back and hear more music without any gameplay going on. And then you have the rest of the real Paris Conference. A little disappointing. That will all be forgotten, though, because you'll just see the clips of the actual elements of the games. Why Sony lost had nothing to do with their presentation Fortnite is why they lose Because they come out of E3 looking terrible And it undid so much We should be talking about ghosts. We should be talking about Last. We should be talking about Spider-Man. What is the internet talking about? They're talking about how I bought a bunch of stuff to play Fortnite, and now I can't move it over to another console. And their press release coming out was just, We're not talking about this any further. We have 80 million people. Love us. We are your god now. No, no, no, no, no. They came in, did a very conservative presser, which focused deep dives but on very few games. I personally found it quite... I don't like Sony's strategy of not having developers explain games. I like what Bethesda, Ubisoft, and Microsoft do, where they actually tell me about the game. That's a personal preference, though. I love the look of the Sony games so much. And they sabotage themselves because they're the number one console right now, and they acted like it. And we can say that if Nintendo or Microsoft were in their shoes, that they would be the one doing the closed garden and walling everything off. But bottom line is, it's Sony doing it. Sony look like bullies, and that's what everyone's talking about. Because even though I don't play it, Fortnite is the number one game in the world right now. And Sony acted like that it didn't matter because they're Sony. and I think it sucked all the oxygen away on any positive they had at E3 And maybe they recover from that but we see Right now they not Right So Tony disappointing or losses When I went to bed on Sunday night I figured that nothing was going to be more disappointing than Bethesda. Really? You're a big Bethesda fan. I am. I was not happy with Bethesda's overall thing. I felt like they were doing too much stuff that was just kind of playing for time. And I understood why, but I didn't like the Elder Scrolls VI announcement. But I completely threw out Square Enix because it wasn't anything. And it was Nintendo that messed everything up. And it was their fault. Their concentration on Smash, it makes sense. I understand why they wanted to. It was the biggest thing they had to really talk about. They overdid it. I think even if they spent 10 or 15 minutes on Smash, it would have been high, but it wouldn't have been as egregious as what it ended up being. So overall, that was the most disappointing for me, because they didn't have any announcements that, I understand, people were just hoping for, but the things they did talk about just did not work, and they spent way too much time on Smash. Overall worst of the show, I thought everything came out of the show fine. It was like you said Sony after the show shot themselves There no way around it Sony hurt themselves bad But nothing going to go wrong They not going to lose people People are still going to buy their games They still going to play. It's just, they're going to look bad for a couple days, and then it'll be forgotten. Okay. I mean, yeah. But I think they look bad. Last word is yours, Don. Who lost? Who was disappointing? Everybody brought up good points. Most disappointing was Nintendo. and they didn't have an hour they had to fill. They could have done a half hour. They only have one thing to show, but then just show one thing. So that was a bummer. I was expecting, I'm high on the Switch and I wanted to be blown away. I wasn't. But yeah, this week I was most mad at PlayStation trying to get my costumes and stuff to switch over to Fortnite on the Switch. And just, you can't. You can't tie it to your Twitch account. You can't tie it to your Amazon Prime account because it's already been associated with another console. It's bummed me out more than anything from E3. It brought up a good point, and yeah, that's what I want. Okay. Well, that's it. We made it. We're at the end. We're over three hours, but we're under four, so we can take credit for that. Yay! Thank you, Don. Thank you, Eric, for guest hosting with us. And let's just get through the rest of this. You can reach out to us at collectivegamerspodcast.gmail.com. Reach out to us on the social media such as Facebook.com slash Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Instagram and Twitter at Eclectic underscore Gamers. That's it. We'll see you guys in two weeks. Bye, everyone.