Game Scoop! 850: Konami's Own Antiques Roadshow

What's up everybody? Welcome to IJ and Game Stoops. I'm your host, Damon Hadfield. Yes, there are going to be multiple scoops this week. I'm joined in studio by Nick Lamone. I'm back, baby. Sam Claiborne is here. Why on a Monday? Why did you drag us in here? I will. I will get to that in just a moment. And back after a couple of weeks away is Justin Davis. Scoop! People were worried about you, Justin. They were wondering where you were. Yeah. You're back. I'm still alive. I'm the one that should be saying I'm back. He's like John Stuart. He only works Mondays. Yeah, and it is a Monday. We're recording early this week. We've got a great show for you. We've got another really fun announcement from Konami making good use of their IP. I don't know if you guys have seen this one yet, but it's a... Oh, I know about this. In particular, I think Justin is going to be excited for this. They're opening up their antiques. And also, we've got Yoshi P from Final Fantasy saying, Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong. Am I, unk? No, the kids are. The children are growing up too fast is what he was saying. Yeah. Yeah, and they're making the games too slowly. But first, we are recording on Monday because this week, Nick and I are going to Boston for PAX East. And we're going to do a live game scoop there. It's going to be a little bit different though from what you might have seen in the past. We don't have a panel. We're going to be... Where is it? We're going to be at the... We're going to be at the trolley sour house there at the entrance of PAX East. Oh my God. Oh boy. So yes, we will be giving out sour gummies. We're also going to be doing a whole game scoop show there. Yeah, that's going to be on Thursday at 1pm. If you show up, you could get some prizes, some fun giveaway stuff happening there. And then Friday, there's also going to be... I've heard that IGN does do other podcasts, but podcasts are locked. We'll be there on Friday. Yeah. And I'm going to be helping produce that as well. Same time, same place. Same time, same place. Trolley booth. Same chances for prizes at the trolley sour house. Yeah. We want to... Wow, it sounds like mouth puckering fun. What's your favorite sour bright crawler? That's the worm. I'm a big fan of the red, blue ones. Well, yeah, probably. That's probably going to be my favorite too. I'm going to try them all. I'm going to try them all. You can't even stop me. It'll be me and Nick, and then we'll be joined by Miranda Sanchez from Unlocked. So if you're there on Thursday, 1pm at the trolley booth, come by. Say hi for some fun and games. Not fun and or games. I've planned fun and games to happen simultaneously. But what if I want to have only games and no fun? Then maybe it's not for you, Justin. Maybe the games are not for you. It actually says that when you walk into PAX, you must be willing to have fun and games. Yeah, I want only fun, no games. Remember when we did a game scoop with Seth at PAX East six years ago, and then the world collapsed? That was just going to say, yeah, the last time I went to PAX East was with you and Tina and Seth was there. And it was in late February, 2020. And a big event happened just a couple weeks after that. Is this what happened? They unleashed the T-Virus? Yeah, yeah. The convention center. You guys, cartridges. And there was really good retro game shopping there. We had a good time. I think this is us doing that. That was great. But yeah, if we are the harbinger of World Doom, then you're set up well again. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I should point out I did not get sick at all last time. I've been drinking my emergency to prep my immune system. And I'm excited. This is my first PAX ever. I've always wanted to go. And finally making it happen. Thanks, IGN. Nice. You're going to be blessed. And hopefully it won't be 10 degrees like it was when we were there. It is going to be cold and rainy, which is not my favorite combo. You'll be inside. I prefer I get a little bit colder so we could have snow, but we'll see. Yes, no one cold is cool with me. Okay. Okay. Headline this week. Younger generations are struggling to connect with the Final Fantasy series because it takes so long for new games to come out. Yoshi P says Nick, who's Yoshi P now? Kyoshida, he is the creative director of creative business unit three. They made Final Fantasy 14, a realm reborn and so on and so forth. He's partly responsible for that game being a giant success. He also most recently made Final Fantasy 16 and also oversaw the remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, the evil lease alliance. Where's the P come from? I don't know. Okay. That's a good question. I actually never thought about it. Nail. He's a Mr. Final Fantasy these days. He's a very nice guy. Very charming. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, just what he's talking about is there was a new story about this recently, right? Some games are taking so long to come out now that kids like Dragon Quest was like this, too, of like kids are going through their whole childhood and never getting to play one of these games. And so they're not able to connect with them like we were able to when we were kids, for example, where there are video games coming out every couple of years in the series, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it cuts both ways. Like we're sparing the generations of Kingdom Hearts, but they're also not getting to Final Fantasy. Take that back right now. It's so many years. Gasp. Oh, some hard, hard pro clutching happening. But jokes aside, and I think that wasn't a joke. That was just true. But Kingdom Hearts, it is a really good intro to for a special for you and action RPGs and stuff. And it is funny that, you know, for the I don't know, like, you know, seven or eight year gaps in which you should play this as a seven or eight year old. You're not going to play these games. But yeah, this is totally true. But then we also remember they put out two giant Final Fantasy Final Fantasy's in one year, like two years ago, which was pretty amazing. No one made them do that. They chose to do that. Two giant Final Fantasy's. Which ones? Rebirth and 16. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Six months apart. Oh, that's right. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They, but what's a little bit strange about this argument is that Final Fantasy's are already like, you know, drop way or these other franchises have things that like, you know, oh, I can't wait to get more slimes and like hear the music again and do this and do that. Whereas like every Final Fantasy is like kind of unconnected to begin with, like super different from a gameplay perspective. Obviously they don't have story connective tissue between them, like completely separate unique stories. So it's weird, Justin, because last week Mark was on this show saying that you thought that Final Fantasy's were direct sequels and he argued with you about it. Got it. He told you what you thought. That's not a joke. That actually, that was a conversation that happened last week. Okay. I'm pretty sure it was the exact opposite. That sounds like it, right? People were like, what you just said. Yeah. I always, I thought it was weird. Usually I think it's whatever Mark would sound like Mark is wrong. That's what is the fighting words. But he did agree that Final Fantasy's are not sequels. Okay. So Final Fantasy seven was 1998, seven or eight. It's seven or eight. It's one of those. It's one of those. But then Final Fantasy eight. Someday the truth will be known. Was right there. Eight or like 1998 or 1998. Three of the PS1 generation. That's one thing. And then Final Fantasy, I know Final Fantasy nine was 2000. Correct. So they're right there. The three giant Final Fantasy games. And then you have Final Fantasy 10 like shortly after. 2001, 2002. Video games are cooked, man. They can't make them anymore. Final Fantasy 15 came out in 2016. Final Fantasy 16 came out in 2024. Yeah. It's an interesting new dimension. I mean, look, we've been talking on scoop for a long time about like video games. There's so time consuming and expensive to make that they have to sell a million, billion copies and a game can sell eight million copies and still be a failure. Right. When it takes, you know, 2000 people, seven years to make it. But like honestly, like this new dimension of like, you know, the young kids and the youth not being able to get attached to these franchises and form these kind of like, you know, I am really a big fan of this thing because it comes around every couple of years. It's like, I just hadn't really thought about that till I started seeing these reports. And I think it passes the smell test. It makes sense. And it makes me sad. Yep. So I have Yoshi peas number here. Let me call him and then Nick, you're going to call Cushing Nakanishi who directed Resident Evil Requiem and we'll do a three way call. And we'll just have Capcom tell, tell Square Enix how they're doing it. Yeah. How they do it. Bro, just release more games. Tell Square Enix just cut your games like in half. Well, well like Final Fantasy 16, I really like that game, but I think once it gets into Act 3 and you're like 50 hours in, it's like, all right, I think I'm ready for this to be over. I think, I think a lot of what people enjoy about modern Final Fantasy tends to peak after it's Act 1, which is approximately 30 to 40 hours in. And I think at that point, that's probably a contributing factor to the games taking such long times in their development cycles. And, and granted, look at Claire, Claire Obscure, right? Exactly. And that's a 30 hour RPG, 30 hour being like, that's if you really wrench it of all of its content and juice. I feel like 30 to 35 hours is a sweet spot. That's games don't really need to be longer than that. Yeah. I think the creator of Final Fantasy 14 would be like, we always have a new Final Fantasy. It's updated yearly. It's ready for every generation. And please look forward to the release of Dissidia Duo Desim coming to your mobile