Pokemon Pokopia Is the Best Pokemon Game in Years - NVC 802

Pokemon Pocopia is here and it's the best Pokemon game in years. We'll talk all about it this week on NBC. You've switched to Nintendo voice chat. It is Pokemon Pocopia launch day and we're going to talk all about it. If my voice can make it all the way. Sorry, I'm really hoarse this week. I'm your host, Logan Plant. Joined this week by Brian Altano. glasses bald glasses glasses bald glasses did we do it we did it okay cool yeah that joke is never gonna die i can't see anything so good now i can see oh thank god rev valentine who reviewed pocopia and i think has what 60 hours in it so far is that right i cannot put it down i love it so much awesome yeah i can't wait to hear about it and seth macy hey seth if hey if i were a horse I would be a Clydesdale. Just pick up them all. What? They're big and they have hooves. Giant hooves. Well, are there any horse Pokemon in Pocopia? The Super Bowl. I'm sorry. I haven't seen any so far. However, Pokedex large, so maybe. Cool. Well, we're going to get into that in just a second, but stick around because later we're going to talk about Resident Evil Requiem and all the cool stuff from the Indie World Showcase. But first, Pokemon Pocopia is out now on Nintendo Switch 2. Rev, you reviewed it you gave it a nine out of ten you called it amazing why is it amazing tell me all about it oh my gosh it's so good so you're this ditto it's so it's made by the dragon quest builders two teams so if you know what that game's about you kind of know what this is about you're this ditto who turns into a little person and you start running around this world that's kind of dreary and drought stricken and in ruins and you discover that you know you have the ability to transform into other pokemon and take on their abilities because you're a ditto and you can use those abilities to sort of green up the world and make it a more pleasant place to exist in. And as you do that, Pokemon start to return and live in it. So, you know, you find a Squirtle, you learn how to use Water Gun, you make the ground green, and you can start, you know, watering the grass, and then the Bulbasaur shows up and teaches you how to make more grass grow, and so forth. And it's this adventure going through this world, greening it up, trying to draw more Pokemon back to it and make this little community. It gradually gets bigger and bigger as You start to learn how to do stuff like build buildings. And it's also this sort of interesting exploration story game as you try to piece together what actually happened to this world, where you are, why you're here, why it is so messed up when you show up. And it's really, really good. Like, there's a bunch of disparate elements of this game that all combine into this really nice, satisfying loop. Like, there's crafting, and the crafting is really good. the loop of getting resources and what you can find, and then gradually upgrading the kinds of things that you can make and increasing your recipe library, I guess, to make even more and more interesting and interactive things. For Pokedex people, there's a lot of Pokemon in this game. I'm definitely somewhere over 170 in my Pokedex right now. Oh, whoa! What? And I'm definitely not done. I have so many more left to find. So there's a whole bunch of Pokemon to find by building all these different habitats that get increasingly more complex. So as you play, you're trying to find items to piece together. Like, oh, this Pokemon wants four squares of grass together in a square, and that'll lure them there. Or, oh, this Pokemon wants a topiary with a bunch of flowers growing around it. all these different things, trying to piece together what kinds of habitats that they might want, and then luring increasingly rare Pokemon back, so there's a collector aspect to it. I don't want to get into the story too deeply without a spoiler warning, so we'll do that later. I love the story in this game. It is kind of nuts, actually. It's really interesting and really well told, and above all, I love being a ditto. I was not like a big ditto person before this game, but this team of Megaforce has done such a good job with just the little details of being a ditto, like being this sort of like blobby pink creature that has turned itself into a human and all the little bits that come with that. So like if you jump off a cliff from a high place, there's no combat, there's no damage, there's no HP in this game, there's no fall damage. So when you land, you just sort of bloop into like the pink goo for a moment and then you, you know, turn back into yourself and then bounce back along. And there's all these little details in the animations, both with Ditto and all the other Pokemon that you encounter and the ways in which they interact. It's just it's really well thought out. Like like there's all sorts of small details about this game that are so clearly thought through in ways that I didn't expect. Like last night I was playing and I realized that if I ask a Pokemon to follow me and I fast travel, they fast travel with me, which that seems like such a basic thing. But I've played so many games where doing that would just totally lose them or they'd get stuck somewhere or it just wouldn't work. And they follow you so cleanly through different paths and they can do all sorts of these. Last night, a pseudo Wudo came like flying at me in a mine cart out of nowhere. Like, there's just all these fun little interactions and little bits, and I'm constantly being surprised by the playfulness and the attention to detail in this game. Yeah, that's great. I'm only about an hour and a half in. The game just came out this morning, and I really like the loop so far. I liked it in my preview. I think it's really impressive, just how you're finding new Pokémon, using their abilities to build new habitats to attract new Pokémon. So, Reb, how does that kind of grow throughout the whole game? Are you constantly getting new powers for your Ditto to learn? It does slow down a little bit. Your main ones that you get early on with the grass and the water are kind of like your bread and butter. And then you get cut and rock smashed very early on, which, as you can imagine, you know, cut wood and grass and then smash rocks. Very easy. Rock smash is going to be the one you're going to be using the most because, you know, it's basically terraforming. Like you're busting through bricks and then placing them. A lot of it is going to be collecting different furniture items or crafting different furniture items and arranging them in particular ways that are pleasing to Pokemon. So it kind of evolves like that. you do there's a bunch of optional powers like i was kind of shocked how many of ditto's abilities i could have just totally missed out on there's a there's an ability that just lets you sort of it's it's not really a sprint i wouldn't call it a sprint but it's basically the equivalent of having an even faster sprint button and i almost missed it entirely because i didn't want to bother doing that quest and then i went back and did it and i got it um there's another ability that essentially turns uh the hide and seek game that you play with uh your pokemon friends into a prop hunt game, which is really, really funny. And I imagine you could use that for shenanigans in multiplayer mode as well. I haven't gotten a chance to test that out yet. As we can see, if you're watching on screen now, there's a surf and a fly ability. And there's a couple others as well. But primarily what is developing as you play through is your ability to access different items, so your ability to access different kinds of furniture to build increasingly complex things, and also the kinds of areas you're traveling through. So we've seen a lot in this footage of kind of the starting area, which is this wasteland. But you'll eventually visit some other areas, too, that have slightly different types of biomes, and those biomes will impact the kinds of Pokemon you can summon as well. Cool. Brian, Seth, what do you make of this? I can't wait for this. I was obsessed with Dragon Quest Builders, and I've always just been, like, casually into Pokemon. Like, I never got obsessive with it like many of you have. um but this is this is such a perfect mix of stuff that i'm i'm i'm all about like it's got a little bit of animal crossing a lot of dragon quest builders which i absolutely loved and a lot of pokemon but in a way that isn't like me you know sort of like going through the same grassy area a thousand times over and over again trying to find one rare drop nothing wrong with that i completely understand that i've been there before i was actually just playing through fire red a couple weeks ago um so yeah this is this this is totally my cup of tea i like i can't wait to play this with my kid yeah i'm looking forward to the end of the day so i can play this because uh yeah like you said look it came out today and i didn't get a chance to play but minecraft one probably if if i had records of it is it the most played game i've ever like in all of it like i know i've put thousand and then over flight simulator really yeah well flight simulator takes some setting up when you play it like i do like i i go through the checklists and i do yeah i walk around my plane and do i'm not even joking i do the pre-flight inspections but anyway but minecraft yeah you can just sit and be like all right i'm gonna go dig a hole now and so um and one of the things like i always as much as i loved minecraft i always wished that it did have like a narrative structure somehow and the dragon quest builders did that but then this is like obviously much more recognizable i know uh much more about like pokemon even though i'm not a pokemon expert than i do about like dragon quest so i am extremely extremely excited to dig into this tonight and i think that um the main character is especially like appealing to me because i also feel like an awkward facsimile of a human most of the time. I'm very much, yeah, I can't wait to play this. And then to find it, like, Rev, you have 60 hours in this game. I wrote my review at a little over 40 hours and then I could have put it down. And I probably should have put it down to go play the new World of Warcraft expansion because I really need to get on that. But I also, like Logan, had a disease of some sort. And, you know, this is so perfect for just, like, not feeling up to it but curl up on the couch heated blanket cat on my lap and pocopia i did not know this game cured disease that is really seems like a perfect sick game yeah it is i was gonna ask yeah is it like is it a cozy game like does it just feel like i just want to feel like i'm snuggled up in a blanket um and just sit down and kind of get after it i say it absolutely can be there's no there's no combat i i mentioned which there there wasn't dragon quest builders too um i think some people were a