The Besties - The best games of June 2014 according to The Besties

Episode Date: July 8, 2014

Remember last month when a surprise cloud of quality games rained down upon us, soaking us in the joys of kart racing and nazi shooting? Those warm rains of spring have passed and what remains is the scorched, dry earth of summer. Sure, a couple of nice games appeared, like oases ready to quench our thirst. But after completing Shovel Knight and Valiant Hearts we returned to our slog, counting the days till the fall deluge. How have you been passing the summer drought? 5:00 - 1001 Spikes 22:00 - Shovel Knight 36:00 - News of the month, E3 Edition 56:00 - Valiant Hearts 1:14:00 - Pixel Junk Shooter Ultimate 1:18:00 - The Resties! Theme song by Ian Dorsch Get the show: Download MP3" Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Justin, you still, uh, still popping them opioids? No, I haven't had one. Okay, okay. It depends on how you're using that. I haven't had one today. Okay. I want to eat one, though, like Pac-Man. What if people don't have the context of why you're a drug addict now?

Then they should listen to My Brother, My Brother and me and invite you for the modern era, releasing every Monday on the Maximum Fun Network. A lot of people don't understand that there's... if you're only listening to one of these podcasts, they are a codec for each other. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's only the people who listen to both that can, like, figure out the, like, Dan Brown-esque riddle that exists in both universes. Okay, I want to talk about Justin and his

opiate addiction. So Justin got his wisdom teeth taken out. Addiction's a big word. He used to be addicted to having wisdom teeth. But we staged an intervention for him. We pulled all his teeth out. Now you don't have them anymore.

Did you get all four taken out in one swoop? Yeah, I figure. Fuck it, right? i figure fuck it right in for a penny in for a pal yep if you're gonna go to time as well go into lincoln did they show you them afterwards isn't that some more shit they didn't that is i think you have to ask specifically i asked specifically and what do they say i didn't ask before but i guess do they grind them into? Because they wouldn't go get them for me. What did they say when you asked? We don't keep those. Right, well, the more I think about it, this might, the fact that they didn't show you your teeth might indicate that there's some sort of Jurassic Park scenario taking place.

Oh, yeah. Where you're just going to, like, DNA the shit out of those teeth. Or DNA them. Or a dino scientist is going to carry it around in his pocket and use it to scare chubby kids that come to his excavation site. Talk about what predatory Justins are capable of in the wilds. You think they're to your left, but they're not. They're behind you, and they're biting you with their back teeth. Let's start this dumb show.

My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the month. My name is Griffin McElroy, and only like one good game came out this month, so I know what that is. My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best game of the month. My name is Russ Frusche, and I know the best game of the weekend month. This is the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in sports, entertainment, news, previews, video games, FIFA, football, soccer. We got soccer fever here. Go USA Go. Can't wait to see how far they make it. And today we're going to talk about video games. June is a hot month. It is wise very hot june is a hot month literally uh but very uh for video game releases uh it's been

a little it's been like that one book i read in rainbow about the family that didn't have a lot of money to go around tight times so they made soup out of rocks so in soup out of rocks it's been tight times in the video game world but we still uncovered uh a few gems that came out this this this month of course with e3 the whole industry kind of loses a week because no one wants to release then and then before that everybody's planning for e3 so there's no games then and then after that everyone's still drunk so you don't want to put any games out then either why won't I sober up

it's been three weeks what's wrong with my body yeah it's been bad E3 was exciting if you're a time traveler and you could just jump ahead to March 2015 when all this shit's gonna be extant we kind of released a besties sort of sort of did if you could search that uh best of e3 video polygon on

google non-canonical besties if you miss our um old school needlessly combative besties i would say um that's a good fit for you because man blood sugar to be at its all-time low when it comes to that well and if you want to see me get genuinely angry at the three other people whose voices you're hearing right now uh just go ahead i had a friend who watched that and said man are you putting on i was like no they made me pretty angry that was me being genuinely angry with my my co-workers that's all in the past uh the feelings are still there yeah it's all behind us let's talk about the games with june uh kind of a mixed bag this month of games fresh dick uh you've got the first one that we're going to talk about and it is the uh the thousandth and first spikes game yeah is that correct that is accurate it is called 1001 spikes