devices sometime this year. Maybe one game a generation could be 100 hours, but like that's it. That's all you really need. Well, I also think like half jokingly, but like, what's Tetsuya Nomura been doing? Like, let that man make some more video games. It's been a minute and he, because back when he was making them say what you will about his, his taste, I personally enjoy it quite a bit. I did enjoy 15. No, he did not. He didn't know that was Hajime Tabata. He was, well, now it's complicated. All right. Because Tetsuya Nomura was overseeing Final Fantasy Versus 13, which was the emo prints, which then became Final Fantasy 15 that was taken over by Hajime Tabata. Okay. Okay. Final Fantasy seven. Okay. And he's still making video games somewhere? Allegedly. He also did Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts two and supposedly Kingdom Hearts four. He also did Kingdom Hearts. He's on all the Kingdom Hearts. Oh, that's what's happening is that the Kingdom Hearts games are behind a soft lock of it. But we don't have, we don't have like the data, whatever prompted Yoshi P to even make this guess as to why younger fans aren't connecting with Final Fantasy. We don't have the data that shows like Final Fantasy rebirth and 16, 90% of copies are to gamers 35 and older. Something like that, right? We don't see that piece. Well, I think what they're looking at is the sell-through rate of plush Chocobos and that's just plummeted. Yeah. Well, the comments on our article are all like, oh yes, that's what it is. It's the length of time. It's not that the games are mediocre now. But what they're doing is they're taking his comment and saying, no, that's not why I don't like it anymore. But his comment was really, it wasn't talking about the readers of this article, right? It was talking about younger gamers. Yeah. They're just conflating them. I have a long, as a man who abdores all things Final Fantasy, I have long thought that perhaps this is the thing that qualifies me as an Unk because maybe it's just destined for to be and only resonate with a certain group of people, namely young men and they're like 28 to like 40 years range. That happened with Halo. Yeah. And it's like, maybe it's just the time and place thing and maybe it will come and go. It makes me sad to say, but like, yeah, maybe Final Fantasy is just for like my generation. And then it's done. The kids today, their brains are all cooked because they don't play anything, you know, but they grow up on Roblox and Minecraft and then they graduate to Fortnite and then they're never, ever going to play Final Fantasy 7. This is my most like old man coded opinion. Is that like, you know, that's what it doesn't have. It doesn't have building or shooting in it. And then they get a disposable income and then purchase Crimson Desert and then spend 120 hours playing that game. And then they say, this game's great. I don't understand what you're talking about. I think, I think we talked about how long these games are. We're like, would it would Final Fantasy 16 be, you know, one ounce a worse game if it were 30 hours shorter and then like, in fact, it might actually be a better game. Like I realized that they'd have to rework this scenario and yada, yada, like these really big, long, gigantic games. Like part of what makes that experience fun is when it's an open world and when you have freedom to go north, south, east, east or west, explore wherever you want. Feel like you're having a, you know, an adventure that you authored a little bit versus, you know, an adventure that's being guided. Like if it's more linear, like a Final Fantasy, it's like they can start to feel very, very, very long. We get it. Like you like Crimson Desert Justin. I actually do like, I do kind of like Crimson Desert. There is, so the, the, the comebacks are not super common in video games, especially when a game comes back and becomes popular with younger generations. But I would argue that an RPG from 1988, 89, just like Final Fantasy one had a big resurgence. That's the Zelda two RPG, which had a resurgence for Beth the Wild where all these kids started playing Zelda and they were not playing Zelda at that young until that game came out. Right. And that was a way that the game was reframed after a little bit after Minecraft, right, a little bit after, you know, kind of accessibility ideas to reach younger audience. And then, because there's these perennial games like Mario Kart, which is just going to stay a younger, played game forever. And I got, well, we went best generation of Smash Brothers right now, but it doesn't really matter because we still playing the last one. But the, but for, for Zelda, they really did have to have a comeback. So it's possible to bring, like there's enough elements of Final Fantasy, which I think are universally appealing and great, but I don't think it's a gritty game of Thronesy, Final Fantasy 16. No, I mean, but how good is Nintendo at this, right? Like Zelda, Zelda, Zelda's a great example because Zelda's just as old as Final Fantasy, almost exactly down to the year, right? And then it made a generational game, one of the greatest video games ever sold made that sold three billion copies. Whereas like, ScreenX doesn't seem, they seem a little bit more stuck where like, what does it mean to make a big mainline Final Fantasy game? And what is it? And how do we reinvent it and sort of get to the core of that experience while keeping it, you know, relevant and interesting to another generation? And they haven't quite managed to find as bold of a way forward as Nintendo managed to find with Zelda. I think they were close with this amalgamation of something like Rebirth and 16. If you take the grittiness of something like 16 and it's more entry level style storytelling and combine that with something that is a little more demanding gameplay wise like Rebirth, because I would argue 16 is relatively straightforward. It's a pretty simple action brawler game. Whereas Rebirth has this very interesting hybrid action turn based RPG at its core that I think is super duper unique. But honestly, a lot of me for the past few years has also been thinking Final Fantasy tying itself so heavily to its numbered entries might be to its detriment once you're 17 games in now, you know, at least 17 main mainline entry games. It makes me wonder if the next one we get will be the Final Fantasy, you know, something, some sort of, not reboot of the franchise, because every game is kind of a reboot to some extent, but just something that loses the numbered branding for it. Because I think maybe that's like Mark, they'll think I need to play the last 16 of them in order to enjoy the new 17. I don't know. But I do think I'd be curious to see what the reception was like. And I'm sure these numbers exist for stuff like Stranger of Paradise, you know, a Final Fantasy Dark Souls like game, which rules, by the way, if you haven't played it, highly, highly, highly recommend that game. But like how something like that fares compared to something like 16, a mainline Final Fantasy game. I got me wondering what game franchise has the most like numbered sequels, like as Final Fantasy 16, like, you know, whatever, I've been in this business my entire adult life, so it doesn't seem weird to my ear. It's just like, yeah, it's Final Fantasy 16. But if you take a step back and look at it from like, you know, an outside in perspective, it's insane that it's like, it's the 16th sequel and it actually has that in the title. Right. And like, has any other game ever done that before? RPG maker. Probably. Yeah. No. They don't put the number in the title like that. That is a good question. Like what's the highest numbered sequel in a video game series? I think it's Final Fantasy. Like did something reach 20? Like I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Dynasty Warriors maybe? Yeah. Is there, Nick, is there any mainline Final Fantasy you don't like? I'm going to be a little bit controversial. I don't really like nine very much. You son of a bitch. Yeah, I think nine. I think it's just too slow. It's too slow in the game. Bro, there's so many of Final Fantasy 2 is right there. You don't need to do this. AI says that Final Fantasy 16 is the highest numbered sequel in video games. Obviously we can verify it with human sources. It's AI, it's AI, Justin. It's right. Yeah, Mega Man is going to get up there. My pitch to get everybody back into playing Final Fantasy is just make a game about Tifa. Can we all agree on Tifa? Yep. Now I'm listening. Go on. Not Sam knows what the kids want. Yeah. Yeah, that seems like a pretty safe bet. The Bouncer, but with Tifa. You know, it's a fighting game, but with Tifa only. She's the Bouncer. She's the Bouncer. Sorry for the voice note, but can we get a takeaway tonight, Mum? No, no, we've got leftovers in the fridge. They'll do it, it'll be nice. Sorry, I'll be eating it. Who's for pizza? Pizza! Sure, we can give you lots of data, but what really matters is friends and family. Now we're happy to be your second most important network. Tesco Mobile. It pays to be connected. Terms apply, see tescomobile.com slash why Tesco Mobile. Industry leaders are transforming business with AWS AI. From Phillips advancing patient care to smarter auto design and games that evolve in real time. AWS AI is how innovation happens every day. I should get Justin and Nick's thoughts on Crimson Desert in a sec, but since Resident Evil Requiem was mentioned, I'm doing it. I'm in the basement. I have not healed. I'm not healed. I'm not crafted. But how many hours? I don't know. It doesn't have any game time, or I don't think so. If you checked your stats to make sure you didn't screw up. I checked my stats, yeah. I upgraded my health from the parlor and I was like, oh, I hope I didn't mess with everything. And that was okay. Yeah, it was fine. What are you talking about? Justin, to catch you up, we've all beaten Resident Evil Requiem. It's very replayable. You can unlock things like infinite ammo if you do things like play it again without healing, no crafting, beat it under four hours, this sort of thing. So