little skeptical as to whether or not that would ultimately hurt the game. I honestly didn't even really think of it until someone mentioned it to me like, hey, does it have combat? Like, oh, yeah, no, I guess it doesn't really need it. I haven't missed it. Like, there's just so much to do. There's so many things to explore. There's so many different things to make. You're basically, you're just constantly in this loop of like little, if you're a checklist person, if you like little checklists and checking things off, so you've got just this mental checklist of, oh, I gotta go make this chair for the Charmander, and Squirtle said that he wants to move to a different house. Oh, and then I wanted to build this habitat for a Hitmonlee, and you just keep sort of stacking those things up. It's my favorite charity, actually. Yeah. Jimmy Carter. I'm 60-plus hours into the game. I believe I finished most of the quests, but I've still got a little checklist of things that I want to do, and those little things, once I check them off, are going to evolve into other things that I want to do. There's also, So there's several different biomes that are related to the story, and then there's also a separate area set aside that is just basically a big expanse of land. It's got some hills and trees and things on it, but it's mostly empty, and the idea is that's your area to sort of shape into whatever you want. So if you're someone who likes doing big custom builds or wants to make a whole town or whatever, that's the space. I mean, you can do it anywhere. You could destroy the other environments and build whatever you wanted as well. but that one's a little more ready-made for you to get started. Does it have, like, Minecraft has seeds where it just procedurally generates when you start a new game? Is it the same here, or does everybody start with, like, the same map? I'm pretty confident everybody has the same map. There is a feature called Dream Islands, which basically work like island tours and Animal Crossing, except you can only do one a day. The Dream Islands are effectively there because, you know, the world is set, so eventually you will run out of, like, lumber. like you can't you won't have any more sources of it if you just like scour the whole world for it the dream islands effectively let you go to these i don't really know if they're procedurally generated or if there's like a pool that they pull from but it's a bunch of different islands you get a different one every time that have different kinds of resources on them so you can constantly replenish your stock of whatever it is that you need yeah rev i saw an arcade cabinet Yeah. What's going on with that? Yesterday I set it up and a Scizor, Scizor? Scizor? I never have to say these things out loud. I don't know. Started playing the arcade cabinet and yelling at it. I thought it was funny. I also watched Machop play a Game Boy. That was pretty good. Was it actually an MP3 player of 40 classic Pokemon songs? It was not. However, I believe this was revealed in a recent trailer. there is a DJ Rotom, and you can put CDs. There's some great lore in this world involving musical CDs that people from my era, I think, will get a kick out of. But you can collect CDs of all these different tunes from the Pokemon games over the years. You can put them into CD players or into DJ Rotom and listen to familiar tracks all throughout the game. You can also, I discovered this the other day too, you can switch the arrangement so like if you're playing the pallet town song or whatever from the original pokemon games you can examine the stereo and you can switch it to from the red blue yellow version of pallet town to the gold silver version of that song to i believe the fire red leaf green mix of that song so you can just listen to the different arrangements yeah you you mentioned animal crossing a bit ago and i've only played for like an hour like i said but you can already hear how many sound effects are just pulled straight from animal crossing like this game share a lot of dna like the the sound effect when you click on something that you're not allowed to do and it's like that little failure sound effect it's the exact same like there's so much animal crossing dna here yeah absolutely uh rev how is the that's actually something i was wondering about i built a house and it's not like animal crossing where they're like come back tomorrow and it'll be done but it did say come back in 25 minutes and it'll be done and you have to wait like a real amount of time for stuff to build did that ever get bothersome or annoying having to wait like a half hour for these pokemon to work on this stuff or is there enough to do that it didn't really matter um it it got bothersome but only because i was on a review deadline and i did sort of recognize the the trouble with that like like it's what a funny thing about reviewing things is sometimes you have to like be able to differentiate between is this annoying me because it's annoying or is this annoying me because i have to play this game in an extremely condensed fast amount of time uh there are some builds that will take you into the next day like some of the really really big builds they'll tell you oh this will be done tomorrow and i remember i had a moment of panic on the first one when i saw that and i texted tom marks our reviews editor it was like hey there's some time gated stuff in here i i don't know what's gonna happen did you try to time travel did you try to i did not try because i in a review setting i was worried about what it would due to the game. I have actually since time traveled because there's an event going on right now with Hoppip and you can just, it's not supposed to start until next week, but you can just time travel to start it. It's really silly. It doesn't seem to hurt anything. And so I imagine you could finish builds that way as well. I haven't tested that. But to answer your actual question, Logan, I think it's fine. There is so much to do that if you leave something to get built, you can really just run away, do a bunch of other things and then come back. I do recommend like if you're doing a really big build, I tend to try to start those at the end of the day, like when I'm signing off for the night so that when I sign on the next morning, it's done. But yeah, it's just, it never, apart from having the review deadline, it really never fazed me that I had to wait for stuff to get done. Well, honestly kind of comforting and just leave it. What's kind of the balance like of guided missions where they tell you what to do and you can just build whatever you want and kind of make the town of your dreams? You can. So in the sort of empty area that I was telling you about, you can just make whatever you want. Like there's no guidance. You literally show up there and the game tells you, yeah, make whatever you want. Have fun. In the story areas, there is like a decent sized section that's tutorial where they're just slowly drip feeding you the different abilities that you're going to need. And I do think it's beneficial to go through the story and build the things that they're asking you to build as you go just because that is how you get access to a lot of stuff that you're eventually going to want. There's an upgrade that you don't get until after the credits roll that makes building so much easier. So if you are trying to build the town of your dreams, I actually recommend just beelighting through the story before you try anything. How long is the story? If you go fast and don't worry about anything else, probably about 20 hours. That's great. So much more than I was expecting you to say. I mean, I did it in 40 because I kept getting distracted because there's so much to do. Well, then it'll take me a thousand. Yeah. I would say, Logan, you are given a ton of freedom in the sense that there's a point after some of the tutorials where they just sort of take the leash off and say, okay, you know, you can do the plot if you want. Or you can not. Like, whatever. And you can go and build things. And you can go attract Pokemon. and there are a few things constraining you, but there are some things constraining you. You'll be missing some abilities if you don't do what they want. But I will say most of the quests are not... They're not forcing you to build the town in a way that you don't like. Generally, they're mostly just asking you to set up habitats, which are like these kind of little squares, effectively. I don't know. You're usually laying out like one to three types of furniture or some grass, and you can put it wherever you want. There aren't rules about where they specifically want it generally. Sometimes they want you to build a house, but you can put that wherever you want. There's not a lot of dictation from the story in terms of, we need you to build this thing right here, and it needs to look like this. There's very little to nothing that's like that. Oh, cool. Okay. Nice. Anything else you want to talk about? I'm very eager to see what everyone else is. So the starting area is the one that I've been building up the most because I'm not a super great decorative person. Like I don't have a great imagination for building spaces. So I've been focusing on restoring the first area, the first town, instead of trying to build up my own thing from scratch. And I'm really excited to see what everyone else's first towns end up looking like, because mine's actually coming along quite well. But it's probably gonna look very, very different from whatever anybody else does. We should start a thread on the Facebook group where everyone just shares when they get to a point where they are like, Oh, I love my town. Share with your ninfrandos, everybody. Yeah, that's cool. because something I already like about it is the mission is build a fort, but then you can build that wherever you want. So everybody's is just going to look completely different, and I think that's cool. And, Reb, to me, it felt like they built a whole game off of Hoenn's secret base idea, which is just awesome because that's such a nostalgic part of those games. And then the fort I lived in in Sapphire was this bush. It was this giant pile of leaves you climb in, and then there's all the Pokemon plushies and stuff in there. And that's the first house that you built in Pocopia. So that was just super nostalgic, and what a cool concept to flesh out in this way. Again, I'm not spoiling anything for anybody. I know people get very upset when I do that, and I will not do that. But if you are someone who is nostalgic, especially for the original Pokemon games, or if you're playing FireRedLeafGreen right now, this game is going to be really great. You're really going to enjoy the story. Also, if you're just a Pokemon fan in general, I mean, obviously it's a Pokemon game. There's tons of references to Pokemon in a Pokemon game, like whatever. But there's all sorts of little Easter