there's a subtitle involving this hero but i don't remember the exact wording of it 1001 spikes is the nomenclature ab A Thousand and One Spikes. There it is. And A Thousand and One Spikes is a platformer in the style, graphically and gameplay-wise, of NES-era platformers, 8-bit platformers. It's very, very difficult, in addition to there being A Thousand and One Spikes in the game. Actually, I'm not sure that that's true, but you do In addition to there being 1,001 spikes in the game. Actually, I'm not sure that that's true, but you do get 1,001 lives and you will probably be using every one of those lives because you'll be dying quite a bit because the game is intentionally very hard.

I would say if you played Super Meat Boy, it's a pretty similar experience. Although control wise, again, it controls more like an 8-bit era game than it does like a more modern platforming game i'm not so sure the super meat boy comparison is so on point it definitely 100 is well it's just like the maybe like the difficulty of the game and sort of the trial and error nature of the game yeah and it's a platformer and it's a platformer sure it's 2d and it's like old school inspired for me like the the structure of the game is what sort of set it apart like the idea of having like a limited number of tries looming over you like how it gives the game a sort of oppressive because in super meatball you can fuck up and like forever sure and still be fine not

when you're in those like special like hidden stages where you only have three attempts to get it right but like it casts a specter over the game that i'll be honest i didn't finish playing it because my like i got to this one area it's the level right after the fire levels uh like the lava levels and like i just like i hit a wall and i was playing on an airplane and so like i i spent like 70 tries on one level and i was like screw this i'm gonna do something else and when i came back to it i had forgotten all the stuff i had memorized about that level over my 70 tries and i thought like i'm just not gonna yeah you can't uh leave a level midway through

you have to beat it and that's like a, I don't like playing any video game like that, whether it's like an RPG where save points are few and far between, and I know like, well, I've just got to get through this until it's done. That's just not how I play games anymore. Sure. Well, I'm going to throw down some topics that I think, you know, you mentioned the live thing, the limited lives. And I was a little daunted by that as well,

but they actually have a mechanic where you just buy more lives. It does seem weird. With money. You earn money. Earth money? Not, like, real world money, but, like, in-game money.

I haven't found any in-game money yet. Where are you getting this money? So, the game nests a bunch of features inside. There are these golden idol gem things that you find in each of the levels. If you collect five of those, you unlock other modes that you can play that are played very differently from the normal game, like big, much larger levels that are not as difficult and more repeatable. I played the tower.

Yeah, so in the tower thing, I think it's called the tower of nanner you earn money and the money is spent in a store that unlocks once you i think collect a few more of those idols so the store in addition to having like you can buy a bunch of lives for some money you can buy new characters and one of the things i really liked about it which is another yet another super meatball comparison is that there's a bunch of unlockable characters and they're all inspired by classic video game things so yeah uh there's like an old school like looking like a simon belmont from like castlevania 2 and he has a whip and a throwing knife or i wasn't so crazy about the fact that each one each character has their own standalone like campaign path like if you chose to play as a

different character you couldn't keep playing on the path you're playing as uh on as as abin hawkins because like the mechanics are a little bit different so like it boots you all the way back to the start yeah i think the idea was that it would encourage people to uh sort of have a different experience getting through each of the levels otherwise like it kind of makes speed runs meaningless because clearly you would just pick the character that yeah and it also makes the levels more difficult to design like if characters are capable of doing different things how do you design like this is a game where every pixel of like the platforming challenge is is considered by the by the level so like you have to have this perfect run through it if you all of a sudden like put in a character that can hover right it changes the design entirely

now so that's the whole life thing and money and i don't think the game does an extremely good job like letting people know how to unlock that extra content. I know someone at work actually played through the whole game, didn't find a single golden idol. And, like, all the content was still locked when he beat the game. Weird, yeah. So, there's that. Why I like this game and I totally 100% appreciate why certain people wouldn't like this style of game is because, I griffin's right you do have to like focus and like beat a level in one sitting but that feeling of like slowly like getting closer and closer and closer to the ending is super satisfying it's like i feel like like for anyone that's seen

edge of tomorrow that's how i feel when i play this game because i'm just getting better and better and better and granted you could like simplify it into like a memorization game but there's still like a lot of reflexes involved and a lot of like oh no yeah you have to have the skills to execute the moves it's not like a fucking like card matching memorization game right there's there's and like i like that i like i like torture platformers like i i love that feeling that I get when I do complete that. But I think everybody has a breaking point. And I know that these games, this genre gets way crazier.