that's what I'm doing. I'm doing a no heal, no crafting run right now. But I did upgrade my health in the parlor and I was like, oh, I hope I didn't screw myself over. But nope. So for everyone who's wondering, if you're doing a no health run, you can upgrade your health. That's allowed. Steroids are fine, but the herb, not so much. Yeah, don't, yeah. Got it. Say no to herbs. Don't partake of the herb. And I think you're through the kind of hard part because after this, it's like you just shoot everything Leon for a couple hours and then you're in the medical facility and it's pretty easy to avoid the Zambos in there. I can tell you exactly where I am. I'm in the sewer where they're dumping the bodies into the blood. Yep. Yep. I'm ready to do that. On my second run. Yeah. Run there too. I love it. And if you also, you can also set up a big CP payoff there too by doing the final challenge which you have to activate at that part. So if you want to read about that and then do that part, you basically have to leave your game on for like 15 minutes. Yeah. It seems complicated. You find the doll in Marion's empty cell, you can't take it. No, yeah. You have to trigger the circumstances to get a different doll later on. Okay. But I mean, check the IGN Games guide for it because it's a very solid guide. We got there first. It's, the game is just right at the start. The game is just really fun. It goes down smooth. I hardly ever immediately restart a game after I finish it and I'm still having so much fun with it even on my second run. It feels like an arcade version of it. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. The Resident Evils, I mean, they're not, not my cup of tea as I've said, but I do really respect them a lot for, for exactly what you're describing of like, it's just got this old school, you know, infinite ammo. When was the last time you heard a game talking about that cheat and like unlock it? It's just so fun. Yeah. Big head mode. Metal gears like that too. Yes. Exactly. And we talked a little bit about Crimson Desert last week. Mark was on and he actually enjoyed the game a lot as well. And so, Justin, you said you were enjoying it. I like it. I should say, so we're recording on a Monday. I was hoping I was going to have a couple more days to play and I was out of town, so I just got home. So these are night one impressions of like, I played, I played on a Sunday and I didn't know how hard M the game was. I know it's rated M, but I'm like, I think I think I'm okay with like my 12 year old watching some violence, but then they're just throwing around C words constantly. Oh wow. They really go into the deep end on bad words for that one. And like, I'm like, I'm sorry, you can't, this game's too grown up for you. Anyway, no, I mean, so I, there's, we IGN gave it a six out of 10 and I agree with that six out of 10 and, but I like it anyway. I don't know. It's a little bit hard to explain. I think having your expectations kind of set of like, I understand I'm going into a six out of 10 experience and then like, am I going to get enjoyment out of this? And the answer is yes. Um, I think of the context that for that, that you have to like set up though, it's like, Hey, Justin, you want to play a real piece of shit? Yeah. Sure. I got some extra time. No, it's like, it's what you're saying. That's what Crimson Desert is. I'm just making a joke about the way he set it up. Yep. No, it's absolutely like you need to be in the mood for like a big open round world F round. Like I want to play a game where I'm going to chop down trees and harvest lumber and get iron and collect bugs and collect flowers and just accomplish nothing for like a whole night and like, you know, and then elements of it are going to be really janky, but then elements of the exploration are going to be really rewarding. And I'm going to find something behind a waterfall. And it's like, it's just that kind of game. So I really like, I'm actually really impressed with the combat. I think it's very snappy and responsive and smooth. And then it couldn't feel more different than the non combat, which is like cliff controls like a tank. And like, it's completely crazy. Like even doing something, I had to walk up a spiral staircase and he's just like, just like slowly turning to walk up this staircase. And it feels so different than how it feels when you're fighting, you know, these armies of dudes that like, I think the combat's really good. And I think the sense of exploration in the game and the world design and just general immersiveness feels good. Like it's kind of like a take it slow kind of game of like, I'm just going to walk around town and I'm not trying to like check off missions and do stuff as fast as I can. But just like immerse myself in this game world. I'm having a great time, but I can't believe I thought for sure everyone was exaggerating how nonsense the storyline is. They're not like, did you talk about this last week? No, not really. This is this is not an exaggeration. This is literally what happens. And this is the opening 20 minutes of the game. So if you don't want to have this spoiled for you, skip ahead, but the game opens and your character dies. And then they're brought back. You don't know why or what happens. You're just alive again. And then you get a little thing pops up that your quest is to go into a tavern and arm wrestle someone. Or why you're doing it. And then you win the arm wrestling match. And then the quest changes. The quest pops up and the next quest is go outside and give a coin to a beggar. It doesn't say why. So you go outside and you do that. It's cliff is an inherently good person, Justin. It literally feels bugged. I'm like, am I missing story? Like what's going on? And then you give a coin to the beggar and then it says the quest changes. It says, go down into the sewers and you go down into the sewers. And there's a woman down there tied up and you rescue her and she's like, oh, thank you so much for rescuing me. And then she disappears into like dust and petals. Like she's like a magic woman. It's completely insane. Awesome. And like you can't. And I'm positive. This is cloaked in a central mystery or anything like that. Like as the game progresses, people are like, oh, you're back because they all knew that you died, but that's like basically the end of it. No. And like, I honestly can't believe that that's how the game opens. It's so baffling. And it feels like, and if I'm being really generous to the developer, Pearl Abyss, that it feels a little bit like a fever dream. And I think maybe it's supposed to feel that way. Like, is it supposed to be mysterious? Like, why am I back and what's going on and who is that woman and why did she disappear? But instead it just comes off as weird and completely crazy. And like, once you kind of just, you have to just shrug that off and be like, this world is really beautiful. And I'm, you know, and I'm collecting bugs and I'm collecting quests and I'm collecting loot and like, you just can't, you have to kind of enjoy this game on that level and meet it at that level. I mean, look at this footage that we're watching now. Like the combat's really beautiful and fun. Um, but man, what a, what a, what a strange, weird game. Um, I do, I do like it. Um, I like it, but I agree with the six out of 10. It's hard to go much higher than that. And Nick, how did you find it? Uh, I'm like 10 hours in right now and I played the game pretty the patch that dropped today plus I played a little bit after the patch dropped this morning or last night. Um, I find myself, I've, I've come to terms with the fact that I don't like it particularly much. However, I am playing it for what I'm justifying as academic reasons. I need, I need to understand, and I think I do understand why people like it because I do think it's wide net that it casts is really interesting. I think one, it's one of the most expensive looking video games I've ever said are seen, um, and expensive as in, it looks very nice. It looks very cutting edge in terms of its graphical fidelity and all of the physics and particles. It's, it makes great use of my PC hardware and it's nice seeing how far I can push my PC in some really meaningful ways that, you know, 4k, 240 Hertz. It's very, very fun and cool. Uh, I like exploring the world. I like the possibilities of what I might find. However, it seems like it all feels in not connected in any meaningful way. Like there's no, almost like there's no intention behind all of the things that you can do, just the fact that you can do these things, but there's nothing intuitive about how it goes about showing you, you can do these things. You know, right leading up to launch, I saw a lot of like Instagram reels and TikToks getting served to me saying how this is a finally a grown up version of breath of the wild. And I, I had to pause at that a little bit. I, I, I like took that to heart to some extent. I was like, well, this is how a lot of the world is framed. Like people who are not, you know, uh, people who are not at IGN, people who are not me and people who are in the content creator space. So my peers to some extent, and this is how they're framing it. Like, do they view breath of the wild as a childish game? Uh, it, it raises a lot of questions, but it has me thinking, well, why, why is it that this is a grown up version of breath of the wild? Is it because they say the C word like eight times within the first 10 minutes of the game? Is it that the game doesn't explain anything? And I think that's what a lot of people like is the fact that it doesn't explain anything. But I think the beauty of something like breath of the wild is it also doesn't tell you how to do anything or say how to do anything. It teaches you intuitively how to do these things. And I, this doesn't really do that. In fact, you kind of accidentally discover you can do a lot of things because of a lot of the systems within the game currently, as of, uh, March 23rd, 2026 are broken and just kind of don't work in any meaningful way. And, uh, to Justin point, yeah, Cliff moves horribly. Like, I remember maybe better