Game Scoop! 852: Mario Is Missing

What is up everybody and welcome to Game Scoop. Damon is on vacation this week, raging in Tokyo. So, hi, my name is Sam and I'll be filling in on hosting duties. Joining me this week from IGN headquarters in beautiful Saltel, Los Angeles, I think, is Pear Schneider. I'm so lonely. So lonely here. Is that where you are, Saltel? Culver city. We're in Culver. But I'm in a lonely... I'm in an empty studio with empty seats. Shame on you. That is pretty cool though. It's like being the king. It's also Pear's birthday today. We'll get into that later. But happy birthday, Pear. It's also spring break. So, also joining us this week is Justin Davis. Scoop. And a fresh back from Game Scoop in Pax East from the gummy worm hall of Pax East is Miranda Sanchez. Did you ever have those gummy worms, Miranda? Yes, I did take some of Seth Macy's gummy worms because I didn't want my own bag. And then when I ate some, I got a tummy ache because it was really early for me in the time zone. I was like, it's too sour, but it's so tasty. And then I took a bag home and they are still unopened because I want to eat them while I watch a movie. They're both sour and sweet. So, we've got a great show for you to... This week, we're going to have a show filled with fun and games where we're returning to our ESRB ratings quiz called RealMature IGN. We'll be playing a new game called Continue or Quit. We have another new game from Jobert to celebrate Pear's birthday. And so, Jobert will be working in front of the scenes this week. A little bit. But first, last week, there was a bunch of Nintendo news. There was a bunch of games coming out, but not Mario. But today, we had a little bit more news about what those games are. And we haven't had a chance to kind of speculate wildly about this yet. So, let me tell everybody what the news was in case you didn't hear it. It was based on a rumor. It's that Sarfox and a Zelda Ocarina of Time remake are rumored for this year. Mario, big 3D Mario game is kind of out of this year. Sports, something, something. We'll talk about that. Today, we got a Rhythm Heaven game confirmed. And the reason that that's important is, according to our story today, that the Nintendo is revealing of that release date, that's going to be on, we can talk about this more, but it'll be on Switch to Switch to the Summer, that that launch date in July backs up this leak because it was part of this leak also. So, that's a little confirming thing. But anyway, from our piece, it says, a new Star Fox game and a Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time remake are among the numerous unannounced Nintendo games reportedly headed to Switch 2 this year. That's according to noted internet tipster, Nathan Haight, who accurately leaked to Switch 2's reveal date last year alongside other details of the console. And then VGC, I think, backed this up. So, we're going to go down the list of things, and we're going to end up at a vigorous discussion of whether we should be redoing Ocarina of Time and stuff like that. But first, I thought we'd talk about the no 3D Mario this year. Do we think there's going to be a Mario at all? What are the thoughts here? I don't know. I'm sad about the no 3D Mario, but Donkey Kong was so good. And some of that was the Mario team, right? And it sounds like they kind of split into two groups, and some of them went on to work Donkey Kong, and then some of them were working on Mario. I mean, when it comes to the big flagship 3D Mario, I say let them cook as long as they need to. Mario Odyssey is an all-timer. They've all been all-timers. So, you know, it's sad, but it's always kind of like mixed feelings. Like, these games are good because Nintendo takes their time, right? Yeah. And I mean, if you go back in history, not every console had a smattering of different Mario games, but we obviously just got an update to Mario Wonder 2. So, they did this sort of obligatory drop of content that people were excited about, the new Mario Galaxy movie can jump into. You know, there's a bundle out where you get Galaxy 1 and 2 with it, you know, when you buy a new Switch. So, they're doing a lot of Mario things and re-releases. I think that's a sign that we're not gonna... I don't think we're getting a Mario 3D Mario this year now. But to put a finer point on what you just said, we all expect this because of the Mario movie, right? Like, we used to always get a tie-in game with any movie, even if it was like some ridiculous movie, like a Karate Kid movie or something, there would be a game for it, you know, and the Nintendo, of course, you would think they'd want to online, but Nintendo now is able to do a bunch of reissues and celebrations of Mario instead, I guess. Yeah. I think, you know, like, this whole like movies thing is fairly new for Nintendo. Obviously, you know, they had a Detective Pikachu game and, you know, we had sort of a tie-in with the movie there, but usually, if you go back in history, like, GoldenEye, the game was years after the GoldenEye movie, right? Like, I think... They did another Detective Pikachu game after the movie, right? Like, they actually brought it back. Well after. Yeah. They did. And yeah, maybe they just said, you know what, we don't want to rush our teams, we don't want to have this sort of tie-in deadline. Who knows? They should do Mario, the movie, the game and have Chris Pratt voice Mario in that game. I think we made that joke years ago, too. That was an April Fool's idea. I mean, first of all... Don't give my ideas. Whoa, but Miranda, you saw the movie. Like, it looks great. Yeah, it's pretty, but that's what I expect from Illumination. Like, that's the bare minimum, is like great animation, because that's what that studio does. Yeah. It's very pretty. And weird Mario face. My nephews were saying that they think that Mario looks weird in the Mario movie, which I think is weird. A little bit. It's a little bit... You get used to it in the movie. Yeah, it's vaguely off-model. Like, if you're like us and you're used to staying at the games for thousands of hours. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of that. You're just like, this is different, but it's meant to be, right? It's the movie version. It's a different story. I mean, Nintendo is a weird... Like, just, I mean, Perry, you kind of already touched on this, but just like, hey, we have a movie coming out. It's going to make a billion dollars. It's a gigantic deal for our company. Should we release a video game, too? And they went, nah. Well, they put out... You can get Galaxy, right? You can get Mario Galaxy. You can play... No, but that's maybe how they're thinking about it. They're like, hey, if people rebuy this game, you know, that was no work to put it back out. And they're going to make a lot of money again. And... In a way, I kind of respect that it's separate, right? Like, so if this next like 3D adventure Mario is meant to be something so different from this movie, and they just want to celebrate that as its own thing, because it really is such a like monumental release, right? Like the new big Mario adventure. Like, at least even for me, like, I don't really care about Mario games except for those. I loved Odyssey. And I'm like, when we got the new Donkey Kong, I was like, dang it. It's not the new Mario, but it's... You know, I said that in so many words on this here podcast, Brandon. I got eaten alive. Listen. Well, you said more. More than that. Yeah, there's a little more than that. I said it really nice. Like Miranda just said it. I just said, oh, dang. Like, I'm happy for the Donkey Kong fans. That's not... I just stopped them, Brandon. Don't go any further. Okay, okay, okay. I'll throw up my hands. It's like, I'm a very particular kind of Mario fan. And I think what they're doing here is, since this is... This does feel so much more aimed at kids, which again, makes sense with illumination. Around this instead, I see a bigger push on their toys. Yeah. Toys is a good point. There's a big amiibo. I don't think the Switch 2, like, install base is like not looking like they want it to look for a game that probably should only be on the Switch 2. Probably. That could be as well. I also, I mean, you might be onto something, Miranda, or like, maybe they're deliberately like, no, look, we wouldn't have a big Mario beat every year. And maybe they don't want the games in the movies stepping on each other. Yeah. I think that there's like a clear delineation there. And like, they just want to let them have fun with what Mario and how that exists in the movies and let the games be its own thing. And have like a celebration of, okay, now you've seen the Mario. Look at all these Mario games we have for you. Well, and to back that up, we have data, you know, when we are publishing data at IGN, we can see that a bunch of people are playing Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Wonder right now. So there is, you know, an increased, except does that translate to views? All right, I mean, sales. It would be nice if it did, but I wouldn't trust that. I would want to put out a flash to do Mario games. Remember the DS age when every month for five years, the top selling DS game was New Super Mario Brothers, right? Like they, they've shown that they can sustain interest in a game for a very long time as long as they're as long as new people buy the console. And you know, like they're, I think the difference with Switch two is that Switch one was such a huge success that selling the same games again, might not create that same effect. And it's been obviously very recent that Mario Wonder came out like relatively. No, but the funny thing about this is when they announced the movie's title being Mario Galaxy, and by the way, the movie is equally Mario Odyssey as Mario Galaxy when it comes to like references, like you saw the trailer playing, and it was like some of the locations are from Odyssey, not from, from Galaxy. When they announced that, everybody is like, oh, that means they'll be Super Mario Galaxy three for sure. They're going to have this tying game. And I think we're just learning that that's not how it works. And so when I heard this rumor about the Star Fox game coming, I was like, Oh, this is the same thing. They like, they know Star Fox is in the movie. And so somebody's either making up the movie or like wishing into existence a new Star Fox game. And then Nintendo, you know, maybe does Star Fox 99 or something tiny, you know. So