eggs and nods to things throughout the series or throughout the other games that people who know the series very well will appreciate. And I really, really enjoyed that aspect. It really resonated with me. Does it do anything like, hey, I see you played Pokemon Violet and anything like that or no? Nothing quite like that, no. I got a ditto rug for pre-ordering or something like that that's in my house. It's very nice. um rev do you want to talk about the story a little bit i do uh so can we i'm not going to spoil like late game stuff or the ending uh i'll just kind of talk about the basic stuff that you learn in the first area but i i a little the reason why i being so hesitant is because when i start talking about it it gonna sound like really heavy spoilers because it is kind of wild I promise you this is stuff from the first area of the game There so much more beyond this If you don want to hear this if you even think you don want to hear this just leave and come back We'll have a time code. Do not yell at me about this. I promise I'm not ruining the end of the game for you. Okay, everybody go on. Everybody where they want to be. Yeah, go for it. so the premise of this game that you figure out very quickly in the first area just from picking up bits of paper uh is that this is canto like this is the canto region you start out in the ruins of fuchsia city if you remember which was where koga's gem was uh and the world has been demolished in some way like these are the houses from fuchsia city this is where that town is and the humans are gone. Like, we do not know where the humans on this planet have gone to. Maybe they're in the next town. Maybe they're another continent over. We just don't know. And originally, like, when the game starts, only Professor Tangrowth is around, and then you pop out, the Ditto, and you are the only two Pokemon within miles or anywhere. And then as you work together to restore these habitats, more and more Pokemon start coming back. And the thought that you and Tangrowth have is that you would like to eventually restore enough of the world that humans will show back up as well. And so much of this game... Big mistake, guys. So much of this game is going through Kanto, this region that you will be very familiar with from these original games, and trying to piece together the mystery of what happened here, why the humans are gone, why the Pokemon are gone, and why they're coming back, and what you can do to solve this problem. And this goes places. I was not prepared for what the actual answers were to any of those questions. I loved it. It was fantastic. There's so many really good nuggets of referential stuff to the original games in the papers and the little notes you pick up. One example that is, I think, not too spoilery that I can share is, So as a Ditto, you have some customization options for yourself. And when you're going around, you can pick up little pamphlets or flyers that talk about the different gym leaders from Kanto, like Misty or Sabrina. And when you pick them up, Ditto can't read. So Ditto can't read the text. You, the player, can read the text. But Ditto can look at the picture, and Ditto sees the picture of Misty and learns how to do her hairstyle. And then you unlock her hairstyle that way. And same with some of the outfits of the gym leaders and stuff like that. So it's a really I thought it was a really cute in universe way to sort of unlock more customization options. But there's also a lot of story that's fed to you that way as well, as well as some really, really excellent environmental storytelling. There are a whole bunch of places in this world where you walk in and have just like that gut punch of, oh, I know what this is and I understand what happened here. And it's cool. It really hits. The music is fantastic. They did some really, really good rearrangements of a lot of the pieces from the original Pokemon games, as well as some new stuff. It's just, they really pushed the nostalgia buttons in just this perfect way. And I didn't expect Pocopia to be such a fantastic Pokemon 30th anniversary game, but it really, really is. And releasing it alongside FireRed and LeafGreen was a smart move. I have a question. Before the apocalypse or whatever happens? Whatever happens, we don't know. Does Tangrowth, I don't, I'm not familiar with the player, like the model. Does Tangrowth normally have those glasses or is that just because it's, is that, okay. I can say this, this is revealed in the first like hour. Professor Tangrowth used to belong to it, be the Pokemon of a Pokemon professor. And those are that professor's glasses. Yeah. But this is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. We don't know that it's post-apocalyptic. Whatever. Those glasses are broken. Is that a reference to the Twilight Zone episode? maybe i think it's called all the time in the world i don't i don't know oh my god where this if that is like forget it this might be the greatest pokemon game of all time if it uh you know very famous episode of the twilight yeah yeah they are i do think this is an absolutely incredible pokemon game like like logan said i gave it a nine yeah headline is pokemon pocopia is the best pokemon game in years i i would rather be playing this than any other pokemon game on the switch or switch to right now that's great sorry i just would actually i'm not sorry this game's great like go play it yeah i think it's pretty self-evident this is really good there's there's just so much care put into it overall and i think from i mean i know this was omega force this was a different studio than than is making like the mainline pokemon games but even though the more recent like i you know i liked za quite a bit as well um and i like i liked i like let's go pikachu and eevee i liked brilliant diamond and shining pearl but like the amount of care and detail and and just love for pokemon that was put in this really really shows through and i think i think that's what really elevates it above all these others for me is just like they they were really really like invested in making this as good as possible and i hope they support this long term i hope we get like more pokemon i would love i would love more areas to build in i don't know how that would probably be a little too much but man i just i love i love this game you're not you're not an outlier you know like this is like this is the the critical general critical consensus on this game is i believe like the highest rated pokemon game of all time so far yeah and i think a lot of that is that it like i haven't played it yet but it looks like it's it's figured out exactly what it wants to be and it's doing that exceedingly well whereas i think with the regular mainline pokemon games there's generations of expectations about what they should be in 2d or 3d or what their graphics should look like and i think there's like a lot of optimism coming off of the one that was revealed recently but leading up until that like you know people people were very judgmental of the graphics and justifiably of what it should look like and this is this is a very clean beautiful optimistic looking game and i'm i'm i think that it's really cool to sort of do a do a spin-off that feels mainline ish and you know again this is just from the outside looking and i haven't played this yet but like i know i know the games that came before this in the dragon quest builder side and they're awesome yeah and they're different than the mainline dragon quest games and i think that's fine it's it's really cool to have all of those things kind of working in unison right yeah totally and just an inspired take just a very smart combination of ideas to use pokemon in this way and like you said brian nobody's gonna get mad that all a thousand pokemon aren't in pocopia like like they do if not every pokemon is in a mainline game like it is it's a fun fresh start for a franchise and it looks great runs great which you can't always say with Pokemon games. Usually the spinoffs do, but not the mainline games. And yeah, I think, Rev, do you think this is going to be as big of a deal as we kind of maybe were thinking it was going to be leading up to this? I think so. I think it's going to take a little bit for word to get around because I do think people have genuinely been, I mean, I don't think anybody expected this game to be bad, but I did get a sense when the scores came out that people were surprised that everybody is saying that it is as good as it is. And so what I'm expecting to happen is I'm sure it'll sell very well over this weekend. Like people are clearly very interested in it. But I imagine over the next couple of months, there's going to be a decent long tail of people like, you know, cheering through the grapevine or seeing this game in action or, you know, craving going back to that feeling of Animal Crossing or whatever it is and picking this up. And yeah, I think this will move some Switch 2s. Like, oh, yeah, for sure. Between this and Donkey Kong Bonanza, like that's that's enough to sell a system for me. yeah i think like kids especially will want this more than like a mainline pokemon game because it does have that sort of creation and imagination um element to it and i i would be very surprised if we don't see a bundle like this holiday season with this game and then like another bundle with you know a little more grown up of a game but yeah this i think kids are gonna go crazy for this game and i think whatever sequel or if this becomes a franchise or something i think this might be like what today's kids sort of think of when they think of more so than the mainline stuff yeah it's got that uh it's got that multiplayer aspect as well like i think it's not gonna quite have the same sort of juice as something like minecraft just because in minecraft you know you can create like you got these like generated worlds and you can create like sort of infinite things this one's like a little bit more limited you can have four players at a time uh It's sort of constrained by the fact that it's a Nintendo game and they keep the guardrails on. But I do think the multiplayer aspect of this seems really, really fun. And I'm kind of waiting because I've got 60 hours in. I don't want to spoil things for my friends. But I'm waiting for them to catch up a little bit so that we can all go to each other's towns and mess around. And I'm really excited for that part of it. Finally used that C button on purpose. For the first time. It's just really good timing, too, for this one. I mean, Wins and Waves got announced last week, and we're going to talk about that in just a second. But to say, hey, your mainline Pokemon fix isn't coming this year. It's coming till next year. But by the way, this Switch 2 exclusive is coming out next week, and you're going to need a Switch 2 for Wins and Waves. So why not get it now and play this? I think it's just they nailed this. And two