now. It's supposed to be a little bit better now. I played it again this morning. I was like, nah, he still doesn't feel great. He is a little more responsive, but, uh, I was telling Damon this earlier. I was watching one of our other coworkers before the game had come out. Uh, one of our, uh, gameplay capture people, they, he was playing the game and I was like, wow, that looks beautiful. Like what a gorgeous looking world. I cannot wait to play this game. And then I got the game. I bought it, loaded it up and within three seconds of me touching the analog stick and seeing Cliff move, I just said out loud. Oh no, he does not move. Correct. It's like, I know making a video game is very difficult, but when you make it, when clearly you're inspired by so many games that feel good to play and then you make a game that does not feel good to play less than failed. You got it wrong up front. Back to the drawing board. Yeah. It fights you every step of the way with the controls. He's very heavy and very tanky. And if you've played, you know, our red debredemption two, it's a similar ish vibe of like it takes them just a few too many frames and like a half second too long to kind of turn around and like, you know, really puts an emphasis on animations instead of letting you cancel out of those animations and just go on and do the next move and next thing. So it doesn't feel, I like, look, it, it absolutely does not pass the test of like, oh man, I can't wait to wrap up game scoop and go play more. Like I like the game, but I like it in spite of itself. Um, it's kind of, you touched on something pretty important there, Nick, which like, I think that this is, it's kind of like empty calories. The game, yes. 100%. I've been saying that in my head a hundred percent. And like, by the way, like I like empty calories. Yeah, chips are great. Fries are great. Yeah. I eat a lot of Doritos. And so, but like that's, that's what it is, you know, where like it has a million and one gameplay systems of like, you know, you can steal cattle. And then when you steal cattle, like, you know, you have a wanted level and then you can go sell those cattle and like, you can do all this stuff, but then the cattle sell for like 10 copper and there's no reason to ever engage with that system and the game ever. And like, you know, that, that is a small example of the entire game is kind of like that, like David. So this is a world with thousands of NPCs in them and it tracks your reputation with every single NPC individually. Like you can pet a cat and then your reputation with that cat goes up. Or greet a vendor and your reputation with them goes up by plus five. And like, those are two actually maybe not great examples because you do have a reason like you can have the cat as a pet. If you get them to max level and like everything, you just never know what's gonna, then you have the cat as a pet, then you can get armor for the cat. And it just goes on and on and on and on, but there's kind of like, there's not really a lot of ultimate point to a lot of it that I've seen so far. But as I said before, the world is beautiful enough that I'm willing to kind of keep playing it. And I am, I am interested in, in the combat scenarios. And, you know, that continues to be fun and interesting for me. There's some interesting stuff in the skill tree. So it's like, I think there's fun to be had. And I suspect that this might be like a really good game in like a year. That's a lot of people saying it might be really fast though. I mean, they're updating it so rapidly. You know, for weeks and weeks leading to launch, there was a completely non-existent inventory system and nobody playing this game could store anything. All their quest items, filled up their menus, they couldn't drop them. It's like so broken and it was fixed in like a day, which makes you think like, well, if you could have just done this the whole time, like, how was there not the feedback to do that? And then also it's impressive how fast it's being fixed. The same thing's going to happen with controls, right? Like they're, they're working on fixing those like pretty quickly. There's some other stuff too. Like they've really nerfed some of the challenges that we were like really expecting to be stuck on. They just said, OK, you don't have to do that anymore. Yeah. So it's like that it's heartening that they're moving that quickly through this. Like, but what does that like say about this? Like, what a crazy game. Yeah, like that's never happened before in our, in our lifetimes. This is not a thing that normally happens. It's not an unusual remark. I mean, for as long as video games have existed, people have always justified, like it gets good after 10 hours. And I genuinely believe that this game does get good at the 10 hours. I don't think anybody's saying that. A lot of people are saying bosses are getting longer and you finally unlock magic after 60 hours. That's not good. The game feels a little more tolerable to me at the 10 hour mark. But I just wonder, like, is that ever a good justification? And I granted everyone has a special game to them that does genuinely get good at the 10 hour mark or whatever. But like, I don't know if that's a thing I want to see. This is what you're talking about this. Well, this is my seven would like to have a word with you. Yeah, if they actually fixed every single thing, all the bugs, all the jank, if they make Cliff, you know, control like the Witcher three, right? If it was that snappy and that good, which by the way, they never will. But like, if they managed to clean all of that up, like the out of story. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. Like they can't patch a personality into the game. And like, so that's that's like the absolute peak it could ever be for me is an eight, you know, and as of now, my initial impression is like, I completely agree with that six. You know, one of the patches today is that they change the C word to cupcake. It reminds me a lot of these bloody cupcakes. It reminds me quite a bit of something like Genshin Impact in that I liked playing Genshin Impact for 20 hours because I like seeing what was in the world. I liked the magic system and I just like to poke around and like see if I can climb stuff. And at 20 hour mark, I realized I ran into the friction point where the game wants you to spend money. And I feel like I'm going to in 10 hours from now, I'm going to get to a point where I was like, all right, I think I saw just about everything I need to in this. I think I'm good. And then I will put it away until some update comes out where people are like, no, no, it's for real. It's like really good now. And then I'll play it then for another 10 hours and then be like, cool. You will have forgotten every system and it won't matter because they're ruby. But that's always the problem. But it won't it won't matter, though, because none of it's tied together in any meaningful way. It's just I will enjoy it. It feels like a game that's in a movie that someone is just playing in the back. I was like, yeah, that's what video games look like. All right. Just replay on console. Yeah, I'm playing on the Xbox Series X and I'm playing in quality modes, which is 30 FPS. Is it a little bit? Yes, it does look very good. It's very it's very sharp. So I don't know. I don't know if that's, you know, just an artistic choice or if it's missing some kind of anti aliasing. If there's some bugs there, I'm not quite positive, but it's very noisy. I have a hard time kind of telling what my eye should be drawn to or what I should be paying attention to. But it is very beautiful and I'm not experiencing any, you know, frame issues or, you know, bugs or issues on on, you know, a base console. It's been fine. Damon, there's a really funny, there's different. There's just so much back. I mean, we can move on, but this is my last anecdote of just like, I'll go through these stretches of like, man, that was really fun. That was really good. And then like just the straight, just weirdest thing will happen that like cancels it out. And what I did was you can switch your camera angle, but one of the camera angles is right behind Cliff's head. And the back of his head literally takes up the entire screen. You can't see anything but the back of his head. Half view. Yeah. And I'm like, how did you like, and then that because it's zoomed in and then the next zoom in is first person. But it's like that angle. Why does it exist? Why did you work on this game for nine years? And then that's one of your camera angles. And then like that moment immediately follows something that was like super dope and super cool. And like that's kind of the Crimson Desert experience in a nutshell. That camera button is pretty impressed. I was like, damn, you can't really play the whole game in first person if you want. That's cool for happy for the people that's exciting for. It's an interesting game. It is very interesting. People who play. I'll report back next week. Yeah, everyone who plays it feels some sort of way about Crimson Desert. I have not played it all myself. I don't think Sam has either. Yeah, I'm going to get it started this week, though. I said it out of a lot of work to do with Pocopia. And so I'm trying to get through that. And that game is amazing. And it's lots of systems that make sense and all touch each other. Yeah, that's going to be my playing game. That's going to be my playing game. Is it all type play? Let's talk about it on our Pax Games. There you go. That's a good idea. Copy Miranda has been playing a lot of it, although she switched to Crimson Desert before. I love it. I love Pocopia so much. OK. OK, well, Crimson Desert is a very expensive looking game. Let's turn our attention to a game that does not look expensive, but is very exciting to me. Justin, do you hear this new Konami announcement? Do you know what I'm about to bring up? What if I told you the announcement was made by Konami and Jupiter? OK, oh, no, I did see this. OK, yeah, anyway, the Picross. Picross as Konami Antiques Edition. I like their color. I think the antiques is a little mean. I know. What? Antiques? Am I an antique gamer? Is this one? I'm into antique gaming, but more. Look at this list. The list is not in alphabetical order at all. It's just randomly listed over. Robo detectors on there. Oh, there's I've paused the video right at that moment because there's so many random things on here. So, oh, for all. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. This is Picross. It's the puzzle game where you you uncover pixel art by counting numbers on rows and ruling out places where Mark could be. I love these games. Justin does. Peril of these games. They've made a million of them. And now they're doing licensed tie-ins. There's one for Sega. I looking this up, I didn't even realize Capcom has one and S&K Neo Geo has one also. So I'm going to that's going to be my other playing games. Nice. Anyway, this Konami one over 80 titles, stuff like Yihar Kung Fu, Twinbee, Stinger, Russian Attack, Double Dribble, man, just all everything on here. Metal gear is on there. Jackal, Blades of Steel, Jairus, Gradius too. There's so many Kid Dracula, Peradius, Sunset Riders, Axelay. There's a lot of deep cuts in here. It's just a perfect like, you know, Picross is what they made literally 20 that were not themed and not licensed. Just like, hey, here's another pack of 500 Picross puzzles, buy it and then like, OK, I'll buy it every single time. But like tying it into like you get the classic music and then the art that you're making is little pixel art from these games instead. It's just such a perfect, you know, peanut butter and chocolate marriage of like mix this nostalgia with the puzzles instead of like instead of making some generic cactus with my Picross puzzle, like I'm making the Gradius ship instead. Like it's great. It's just it's it's just a perfect thing. You believe this all started on just Game Boy? Yeah, Mario's Picross, which is why it's a little bit wild. Nintendo hasn't done their own version of this since then. Right. Well, there's some I don't know quite the relationship. Maybe I should have looked before. Nintendo owns the rights. Yeah, Nintendo owns Picross, but they don't know. But Jupiter is an independent company. So yeah, they make Picross, but Nintendo owns the word Picross. And so there's some relationship there between this stuff. Definitely appears on Switch. That's where it appears. Yeah, I think they're all exclusive. Well, but Jupiter was making them on the DS before. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love this. Yeah, I know it's great. It's super rad. And I buy them all and then I play them until they get hard and then I stop. Probo detector to return of the evil forces. Finally, a mega pro pro detector for those listening is Contra. In your think, I consider I consider myself a real Picross connoisseur, not as much as Pair. Pair is the real Picross sicko. I think he literally plays them all. Yeah, like I I really like the Picross games and I played almost all of them. And they did. They went through a long phase where every single Picross game was adding like, oh, we're going to add color Picross now. We're going to add the multiplayer Picross and we're adding the giant ones, like the whatever they call the 40 by 40s. And then they just stopped. And before they stopped, they stopped adding new features like 10 games ago. Before you go and think like, oh, this is, you know, a Tetris, Medi-os or Pushmo killer, it's more like Sudoku than their logic. Yes. Yeah, you have to. Yeah. It's literally numbers and boxes and finding an adjacent box. Yeah, I've never played a Picross. I love their logic puzzles like Sudoku is a good analogy. If you want to start with Picross as Konami antiques, Nick, it's out April 30th. Oh, man. I won't be doing any plane travel by then, though. I know you'll be back from Japan then, too. Yeah, I'll be back from Japan. We need shirts that say I'm a Konami antique. That'd be a sick shirt, honestly, what they should make. Yeah, it'd be great. No gradient ship. OK, let's check in with the listeners. Hey, listeners, howdy. Listeners, remember, you can always reach us at the email address gamescoupatign.com, just like our friend Charlie Gadson and San Diego did. Charlie says, I saw everyone's friend Wario 64 tweeting about a sale for Trails in the Sky first chapter from 2025. It piqued my interest, so I watched the trailer, enjoyed it and finally looked it up on IGN.com as one does. And to my surprise, I did not have a review for it, despite having uploaded gameplay videos of the first few minutes. I get it. I didn't review every game that's released anymore like they did 20 years ago. But after sinking over 10 hours into it on Switch 2, it seems like this is one that flew under the radar. This JRPG bleeds smart triple A production values and not just in terms of visuals. It has unique combat that feels fresh, snappy and challenges the player to keep up in the same ways. Xenoblade does both voice acting, a zoned open world with seamless transitions in and out of towns and a Final Fantasy 7-esque materia system that takes center stage. What? How does this work? Can we commission Justin to come out of review retirement for one last dance? Crazy that this game is getting slept on. Explain Justin. I mean, Justin has all this time to play total shit games. You might as well play good games. So the the trail series is near and dear to my heart. I actually have not played the trails in the Sky remake, but I've played almost all of the other games. So they're they're long JRPGs, you know, the 40, 50, 60, you know, the longest ones are maybe these 80 hour JRPGs. But what makes them interesting is that they are all interconnected. So like there's and then there's these subseries, there's trails in the Sky one, two and three, and then there's trails of Cold Steel. There's four of those. And there you could start with Cold Steel one. You don't need to have played trails in the Sky. But if you do, they're in the same continuity and take place on the same continent and then some characters will show up like, I don't think it's much of a spoiler, like the playable character who you play as in trails of the Sky shows up as an NPC in trails of Cold Steel. And you can find out what they're up to now and like what adventures they're going on and even minor NPCs like some shopkeeper, someone will show up, you know, game to game or, you know, a prince or someone like that. And so it's I described it on IGN. It's a little bit like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but in JRPG terms, because they're all interconnected and they tell these individual stories, but it's also building up to one kind of like big final crossover event, which I think Neon Falcom is, I think they've sort of announced that the final games are going to be the final ones. Like, you know, the series is like finally wrapping up after multiple decades. And what they were finding, I don't agree. I think trails in the Sky is extremely playable, the original trails in the Sky, but they thought it was getting a little bit old and a little bit dated because the franchise has been around a couple of decades. It's like a it originally came out on the PSP. I played it on Steam, but it's like a PS1 era. Kind of like more old school looking RPG. And that is like the starting off point was starting to feel a little bit off putting to like younger gamers or newer gamers or gamers that were trying to get into the trail series now. So as kind of an experiment, they remade the original trails of the Scott trails in the sky. It, you know, they did a full remake ground up remake, you know, with new visuals, new everything, new combat system to make it feel more modern, but retell that story. And if it went well, they're like, OK, they're just going to keep doing the remakes now and remake all the older games. And it seemed like it did go really well. It sold well. So I suspect we'll probably start getting more of them. So you're going to review it or not? I'm actually not a bad candidate to review it because I have, I'm very, very familiar with the games and, you know, familiar with RPGs, but. You really think they're going to put out like a final fantasy version of this? What do you mean? The final game, like they'll actually do that. Yeah, I think so. That's interesting. It's like they're big. It's like they're big adventures event. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And they're really they're they're deeply, deeply satisfying to sort of like have some character like, again, if you don't play them in order, it's fine. Like you're not going to be completely lost. But some character that was in eight games ago, show back up and have the continuity and lore sort of respect that. And then just the fan service element of like, oh, man, like what's this guy been up to it? Like it's so much wish fulfillment of these games that you played and loved. And then they end and then you're like, well, I'm never going to see these characters again. And then to find out, you know, what happened to that corner of the world or what happened to this town or what happened to that character? And they end to have them come back a decade later and sort of get to spend a little bit more time with them is it's just great. It's the best. They're really, really good. I believe they have the remake sequel of this announced and that's coming soon as well. I've never played a Trails game, but honestly, I was this close to pulling the trigger because like our listener, I also saw that Wario 64 tweet and I was like, I think I'm going to do it for this. Like I always do the thing where I buy like two JRPGs to play on a plane. And then I just fall asleep or watch something on my phone. So I don't know. I think I might dive in finally into the Trails universe. The original Trails in the sky, if you know, the non remake version, but the original game, it's not like it's that old school and clunky and impossible to play. It's just, you know, it's an old school RPG. It's an RPG from the early 2000s, right? And but on the Steam version, it has some quality of life features. Like it has a fast forward button. And so like at the end