speaking via his podcast, this is from our piece, Nate, they hate so that Nintendo's new Star Fox game would be announced in April and has, and it's April right now, and had been intended as a surprise reveal following the characters just confirmed appearance in the Super Mario Galaxy movie, where we mentioned here that his voice by Glenn Powell, I don't even remember his voice being significant in that the movie. But, and then the original quote from where this all originated from actually a podcast is that Star Fox is coming back in summer 2026, we're getting a new Star Fox game in the very near future. I've been told it's a classic style Star Fox game, and that the visuals are supposed to be very good. And I've heard it does have online multiplayer. So that that's a lot of detail about a potential Star Fox game. I don't I don't care about a new Star Fox game. I don't I mean, whatever, like I'll play it like I play like I work at IGN right like I'm happy to play anything but it's like I've never been like Star Fox 64, I guess I played a lot of but like these on rails 3d shooters are just not not my thing. Did you see the movie yet, Justin? No. Oh, okay, well you will. I saw I saw I saw Project Hail Mary instead. You'll probably have a good choice. Yeah, it is a better movie, but the Star Fox stuff is awesome in the movie. Really like it. I really liked it. I really liked it. But it really made me want to play another Star Fox. It's funny. We're seeing we're seeing a lot of footage from different games here like Star Fox 2, which was a canceled game as well as, you know, what was once dinosaur planet Star Fox adventures that Nintendo tried a lot of different different things because these on rail shooters have fallen out of favor with, you know, the likes of Justin Davis. And so they don't sell that well anymore. And redoing Star Fox 64 is obviously not something they wanted to do. They added strategy elements for the handheld one. They did a remake of 64 and the 3ds. And then they tried, you know, an action adventure like Zelda and putting the Star Fox license in that one. And then the most recent game was they handed it over to the Namco guys like who know how to make a good Ace Combat game, but then told Namco, you got to have this crazy control scheme where people have to look at two screens and like a lot of people didn't like it. It was pretty decent game. But I also just I know, I know it doesn't work this way. So commenters, I know this isn't reality, but like I can't help shape, you know, shake the feeling that if like, like those these slots for B tier Nintendo games and that like now Star Fox is filling a slot that like could have been F zero. Like bring back F zero, bring back advanced scores. Which is the Mario Odyssey argument, right? It's like Mario Odyssey two is taking, Donkey Kong is taking up that slot. They brought back F zero. It's F zero 99. Yeah, they did it. They did it new F zero and they, they decided graphics aren't everything. And by the way, I'm a huge F zero fan. Some of my favorite games. I love GX and maybe a better example is Excite Truck then. That's a good one or Battalion Wars or something like that. Yeah. No, that's true. Excite Truck was an Excite bike series game that was a we launch title, which you controlled trucks by tilting the we control there in. And so, you know, that was like a waggle was all the rage of the time. And then they followed it with a game called Excite Bots, which is little trucks transforming into robot. Excite, Excite Bots is an underrated game. They're all actually good. They're good games. It's just like people, people don't want these and just, it's not in the name. I see a Jeep on top of a mountain. I want that. Yeah. That's, that's what I do with my, in my games. I just go on top of the mountains. That's my entire goal. I just want to go all the way up. But like, if she and Skyrim vertically F zero, way phrase, Star Fox, these have never been the top sellers and you're right. Like they're not beat your games from a quality perspective, but like they're, they're sort of niche genres. I'm curious to look at this and they say we need a graphical showcase for our new system. We need a multiplayer game for a new system. And then this checks the boxes because Splatoon doesn't quite. And so then they're trying to use Star Fox to just get those things under the platform. Maybe it's also possible that they need a graphical showcase. Well, I think so. I think, I think for Donkey Kong, like after going to that talk at, um, GDC, it did seem like they wanted to, you know, show off this tech in the game. Maybe it wasn't a graphical showcase, but it's tech. But I think Metroid Prime was the general. I think that was it, right? Like showing it off at 120 frames per second. That was, I think making the, the point on the, on the graphical side. No, but like the thing with Star Fox is where would they take it? And I do think it's basically, Hey, the Ace Combat team is done with their game, right? They've got a new game. They're going to take it to the Lilat system. You know, let's carve out a portion of that team to work on, use maybe that same engine on a Star Fox game again. It's always in the Lilat. The only question is how are they going to use the mouse controls? Because that's, that's Nintendo's thing right now. It's like, so whenever I think of Nintendo and new games, I don't think they're going for graphics. I always think they want to say like, what, how do we use this systems gimmick in our game in a fun or interesting way? And that doesn't always come across well, but it can sometimes. And that's sort of one of the things. What if the gimmick for this is chat though, you know, and they just really play up chat, like don't do stuff like that. And I say this with love as a big Nintendo fan, but there's such a, there's such a strange, funny company, like going all the way back, I mean, going all the way back to the Wii they were talking about, like a feature was like the power draw of the console. Like it's only going to cost your household $40 to have this console. Small, quite affordable. Compared to the $100 of the Xbox and every kid's like, what? I don't care. I want to, I want to totally true. I want to play this again. I have like, in my mind, I keep thinking this game, this game, we're looking at the Wii U. The Wii U one. The Wii U game. Zero. Zero. Yeah, Star Fox assault. Yeah. And it just like we're watching a very slow drone flying around. You have to look at the tablet. It's actually, that's a, that's a let's play with me and my kids and they're fighting over the game, like because one guy is playing like an idiot. And it's like the Wii U tablet is used for sort of like a second screen, like a camera built into the drone. It's a really cool idea, but it's just annoying to play. But in my mind, I'm now, I'm now wondering maybe it's better than I give it credit for and maybe I have to dig up my Wii U. Well, we should move on from Star Fox, but there, it's just been a long time since I've played a Rogue Squadron type game where it has almost like arena size levels with a lot of movement that you're not really on rails in and you get to kind of make decisions and, and, and go warhawk. Yeah, warhawk. What about Starfield? Yeah. Yeah. You're five seconds space. Yeah. I love these games. And there was a Star Wars shooter from just a couple years ago. Yeah. That wasn't terrible. It was like that. So I, I think small space battles. Yeah, they could take this off the rails. And I think it'd be a little bit. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Here's a quick list of the other things that I want to talk about the rhythm game for a second. But, um, so a switch sports game was also mentioned, although that release sounds less certain, our article says, and then, um, there's also a re-releases a Zed Blade two and Pikmin four. I mean, both, both incredible games that totally find up, rise those that might be kind of expensive to get those Pikmin four, especially I don't, oh man, I'm not a hundred percent. I think we've never gotten a Pikmin game at 60 FPS. So there's an opportunity for that would be quite nice. If, if I'm right about that, that game looks incredible already. So like uprising that game or doing whatever, adding little levels or whatever, like is bring it on. Like I love, I love that game. And then Pikmin. And then obviously, like, I don't know if we're going to talk about it, but like the Zelda, the Ocarina of Time remake, man, it's crazy. Like, do we, is it going to be like, what does that mean? Does that mean, like, you know, an Ocarina of Time remake, or does it mean like a Breath of the Wild style? No, a hundred percent. I wanted to give Pear his birthday shout out to, uh, to talk about Rhythm Heaven, but we can move on to Zelda. Okay, sorry. Rhythm Heaven is very important. It is. You're right. You're right. I jumped the gun. I'm also very excited about Rhythm Heaven. Well, I don't tell me about the series because I, I, is it related to Elite Beat Agents and stuff? I played one of them, but it was like on Wii. It's, it's hard to explain. I mean, Pear, do you want to take it? You press, it's, it's like, it, you, you tap in the rhythm and it's a one button game, but it's just so cute and charming and all the little games. It looks warrior wear. Yeah, that's, that's the best way to describe it. It's like, it's like complete, complete nonsense, with just sort of part of the experience is just how silly and whimsical the animations are and the music and the, the sort of like the, how the characters react to it. Um, you guys never played them? Yeah. I have one. I played one. Oh yeah, I played, played the heck out of it. Miranda, there you go. Well, here we go. I love rhythm games. I love them. The perfect panel. Yeah. Well, so this one is 40 bucks, which it sounds like a good deal. Perfect. Out pretty soon. And, um, uh, what was the release date? It was July, July 2nd. Yes. So look how perfect that is. No, like honestly, like once you, you have, you have to hear this with, with, with audio. Yeah. Obviously there's, there's this sort of silly, like everybody opens their mouth and adds the harmony sort of like it's just fun. The, the, the rhythm is created by household item noises and things in some of the stages. It's just really fun to listen to and just complete nonsense goofiness like why are you aware? Yep. Great games. Okay. So, uh, back to Justin. So let's talk to Zelda. How should a Ocarina of Time