months after the Animal Crossing update, I think this was really well positioned to do really well. That's Pokemon Pocopia out now on Switch 2. Go check out Rebs' 9 out of 10 review up on IGN. let's talk about Pokemon Winds and Waves now because none of you were on the live show last week when these games were announced they're coming to Switch 2 next year we got a look at the region and the three starters that's Brout, Pombon, and Gequa we got a look at Windy Chew and Wavy Chew these crazy Pikachus who are dressed up to go on a tropical vacation that's what is it Mr. Windy Chew Mr. Wavy Chew and Ms. Wavy Chew I think I got their things right yes there they are right there they are uh yeah Reb what did you think of this the first look at Gen 10 we got it I'm obsessed with this. Oh my gosh. I was not expecting gameplay. And I also wasn't expecting gameplay that looks fine, maybe even good. Like a real video game? Like a video game. This does not look like the most pristine, beautiful game that the Switch 2 could possibly have. But it looks all right. It looks like we maybe caught up a little bit in terms of what a world can look like. Obviously, I have some reservations after Scarlet and Violet, but you know what? I'm into it. I love the setting. I think the setting seems like it's going to be beautiful and really fun to explore and full of variety. The starters are fantastic. Yeah, I'm into the vibe. It's got a great vibe to it. Yeah. Brian, what do you think of this? Yeah, this is the best-looking Pokemon game in a very long time, and I'm not a big graphics snob about this stuff. And, you know, we spent many years covering Nintendo games on underpowered hardware and art direction is king. So I don't really care, ultimately. But this is a very beautiful video game. And this this this Pomeranians incredible. I was I was texting Max Scoville immediately at six o'clock in the morning. I think he probably got like because he's he's he's had Pomeranians in his household for many years now. and uh i think he woke up to like 100 texts about this this little palm yeah he's great um this yeah this this is this is one of the the the best looking uh starting lineups i've seen in a while i'm excited to see how they evolve i really like that angry little bird it's an angry bird yeah yeah he's he's great he's great um very pretty video game i like that it's that it's far away like it feels like they're gonna take their sweet time to make this really polished and really good And I don't know, like this, this is like what we've been asking for for the longest time is is for any sort of game that's on an annualized cycle that maybe regularly lets down people. Take a break, take some time, regroup and, you know, find find what makes this franchise tick with everybody and, you know, make the new generational leap. And we're here. We're finally here. Like it's, it's taken a while across this entire console generation, wherever the switch and switch to fits within all that. That's a much more confusing timeline than I'm interested in getting into, but it's taken a while for this, these, these console generations sort of, sort of find their footing. And I feel like we're kind of getting in a groove across the board with everybody now. And, uh, that's really cool to see. And this is, this is going to be one of those things that like sends the switch into the next, into the next 10 million, 15, 20 million units. Right. Like this is this is going to be one of those generation defining games in terms of sales. And I think like critical reception, probably like I think this is going to be a just a massive, massive hit. And I think that's cool. Yeah, it just it makes me happy to see a long running franchise like this still have juice. We just talked about a game that, you know, Rev loved that's in this franchise. And then this is the next big one. And yeah, that rules. Yeah, I think it's the best week that Pokemon has had in I don't even know how long. at least a decade it's it's been a long time since i personally have felt this enthused about pokemon i mean to be frank i've hated covering pokemon for the last generation i i find it to be a miserable discussion because just you have you have groups of people that all they can talk about is how it looks and runs and yeah that sucks they have not looked good and that is worth talking about and then you have people who say oh but it doesn't matter it's a kid's game it's Pokemon, but it should matter. And it's just, that's all we've been able to talk about. And so you set your alarm for 4am to get up to cover a 6am Pokemon presents. And you're like, here we go again. And no, it was a different story this time. And that is just thrilling to me that I've never been more excited to see a game that's more than a year out. Like that didn't say 2026. Yes, that's, that's fantastic. And you can still criticize some of the textures or whatever and say they're not they're still a little low res like this is not like reb said a perfectly polished modern 2027 video game but art direction goes a really long way and the lighting looks just way better like there's some shots at sunset that look really really nice and the water is probably the best looking part of this but that is very eye-catching and it draws your eyes away from maybe the rougher looking parts of this and that's probably intentional and it looks really really good so i'm i'm just super thrilled about this and pocopia being maybe the best spinoff we this series has ever seen and then getting this which looks like probably going to be the mainline game i've been most excited about since like the ds it's been a really long time since i felt this wave of hype for pokemon and it's it's just great like i just think they nailed this announcement logan i feel the same way i like because i i don't consider myself someone who gives a crap about how games run or performance or anything like that like it's never been something i've cared about and i have it got so bad there with scarlet and violet that i was forced to care about it for a while and i'm mad about that and if this if if this game looks like this and runs at a locked frame rate and doesn't have like any really crazy technical bugs i i i hope i want to go back to not caring i want to go back to it being like a non-issue and i i just i'm i'm praying um and i i finally have like a little bit of optimism for that yeah the the exotic locations here i think work in its favor a lot more than sort of like the repetitive parisian streets that they tried with the last one right like i think i think that like inherently like people know what a building looks like in a video game and when they see one over and over and over again that's just like kind of a flat texture it's sort of lackluster but when you see a cartoon tree you're kind of like okay man you can have a little more you know playfulness with that and so yeah i think i think that totally works in its favor i also like uh to pick up on something logan said real quick back there and this is obviously not something that comes from you logan but you were you were speaking on behalf of a lot of people in the community like i resent the notion that like uh a game for kids should look or it's okay if it looks to totally garbage right yeah yeah i know we all agree there like kids kids actually pick up pretty quick like my kid realized about halfway through the that movie wish from disney that it was a bad movie and it was ugly and like kids once they start like doing you know rolling around on a couch that's when they're bored right when they don't want to look at something for a long time it's why i don't i don't like and i swear i'm not going to talk crap about this game on every podcast this week but maybe i am it's why i don't like roblox i think it's an ugly ugly looking game um and it's incredibly popular and so when something like this comes along and it's got like an actual sort of defined artistic direction to it and you can actually tell that there's some playfulness and fun to it and it doesn't just look like you know dollar store duplos or whatever then i'm i'm all for it and i think that i think that the kids deserve better quality stuff they deserve better kids movies they deserve better uh tv shows and video games and all that like i think there's so many people pandering to the the bottom quickest buck garbage for kids and they deserve better and so so do we as as their parents who have to pay for this stuff yeah yeah you're totally right and it's just crazy to me that if you go back 10 years to when sun and moon came out in 2016 before the switch era even started you'd be shocked if i told you hey the next decade the pokemon conversation is going to be dominated by performance and art direction and graphics that's never been a thing and now it is it's one of the leading narratives of this franchise and to see if maybe that was just a one generation thing and they can shed that now and we can go back to talking about other stuff it's just great and very exciting to me that like we can start talking about how i think that this island setup has a chance to be a way more fully realized version of like sun and moon where you kind of just warped between the different alolan islands and here looks like you're actually traveling between them that's really cool and i think like the the newer hardware the switch too it's going to allow for a way more immersive experience with that and i just think that's really exciting Seth any thoughts on this one? Yeah we kind of joked around about it during the planning meeting but like did they finally take everybody's advice and bring Monolith Soft in to like help craft this gigantic amazing world because I mean nothing will ever come close but is this maybe like Pokemon's Breath of the Wild moment? Because I remember watching that Breath of the Wild trailer the first time and the reveal trailer and thinking well this is like a cinematic this isn't real and then it wasn't lately and so you know this is also the kind of the same thing i was like you look at i wasn't really expecting much i was like like oh here we go let's go through the motions and like oh wow this is actually beautiful and inviting and i'm kind of interested to explore it so we'll see nothing will ever touch breath of the wild pokemon will never have breath well but this is potentially close until we find out it's like eight different areas that are walled off in invisible wall damn it got us again no i've got high hopes we'll find out a lot more to come over the next year that's winds and waves coming out in 2027 a last thing on pokemon here before we move on to other games we're playing seth you've been playing pokemon leaf green how's that going i've been playing pokemon leaf green i'm in cerulean city right now i just got my uh my ass handed to me by the uh is it is it misty the gym leader and uh yeah her starmie just completely smoked me and uh i