I've tried to play I Want to Be the Guy and Cloudberry Kingdom and shit like that. But everybody, I think, has a breaking point. And mine is like, when I spend an hour on a single level knowing that I have to finish it or else I'll forget everything that I have memorized about that level, and then I finally get through the string of super difficult millisecond-to-millisecond jumps and attacks that I have to do to get through something, and then I finally make it to the door and then like a spike pops out from right under the door and kills me i'm like that's that's when i quit i i see the only reason that bothers me is because of the life count

and i mean i know that that's a it's a specific choice that they made and they obviously have their reasons for me i could get into like the experimentation and the constant death thing if there wasn't just that little bit of it needing to be demoralizing every time that i died i don't understand why every single time there has to be a little bit like of that negative reinforcement yeah it takes away from it being just like a fun it would be funny to get all the way to the end and die kind of like that it would be kind of funny except every time it happens it becomes a little less likely that you're going to be able to finish the game i i just don't really understand the reason well and they overuse that that idea of like that last second fuck you

like even super meat boy doesn't do that. Like, you see the exit, you get to Band-Aid Girl, or Bandage Girl, and, like, you're done with the level. If Bandage Girl, like, no kidding, half the time in those later stages had a secret spike that shot out of the top of her head and killed you, like, that just, it's, that sense of satisfaction you get when completing a level

is completely overshadowed by well this is just fucking annoying well yeah because that takes it from it takes it from a skill-based thing to a memorization well based thing yeah you can usually see i mean you can usually see that stuff ahead of time usually i think the memorization thing is my issue with it and i think it's funny that fresh references uh edge of tomorrow and this is going to be nitty-gritty because few people saw the movie and fewer people read the book but the book that it's based off of is about the writer's issues with video games that it's this sense of wow this is a crazy impossible adventure and i am totally outmatched. And as I play through it, I'm becoming a hero, and I'm saving the day, but really all I'm doing is learning patterns.

And it doesn't mean I'm any better than the person I was when I started. And that's how I feel when I play these games, where when I complete a level or make it too far in the game i actually feel like gross i feel like i have been lower like almost learning choreography uh but like not performing it for anyone but myself uh and then when it's done it's like well why did i do that like why did i learn to do this weird thing with the machine that i don't feel like i really gained anything from other than the fact that i like learned how to basically mirror exactly what the developer wanted me to do. Right, and I mean, you could, if that,

I could see a lot of people being frustrated by what you just said. They think that's all video games. It could be a lot of video games, but I think in this specific case, what puts me off is that a lot of those later levels really do require a, there's a single single way really that you can get through it and there's a little bit there's a little bit of variation to it like you can branch off to try and get that golden skull which will give you an extra one up or whatever but like

there are levels that like at you start by like dropping into this like this tunnel of spikes and lava and fireballs and enemies that are on a pattern that you need to know. And there's just the one way you can get through it. And once you get outside of that pattern, once you've started, you're dead. Yeah, it feels to me more like reading music versus Spelunky being improvisation. Because I think there are similarities to be drawn other than them both being adventures, but when you look at a level in 1001 Spikes, you're looking at it as this thing that I'm going to hit these marks that have been preset.