remake even go down? You know, these are the kind of questions that, that I think everybody's asking who's making it as another big one. And then, um, because I'm sure it's farmed out. And then, and just real quick as an intro, we did, and is it still fun episode on this, including, uh, members of this panel, Miranda and Perry, you both revisited this game. Yeah. Did you say yes? Yes. Yeah. We all said yes. Yes, but the camera sucks. Yeah. But once you get used to it, you're okay. It doesn't have a, it doesn't have a camera because they use, you know, they basically don't have a second stick for it. So. Well, I think it's like you two with a fishing pole in this too, right? Yeah. Z targeting. Yeah. Yeah. You have to lock onto things, which is then, then they reuse that, that same concept for Metroid Prime. Yeah. Justin, do you have a pitch for what the best version of a, of a Ocarina of Time remake could be? I don't know. I've been thinking, I like, you know, I'm thinking about the next Zelda game. As we all are, just I wake up in the morning. I wonder what the next Zelda game is going to be. And like, I, I don't think thinking. I think about it more than Rome. Like I, I think that we're this new, you know, open world Zelda, open field Zelda, that's here to stay in my opinion. Like is it going to here to stay forever? I don't know. But like that's what Zelda is now, but I don't think that they could reuse that high rule for a third time. I think whatever they do next needs to be something new. Unless it's flooded. And so then it got me wondering, I'm like, maybe, maybe someone, some trusted developer, like a band Dynamco or someone has that, you know, tears the kingdom engine and is going to remake Ocarina in that. Like that's the pie in the sky, like grandiose, like insane version of what they're doing. And what's maybe more likely is someone's just remaking Ocarina more kind of like straight up like this. Like a blue point. Like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The 3DS remake is actually pretty substantial. When you, when you look at the, they didn't just re-texture the game, they, they actually updated a lot of things. It's funny, like when you go behind the scenes and you look at how the farm is constructed, you know, the farm at the center of the open world, when you get a boner, right? Like the way lawn lawn ranch is constructed in the, in the N64 game, it's completely different from the 3DS game. In the 3DS game, you can actually see outside of the farm, whereas like in the N64 game, it's almost like a room you enter and it has to load it and like, you know, into memory. And from the outside, it's like geographically smaller. Exactly. Like an object on the field. And so 3DS, 3DS really was a remake, but they stuck so close to the, the quest design and the, the geometry that it did feel more like a remaster where it was just a prettier version. They did, they smoothed out some things where people got stuck as well. And so I would love a real remake like the way Capcom has been doing them, because I know this game by heart. I know, I know everything, every key, every door, what I have to do. And so I want a couple of surprises that, um, yes, where things are different. And maybe there's an, maybe there's an extra dungeon in the mix that we hadn't gotten before, or maybe all of the heart containers are in different places, you know, well, MasterQuest did that too. But like, like for, for real, like actually mix up the game a little bit more, make it a true remake. Yeah. A hundred more Skulltolas to find. Skulltola. I mean, those were really cool. It was a little annoying in the original game. You can go into the first dungeon and you hear them, but you can't collect them because you don't have the bombs yet, right? Like those are the sort of things that I think a modern Nintendo would not do. So if they, if they smooth these things out and then give us some extra new discoveries, to surprise us, I think that'd be awesome. Do you have a sense that Zelda now means something different to a younger generation and that this might not match those expectations? And I don't think Echoes of Widstom matches. Oh, for sure. I mean, we, my daughter's 12 and Breath of the Wild and Tuesday Kingdom are her favorite video games of all time. And like, you know, like she would be, she'd be very, very excited to play a knocker in a time remake. And then I guess I wouldn't say like, oh, she's definitely not going to like it or whatever. Like, but, but it's going to be very different, right? Like it wouldn't meet your expectations for like what this franchise means to her. Think of going up Death Mountain. You can't climb the rock wall. You have to go up. You can't, you can't jump over the fence. You have to throw a bomb over the fence to open the Dongos Cavern, right? Like, unless you can, right? Because it's going to be one or the other. It's going to be like the Resident Evil remakes, like you said, that follows the spirit of the original games, or it's going to be in the engine of the new games. And they're just like, it's a, it's a retelling. Yeah. Yeah. I have a hard time thinking of what I would want, because I think there are, like as you guys said, the 3DS version did a good job of smoothing out some points that were kind of an issue before. But there is a way to still, I think, make this a game where there is a set order of operations with some variability and still have it be fun for the people who enjoyed Choosing the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild. Like, I think there's a middle ground there that they could find. And if they do that, I think that would please a lot of people. But that makes the best game. That's like the question, right? So let me, let me pitch some ideas that are crazy. What if it's a D make and it is in the link to the, or Link's Awakening style thing, like a little 2D top down version. Oh, I hate that. I would like it. I don't want that either. Okay. I would be really angry about that. Two to one. We lose that one. We did that twice. And they did that for games that were tie, like, Link's Awakening was tile based, right? And so there was a reason for sticking with that sort of geometry where it's like Ocarina of Time is like, this is one of the early games of an overworld being just feeling more organic. And I wouldn't want them to put that back on a grid. I think people have tried like mod D makes of this game and like total sprites before too. Just cute to see. So then another one would be that the Breath of the Wild map has all the elements are a lot, most, maybe all of the elements geographically at this game. They're, they're, they're in similar places. Lawn lawn ranch is actually ruins in the middle of Hyrule field. So to Justin's point about like, can they reuse this map again? Could they tell the Ocarina story in Breath of the Wild's engine completely just like, let you do all the other crap, but then there's a story mode basically that you're playing. That's Ocarina. That's kind of what I was like, it's, that's, I'm not saying I think it's going to be that, but like there's, there's, if we're speculating options, like, yeah, I would say that's one of them. They would be so awesome if they use the, the approach of Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom to recreate this world just larger with, you know, like Hylia where it belongs and Death Mountain where it belongs. And that would give you the surprises because what's between them is new. Yeah. Right. But, but the thing, go ahead, Miranda. Oh, good. I was going to say that the big thing though is like, they have to get the music right because that's such a core and critical part of this game. And I think adding to that is going to be a big challenge. Not that they can't do it because I think they've obviously proved they have great. And the other thing I, I'm very fond of is the item gating, right? Like the, the classic Zelda formula was more like a, was like a Metroidvania, right? In that you had to, you saw the hookshot targets all over the place. And once you got the hookshot, you went, oh, I understand now what they mean. What, what that means. And then you, you get this excitement over wanting to go back into places you couldn't access before. And like that obviously doesn't exist the same way in Breath of the Wild in Tears of the Kingdom because you can climb anything. The limiting factor is it's raining here all the times you got to get some rubber boots or something, but like it doesn't have that sort of true item gating gameplay. And I don't, I don't want to lose that. No, it's, it's so, such a great feature of the older games. And even after Ocarina, they improved on it by like, you know, by now the items unlock shortcuts and let you, you don't have to do this big arduous climb in the future. You can skip right past it. Like, oh man. There's a lot of, or not a lot of that, but there is some element of like change in the world that they had with Tears of the Kingdom as you like cleared areas or improved areas, like the central town kind of hub where everyone was meeting up, like that changed pretty well. And certain people changed based on how you cleared stuff. And so I think, I mean, that exists in Ocarina of Time already, but I think they could do more of that and to make it interesting or like opening new paths if it's not necessarily item gated, might be people gated by like specific access to stuff. So like there's some ways they could still play with that without having it to be so stringent on items if they do want to keep exploration really open. Yep. And then I'll play this remake whatever it is. Yeah. Exactly. I know that's the thing. They don't have to do anything. They don't have to lift a finger for me to play it. Yeah. I want to share one more funny anecdote. Real quick, I was watching a YouTube video about Ocarina of Time. You know, I've played the game many times in my life. I know it very well. I never knew, and I never clocked that in Hyrule Field, the border of Hyrule Field, it's this blurry, it's in 64, right? It's this texture that's like, you know, no pixels at all. I didn't know that was supposed to be like trees. Oh my God. Yeah. So funny. It's like, it's like a forest. It's like a forest of trees that like Link can't pass through. And like some YouTuber pointed that out. And like for some reason, it just never crossed my mind. I never thought about what it was. Like I just thought, my God, it's just you can't go there. So