of every single battle, just like fast forward through the results screen, like I think I ended up saving 10 hours doing that because my Steam playtime was 10 hours shorter than what my in game clock playtime was. Right. So this is this V-roll here is the original game. You can see it's looking a little bit. This looks great. I don't know. I mean, I know, like Nick, I know you and I think it looks great, but I'm just saying if you're just spelling of shares on. Yeah. If you're if you're a different type of gamer, this might start to feel a little I think that's Charizard. That is OK. Interesting. It's just wild that Neon Falcom is 45 years old and they make beloved games. But, you know, I think you've asked people to list their favorite Japanese developers. That would be pretty far down the list. It's not as well known. There's some East fans out there still. Yeah, East is their other. East, they just got East 10 Nordics like the the super deluxe version of the East game from last year. That just came out. So, Justin, why do you think we didn't review it? It just we didn't. Didn't think we had someone on staff, knowledgeable enough and with with with enough time. Yeah, I don't know. So to be clear, like I haven't talked to our, you know, head of reviews, I'm not 100 percent sure I could guess that, you know, very long game, which makes it expensive to review if you assign someone on staff to it or freelance. And I could also guess that very, very long running franchise, right? Like maybe we imagine that, hey, who's ever going to buy it is buy it. Like we like to review games where there's like this groundswell of interest of like, hey, we can really help a lot of gamers out and a lot of people really want to know our opinion on this and like opinions on the trails games are kind of pre baked in. I would guess, but but I haven't, you know, I haven't talked to anybody about that yet. So I'm not positive. Cool. Justin, about to throw all those waiter on be like, I need to review two days, make it happen. No, I'm not. I'm not I'm not a bad person. I'm not honestly, because I like I said, I know the games and love the games really well that I would be a good candidate to do it. I think it's man. I think it has a 90 on open critics. So other it has been very well reviewed. Y'all about to get me to drop what what did Wario say it was, 46 bucks or something? I think that's one of those. I mean, what Justin was talking about, like not jokingly, that's like a with a niche series like this, that's a self fulfilling type of review situation where like, you're going to give it to the trails fans. Yeah, wherever they are. And it sounds like that's always consistently good. And they're always going to try to get more people to get on board with trails. So that's a recipe for a good score. Yeah. Idle money lies in your current account, picking crumbs out of its belly button, wondering, should I eat them? But when you start investing with Monzo, your money is always busy. It turns on regular investments, invests your spare change and tops up your stocks and shares. I said, it even helps you make sense of risk and return. Monzo, the bank that gets your money moving. You could get back less than you invest. Monzo current account required UK residents 18 plus T's and C's apply. OK, extracurricular activities. I recently just watched something for the first time, something that some people might consider a classic. All right. Trek. No, not sure. Boston Powers. Trek 2. Although Shrek, I find almost unwatchable now because the animation is so bad. It's just such an ugly, ugly movie. Funny movie, but an ugly movie. Anyway, Kingo is doing baseball. The any guesses what we want? Sandlot. No, I think the dog will be too scary for him. That was a very scary. He has a thing about scary animals. We was clearly it's a league of their own. Angels in the outfield. Who was Rookie of the Year? Oh, yeah, we watched that. Yeah, but I never see it. Have you know this movie, Sam? No, is this one where his arm gets stuck? 12 year old boy slips and hurts his arm. But no, it turns out he can throw 100 mile for our fastball. So he gets he gets hired by the Chicago Cubs. He plays the pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. It was great. It's a very silly, fun movie. My kids liked it. I'm not going to say it's on the same level as like a home alone. But it was like Godfather one and two. No, yeah. But it's a very it's a sweet, cute movie. The kid is likable and Daniel Stern is in it. Being funny, Daniel Stern doing funny stuff. He actually directed the movie, which I was surprised by. What? Yeah. I don't know if it's directed other movies, but he directed it totally. It's it's a fun movie. Gary Busey is in it. He's the aging pitcher that gets replaced by the kid. Right. Yeah. He he has almost nothing to do in the movie, but he's in it. He's very mad at the kid at the beginning. But then at the end, well, no spoilers. John Candy. We do. We go ahead. The funniest part that I'll share with you here is Daniel Stern is with the kid. They're at like a swanky party because now the kid's like famous now because he's the youngest pitcher out there. Now this party and you know, so he's trying to tell him like there's lots of benefits to being famous kid here. I'll show you. And he like leads them over to these two women. They're saying they're in Daniel Stern's like, excuse me ladies. And then they stand for their firm moment. And he says again, excuse me ladies. And he gets them to move out of the way so they could play a pimple machine. It's great. It's great. It was great. I think it was a rollerball game. Do you know which game that would be, Sam? Yeah. Rollerball is a ladies and gentlemen on a on rollerblades playing a, you know, battle to the death type game. It's Williams early early nineties. It was great. It's funny you brought that up because we just watched this within the last six months for a family movie night. It looks great. You know, and we, and our family is absolutely no connection to baseball and they liked it too. Yeah. It's early nineties. Super cute. Yeah. That's when he's telling the pitcher. He's saying pitcher has a big butt, Sam. Yep. Ah, okay. Okay. It's great. And then another extra crack activity I forgot to share last week. We went to Disneyland a couple weeks ago. There's the, there's the rollerball. Yeah. That was it. Yeah. This is, this is exactly what I accept these ladies. Excuse me, ladies. Daniel Stern is very funny in this movie. I have to say. Excuse me, ladies. Oh, it's perfect. Okay. I love it. The other thing, we went to Disneyland, we did Star Tours, and guys, it's all new. All new. Did you reach it again? All new scenes on, on Star Tours. So if you haven't, Really? Yeah. If you haven't ridden this, this is a virtual ride at where you fly through different scenes in Star Wars and they're interchangeable. So it's different every time you never really know what you're going to get. However, there's like an intro and then there's a scene one. And then there's an intermission where a famous character tells you, you need to go take, go to this planet to, you know, meet this person. And then there's a scene two and then there's an end. These big scene one and two are completely different that I'd never seen before. It. So I hope I'm going to, I want to tell you about it. If nobody, if, if people takes this seriously, you think it's going to be a spoiler. I cannot believe they're showing these lines moving this fast. It's so painful to see this and it's never like this. Anyway, scene one was awesome. You go to the indoor, the crash Death Star from Rise of Skywalker. You land that ocean with those. I did that one. Oh, well, it was new for me. Okay. I thought you were about like they, they did, oh, you can witness the Gorman massacre. From the first person. Yeah. No, that's cool because you're like, you're in there, these huge waves, and then you go into the Death Star and then, Jess, you, you see, you see the, the alien from the trash compactor, which I understand is from the first Death Star, but apparently this is a problem on all, on both Death Stars. These things just unavoidable. Pestilence. These things just get into the trash compactors. Or maybe it's part of the trash compactors, like organic recovery of goods, right? They use the, that comes with the compactor. Yeah. To make sure everyone understands what you're talking about. It's a ride where you're watching a screen and then the ride is moving all around. And so it changes. Like sometimes you get stories from episode, you know, the original Star Wars. And sometimes you get stories from the, you know, from the prequels or whatever. And like there's a really cool Reddit post from a guy who spent an entire day at Disneyland. And I think he rode Star Tours 44 times. And that's all he did was just loop through Star Tours. And then he did stats on like, you know, like he, he basically cracked the code of like, you know, if you get this scene, you can't get, you know, a prequel scene after it because it would break the continuity, right? So it's like they'll mix, they'll mix scenes from Star Wars eras, but not always. Like if you get a Kylo Ren scene, then you're guaranteed to get like, you know, a sequel series scene after that. And so he broke down exactly how, like it is random what scene you get, but not completely random, basically. Oh yeah. It's in 3D now. I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And it used to have Paul Rubens as a custom bot for it. Do they not do that anymore? They have that bot, but it's not Paul Rubens. Can you not do your original experience or anything like that? No, because it's R2D2 and C3PO fully animatronic that replaced it. So there's no way to like wheel out that bot. When I saw it, they had like piped Ahsoka into like a few things last time. I've seen this covered into Ahsoka. It didn't feel very natural. No. Then my other second scene, tell me if you saw this one, Justin, it was Crate, the salt planet from Last Jedi. No, I haven't done that one. That was cool too. Because you fly down, you know how they get on those like salt