i don't know why but i tend to gravitate to these older more simple pokemon games even though they are so simple in it in a way that can kind of be grinding like i just enjoy grinding and there's a lot of that here um i'm like five hours in and just running around building up my team doing fun pokemon stuff i didn't realize that this was just the game boy uh advanced version of the game boy game initially and i was realizing like i i don't think there's ever been a generational leap greater in the history of video games as when this was on you know four color game boy and then to see it realized i can't imagine because i wasn't like a little kid back then well i can imagine but i don know firsthand then to see it in like the beautiful graphics of the game boy advantage the super nintendo level graphics like i walked by a lake and i was so surprised that there a reflection i was like really in a little like you know pokemon game it's it's so beautiful but it looks amazing on uh my big tv the colors are so bright i don't know if they like turn the saturation up or if that's just how it always was but i am enjoying myself quite a bit more than i had expected to and i see myself actually finishing this one just like i did with pokemon blue when that came to the 3ds back in whenever that was 2016 i think so having a good time um not like hardcore like jada's doing like a nuzelock run and she started over 438 times so she'd get a shiny bulbasaur because like jada's on a different level yeah i've never seen a shiny by the way i think you're all lying and fibbing I don't think they're real man the Game Boy Advance era was so good what a time dude the style then oh man Seth I've seen you post pictures on Instagram of four leaf clovers so I believe in you you can do this I have a supernatural ability to just buy I look down and I'm like oh there's a four leaf clovers and I pick it up see so look you're already on the right track that's true you got this thank you thank you for believing in me Brian you mentioned you were playing FireRed also i was yeah i i uh i put like 20 hours into that game a month ago before i even knew this this was coming to switch oh wow um which is which is great uh and yeah i i love it i again like i i'm i was i was very aware of the like gen one pokemon stuff on game boy right very aware of it and obviously like what seth just mentioned is like it's a really cool thing that we don't really get as frequently in right where it's like there is just a massive leap between one game to another and like us us olds who they grew up with the nintendo and they got a super nintendo and 1064 game boy advanced and all that kind of stuff that became pretty normal and obviously like there was diminishing returns and we kind of hit a ceiling there but um yeah i i i'm i'm playing this game with save states and all that all that cheating stuff that nintendo made sure that you couldn't do in this version uh i believe so i think that was like wasn't that like the prevent the theory around this being its own sort of skew and not part of like underneath the umbrella of like the game boy app on nintendo online yeah um was that they could sort of control that yeah that stuff right you can't do a rewind millions of dollars but yeah yeah yeah so yeah you know power to you however you want to play this game go for it yeah cool just amazing remakes like if you made a list of the best video game remakes ever like the pokemon gba remakes and the ds remakes of gold and silver are just phenomenal really good modernizations of those games yeah that's pokemon next week we'll talk more about pocopia because we'll all have some more time with it but seth tell me all about ign fines did you know that ign deals is now called ign fines yes it's true why did you change the name well because i got tired of people in the comments saying this isn't a deal when i would post a pre-order that's not really true but uh it's be fines is both a verb and a noun i'm completely forgetting the copy that i had prepared for this i didn't have it open but yeah it's the same deals that everybody loves plus news and cool stuff and stock alerts and like a castle in japan that you can buy for 64 000 it's just more cool stuff for you to enjoy look at that that's ghost in the shells on on sale oh my god so make sure you go follow IGN finds on all of the social media platforms except for Pinterest I'm sorry Pinterest we just couldn't make it but yeah Instagram Facebook x blue sky threads and nice awesome and if you follow it I will be very much your in well I think the biggest tonal whiplash we can do is from talking about pokemon pocopia to resident evil requiem which is out now on switch two brian and i have both finished it uh brian i know you adore this game tell me about it finish it as an understatement uh i think i've beaten this game five times yeah i'd expect nothing less um i've uh i've done every challenge in this game except for the final one and that's just because i i know how to do that at this point um okay so uh first of all, Logan and I were texting about this game over the weekend. Absolute miracle that we can even talk about this on this show. Amazing. Let's just start there. It is so incredibly cool that this next-gen, exclusive, gorgeous, brand-new, groundbreaking, nostalgic Resident Evil game is available day and date on Nintendo Switch 2. This B-roll is amazing right now. Oh, yeah. The toilet graphics. The toilets. I actually, this isn't one of them, but I I sort of want to make a video ranking all the food in this game because there's a lot of people have just left dishes of disgusting food. And also some good-looking sandwiches. It's weird. Okay, so Resident Evil Requiem basically answers the question of how do we take all of these disparate elements that have built up for Resident Evil fans for all these years? There's survival horror that has been there from day one, right? Limited ammunition, limited healing items, jump scares, all that stuff. and the action stuff that came with resident evil 4 right with you know leon doing cartwheels and backflips and jumping out of a second floor window and all that fun stuff how do we bring all those people back to the table at the same time and give them all a game that that makes them happy well probably impossible right it's probably impossible to make all of those people happy in fact i've already seen a weird backlash with this game where they're like people are like it's not as good as resident evil 6 i just want to let you know we don't need to do that yeah that's that's not necessary i i'll allow it for attack of the clones because you guys were five but resident evil six i was four we don't have to do that okay that game was not great it was fun in co-op i get it but if it was so good it wouldn't have made capcom stop that franchise down forever so we could get seven eight and now nine all available on nintendo switch 2 right now okay so what i love about this game is it takes grace who's a newcomer and she's this fbi agent she's dealing with like these this this history that's like really weighing her down and she's thrown into the deep end on this like horrible thing all of a sudden and she pairs off with leon s kennedy who's arguably one of the best most fun video game characters of all time and uh they go on this really cool adventure where they are sort of tag teaming this really gorgeous really cool world that revisits some previous uh areas in resident evil but also some brand new things that also feel like classic kind of resident evil puzzle boxes right there's a there's an area in this game very early on that's like a patient care facility so good it feels like one of my favorite sort of big puzzle boxes since the original spencer mansion in resident resident evil remake or uh you know the rackham city police department in resident evil 2 and so um i just really love this game i think this is like such a fantastic step forward for this franchise i loved seven i really really loved eight nine is just on another level to me and it takes some of my favorite things of four some of my favorite things of like resident evil one two and three and puts them together in this game it's like it probably take you like 13 14 hours to play through and then once you beat it there's all these challenges that unlock like beat it without using healing items beat it in under four hours and i went back and i did all this stuff and you unlock these cool toys like infinite rocket launchers oh my god like the first one yes yes yeah so all of that it is just like i'm gushing about this game because it is so much of everything i love about resident evil coming together into one place for the first time in a really long time and i i love the main characters i love the environments i think it's gorgeous it looks really really good on switch 2 and it just makes me so happy that this franchise that i've loved for so long is still doing so many cool things and reinventing the wheel selling really well yeah getting great reviews so yeah resident evil never you know never really left but it's it's we we are so back yeah it it's i'm not as big of a super fan of the franchise as brian i've played the remakes that they've been doing the last few years resident evil 2 3 and 4 remake are the main ones that i've played and this is my favorite resident evil that i've played i think this and one of my favorite survival horror games i've played i just think it's phenomenal and what i really love about it is that i i'm not great at horror games i mean i play them with a friend we pass the controller back and forth uh it's just never a genre i really played a ton of so i like playing in kind of a co-op setting and usually in resident evil games i start to get a little burned out by the end of what it is didn't feel that at all in this game because this is two short resident evil games smashed together into one that are completely different from each other like it's not like the two campaigns of two that are basically the same but a little remix this is like okay your grace and you are hanging on to every bullet and you're terrified to miss a headshot because you will run out of ammo and you have this one gun that's called the requiem which is awesome and on the nose and corny and very resident evil and you only ever have like two or three shots from this that takes out any enemy and basically one hit and so you're stockpiling and deciding okay when am i going to unload all these into just a terrifying creature coming at me and it's tense and the exploration and puzzles are brilliant and then you get to take a breather as leon where it's like all right remember this boss that took you like 15 minutes of like sprinting around hallways avoiding this thing hiding under tables to kill well now you're leon and you have a shotgun and a chainsaw and an axe and you can kill it in 30 seconds and it's just these completely different vibes that