anyway, it's funny. They're thick. They had to, I mean, they, there's so, the wonderful thing about Ocarina of Time is like, how many tricks they had to employ to actually pull this game off, right? Like the sort of where it loads when you go around a corner and the geometry actually changes, right? Like you see Death Mountain in the distance. And it's not the geography of Death Mountain that you get when you approach it. Whereas like in Breath of the Wild, the mountain in the distance is the mountain that you can climb and it's just, it's there. And so like remaking this game means almost like making a completely new game, except for the dungeons. I guess you could just take them. And then my final point would be, it'd be neat if it was a twofer that had the whole saga with Majora's Mask in it. And then that would make for, even if it was a simplistic remake, as long as it had them both, you could play through them with some kind of continuity, almost like Banjo-Kazooie's promise of the ice key and stuff like that. You know, because there are elements like the masks are in the first game. Like, I don't know, it's time to go. That'd be sick. Okay, let's play a game, shall we? The first game we're going to play is called Real Mature IGN. It's where we look at ESRB ratings. I actually retitled this game. You chose fantasy violence, but we'll go with that Real Mature IGN. We're going to look at some ESRB rating descriptions that all have a connection to a game coming out this year. I'm going to read them a little bit out of order to hide some of the stuff about them. You're going to try to guess what they are. I'm going to do the, you know, these are direct quotes from the ESRB rating site for people that don't live in ESRB territory. The same is Peggy, where we rate games from teen to mature to everything. And there's these descriptions for parents. You can see what's in the game. They're pretty lurid. They're kind of funny. They're not very mature. So I'll slowly reveal what these games are, try to guess them, and then we'll discuss the connection to this year's games. So here's the first one. All right, to quote the ESRB, players use psychic abilities, e.g. telekinesis to levitate and fling fernshred enemies. Large splashes of blood are frequently depicted as enemies are shot and killed. Control resonant. Are we strouting out? What are we, are we waiting? You may, you may. Sorry. I didn't know what the rules were. Yep. Depict large pools of blood underneath corpses and bodies hanging from ropes. The words, the F word and the SH word are heard in this game. I won't read those words. First of all, these are not games that are coming out because the ESRB doesn't have ratings for those quite yet. If we, when we play that game, it has to be games from like this month. So it's not control. It is control. Yeah, I was gonna say. Yeah. So the next one goes into it, starts revealing it, because this is an action adventure game which players help women with psychic abilities battle supernatural forces that have taken over the government. And then the giveaway is from a third person perspective, players traverse building corridors and use a handgun to shoot and kill enemy creatures and possessed guards slash agents. That's control. Control is rated M for mature 17 plus for the ESRB with blood, strong language of violence. I don't remember that much blood in it, but here it says. There was some blood. Yeah. Yeah. All right, they're going to potentially get harder from here. Okay. Next one. Okay. Bring it on. Players use an assortment of cartoony firearms, oversized lasers, blasters and pistols to stun enemies or douse them in color. Players can also grab or throw enemies to the ground in hand to hand combat. A handful of sequences depict slapstick style and bathroom humor, characters emitting flatulence, bird droppings falling on a character's head, a character getting kicked in the crotch, which I don't think would happen. Cuphead. That's a good guess. What about high on life? Nope. Nope. That's a good guess. That'd be even dirtier though. That would be worse. Yeah. All right. I'm going to keep going. Yeah. Here's the hintiest one before we get to the giveaway. In some driving sequences, players can slam into fleeing vehicles, causing them to break apart into redacted. Legos to the undercover. Nailed it. I was about to say. That's it. You got this tumor in there. Okay. So this is in this, there's the giveaway. In this open world adventure game, players assume the role of Lego police officer Chase McCain as he goes undercover to capture a criminal. Players explore Lego city's open world environment, investigate crime scenes, and apprehend criminals and complete mission objectives. Lego city undercover is rated E for everyone, but the SRB with cartoon violence and crude humor. This is a great game. Like it's so good. Legitimately. Like I, like we were having op-ed on the site today or yesterday. We do this week on like how good Lego city undercover was. And it's just a great game. And like, I don't like that it gets lumped in with the Lego games, not that they're not also great, but just like, if you're a fan of just like general open world, just run around and, and, you know, kill time kinds of games, it's just excellent. It's totally original, right? It's all fun. Yeah. It's funny too. It's yeah. Yeah, it was, it was original. Switch exclusive. I mean, it's definitely not anymore. Was it you or something? I forgot where it came out. It may have started as an exclusive, but I think you can play it everywhere now. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason why this is relevant is that, you know, Lego Batman seems to be an open world game like this, right? And also Grand Theft Auto's out this year, which is what this is based on. What's so cool about this is that it wasn't beholden to like any story sequences you had seen in a movie before, you know? And so like, yeah, it was just fun. It was a little bit like Simpsons Hit and Run where it's like, okay, what would a Lego GTA look like? Right? And boy, Batman seems like it's in a really good spot. If they could pull this off. I'm excited. I think I want to play this again. It looks great. Doesn't the graphics look good? Yeah, the footage looks really good. Okay, next one, three or four, we have players use pistols, machine guns, and explosive to defeat opposing war scenarios and military robots. Combat is often fast-paced, accompanied by realistic gunfire, large explosions and cries of pain. Players can trail blue colored blood on the ground while down by enemy fire. Some areas depict corpses lying in pools with blue liquid. The word a hole has also heard in the games. No, our craters. Blue. What are craters? The blue blood is so straight. What's the blue blood from? Well, Halo. Halo has like, but purpley blue. Yeah, there's not really a lot of those red blue blood is avatars. Maybe Avatar. Yeah, maybe it's an avatar. That's a good guess. Good guess. Okay, aliens are blue. We're gonna move on. This is a first person shooter in which players assume the roles of biosecibernetic mercenaries that perform missions on a distant planet. Spock versus Spock. Nothing, nothing. All right, this is the final one. Remember, these are getting harder. Players engage in salvaging extraction missions across the planet's surface at a dear elect worship, completing contracts and obtaining loot. Is this all the same game? Yeah. Oh boy. This is hella... Has the E word extraction. Yeah, but what other... Wait, because it... Drum roll please. I don't know. I get it. It's Marathon. I was about to say it's not Marathon, right? It is Marathon. Yeah, I didn't know it had blue blood actually. Dang it. I didn't know it had blue blood. I was like, but isn't that, but I guess it came out already so it qualifies. Yeah. Yeah, Marathon is rated T for Teen by the SRB with animated blood language and violence, which I think is actually pretty sedate for a first person or, you know, just any type of online shooter. Yeah, you're not actually killing people. You're killing robots. And the blue blood is probably exactly why that game's rated T. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, final round. Close-up camera angles and slow motion effects effects accentuate the violence of some finishing moves. Enemies' arms are cut off. Of course, there's a split in half. Heads are pulled out in a dramatic fashion. Some profanity. For example, SH word and the ass word. Oh no. What is that? Can be heard in the dialogue. Mortal Kombat. I don't know. Whatever. That's a good guess. It's a good guess, but it's not Mortal Kombat. What? But people's heads are pulled out, Sam. I know. I know. Torsos. Diablo. It's a hard one. So you all know it, though. So then during one sequence, redacted, grabs an enemy and thrusts his body head first into a rotating helicopter blade. Redacted also performs berserker moves that enable players to attack slash kill several enemies at once, slashing bladed claws at a frenetic pace. Oh, Wolverine. It is Wolverine what? It's called, okay, here we go. Here's the giveaway. Wolverine game. Wolverine the game. You all know this one. Well, this is the giveaway. Players use claws to slash, stab, impale, and dismember enemy characters resulting in splashes and stains of red blood. This is an action game based on the characters and events of the X-Men Origins Wolverine movie. X-Men Origins Wolverine. Rated, mature, 17, blood, door, intense violence and language. And Justin, related to what you just said, are they going to get away with a teen rating for making the blood from robots? Yeah, you are slashing up a lot of robots in the new Wolverine. But I think that trailer, if I remember right, was pretty intense. I'm assuming that the new Wolverine is going to be rated M. How does this game look now? I can't tell if this works out. I think it looks good. Injury, guidance like maybe? I think Marvel is ratings proof. Like, even if you get mature, look at Logan. I don't even really remember this X-Men Origins movie. Was this the one with Saber Tooth? They fight a lot in the beginning of it. It was the bad one. X-Men Origins. They were both pretty. They were both kind of close. There was two and then there was Logan. Is that what happened? There was a trilogy? Yeah. Logan was not really part of that first two. Logan's different. Yeah. And then Deadpool's in one of them somehow. Well, that's Origins, right? They goofed. They screwed up. The merc with a mouth literally doesn't