skimmers, whatever they call them and try to like. That's cool. The red stuff. Buy people time while the first order is there. Yeah. You like fly through that and then you destroy one of their next generation ad-ats, whatever they're called. That sort of thing. Anyway, that was cool. It was all new to me. That's great. I love Star Wars. How are they allowed to fill this? This is poverty. This is nuts. A what? How are they filming this? This is crazy. Oh, yeah. This is some nuts. Yeah, not supposed to, but yeah. Although on Disney Plus now for the seventh anniversary of Disneyland, they have ride thru's of like all the rides that you can watch now. Took them forever to do that because my kids have been watching this stuff on YouTube for years. Like they can just watch rides. Anyway, the final thing I'll say. Okay. I go ahead, Justin. Oh, I just know you can finish because I have another different Disneyland thing. Final thing I wanted to say is that the live action Moana trailers out. I don't want to give it any airtime. It's horrible. But the number one comment on the IGN version is, is Moana 2016 with DLSS5. Moana 2016 with DLSS5 on. Whoever made that comment, A plus. Yeah. All right. Go ahead, Justin. Oh, just another little Disneyland. Just start towards having different variations. The Millennium Falcon ride also has small variations, right? At the end. And I learned that like, there's like a short version, a long version of the speech that what's his name. O'Connor, whoever the little pirate guy is that you take the mission from, and he talks to you at the end of the mission. And you get the long version if the ride needs to take longer to like, reset to get you all off. Yeah, that's an ad. And so it's like, he's adding up the damage. Like this is damaged and this is damaged and this is damaged. And part of the version that you get isn't just how you performed on the ride, but if it needs to take longer to get you off it. That's great. Isn't that clever? Yeah. Very cool. I, you know, we go to Disneyland a lot. I really appreciate how well run the park is. And you appreciate it more when you go to other, some of the theme parks and you're like, well, these guys, Disneyland has a bigger ride. Dude, Six Flags Magic Mountain. It's like a bunch of 13 year olds operating rides drunk. It's so scary. Yeah, exactly. It's fist fights everywhere. 100%. At Knotsbury, they had to like install a rule where kids cannot be there by themselves. They have to have a chaperone with them. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Total Lord of the Flies. Yeah. It's a theme park in Iowa called Adventureland. That was like the place when I was growing up. I went there growing up. But now it's like, now every parent just drops their kids off by themselves. And they had to set the same rule. It was just like, they were just running wild in the park and like taking it over. Okay. That brings us to video game 20 questions. Our suggestion this week comes from Josh, who has an anecdote to share first. Hey, Scoop. I had a rare gaming discovery recently. I wanted to know if the Scoopers recently experienced something similar. As a dad in his 30s, things like this don't happen often anymore. To start, I had never played a Resident Evil game. I'm not interested in the horror genre and largely look past any titles that might fall into that category. With the release of Resident Evil Requiem, a buddy of mine was going off about how excited he was and how good so many of the games are. He convinced me to give one a try. So I purchased the remake of Resident Evil 2. My friend mentioned this was a scarier, but really good title in the series and a fine starting point. As soon as it started, I immediately dislikes the experience, but I stuck with it. And after a while, I have to admit, I am absolutely loving it. And I've started looking at the other titles in the series. So my question is, has anyone on the panel recently discovered something gaming related you thought you wouldn't like or possibly hate but ended up loving? And Sam, that Bellattro would count for you, right? Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good example. I was just going to say no, I would ever subject myself to something I don't want to play. But yeah. No, I did that with Metal Gear at 1.2. I had to play, you know, Peacemaker for work and I hated 1, 2, and 3. And then I really liked Peacemaker and then I liked 5 a lot after that. So you never liked Metal Gear Solid? You never liked Metal Gear Solid? I liked it at the time, but I haven't revisited. Yeah, I mean, there's been a whole genre like that that I've gone to. And I love Death Stranding. Yes, the piece, exactly. Peace Walker, yes. Isn't that weird? I mean, that's a very tasty one. That's a good one. It is, but it also fixed a bunch of things. It has the Fulton recovery system, so it's really fun to collect stuff in it, but it also taught me how to play Metal Gear. I still don't like playing 1, 2, and 3. 1 is better than 2 and 3, I think. That's great. I'm trying to think. There's never something that like, ah, I don't like this thing. And then, you know, I played a game and it won me over and changed my mind. I was absolutely obsessed with Pocopia and I put dozens of hours into it. And it's not that I thought I wouldn't like it. Like, I was confident I would like it, but like, I'm not a Pokemon guy. And so I think I talked about this on the show a couple of weeks ago of like, if you're a Pokemon sicko, you'd probably lose your mind over this game because you can talk to them and they're all really cute. It's all callbacks that can tell its callbacks and references to the other games I haven't played. And like, the whole game is like a post-apocalyptic version of Pokemon 1, which, you know, I don't have any nostalgia for. And so I can enjoy it just as a game. I think it's a really interesting, great game. But I feel like it's like a generational game for people that like grew up with that with that kind of Pokemon love and their blood. Anything come to mind, Nick? Uh, I got two quick ones. Um, oddly enough, I think it's the original Resident Evil stuff. Because I was a fan of the remake. I was a fan of Resident Evil 4 back in 2000. That's a good one. 2004 or whatever that whenever that came out. And like, I had played every Resident Evil up to that point, like apart from the original, um, I played two, never three. So there was always just like this mindset that I had that once the two remake came out. I was like, should I replace some of the old ones? I was like, nah, I don't think I'm going to like them very much. And then for the podcast, uh, is it still fun? I was like, okay, I'm going to finally do it. And I was like, wow, I was wrong. The original is fantastic. The remake of the original is fantastic. And I never thought I'd like the original three, but I love the original three. Yeah, that was so much fun. And I'm revisiting a lot of the classic games now that I am less squeamish than I was back then has been really fun. And the more, I guess, out of left, YOLO was probably the E-series. I just, I always thought bump combat looked kind of boring. And so, um, I started checking out the original Ease 1 and 2, loved them, tried Ease Origin, which I liked it for the first play through the rest of it kind of, man. But after that, I'm all in on Ease now. I'm like slowly working my way through that entire series now. The series is kind of like Trails. It's just quietly been going on for decades now. It's heraldic. It's, it's stoic in it, in its legend status. It's pretty great. I'm waiting for this to happen with Souls Likes because I haven't liked any of them. Well, that's, well, yeah, that's what I was going to say. Probably Elden Ring for me. I went into it expecting to not like it. I just dabbled with Souls games. And I just didn't like, I don't like the, I don't like being locked into animations. I don't like just slamming my head against brick wall bosses over and over and over again, running back to bosses. I just, it felt all very like unfriendly to me. But of course I ended up absolutely loving Elden Ring and it being one of my favorite games of all time. Okay. That brings us to his suggestion for 20 questions. And he says, hint, I have never played this game even though I like Redacted. And with that, let the questioning begin. But what's the Redacted thing he likes? Oh, it's, I think it's ponies. Oh, oh, you're going to get me one of these days. Ah. Justin, you got to ask the first question. We got to, we got to shake it up. Okay. Uh, it's not going well. Is the Redacted thing that he likes, uh, horror games, sports games, or I don't know, racing games? No. Oh no. And he did just tell you that he doesn't like horror games. Well, but except now he does. Okay. Is this from, uh, before the year 2000? No. Your 2000 or after? Is this game made in Japan? No. Uh, is this game made in the United States? No. What else is there? Is this game multi platform? Yes, that's five. Multi platform. 2000 on. Did this game sell more than, uh, one million copies? Yes. That was a very definitive. I think, I think that you have the top of his head. Can you read the anecdote again? I have never played this game, even though I like Redacted. Cupcakes. Dark Souls, even though he loves Elin Ring. Yeah. Except this game is made in Europe. I think it's a role playing game. Could be Claire Obscure. Although that would like never played as like, it's only been a year. So you're okay. It's, it's not quite reached never played status. Yeah. Was this game made by made or published by Ubisoft? No. I just said that because I'm assuming it's made in Europe. Hmm. Uh, was this game, is this game playable on a Nintendo system? No. Oh, rip. Okay. Xbox, Xbox PlayStation or PC. Yep. It's not Donkey Kong 64. Did this originally come out in the Xbox 360 PS3 era? No. PS4 era? No. That's five. We just hit questions. I'm sorry. That's, I'm sorry. That's 10. Oh shoot. PS5 era? Yes. Okay. So it's more recent. Is this the game? Is this game the first of its name? Yes. First of its name. Could be Claire. Could be Expedition. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is. Um, well, wait, the games that you mentioned earlier, Justin, you said horror, sports or. Racing. Did this game come out last year? No. Is this game an RPG or a shooter? No. What? What else is there? Well, okay, okay, okay. It's a, I'm sorry. Let's see. It falls under the increasingly broad category of RPG. So it's a PlayStation game. So it's a third person action game with RPG elements, probably. Is the vibe on the game. Could be Genshin. Could be Genshin Impact. Maybe he's not a fan of Gotcha games. We just hit question. What? 14. We've lined. I'm still thinking about where the game's made. I was assuming it was made in Europe, but it could be from China or Korea. Yeah. Or, you know, obviously there's other countries, but like, you know. Do we eliminate US? We eliminated US and Japan. Oh, we did do. Yes. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. Okay. Got it. So it could be Black Myth. Did that come out last year or two years ago? That was two years ago. Why don't we just ask if it was designed in Asia? Sure. Is this question is. Was this game designed in Asia? Yes. That's 15. Is this a Gotcha game? No. I mean, that's not a bad question though. Not a. Could be an MMO. Could be, could be, could be a Black Desert Online. One of those other South Korean MMOs. Or could. Is this a Korean developed game? No. That's probably Black Myth. Does that mean it's Black Myth? Could be. Getting pretty close to Black Myth is sounding to me. But. Exactly. Didn't that come out last year? Isn't, I didn't play, isn't it a, isn't it a, like sort of a boss rush style Souls-like game? Maybe it came out two years ago. Not a Souls-like game, but it's more of like an, like a Devil May Cry to some extent. When did it come out? That came out, nobody knows. That came out not last year, but the year before, which was. Okay. What about where it wins me? That was last year. Right. Where it wins me was last year. Yeah. It's, it's probably one of those. What question are we at? You have two questions and a guess. Oh boy. Like, I mean, we can really nail it if we asked if you play as a monkey or an ape of some sort. Do you play as a monkey? Don't, don't you ape of some sort. That includes humans. Maybe. Fair enough. Do you, do you, do you play as a monkey? Yes. Is it black myth? Do it come. It is black myth. There you go. I hesitated for a second. Finally a win. I was like, oh no, it's enslaved Odyssey to the west. Yeah. Black myth. Wukong. And the only reason I said no when you asked RPG, I was just thinking Souls-like in my head. It's right. But it's like an action RPG. Just like all these games are. Yeah. Very pretty game. Very, also very pretty. Boss. Yeah. Very cool bosses. It's the first time I played a video game that made me want to go back and reread some old world literature. Yeah. I played this for a bit. I liked it, but got distracted and never went back to it. Do you finish it? I finished it. I didn't get the secret ending because then I looked up what you had to do to get the secret ending. I was like, I ain't doing all that. I was like, I'll just. So fill in the blanks for us, Damon. I just watched the Mitchell video. Oh, I have never played this game even though I like Souls-likes. That's all. It's not quite a Souls-like. However, it does have a lot of shared DNA. I'd say if a Souls-like had a baby with something like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, which is a good company to be in. Do you have a stamina meter? No. No, there's no stamina. Okay. That's fine. I'll go with that. Well, I guess you have like a, I think there's like a guard gauge, which I think might be referred to as a stamina meter, but not like a. Did you see that mural? Was that like, now I don't, now I don't remember, but I, there's nothing in the game that necessitates, you need to walk because you've been running for too long. Okay. Do you dodge role? You do dodge role. I'm just like, look, you're the one that played it and I didn't, but this looks incredibly Souls-like to me. So I feel like it's sus to say that it's not, it's not a Souls-like. It's not a Souls-like. Okay. All right. Okay. It does have a lot of elements of it though. Okay. Do you have to go back and collect your Souls once you die? I don't remember actually. I mean, besides the fact that you dodge role everything and collect all your Souls when you die, it's super hard. How dark is it? What? I think it was, it was pretty challenging, right? It's a, it was a pretty tough game. I think near it, once you get past like the snow covered mountains, it starts to get a little bit easier, but everything from up to that point is pretty tough. Also this, this is the next fuzzy. Memories of a game. I mean, it's 2024. It's steeped in. Two years ago, Sam. It's years ago. And it's, you're steel trap. Steeped in. That's what you're here. Steeped in Chinese myth. So it's like one of those things where I'm just not intimately as familiar. So it all is just like, what happened in this game again? Yeah. Yeah. They announced a sequel to this. Yeah. It's like a completely different character. Again, I've only read like the first Black myth or I'm sorry, the first like Sung Goku. Journey to the West. Journey to the West novel that, and I was back in like middle school. I remember the tiger shroud, the tiger, the tiger's like trying to beat. He burns an entire palace in the, and you know, Sung Goku covers himself with a shroud or something. I was like, this all rings vaguely familiar. And then after I was like, I have no idea what's happening. Yeah. I think we can all agree this is a souls like like. One of the greatest final bosses I've seen in a video game, at least in the non-secret ending. I think it is so clever. May I spoil one small thing of the last boss in this? You can spoil it for me, but let's just feel free to jump ahead. If you don't want to spoil it. Quick spoiler for the last boss of Black myth, Wukong. So fast forward like 10 seconds if you don't want to hear starting now. But basically you have to fight the true version of yourself. So you fight yourself and there's a part where if you walk away from him to heal, he'll freeze you, grab your healing jug, heal himself, and then continue to fight. So you waste the heal. It is the coolest thing in the world. I loved it so much. Cool. Well, nicely job and thank you for the suggestion. Josh in an undisclosed location viewers listeners. If you have your own suggestions for video game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address gamescoupedidg.com. And that is all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Justin. Thank you to Jobert. We're going behind the scenes to make this episode possible. If you're coming to PAX East, you're going to be there on Thursday. Come by the trolley booth at 1pm for some live scoops and some free candy. My name is Damon. This is IGN GameScoop and we're out. I don't think we've won 20 questions since January. I was going to say, Justin, today's the day it all changes in the streak. Yeah, I missed a couple of weeks. Didn't I? I think last week we got one that we probably had for the third time and we still didn't get it. It's a game that's always present in Damon's mind. So he picks it all the time, I'm sure. Well, I don't even remember. It was, it was Nark. Oh, yeah, yeah. But then the week before that, Justin, there, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me some clues. Give me some clues. Okay. Well, the theme, they had five options and the listener had been eating Taco Bell. So we picked like a mild option and a fire option and then there was a Verde option. They chose the Verde option. Oh, great. Something a little different. And they're, we got about halfway through and I was like, you guys are not thinking nearly Verde enough. Give me, give me a few clues from that one. Sam asked, Sam asked if it was like a. You don't want to open this one up. Sam asked if it was a compilation of games and I told him it could be. Okay. We managed to distill it down to a turn based pixelated RPG where you can play as a human. And it can be a compilation or it can't be. It's the PS1, it's the PS1 disc that had Final Fantasy tactics. That's, we actually brought that one up. Yeah. And then there was something else, Final Fantasy. Wait, there was a couple of. But we eliminated Square Enix. Yeah, it was not Square Enix, but you're thinking of anthology and Chronicles. The Chronicles came with Chrono Trigger. Right. It was tactics and Chrono Trigger. Is that what it was? No, that was Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger. And then anthology was five and six. They also had a one and two compilation. Yeah, there was a one and two, but one and two was on the GBA or was it on the PS1? It was on the GBA for sure as Dawn of Souls. Final Fantasy went into Dawn of Souls. Anyway, this is how it was going for us. Yeah. Anyway, it was RPG Maker. Oh, that's rude. It's Verde. There was a moment where we were showing a looping animation of fire on screen and David was like, Jobert, please get this off of the screen. It is literally. It is RPG Maker. It was literally making me go insane. It was like showing a fire animation. You could put a tribute to a character. It was just over to. Oh, my God. We were trying to guess the sound it was making. A little fart each time. A scream. All right, Jobert, should we start this show? Okay. Was he just waiting on us? We were waiting on you. This is the ploy is that he tries to get all the goods before the show so you can use it for the post show. Now we have no more goofs for the show. Yeah. Get it all out of the system. First it goes from game goofs into game scoop. Yep. That's RPG Maker. HP Lovecraft's RPG Maker driving Damon insane. Like this is the sound effect they're going to use. Like this is the B roll. He pulled up when I revealed the game. This is the B roll. What you're saying that like it's Jobert's fault. This is just the game. This is RPG Maker. That's all it is. Fade out. Yeah, you can have a fade. Yeah, you're making an RPG. Name's on line. I do love that the graphics just say 20. 20, yeah. My graphics are 20. Let's go just up 21.