they bounce back and forth between and usually you're grace first and you're leon second and so you get to do this really methodical careful execution as grace and then as leon it's like well i have the upper hand now and you just completely mow through them and i love the different vibes that that creates and i think it's balanced really really well and yeah i just had so much fun i played this game in one sitting we we started at 9 a.m and finished at 11 30 p.m and it was one of the best it was just awesome yeah that's so cool dude and we have we i do this thing with my friend where we we have a timer on the table and it goes for 60 seconds and then it rings and then you pass the controller so we pass the controller every 60 seconds which sounds insane but it does it feels like really does it feels like you're playing the whole time like it feels like you're it's not like oh now it's my friend's turn it's like you're always just like in it and it's just the best way to play these games so i think i just had a new series for ign video 60 second game play 60 seconds second hand so that timer went off like hundreds of times yeah yes yes that's awesome yeah it's just we've been playing games like this for like 10 years like this is how i love that it's so awesome together i love that no well said logan i yeah again like it's i i really love this game and like look if you're if you're kind of new to resident evil or you're worried about the difficulty spikes and stuff like that there's there's a there's a casual mode that that you know it's not it's not baby mode it's not the easiest thing in the world but it's it's like you'll you'll be able to you'll be able to get through this game right fairly easily uh if you're an old school resident evil fan there's a mode in there that uses uh it's like a classic mode it uses the old ink ribbons uh in the grace section wow and those are really cool now grace can now craft ink ribbons but you can also find them but you have a finite amount of times you can save and so if you save and then you use all of your bullets and all of your knives and all of your healing items and you save again you kind of painted yourself into a corner for a little while and things get really tense and really scary and so like you have to start there's that sort of push and pull risk reward thing that happens that i think is so smart and so clever and just really feels awesome yeah there's also some great great monsters in this game some really clever boss fights just just some really cool environments there's a lot of uh there's a lot of stuff in this game that i i really dig just from like an old school horror perspective in that like it sort of feels directly inspired by stuff like uh day of the dead like the one of the original romero movies and you know zombies are kind of going about their lives as if they were still living and you know like there's a kitchen with a chef in it and there's a patient care facility with some patients who are kind of walking around there's a doctor who has a chainsaw for reasons i can't explain maybe that's the kind of surgery he was he used to be doing but it's great um i i love this game it really makes me hope that this is kind of the way forward for this franchise right like this is the future is that kind of balance that put that push and pull of like we've got we've got some old school sort of survival horror elements and we've got some actiony you know over the top elements and i think all that stuff uh is what this franchise really does best it also makes me hope that resident evil 2 3 and 4 remake come to switch too yes um yeah nintendo fans were on they were there on the ground floor day one for leon's first big you know uh third person over the top adventure with resident before on the gamecube i was there i bought the chainsaw controller I pre-ordered that game. I got the demo desk and I played it a thousand times. So seeing Leon's new adventure on switch two just makes me go like, okay guys, it's time. It bring us resident evil two remake, which stars Leon, resident evil three remake and resident evil four remake, which, you know, obviously to me, that's one of the, one of the greatest remakes of all time. So I'm replaying to remake right now. I feel like that's, that's doable. Maybe Captain will drop all three of those on the same day again. Sweet. But I think there's hope. I think the future of this franchise, will live on switch to just like it lives everywhere else. And that makes me really happy. Don't let this lady kiss you. Yeah. She will bite your nose off. Yeah. Oh, it's that thing all the time. Okay. And something I love about these games. That's like, I play why I play them really is the puzzles and the world design is just great. Like these just mini Metroidvania, Zelda temple type things that like the care center is like, there's one level where you're kind of like underground as grace. And the whole conceit is you need to find three batteries to power up this terminal and it takes like an hour to do this and you need to be smart about which battery do you go for first because somewhere you'll need two of them to get the third and a bunch of different little puzzly set pieces happen as you're going and yeah it's just it's fantastic and this game balances action set pieces with tense horror with puzzles just really really well very bloody game too grace has this thing she can inject into zombies that explodes them all over her just this blood just bloody explosion and it makes it so the enemies can't get back up and you can only craft a few of these through the game so you really have to decide oh how much of a pain was this guy do i want this one to get back up or should we or should we save this for later and it's just it's great can't recommend enough capcom support of switch 2 has been incredible pragmatis coming to switch 2 in a co in next month monster hunter stories this month yeah resident evil last month they've just been an amazing third-party support so far for switch 2 yep yep yeah and i've played the switch 2 version a little bit i'm replaying it on switch 2 now and it's great like i played it originally on ps5 i'll admit i know nintendo show but i'm playing it on switch 2 now and it's really really great version cool that's resident evil requiem and now we want to remind you that it's humble bundle's 15th birthday and everyone's invited it's time for a brand new month of gaming jump into the humble march choice bundle and score an amazing lineup of titles right now you can grab tempest rising chance of cenar sworn entry and odyssey 3 hd brett and fred zero hour small land survive the wild and hard west too this all supports the malala fund an organization working for a world where every girl can learn and lead by breaking down the barriers that hold back the more than 130 million girls out of school today head to humblebundle.com through april 7th to start playing today well we got a lot of indie games last week at the or this week at the indie world showcase that nintendo hosted earlier at 6 a.m another 6 a.m showcase we didn't do a live show so we're going to cover it here and they shadow dropped three games that came to switch to that day that's mini shoot adventures blueprints and rotwood and some combination of us are playing all of those right now so let's start with mini shoot adventures which this is one that i've been waiting to come to switch for a very long time this is what if like legend of zelda or a link to the past was a twin stick shooter and it's just phenomenal and seth i know you started checking this one out last night what do you think so far yeah you're like oh you should play this you like stick shooters right i was like yes i do as a matter of fact and this was a game that i i was so tired yesterday like i was super ready for bed and then i stayed up later than i meant to because i was playing this game because i love it so much it is so charming it is so fun it's uh it's yeah it's the legend of zelda but you're it's a twin stick shooter like it's that's the only way that you can really explain oh i didn't know you could use it a little flip though oh whoa okay i'm watching the b-roll and i'm like i'm learning extra things about this game yeah yeah i it it's one of those things it's like it does the sort of exploration the zelda sort of metroidvania thing in a way that i don't get bored or frustrated when i get lost and then there is that always that joy of when you finally figure it out and it's like something so obvious like oh my god all i had to do was go this way and it like you know it just it feels so wonderful to control but it also feels wonderful to play um another thing that it does amazingly well is i went into an area that was just i didn't realize was i was underpowered and i was having a really hard time but i was still getting through it and then you know it was a dead end i didn't have whatever the power was that i needed to get to the next part so i found that you know that right hand turn that i'd missed earlier to go where kind of i was supposed to go and i was like oh my god this feels exactly right i have so much power now it just makes me feel good and it's such a fun game it's so charming the music it reminds me of disaster pieces um bez soundtrack in a way yeah the music is incredible yeah it's super super good and then like the ships they're not you're not like a pilot like flying a ship it's all they're the characters and there are other ships that you meet and they're your friends and they like you and they sing songs to you and it's so it's so amazing i i didn't even hear this game until you know uh they mentioned it at the indie direct and i don't know how i missed this is this game is awesome and the good news is it's on it's on game pass if you have an xbox and you you know you're like i don't know about this but this is a game i would say like 100 just go buy it's like 15 as soon as logan was like i think you're gonna like this i bought it like mid conversation yesterday so yeah oh my god what a wonderful game i'm really looking forward to playing more of it but now pocopia is out and i'm like oh i don't know i'm gonna i don't know which one who my baby's gonna be for this week we'll find out tune in next week yeah i i'm trying to finish this before i get too invested in pocopia i if you are listening to this and you're a nintendo fan if you're listening to this you have to play this game like this this is a must play game if you like zelda if you like metroid if you like nintendo games i am over the moon with this game it is one of my favorite games i've played in a very long time it's just this this zelda when people say this game's like zelda i'm like it's probably not it probably looks like zelda or tries to be like zelda but very rarely are these indies that people say it's an homage to Zelda actually nail that this one does and I don't say that lightly like it has dungeons where