get to speak. But still Ryan Reynolds? Yes. Yes. It's completely insane. That is so crazy. It was all the bad decisions. It's like the Mariner movie. Isn't life grande and making it better just got easier with Starbucks new protein cold foam? A little something, something to take your favorite drinks up a notch with 15 grams of extra protein. Turn your usual iced caramel latte into a smooth iced caramel protein latte. Add a delicious swale on top of your drink just like that. Protein never tasted so good with Starbucks new protein cold foam. Subject to availability while stocks last. Cool. All right. On to our next game, fun and games edition of Game Scoop here. We'll keep on rolling. This one is called New Game. It's called Continue or Quit. So for Continue or Quit, we all are going to pick out a feature or trend in games that you'd like to continue. See more of games going forward. And then one that just needs to stop now, please. So for this game, we're just going to go around the panel. I'll go. We will all brought home work to this one pair. You're up first. How is that a game? How is that a game? Do I get points? Do I get points? I will judge you at the end. No, it's just a game because we're, we all had to bring something to show and tell. It's a game because it's a structured discussion. Okay. Yes. There you go. A trend that actually is not a very big trend, but should be. But some companies have done, I think we've seen it in DOA 6. We've seen it in some Ubisoft games is that when you pause your game, your controls are displayed on the pause screen. It is insane. Straight up. You don't need to go to an options menu or whatever. It honestly is insane that any, any sort of game that you return to doesn't immediately kind of have this reminder of what your controls are. And like some companies have done some cool stuff. Like if it detects you haven't played a game in a while, like when you're going to the open world, suddenly it shows like hit X to, you know, hit enemies, which is way, way more work than just put the freaking controls on, on the pause screen. There are some games that don't display the controls anywhere. Some you have to go into like options and go into controls and like just pause it, hear the controls. Thank you very much. If I haven't played the game for two months, I'm going back to it. Thank you very much. Okay. So that's your continue. Continue that. Okay. What's your quit? My quit is, is unskippable or, or, or only skippable dialogue. Some like Bethesda has this wonderful system that when a character says something hit a, it just shows you the subtitle, the text of what you said what the character said. And like a lot of games now have gone back to, if you hit a, it'll skip the entire line of the character and you don't know what they said, or you cannot skip what the character is saying. And I'm sorry, like video game writing is not always so great that I need to listen to somebody talk about their chickens for five minutes, like just let me go. I get it. I get it. You're a slow talker. Just give me the text, but I still want to be able to hear some of the dialogue. Yeah. Crimson, Crimson Desert is the thing where there's something about the game's engine where you can't skip any of the cut scenes, but they knew that their cut scenes were like, you know, maybe not that great or that gamers would want to skip them. So you can only fast forward them, but it fast forwards like the way that a VHS tape would fast forward and like everything gets sped up and like the sound gets high and like the music gets all warbly. It's, it's, it's unbelievable. That's funny. Whoa, that's crazy. But Bethesda and Obsidian, they've done this already where like you just hit the button and it just shows the text and it's perfect. There's definitely that system has been perfected. And then of course you have such fun, like my wife always gets annoyed when I play games like that. And it's like, and then, and next you should, I love it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I get the same commentary, but I think it's, I'm so used to it now and I love it. And when they don't use that system, it's really, really horrible. Yeah. Quit it. Justin, what's your continue and quit? My continue, what's funny about mine is that five or maybe 10 years ago, it would have been a quit and I've changed my mind and I think that I didn't like, I'm like, yeah, you know what? I like it after all. And I want it to stick around. And that's the ability to the video games where you just clear out and outpost, you get up on the Far Cry's and the, and the Metal Gear solids. And I want that gameplay loop of being able to go up in a radio tower and then you do the thing in the radio tower and then it reveals everything on the map. And I feel like on GameScoop, we would goof on that. It's like, that's every video game now and we're over it. But now it's kind of not in that many games anymore. And I miss it. I like it. It's actually just keeping it real, but that's basically it. I like that gameplay loop of, you know, the map is all obscured and then it reveals a whole little like, you know, a little sandbox of like new areas, like there's a race and there's a little brawl I can get into and there's an outpost I can clear out. And then you go to the outpost and you mark all the guys with your binoculars and you see them all. Right. And the game makes you think they're like, ah, it's open. You can go clear this area however you want. But actually there's a cage right there with two tigers in it. And I'm like, well, I know how I'm going to clear this one. And like, yeah. In Assassin's Creed, I kept getting to the middle of the thing and getting the treasure and everybody's dead. And then I looked down and there's like a secret passage that led in from an obvious waterfall on the outside. I'm like, damn it. This whole time I could have just snuck right here. I love it. I love, I love, and they make you think they don't tell you like what to do, but like you think you're being all clever and come and come up with it on your own. But of course you're doing it like the way they intended you to do it. Yep. They love the breadcrumbs. I like, I've, I've, I've always liked the tower concept, whether it's in a UB game or in a Nintendo game. It's just because it sort of becomes this thing sometimes where I'm like, I don't want to do this whole freaking quest. I'm just going to do a couple of, you know, uh, Falcon's Bart or whatever, whatever they are. And it just got so overdone there for a second. Right. Like, yeah, I chopped up the worlds that were supposed to be organic in very formulaic ways again, but it is such an easy to understand fast travel system compared to, you know, whatever Red Dead Redemption did. You know, yeah. What's your quit? My quit's not as strong just to warn you. Like I, I'm just, I'm over battle passes. I don't need them anymore. Um, I feel like a battle pass recently. No, well, no, because I think that they, I just think it's a treadmill, right? Like I don't, I don't, I don't like games is consumption and just play this game forever. I mean, games is a service, you know, it's like, I just, you know, it's not my thing. Um, I think that the battle pass concept, it was so when it was new, it was so friendly and fresh and like, you know, you can pay your way, they'd play your way to get all these rewards or, you know, give us 10 bucks. And that felt way friendlier than like loot boxes, right? But like, you know, but now it's become kind of, you know, habit forming in a different way and has kind of been taken in an unhealthy direction. It also makes things really stressful sometimes. So you know, like playing with destiny, it's like, I really just want to finish all this gear. I have one piece left. It's like 10 levels away. So tonight I can grind for like hours to try to make it, or they allow me to pay for levels. So I can pay for it, but it's, it's just that shitty thing. I was like, I've already paid for this. So that kind of, it's just what I want to do. Weaponized and monetized FOMO and then it, and then it just never ends, right? And actually Halo Infinite is so good at like battle passes don't expire and you can, you can buy and play through an old battle pass anytime you want. It's like so friendly. So anyway, I'm, I'm just, it's not even, I don't even, like, I know that this is the segment, like keep or die. Like I don't even say it needs to die, but it's just I'm over it. I'm not interested. It just continue or quit. It's nicer. Sometimes you just had enough of something. Yeah. It doesn't need to go away. Unless it's mine, then it needs to go away from mine. All right. So Miranda, what do you got for continue or quit? This is really hard because I juggled like three things I really wanted, but I will go with the thing that I want. I have a note stock in my phone with a thousand things. Yeah. I was like, the thing I want most is probably magic chest storage. So basically, a lot of games like crafting, they want you to collect stuff and put it away, but then I can't fricking find it. Or if it's a multiplayer game, why did you put your, your, your rocks in the food chest? So that's really obnoxious to have to organize it that way. If you have to do a lot of chests or a lot of pockets or places for storage. So what I like is with when it's crafting, it just accesses all your accesses, all of your storage, or at least like with what Pocopia does is at least if you have a chest right next to your crafting table, it has everything. So next to that table. So, or like, at least give me an option to upgrade my chests to be magic chest level or something. If you want to make me be responsible for my actions of where I'm storing things. Like that's something I want to see continue because some games do that really well. Well, some games will count early access and be like, good luck. And I'm like, why would you do this to me? Like that's just cruel. You want me to pick up everything, but you don't want leaves all over this region. What I need them craft, craft directly from chest is like the world's most perfect quality of life upgrade in any game. Plus just the ability to smart sort stuff before you do that. Just easy. I mean, all that is like basics. And like, I'm playing a freaking video game here. Like I don't need the realism of not being able to carry a bunch of stuff. I am playing a video game for a reason. I don't go out in my neighborhood and get every cactus I can put in my pockets. I