While I personally love something like Spelunky where I feel like, okay, I have a general feel for what this is. I can bring what I know to kind of survive it. Yeah, I mean, they're, they are like, I mean, in terms of Griffin,

not agreeing with my super meat boy comparison, I don't really agree. I mean, again, I get the connection to Spunky, but they're very different. That's why I'm saying, really trying to do two very,

very different. Exactly. And that's why I'm saying I like the other one. Because I, the one spikes beyond just like, I understand where you're coming from, Chris, but for me, the, the, the benefit or like the other one. Castle on Spikes. I understand where you're coming from, Chris, but for me, the benefit or what I get out of it

is that a lot of the levels are designed with a real intelligence that is actually sort of fun to unearth the logic behind it. Yeah, it's like a puzzle game almost. There's one really great bit where you have to get across a gap, and there are these four platforms. And once you step on them, they start falling down. And you actually have to run across the platforms, get a key, and then jump back across the platforms before they disappear completely. And the second platform, you can actually completely miss as you're going. You can hop right over it as you're

hopping down the key but if you do that then you don't start it lowering yeah it won't it'll be hard to get back you won't be able to get back over like so you have to as part of your the procedure make sure you touch that second one or else it won't. Yeah. Yeah. I like those things. I shouldn't say that there's nothing for me in these games. I think the pleasure of games like this that are so, so specific is that you're essentially learning to think like the developer. And I think puzzle games is a similar example. I think adventure games too,

where you're learning how they think. And it's almost like you're predicting, okay, they have a sense of humor about killing me off at the last possible second. I should always be prepared for traps at that door. Yeah. And you start to think like they want you to think. And I think there's something, I mean,

kind of cool about developing that kind of bond with a designer through the game. I just personally, I mean, it's a matter of taste. I just don't always connect with these types of taste i i just for me like i recognize i'm just bellyaching because like i really did i like the game a lot um and i liked learning and like specifically learning that language that the developer invented and then you have to figure out how to do it in order to survive like i mean i i really was into that it's just like it reached a point i i feel like it got so wildly unbalanced to the towards the end where they it almost felt like they

knowingly were like shaving off huge portions of the people who were playing the game with every like set of levels that came around because like you'll play a set of levels and be like that was super fucking hard and then the next set of levels is like always twice as difficult well you should you should also note that uh the end of the game that you see on the campaign may not really be the end of the game okay well i didn't even reach that end is what i'm saying like i hit i hit a wall and like i thought i was good at the game and i thought like i had learned how to survive in this super punishing world um and then like it it i i think i started one of the new set of levels and like bashed my head against the wall and like the first one and i was just like no i guess this is just where we part ways old friend

and that was like kind of disappointing to me. This is a small thing, but I really don't like the two different jump heights. Oh, I love that. I love that. I think that's really cool. I don't get it. I think that makes me very angry. I'd much rather that than, like, an analog control of the jump height.

Why? Because it lets them make, essentially, a very, very precise platformer. Why can't you tap versus hold? Because it's not... I'd rather know for 100% sure what height my jump is going to be. No, I dig that a lot. There were just too many deaths that like...

If you'd done a different jump. If I'd used a different jump and I didn't even think. And honestly, that's something that I ran into a few times. And tell me, this might have just been my experience. There are a few things that seem like, for a game that's so much about precision and being pixel perfect, there were some things that seemed like kind of sketchy to me.

Like there were times when like flames would shoot out of the wall and I would be positive that the flames had been like extinguished and I'd still catch fire like I would I was certain that I wasn't touching them there was sometimes also with like jumping underneath uh rocks uh falling blocks where I feel like I cleared it and they still killed me like there was a little bit of that for me um whenever you're on like blocks that are moving like sometimes if that block like touches a wall that is higher than it, it doesn't even give you like a millisecond to try and jump up to that higher platform. It just knocks you right off, like underneath the block into the lava right next to you.

Like I had a little bit of that, but I thought for the most part, it was a pretty tight. Yeah, I didn't have a ton of that either. Maybe one once or twice here and there but not repeatedly um i really liked it but i also get why people wouldn't really it is for a very very specific kind of right or did you yeah yeah and vita vita i thought was a fantastic uh platform for i wouldn't play it on anything i wouldn't i wouldn't like it's a good game to like bring with you on a bus or a train or something where you're going to be playing something for an hour.