you need to find small keys and they are non-linear and you get upgrades in the dungeons and these metroidvania upgrades are phenomenal because every single one you get serves both combat and exploration in a different way like the super shot you get is a super powerful beam that can kill enemies faster and it also lights torches which you need to do a lot in the puzzles in this game it's every single one has is this dual purpose thing that's great every dungeon ends in an awesome boss battle that's very zelda like like this game is just it's perfect there's nothing i would change so far about this game i think it's one of the one of the best like zelda likes or metroid fans i've ever played i i cannot gush about it enough i glad you said that because i did think of one thing sometimes the load times are a drag And that is my only complaint about it It it loads sometimes slowly like more slowly than i would expect on a system that has you know uh such a fast uh addressable memory but once you in the overworld it never loads again until you leave it like it is a seamless world it's when you're going in and out yeah yeah yeah brian what do you think of this one um so yeah i i'll to echo what everybody said uh i think this is one of the best games on switch period i think this i think this is one of the best indie games ever made i 100 of this game on steam deck when it first came out it is such a perfect handheld game it feels so good in handheld mode and uh i had i'd i'd kind of just put it in the back of my head i guess i just assumed it was everywhere already and then they announced like it's on switch too and i'm replaying it again now i'm like five or six hours in i will 100 it again i think it it feels fantastic the um the hc rumble stuff on this feels really good like i love i i think it looks gorgeous on the on the on the switch too um the uh gameplay is just fantastic like we we talked about you guys talked about how like it's got obviously some zelda influences obviously some metroidvania stuff it's also got like some mild rpg systems so even when you're like bombing around the world and you're looking for secrets and stuff like that you can kill enemies which fill up this meter which unlock these gems and you trade in those gems and your shooting range goes further or your speed gets faster or so you're constantly constantly have that little bit of like number go up type of thing and it's not like overtly in your face like you know uh full-on rpg elements you're not like you know sort of like babysitting stats and all that kind of stuff um but you're constantly getting little little gems that create a stronger and stronger version of you and there are optional challenges there are like little puzzle rooms there are these like races that unlock little things and i i just think this is just a fantastic game this is you know it we can we can tell you all day like if you if you like shooters and you like zelda this is the game to play but even if you only somewhat like those things a little bit i promise you you'll love this game yeah and if you're like oh i don't really like shmups i can't deal with like the bullet hell stuff you can go into the settings and you can you can turn on infinite uh you know infinite health or like infinite boosts like anything you need to do like there's there's really cool options there so even if you're like you know you're you're a parent they have a little kid and they want to play this game but you're you're you know you're worried about the frustration level about dying over and over and over again you can even bypass that and just have a chill experience like everyone said the music's awesome it's got this really like 70s synth vibe to it uh yeah i i love this game cannot say enough good things about it it's dirt cheap on switch 2 and switch buy this immediately this is this is one of the best zelda inspired games i've ever played yeah yeah i'm glad you mentioned the races because that is a really cool part too it's just these optional things underground where you use your boost and use some of your other moves to beat this other little robot to the goal so they head back to your base camp and it's just yeah this game just nailed it just feels great to play and i'm not a bullet hell player i've never really played a ton of twin stick shooters like this but it's just really awesome i feel like a lot of action adventure games like this think they need to have souls like combat and that's kind of the only way that a lot of these the only approach a lot of these games take but now this game is just completely different form mashed together with this zelda exploration and puzzle solving and metroidvania elements where you get an ability and you're like i remember 10 places i can use this and then you do this bullet hell stuff to get back to those place is just it's so inspired it is just such an inspired take on multiple genres with so many fresh ideas and the power progression is really really good too like you're constantly unlocking new things and beating stronger enemies that you were too weak to take down before yeah like if i were reviewing this i'd be close to giving this a 10 right now i can't i think it's one of the best games i've ever played reb you got to play this game i okay yeah right now no i'm mostly just blown away because brian you said that this this has been out or seth you said one of you yes it's this was on steam uh i want to say about a year or two ago yeah april 2024 is i believe just baffled that like we haven't heard about this i know where has it been yeah i know it's a lot a lot of times when things come to switch is when it seems like they really um take off like i know hollow knight was another example of this i just think this is an indie game like in that tier with those indie legends that we talk about. I am not like a bullet hell shmup player and that's another thing that I love about this game is it never feels like anything I can't do. And sometimes I feel amazing when I'm like, oh my god, I actually dodged that giant glowing orb or the 4,000 that were coming and I somehow snaked my way through. One of the things that I like the most about this is you can constantly re-roll your abilities with no penalty. which is how I ended up kind of in that area where I was too overpowered. I was like, well, I don't need to, you know, whatever. I don't need firing range. I just need power. So I re-rolled everything, put it all into, into how powerful my shots were and then made it to where I couldn't go any further without like the next item. But, oh my God. Yeah. I think Logan, I'm kind of with you. Like if I were reviewing this, I would be like, this might be, this might be a 10 for me, but it's, it's play it. I think you would enjoy this a lot. It's wonderful. Well, if you can drag me away from Pocopia, we'll see. You can do both. And World of Warcraft. You can do three things at once. Not well. So if you're listening to this, that's what juggling is. Check out Mini Shoot Adventures out now on Switch and Switch 2. It's on both. So if you don't have Switch 2 yet, you can still pick this up on Switch 1. And it has a free upgrade when you do get a Nintendo Switch 2. Yes. so there you go yeah the nintendo switch 2 edition well another big game that came from the indie world that's only on switch 2 is blueprints and rev i don't know if you checked it on switch yet but i know you played this last year and it's one of your favorites yeah i've not played it on on switch yet or and i and i probably won't because i finished it like it is it is as finished as it could possibly be i do not need to go back to it uh but blueprints yo dude this game rules uh what do we need do we need the premise like if people heard about this what is this game yeah i don't actually i remember everyone talking about this and how much they loved it i have no idea what this game is at all oh my gosh blueprints so it is it is this weird like combination of a roguelike and a puzzle game uh so you are this this young man uh who has inherited uh this glorious 45 room mansion from uh your deceased uncle great uncle i it's been a bit since i played relative who has died and he's left it to you in his will on the condition that you go into this mansion and find the 46th room of his 45 room mansion. You go in and, uh, the, this man was an architect, uh, and he has designed this mansion. And when you go in, you're presented with three doors in, in the front room and you walk up to a door and it lays out plans, blueprints for, for three rooms that could potentially be on the other side of that door. And you choose which one you want because there are all these different rooms. They have different things in them. Some of them give you buffs. Some of them give you items, whatever. And you pick which one you want, and then the door opens, and that's the room that's on the other side of that door. So you keep going like that, and you basically draft in the blueprints the architecture of the house as you explore it with the goal of solving the mystery that will lead you to room 46. And inevitably, as you draft, eventually you will run into enough dead ends or thoroughly explore in such a way where you will not be able to go any further that day. And so you go to bed, and then the next day the whole house resets anew, and you draft a different path of rooms and try to make it. It is a phenomenal puzzle game. like whoa the the rabbit hole on this puppy goes down so far uh you'll you will find room 46 within depending on how you play 10 to 20 hours probably i played for 100 hours there are so many more there's so much more after that uh it is the the puzzles are really good there's so much information that is just like laid out in front of you as you start to explore it's a notebook game, like you want to have a notebook in front of you because you'll be seeing things on the walls. Like that seems like it might be important later. I'm just going to write that down. Some of it is, you know, notes. Some of it is like portraits. Some of it is just like looking around the layout of a room and looking and seeing what's there. There's keys, there's metal detectors, there's items you can craft. There's all this stuff as you explore and you start to learn like the weird intricacies of the house. And then it's also a really incredible story as well. And I don't I don't want to spoil it for people. I don't want to get into it. But as you go through this house, you start to pick up on the lore of this house, the lore of the people who have lived here, the world that they live in. This is a story about war. This is a story about family and inheriting problems from them. This is a mystery because not only are we curious about what happened to room 46, there's a character that you discovered is sort of missing. And there's a mystery as to what happened to this person that you may or may not solve. I loved Blueprints. It's really