understand implicitly why when I sit down, I should be able to get all those damn cactuses. Yeah, it's like, I'm already stressed about how I'm going to organize my yarn collection. I don't want to have to stress about how I'm organizing my in game school collection or whatever it is that I picked up today. Like please just let it stack in the right spot. And if I need it, pull it out when I'm crafting. We kind of edged into a quit here. What's your quit? My quit is combat through deck building and games where stories are really cool, which is very specific. So there are so I feel bad, but I don't like deck builders. I really, I like playing card games, but this is why I have Miranda on this show. I know, Sam and I can play about this all the time. And I'm sorry. I know people love card games. I love, I loved Yu-Ki-Oh so much. I love other games, but gosh dang it. Like, like artifact, artifact was great from Valve. Like there's like these standalone, this is a card game. I'm battling you, but when they use that as a mechanic to get through a big story game, I'm like, well, no, I have to worry about collecting these cards and doing a strategy when I really just want to pay attention to the story in a different way. And it stops me from playing really cool games, have cool stories. I'm like, now I have to learn. However, you structured the mechanics for your game and hope I get that one card randomly or I'm going to be really disappointed. I love you, artifact. Thank you, Joe. Did artifact go away? Is it gone? Yeah. You can still play it, but they're not updating or anything. It died pretty soon after they didn't. I don't think that a really good plan was like how to continue with it. There's just like great characters, but I like it when the story and things are told through like these cards. Like this is the battle or like whatever Laurie would put around the cards, but when you start separating the cards and the store, it just gets, it's just annoying for me personally. So I don't want to see it. Okay, storytelling through cards. Very good. All right. So quickly mine are, and I chose from a lot, but so for this week, I'm going to do continue a default character creator option. I just want you to roll me a looker. You know, just, just if you have somebody you think is, it looks like a character that might play this game, maybe an orc, a lion, a lady, an elf, like whatever it is, mix those up and give me some of your best designs. And I'll just play as one of those. I will never use your character creator to create a character. I might use your character creator to use one of your old characters that looks really derpy and then change it because it looks so bad, but that pisses me off. I'm the same way. I hate it when it's like, I just want, I don't want to sit there and have to create a character, except for something like Tomodachi. Even naming Link pisses me off. Tomodachi life. Tell me what you want me to play the game with. Tomodachi life is different because the whole concept is that you create these stupid characters and make them interact and you create your friends and all that. But generally, I really, really annoyed when there's not a good preset and there is a required character creator and then you roll and you get these hideous characters all the time. Like it's a, it's a, it's a big turn off. And I think avowed was one of those games where I'm like, Oh, I don't want this. Yeah. Like no matter what I rolled, I got provided defaults. Yeah. If you, if you're doing random, if you're hitting the random button, you're going to end up with mushrooms on your face for sure in that game. In avowed. Yeah. It's, it was like all the rejects from Pirates of the Caribbean. Like it was so bad. That's what I like about like cyberpunk, right? Like they're, they're V, like they're iconic V looks really cool and they're stylized and they're thoughtful. Same with Shepard. I mean, Shepard is a character. I like that. So, and then my quit is quit moving the jump button. I'm sick. This is the jump button right here. It's this one. Okay. And on a Xbox controller, it's the bottom one. It's just that's the jump button. That's just how it works. And we don't need to be doing this anymore. And you know, my favorite games of all time have done this. Zelda, like put it on the top. What, why did we quit, quit, quit that, quit moving the jump button. I think it's crazy. I think Donkey Kong, Bonanza, did you remap it? Got a little crazy with that too. And I remapped it in that. Yeah. See, I remapped it and because it annoyed me too. And then I mapped it back because they clearly wanted the up down sort of like setup reflected in the button. It's cute. But you can do that outside the constraints of the jump button. There's so many buttons on these controllers. It's really funny when some of the emulated Nintendo classics were poorly mapped to switch where, you know, Mario had a button you hold down for running fast, and then you were supposed to jump while holding it down. And they mapped it all crazy originally. They did it backwards. Yeah. Famously, they switched the Gamecube Mega Man anniversary collection. They just switched it. Just shoot and you have to do that in that game too. You have to jump rapidly in fire at the same time. You need to be able to mash the A and B buttons while you're playing that game. Yep. Yeah. I just, I know you can remap it in some games, but like, unbelievably in some games you can't. But then no matter what, like you just didn't need to do this. There's no, it was just unnecessarily aggressive. All right. So we're on to Let's Play a Game number three. Remember, this is the fun in games episodes. The last one was a fun. Let's just call it that. It wasn't a game. It was a fun. Okay, good. Is this next one a game? I don't know because my man, Jobart, is leading it. It's called What Is Pear Eating? What Is Pear Eating? Great. What do we got, Jobart? Can't wait. That's correct. We're going to be guessing what Pear is eating. So Pear, you and I are friends on Facebook, which means I have access to all your Facebook photos. And so, oh, happy birthday Pear. Happy birthday. I don't think I've posted food in a while, but I will tonight. My wife, my wife booked a really, really nice restaurant for dinner for my birthday. Is it in a genre? Is it sushi or something like that? No, it's called Providence. It's a fancy LA seafood restaurant. Yeah. Seafood. Great. All right. What do we got, Jobart? Okay. So we're going to show, I'm going to show some photos of Pear and food and the food is blurred out. So you're going to try to guess what that food is. Okay. I'm a dachelife basically. And Pear, I mean, these are your photos, so you'll probably know what these are. Okay. Yeah. Pear. So, but you know, if you know what it is. Am I guessing too? Yeah. If you know what it is, don't give it away right. How about this? Pear will describe in each photo for the listeners what's going on in the photo briefly before you guess. Yeah. And I totally get that this is not great for our audio, but you know what? Dame is not here, so there are no rules. I'll just make eating sounds the entire time for our listeners. Oh, gosh. That's exactly how people like. No, no. I mean, we'll get some snacks. The opposite of ASMR. Yes. I do have clues. What's the first one? I do have the clues to give if you guys need help. Oh, you do? Okay. So here we go. This is the first one. I totally know what I'm eating there. I think I know what. So we're looking at, it looks like a giant vertical piece of pizza. It's shaved ice. It's very tall. Yeah. It is. That's shaved ice. I think that's, yeah, that's like, that's in Japan for sure. Yeah. That's a lot of shaved ice. Yeah. In the summer, like this particular restaurant, I forget which one, it actually had shaved ice with blue cheese. Oh, my God. Which sounds made up. That sounds actually amazing. I didn't go for it. No, it's a big thing in, it's called kakigori. It's a big thing in Japan. There was a giant line out the door for this restaurant. It was blazingly hot in the Tokyo summer heat. And we stood in line for this and it was really, really good. And it's not. I wouldn't have that much shaved ice before a car trip. It's more than shaved ice. They have like fruit in it and like ice cream and stuff. So it's not, it's not all shaved ice. That's incredible. Yeah. It's so good. Amazing. Okay. Next up. Well done, Miranda. Yeah. Good job. Round two. Got these shaved ice. Oh, what the heck? Oh, that's easy. You're getting like, pair weekend pictures here. That's hilarious. I did crop some of these so it's not so accidentally doxy or something. So. Oh, that's all right. Yeah. If they own Facebook, you can show anything. It's really cute because you can see the ingredients that lead to like the world's most stacked bagel. Yeah. Bagel and mox. Very good. Oh my god. But it's got the red onions and the capers. You know what this is? I think this is a pair birthday picture where my daughter made bagels from scratch. And they surprise. When you do add all this in, it's the best bagel ever. It's so good. They surprised me for my birthday and said, wake up, Romeo made bagels. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty intense. Yeah. Coffee looks so nice too. Yeah, the coffee looks good too. You must eat three of these bagels now for breakfast. Yeah, I know. It's triggering. The good best way. Really good. Okay. That's fair heating. It looks like a train. I feel like I can't say. I feel like I know too much. Oh, I know what this is. Is this the bentos that you get before your train ride in Japan? You got it. Is that what it's called? You guys are so good. I love these. They're so good. What is weird is all of these are not normal things. And yeah, that's the Shinkansen train, probably from Tokyo, Tokyo or the other way. And like before you get on the bullet train, you go in either Tokyo station or whatever the station is there, and they have hundreds of different options of amazing bento boxes. So great. What a great train ride. That's probably like salty salmon with rice and stuff. Yum. And I like the little soft drink tea thing. Okay, I think two more here. Two more. Okay. This is really old. Yeah. Wow. This is really old. Okay. So this is a picture of Pear eating a blurred thing. But to be fair, there's a giant pile of sausages next to him. And he's drinking the traditional German beer, a Corona extra. Yeah. You know what this is? This is probably... Is it currywurst? I was going to guess that. I was going to guess currywurst, but that feels like I'm being misled, I think maybe. It's like potato salad or something. No. I mean, if it's sausage... With your hand? Because that looks like... Yeah, you're holding something. A smash burger. This is some IGN barbecue at somebody's house. It may have been at Cass' house, and that's Chris Carl right there, our entertainment lead. And yeah. It is possible that the sausages are throwing you off. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't have it. Because it's a sandwich. I bet it's a hamburger. Okay, it was a hamburger. It is. I think. This is definitely a sandwich. It's a regular hamburger. This is a bunch of... The sausage just were decorations. It's a bunch of editors probably getting together for a barbecue. I don't know if it's at the office. Yeah, there's like a postage stamp size. Is that ocarina in the background? It kind of looks like it. It is ocarina. It is. Oh my god, that's so strange. I think this is at the office. I don't even know where we would have grilled. Yeah, I bet it is. Grilled barbecue. Maybe we made a fire on the roof or something. Cool. All right. The final one, we have Pear with somebody cut out of the picture and he's holding what looks to be a human organ size. That picture, with the picture pixelated, it looks incredibly sinister. The knitted jacket gives it a way that this is in Germany, folks. I was going to say, I like the cardigan. That's a cardigan. That has to be Munich. That's got to be Munich. That's got to be... Is that like a big pretzel? I recognize the arches. That's a Hofbrahaus in Munich. So I think Miranda is very smart. All right, there we go. I think we're talking about pretzel. We're guessing big pretz. World's biggest pretzel. I don't know how big that pretzel is. That's a big pretzel. I want one of those now. I think you cut out one of my kids. That's what the dark murderous shadow is in the background. That's what the other hand is. At the Hofbrahaus, there's people walking around, usually a lady, a traditional Bavarian outfit, carrying just a giant amount of pretzels. I love the pretzel. And you just go, and they come over and all your money's gone. I've been going to this fantastic brewery on federal land over at Fort Mason. It's a beer hall. It's all German. It's all great. It's really good beer. You get boots and everything. Good food. But the pretzels are so tiny and they're like 11 bucks because it's safe for Cisco. No, they got to be bigger than your head. But they don't serve them with mustard as pretzels proper. Yeah, the southern Germans are the masters at doing this stuff. So I'm from... What are more North pretzels traditionally served with? Butter. I mean, beer. More butter. Beer. Actually, in Munich, you get... No, in Munich, you get Obatsta. Obatsta is basically cheese and green onions and cream. And onions. And they mix it up into this paste. So it's... I think you guys call it like... Here is beer cheese, but beer cheese is... Yeah, beer cheese or pub cheese is... It's not as good. That's pretty common here, actually, in Iowa too, but of course, there's a huge German population. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, but Obatsta is different. It doesn't have the pimento stuff in it. Okay, so we have eight minutes to play. Now I'm hungry. Thanks guys. Yeah, happy birthday. I hope you get all of those things at your Michelin restaurants. So you can bring me a pretzel. We have a short time, so, Pair, if you do need to go, you can. But I think we can get through this video game 20 questions. We can speedrun it. I can stay. I know you guys are going to get this one. Can we need a win? It's been a while. That's the pressure. I wonder if the GameScoop historian... I wonder if this counts as a win for you as well, Sam, if we win. Oh, no, I don't think so. And I think the person that sent this in is going to know that, because the person that sent this in is Greg Kelly, who does some of our tracking of GameScoop 20 question stats. So this game does have an anecdote, and it's a good one, but I don't think I can read a single part of it before we play. Really? Because it will give it away. Not even Hello, Scoop Crew? Can't even say that. So just know it's from Greg Kelly. Got it. That means he probably picked a game from a series that has never been in 20 questions. That's something. See, this is enough to go on, right? Okay, speedrun, right? Let the questioning begin. Did this game come out in the 70s, 80s, or 90s? No, it did not. I heard you guys... Was it on a modern console? Was it on a modern console? A modern console as in... Like current gen? Current gen. No. I heard Gemini came out with a surefire way of winning this game. It was pretty varied. It was 80% okay and 20% non-switch. Yeah, that checks out. Sorry, what was the... What was the Miranda's question? What was the answer? Was it on a modern console? So now we have bookends, right? It's not from the last century, and it's not on the current gen. Okay. Was this game made in Japan? No, it was not. Is this game on a Nintendo platform? No. Is this game live service? No. Okay. No. That was a dark answer. Do you play as a... That's how Damon says it. Do you play as a human in this game? Yes, you do. Okay. Do you shoot guns in this game? Oh yeah. A lot of guns. Is this a first person game? A lot of killing. Yes. That's it. So... Could be Master Chief. First person shooter, not on a modern console, but after the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Is this the first game in a series? Yes. Well, let me take that back. It's the first game. The first game, so not necessarily in a series. Maybe it's not a series. Should we ask that? That's not Halo. Not Halo. Well, it could be, but it's the first. It's the first. Is this a science fiction game? No. Oh, but you shoot... Okay, you shoot guns. That's 10. Not Halo. Could still be some of the Call of Duty, but also not other... Yeah, I love that about Call of Duty. You just don't know. Well, it could also be a Medal of Honor. Yeah. Is this a military-themed FPS? Yes. Okay, so we could be in Call of Duty territory. Is this based on real world events? You know, I kind of looked that up and... No. No. Okay. That's great. Because like I get what you're saying, like if a game is set like... If it's Call of Duty 2... Highland of Okinawa in World War II. Yeah, if Call of Duty 2 would be real locations. Is this either a Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, or Battlefield game? No. Wow, a hack. Yeah, that's fine. There's no rules. There's no cops. You can do what we want. So it's none of those, but it's a military shooter. A military FPS, I think we know, right? Military FPS. First person. Guns. And then Sam gave us a hint that it's probably not a series, but I don't know that we know that definitively. Is this game defined by having a major reveal at the end? No. No, okay. I'm trying to think of what you're thinking of, but this is not... Probably spec ops the line, I assume. What were you thinking of? I was like, I don't... What happens at the... Well, I guess we shouldn't spoil that. Spec ops the line is the whole thing. Could be Socom. You did. I listened to that episode. Terrible. Come on, that's not true. Not science fiction, though. Socom. Military FPS. Killzone is, yeah, that's... Also sci-fi. There was that game Mag that's around that area. What was that other Ubisoft game with a yellow masks thing? There was a... Ghost recon. There's Ghost Recon. Is this a Ghost Recon, Socom or Mag? Wow. That's 15 and no. So Rainbow Six? Oh, you were thinking of Rainbow Six. Yeah. No, I was thinking of Hayes, which would never be in this game because nobody remembers that. 15. What the heck? I'm trying to think of other defining factors from first person shooters that would be good to ask. I mean, whether it's multiplayer or single player focus might be helpful or it might not. I don't even know. I feel like I've named every military FPS I can think of. So yeah. Oh yeah, because it is military. The series thing stumps me because obviously Rainbow Six is also a series and as are the ones that you mentioned. You've never asked the question about the series. It was the first in a series. The answer was yes. Well, Sam said it's the first. And I also think... Yes, Rainbow Six is an FPS, but I don't think the original ones were. I think they were third person. I recall correctly. They switched. Oh boy. I don't know. I'm getting some from the military part. I'm just kind of like, what? Same. Another military shooter that is maybe loosely based on the real world, but not exact real world events. You have five questions. You can get that. First. And again, the era is we're talking about between 2000 and 2020s, basically. Yeah, whenever that Xbox series came out. Yeah. So that's a pretty big range window. I mean, there's GoldenEye as a military shooter. What about like... Well, we asked about service game. What about like PUBG? No, it's not service. PUBG is the service game. I guess I'm trying to be in that headspace though. Yeah, you're right. But like, you know, like a Tarkov, I know that that's a live service game. That's live service, yeah. But like something like that. I'm picturing older console games, and I'm trying to get out of that headspace. Was this game popular on the Xbox 360 specifically? No. Okay. That is weirdly kind of helpful because it rules out some other things I was thinking of. Then we... And it wasn't on a Nintendo console. We already established that. Nope. Yeah, we have four more. Which by the way, Rainbow Six was as well. Like a 2000 and 64 game too. So maybe we're in place. Maybe we're in PlayStation territory. Should we... I asked about Socom though and Mag. Those are the two I could think of. Yeah. You've been riffing on several questions that have not been asked that are really good questions. Was this a PlayStation game? Like a PlayStation console series game? Also, you need to refine that question. Was this game on a PlayStation console? Yes. Okay. I don't know. There's like... There's ARMA. There's what? Two in a guess. There's ARMA. Well, it doesn't necessarily mean it is a PlayStation exclusive because that's not what we asked. He said this would be one we get, so it can't be ARMA. Yeah. I know it's one we can get. Yeah. And when I reveal it or you get it, you will know why it's one that I know you can get. Maybe it's a game that we already talked about on the show. Just gonna have to believe. I feel