If I were playing it on a TV, then I would not only be strapping myself into this experience that you have to play in huge chunks if you want to get ahead, I would be anchoring myself to my television. The only reason to play on a tv is that it actually um is easier obviously to do uh co-op yeah it's cool sure um i didn't didn't mess with that at all i i feel bad because i like my opinion of the game i understand is not i don't think like based on it's not qualitative at all it's just like i was disappointed i like a hard game but i was disappointed. I like a hard game, but I was disappointed at how fucking bananas it got close to the end.

I mean, that's what they were going for, obviously. There aren't many developers making games that hard. So I guess good on them. I just felt I was bummed out that I couldn't hang. Maybe that's a me problem. Maybe that's not an it problem. Griffin, speaking of games with problems we got another game here that doesn't have real graphics and i was wondering if

you could tell us about it oh god i thought you had gotten over that no no because we talked a really good game i'm it's um that i that i actually am willing to ignore it for it this is like i never get warm fuzzies from like a retro style of games this one did it for me i don't know if it's the semblance to link to the uh legend of zelda 2 or or what it was but this one actually did trigger some sort of nostalgia we're talking about shovel knight um it's oof guys it might be my might be my game of the year so far i know dark souls 2 came out um and that was a really good high well maybe it's just because it's more recent shovel knight um it is a retro style platformer that um and when i say retro style it kind of sets the bar for what that idea can be.

Because while it takes a lot of really cool, like mechanical ideas from games like Duck Tales for NES and Mega Man and Zelda, Zelda 2, I should say, it takes those mechanics, but it makes it entirely its own. And then it presents a retro experience that feels authentic. And the way that it feels authentic is by nailing all that shit, nailing a lot of, like, unquantifiable, like, things about NES games that we loved and, like, still love, like world design and just sort of the tone of the game.

And it's not, like, just drenched with shitty like referential humor and like that cocktail really really does make it feel like uh uh an nes class i feel like that's a i don't know like a a trope of criticizing like retro games like it just feels like an NES game that never got released, but it actually totally does feel like a game from that era that was really good. Yeah, it actually works within the restraints, which is, I think, the difference between those games. I mean, one, you say it's not referential,

but two, it looks like a limited number of animations. When a character does something, the color palette looks like the actual nes color palette like it looks very restrained not like oh well they're using pixels but really yeah but where they actually cheat a little bit for the better is in the controls like if you go back and play any of those old nes games they do not control nearly as well as you think they do. But Shovel Knight, the way he moves around and stuff like that, feels much more modern, much more like a typical platformer that you'd play these days

than you would back in the NES days. And that's where I think this becomes much more palatable than, say, the re-release of DuckTales, which was really pretty atrocious to play through because it faithfully recreated the like stiff jerky controls the original yeah I I wanted to point out Griffin uh you had said that this feels like an NES game that that didn't get released uh and the only thing I would challenge in that is that the the it shows how like not just uh graphics have evolved in video game design like this actually couldn't have been released

in the nes era because there are ideas in it and like concepts that are more recent sure ideas that are being appropriated like the the the best one I can think of is the death mechanic where if you die in Shovel Knight, you die in real life. No, if you die in Shovel Knight, you lose a certain amount of your money and it turns into like bags of cash that are just sort of like floating

and you have to make it back to the point you died and recollect your cash to get the money back yeah which is which you get one shot you get one shot to do one shot at it's dark souls i mean it's a dark souls it is an idea that we saw implemented in dark souls that is being like scaled back to a retro aesthetic that's like that's a heady i think even smarter than that is how they've handled checkpoints um which i i realized they did a big blog post about how they handle checkpoints on their blog it's a yacht club is the name of the developer um where like they it was a really difficult subject for them to approach because checkpoints have become a a very forgiving system in modern games.

Whether you want to call auto-saving a checkpoint or whatever, they are much closer and much more forgiving than they were back in the NES era. And there's a lot of reasons for that. You could argue that we are becoming soft as as game consumers but it was also like that's how they padded out the length of nes games back in the day is by making you play through the same stuff over and over again because it was really hard and when you died and failed most of the time you had to start completely over um so how do they like do that while also maintaining like an accessibility for the game and the way they do that while also maintaining an accessibility for the game?