great because it also has multiple off ramps. So finding room 46, if you find it and you're satisfied with your experience, great. Have a nice day. But if you want, there are layers and layers further of secrets and story and things to explore and things to unlock as you go that will just slowly unfold as you continue to play. Like one of the really wonderful things about this game is if you're ever stuck or just don't know what to do, just keep drafting. And you will inevitably find a room or a secret or something will happen that will give you a clue as to what you're supposed to do next. You'll be percolating on things and you'll forget about them. And then like 10 hours later, you'll come across something and be like, oh, that's what that was for. And you'll pull the notebook out. oh my gosh I I was obsessed with this game when it came out last year like holy moly I love it with all my heart I will not play it on the Switch just because I cannot I cannot get back into that again 100 plus hours I have a notebook that looks like something a deranged person wrote it's just really really nuts but yeah if you like puzzles at all you do have to be kind of a puzzle head if you if you're more of a roguelike person but don't care for puzzles don't cool yeah this is a great one that i thought seemed like a great fit on switch when it came out last year and i'm glad that i made it to switch to great indie world just i thought we got a lot of really good stuff that's a great fit on switch uh including rotwood which brian i know you've been checking out yeah so uh this one's cool it's uh sort of like a um roguelite with uh some castle crashers in it which is that's some that's some very good peanut butter and chocolate right there um i'm not in love with the multiplayer ui which is kind of a bummer but i i've been playing a bunch single player and i i dig it you're basically out there collecting stuff beating up enemies bringing stuff back to your base getting stronger doing it again and uh everything's got this like really cool sort of cartoony hand-drawn look to it uh i it it feels awesome like the like there's that tangible improvement sort of feeling to it where every time you get back out there you get a little bit better a little bit stronger you die get a little bit better a little bit stronger and i dig it i'm still pretty early on but i want to see this one through because i i love the progression so far cool who makes this game i think it's the the creators of don't starve i think okay i don't know i'm getting kind of like a like a behemoth vibe like a uh alien uh castle crashers sort of alien hominid but in you know the modern era this looks awesome yeah the art looks really really cool and i think that's a switch to console exclusive which is great like that's only on pc right now and then coming to switch first so go check that one out too there's so much to play on switch right now like we've spent this whole show talking about awesome games uh coming to switch 2 and switch and that's really great including on mario day mario clash and mario's tennis are coming to virtual boy nintendo switch online as well as mario versus donkey kong coming to the Game Boy Advance Nintendo Switch Online. That's the one they remade a couple of years ago. So now it's back, but you don't have to pay $50 for the remake if you subscribe to NSO. Brian, I don't think you've been on the show and talked about Virtual Boy. Do you have yours? I do. Yeah, have you played it? I have. You don't sound excited. Yeah, I mean, this is probably the fastest I've ever regretted spending $100. Thank you. There's someone with some sense on this podcast, finally. Yeah, it's okay. Like, I get it. It's cute. I guess on some weird level, I think it's amazing that they revisited this, that they built the new one, that they reflected on their largest hardware failure in company history. I think that this is still like a bad, cumbersome, stupid system. and now I own it and I don't know where to put it. So I'm part of the problem. Yeah, I think the actual way they built this thing is not good. They're adding different colors to it eventually. Right now it's still just deep red. That's why the first one failed. Exactly. Not to get into this side of things, but the emulation community has figured that out decades ago, that you can just play these games in black and white. Um, it was really funny cause I, I, I got this thing in the mail, took out my switch to downloaded the, the Nintendo switch, uh, virtual boy app and I plugged it in. I put it on the table and my kid was like, what's that? And she's like, is it like a VR thing? And I was like, yeah. And she put her head in and she goes, why is it red? And I was like, there is the only review you need. I think what was really funny about this is my first experience with it was I got it right before the app showed up. um on the eShop and uh i played captain toad and it just straight up it's just not like when you hit pause in that game the the red and white makes it so you can't actually see any of the buttons like it's almost impossible to back out to any menus like you're not supposed to be doing any of that very clearly you should not be doing what i tried to do yeah you can't see at least yeah you can't you can't see most of the like the corners of the game like toad gets lost it's a bad way to play that uh on the virtual boy games like there's there's bleed in the corner so you can sort of see like your living room and stuff yeah man i shouldn't have bought this i don't know why i did this i'm stupid don't do that my like my partner got one yeah uh and it showed up and it's still in its box sitting on the table in the living room and i just keep looking at it like are you gonna put this somewhere? Why do we have this? It's better off in a box you can at least put underneath something. Or you could throw out or something. It's sitting in my office right now. I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this? I'm going to take it and put it in the closet with the valve index and see how long it takes them to notice. You should. I don't know. If you have a lot of nostalgia for the Virtual Boy... I bought the Virtual Boy... About two months after it came out, it was on clearance at Toys R Us for like 30 something dollars. And I got like three or four games with it. And I thought as a kid, I was like, whoa, this is so cool. But I also instantly knew that it was a failure and that we were never going to get anything like it again. And we really didn't. We got the 3DS, which I think took the original vision of what the idea was for this system and it made it awesome. and then we got Lobo which attempted it's own thing yeah it definitely existed I don't know like man I talked about how cool Pocopia looks I talked about how Resident Evil Requiem is one of my favorite games of this generation I think Mini Shoot Adventures is fantastic I don't want people to think that I'm only capable of sheer positivity and optimism because I don't think I should have bought the Virtual Boy some ideas are bad some ideas are bad and it's okay no I stand by what I said when this thing came out I love my Virtual Boy I would never recommend it I love it so much I would recommend the cardboard one so you can play Wario Land because I think Wario Land is secretly one of the best 2D platformers Nintendo's ever made and nobody's played it and it's awesome I don't know if you've craned your neck in the Virtual Boy long enough to play Wario Land Brian but that I finished that game I love that game I think that game deserves better I think that's like one of those games that it's it's one of the sort of most uh secretly amazing first party games that is stuck on a on a thing that people shouldn't experience it on yeah and i i think that they should they should put a 2d version of this game somewhere and they should even if it's black and white or they add whatever that you do something should be done with this game so that more people can play without having to see a chiropractor and lenscrafters.com. Yeah, well, Mario Clash and Mario's Tennis are the next games coming to the Virtual Boy app. Happy Mario Day! There's your 3D Mario. Mario Clash is finally coming back. And then our last piece of news here is two new Kirby Air Riders amiibo were announced this morning on the Nintendo Today app. This train just never stops. Sword Kirby on Dragoon and Noir Dedede on Hydra. Those are the two legendary machines that you can build in City Trial. Sword Kirby on Dragoon that's a new sentence that's true not even a sentence there they are $50 last time they came out I'm not sure if these new ones are going to be also but very expensive these are very cool they're the swappable ones but man they're just going nuts with Amiibo still on Switch 2 these are actually I mean they're amazing they're beautiful I'm sure the craft on the craftsmanship in them is incredible i'm not gonna probably not gonna buy yeah same i'm out i'm out you're out wow i'm out on all of them i still am i gotta get chef kawasaki i mean come on that's oh i see what you're saying nintendo character ever but i'm out on the 100 completion it's too much too much i think that's wise yeah it only took 10 years gotta save money for that virtual boy yeah yeah i don't regret it i don't regret the 100 i don't do it either i would do it again i played it for all of 25 minutes and i still don't regret i probably will never play it again that's okay no i'm gonna play mario clash for sure that's one of the other decent games that ever came to this thing i'm definitely gonna play that and mario's tennis has donkey kong jr and he's only in like six games ever and i love that guy so i'll play that too did you do a whole you did a whole episode on him i remember this a segment yeah i'd have to it was kind of a whole episode it was a lot we learned a lot about that guy and his tank top and it was it was like 10 weeks straight like what we did for talk of the kingdom yeah we should do um we should do donk of the kingdom and talk about well that is another episode of nintendo voice chat in the books we're here every friday with audio on your favorite podcast app and a video on spotify or the ign games channel on youtube if you like the show please tell a friend or leave us a review a rating a nice comment wherever you're listening it's the best way to support us next week we'll talk even more about Pokemon Pocopia once the whole crew has played it and whatever else happens I feel like there could be some news next week I don't know anything that's just my theory I thank you so much Brian Reb and Seth for joining me thank you to Tayo for working behind the scenes and thank you so much for listening but for now that's all the time I've got I gotta be back to playing Animal Crossing New Leaf on my Nintendo 3DS have a great week we'll be back next time with more NVC the only place you can get the thing get the thing