like I'm failing myself in some way. I'm just like, I should know this, but I don't... Because it sounds... A stupid no-brainer thing somewhere. First person. Not the latest console generation. Military first person shooter. First in a series. First. So it's first. Okay. It started. Why does it keep saying first like that? What does that mean? It's not live service. It just means that I'm separating... You can't ask... There's two questions there that right a trickled out. The second one was a series, but I didn't answer that question. I answered, was this the first? We didn't ask that. Yeah. What about... What about Army of Two? What about... I don't know. I can't think of any other military FPSes. That also might have been a third person cover shooter. I feel like, yeah, I'm missing something. Justin, any other term... Any other term, Clancy's? I mean, we had Ghost Recon. I mean, there's Far Cry, which was not really military. No, that's... There's Splinter Cell, which is not a first person military FPS. It's got some first person in it in the second one. It's not sci-fi. Maybe it's a Star Wars game because that's not sci-fi. That's science fantasy. That would know. He would say sci-fi. I'm not Damon. Yeah, that's cruel. That's really cruel. Yeah, that would be. He wouldn't do that. That's out of line. Yeah. I think you have two options here. You can go with what generation of console is this really. You can also go with some qualifications about the type of game it is. Both those would be helpful directions. It doesn't help us if we ask the series question, does it? No. I think that's... Because we already know it's first. ...console generation. But I don't know if that helps. I mean, it would help if you knew if it's like PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 2. The difference is first and only versus first of a series, right? Yeah. Right. Is this game part of a series? No. Yeah. Okay, great. It's the only one. One question. It's a one and done military FPS that's... Has a non... ...and that appeared on a PlayStation was not popular on the Xbox 360. So probably PS4. Maybe PS3. But... Oh gosh. And not live service. There's a habit twist end. So it's not live service where it continues and that's why there isn't a sequel. There's those... There's the ones that have the... The like the... Sniper games where like the bullets like fly through people's brains and stuff like that. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Sniper Elite. Yeah, Sniper Elite. Yeah. That's not... But it's not... But I think I also think... I think they were probably on Sniper Elite like three or four. Yeah, there's those multiple of those. I remember them coming out. Oh gosh. I don't know. I don't know. You're all sniffing around the right tree here. It's just... I'm not really snacking it. Say that. Yeah. We have one question left. Should we ask whether it's a... Whether it's Sony published? No, it was on Xbox. So like then it wouldn't have been... Do we know it was on Xbox? Can we? No, we don't know. Oh, I thought you said something. It wasn't popular on Xbox. Didn't you say... I asked it was... That was the question. I answered the question. I specifically asked if it's popular on Xbox 360. Was this game exclusive to a PlayStation platform? No. Oh, okay. Okay, so it's not... So we're just host. We don't... I don't know. It could be original Xbox or Xbox One and those generations. That's... So like... Well, or it was on the 360 and just wasn't that popular on it. Let's think about the publishers. Did we ask where it was made? It was not made in Japan. So we're talking about... You can't ask anything more. No, no. We're asking questions. But we had that question. We asked if it was made in Japan. It was no. Correct. So we know it's either EA, Ubisoft, and if it's... By then, like Midway Atari were already... Oh, I don't know. This Atari still was alive. EA, Ubisoft... After the 90s. Yeah. Rockstar, Take 2... 2K. We need to... We just need... I mean, we're out of questions. We need 10 more questions. 10 pairs out of time. Yeah. I know. I think it's... I don't think it's... Do you want to keep asking questions? No. I'm gonna go... Is it Sniper Elite? No, it is not Sniper Elite. Sorry. So, Greg Kelly says, I think it's finally time to suggest the game Black for video game point. Oh my God! I know it's been a running joke from Justin over the years that he regularly thinks it's going to be this game, but it still never has been. It never is. He has mentioned it much in the past year or two, so I think it's the perfect time to pick it. Let's get them! Oh my God, it's Black! Signed one of the 20Q stats dudes from Massachusetts. I got got. From the makers of Burnout, right? I think you would have gotten this maybe with the... We also... I think... I never actually played this game, but I think it was single player only. It is, yeah. So, it's like that may have actually helped. 2002 PS2 Xbox, so pretty early. Yes. Oh, sorry, 2006. I mean, PS2 Xbox 2006. You can now play it on Xbox Backwards Compatibility in the digital store. That's basically the only way to play it. We gave it an 8.6 on Xbox and 8.7 on PS2. Great. I like that Xbox, yeah. I didn't know that this game existed. So, you see me. You see me. That's crazy. You've seen the... It is, yeah. You've seen the cover. It has all the bullet casings on it. It's a very... Everything about this game was marketed differently. Unfortunately, it never... It just never became a big hit. But it was... It's kind of an elevated tech demo. It looked really good. Yeah. It was very beautiful at the time, and it didn't have multiplayer rights. So, it's just a really elevated good... Also famous for destruction. Yeah. It had... It had revolution. It had a lot of destruction bullet... Like bullet... Just a lot of effects around the guns. Brumbling walls, I think was a big deal. I think Resident Evil 4 ended up doing that in-engine for a lot of stuff too. But this game is known for its sound design as well. It was basically like the Matrix lobby scene as a video game. You know, like they just... They were doing a lot of... There you go. There you go. There you go. There's some evolution. All the destruction stuff. Oh man, what a bummer. Like I know this game pretty well, and I'm a little bummed, but yeah, I would not have thought of Black. When Damon comes back, we'll have him just play against us with the same game and see if he gets it. Okay. Yeah. I wanted this to be gun, because it's just a funny name for a shooter. Yeah. But that's not for a person. One of the few Cowboy games before Red Dead. Yeah. Yeah, I have like a leather flask for it. Okay. What? That's so cool. Yeah, yeah, just from the swag, you know, trash can back in the day. Okay. Thank you for your suggestion, Greg. Viewers, this is if you have your own, it was a good one. If you... And I've been part of VG2QDNA, which I like. If you have your own suggestions for ready to go with 20 questions, you can send them to gamescouped.igin.com. Don't send them to NBC at igin.com, like I asked for last week. That made all the NBC organizers very disturbed. But I really appreciate everybody's suggestions that they sent in. There were some really good ones in there, and some even better anecdotes. So I really appreciate that. That's all scoops we have for this week. Dan will be back next week. Thank you to Perrick, Justin, and Miranda, and to Jobart working kind of between the scenes today. That was really fun, Jobart. This is IGN Game Scoop, and we're out. Hey, what are you doing for your birthday? My wife booked us into a super fancy restaurant tonight. Ooh. And then, well, next week we're going on vacation. Oh, and then special birthday treat is on Saturday. We're going to look at the the five Saluki puppies and pick ours. Oh, my God. What type of dog is that? We're not bringing them home yet. What type of a Saluki? A Saluki is like a hippie greyhound. It has long, fuzzy ears. What's a borsoi? A borsoi. My parents had them when I was a kid. They're Russian wolf hounds. So basically, greyhound one size bigger with long hair and weird, funny, long noses. If you ever watched the Hound movie, the Disney one, the what's it called in English? It's called Fox on the Hound. No, the other one, the one with the, this is the night, what a beautiful night. Lady and the Tramp. Lady and the Tramp. In Germany, it's called Susie und Strollt. It's the names of the animals. It's also the names of the animals in English. No, one animal is named Lady. Strollt is Susie und Strollt. Well, it's the Tramp. Is that his name? Is his name Tramp? I think his name is Jacques. Is that right? See, it's different. Anyway, there is a borsoi in that one. Lady is named Lady though. One of the entourage dogs is a Russian wolf hound and his name is Boris and he speaks like this. Okay. I will count you in. Sorry. Was that tag? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, Miranda. So we usually have like a, I usually put like a random internet video on for everyone to watch while I set up. This is tame. I've had some wild ones. I saw this. I said, what in the jobert is this? And he said, it's the tag world championships. I'm like, man. There's also a blowing cockroaches into each other's mouths. Uh-oh, high froze. Yeah, the blue. The balloon keep you up. Yeah. It's like, it's that game where like you hit a balloon around. But the crazy thing is their arena is basically a living room. There's the balloon world cup. Look at it. Because this is in human tradition was always played in living rooms. Yeah. Of course, the set would be a living room. That's so funny. The set's really good. I feel like the next level set should have cacti though. And like, if you're the last person to touch it, like you lose the point. Do they have to, you can only do it once? Yeah. And then I think there's rules like you have to bop it up. It has an arcade machine. Yeah, you can't spike it. So many questions about that Doritos arcade machine. I also think you can't block the other player. Go Justin. Oh, no, just I like that they follow the Olympics. Like it's Peru versus Bulgaria. Yeah. Like, like they went through they went through regionals to get. Yeah, they would 500 teams in Bulgaria. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they have a promotion and relegation system. Yeah. Those semis were tense. Okay, I think we are good to go. Everyone sounds good. Everyone looks good. And Sam, I will count you in. In five, four, three, two and on you.