And the way they do that is by making all the checkpoints. It's so elegant and smart. It's so fucking good. They make all the checkpoints in the game breakable. And when you break them, you get money out of them. So you can get bigger rewards from a level. But if you die and you broke that checkpoint, you have to go back to the one before it. So you could break all the checkpoints in a level.

And if you die, you have to start totally over, which puts you way further away from the loot that you dropped when you died. And if you die on the way back, you lose all the money from that level, and there's no way to get it back. It offers all the challenge. It offers a bonus for people who want to rack up. A variable bonus, because each section of the game is not as difficult as the other. And so maybe a checkpoint's worth 500 gold.

Maybe a checkpoint is worth 2,500 gold. Because you're about to face a fucking super hard platforming challenge. And it does that all in the context of the game. Which I think is the most impressive thing about it. None of it is in a menu. It is completely like you're making this decision on the flight now that being said if you like myself uh uh did have occasions where you accidentally broke the checkpoint globe not intending to that is a bitter pill that okay

but if you did that they they also talked about that. Like, how can we prevent dummies like Justin from drooling all over himself while playing the game? They made it so you had to hit the checkpoint three times. So, like, if you fuck that up... But if you're auto-bouncing, if you do that three times, though... If it's a low... There were a couple places where it was a low ceiling, so it was hard to, it just happened.

How many opiates were you on? Yeah. Were you on? Some, now that I think about it. Daddy's Special Tooth Medicine. Yeah, they didn't factor that in. Maybe that should be an option. Are you on Daddy's Special Tooth Medicine?

And if you hit yes on the main menu, then maybe it takes 30 bounces to break them. It might work. It might work, yeah. I just, like, it was actually kind of a tough game to review because like trying to explain how they how they like made a retro game that feels authentic was really tough to do because i think everybody who makes a retro game tries to make it authentic like that is the pitch of those games like they don't make them like they used to. And,

and I think that that idea is a lot more difficult to explain than just like the graphics look like they did in the like late eighties, early nineties. Like there's a feel to those games that is really, really, really hard to reproduce. And they have managed to do that saying that it ends up being this like you know the nintendo game you've always wanted

turned me off to it like i i got around to playing it because you know obviously we're talking about it here but that has been done poorly so many times and i've heard that praise lobbed and then been kind of disappointed so many times that I was expecting it to be like, oh, here's just another like generic platformer bash things, get to the end, go to the next level. And there's just so much more depth to it. Yeah. Yeah. going to be said for the fact that a lot of those kinds of games try to like win easy points with fans of retro games by like having a character in there who says i am error or it's dangerous to go alone take this or like i'm a plumber and so is my brother like shovel knight really doesn't do

any of that and because of that it doesn't feel like uh uh like i think in the review i used the the term love letter like it doesn't feel like uh hey you guys remember this it feels like the thing that you remembered like it feels there is one level actually that i i loved and was willing to give it uh uh credit for there's one level that is a mansion of it's called the hall of champions and it's like a playable level with a kind of a cool like ghost hunting mechanic in it and in the background are pictures of people who helped kickstart the game like big big donors got their actual like pixel portraits in the game and there are characters in there who constantly make these awesome kickstarter jokes like i guess

this will teach me to pay for something before i get it uh which is which is pretty great um but other than that it is like i don't know it reminds me of is uh where where i'd put it in in the pantheon of heroes is uh right next to rogue legacy that's i think it's another example of like uh a retro aesthetic both like visually and just sort of ethic ethically retro but with like some modern ideas of like having a roguelike and and what that means um that that feels like it could have been of a of a certain time period without being too like winky yeah referential which i hate um and i also think that shovel knight like created this world like both through presentation the music in the game is incredible,

but also the characters. There's a giant half-fish, half-apple called the Trouple King that will do a special dance for you, and then he spits out his own body fluids that you can drink as a potion. There's a goat mathematician. Oh, I love the goat mathematician. It's a goat-tician, and he sells you meal tickets that you give to the cook

who gives you special food that increases your health. There's a moody witch that hangs out in a basement that you give a hundred bucks to, and then she gives you a potion minigame thing. The world feels... I can remember all of that shit. I can remember all of

these, what would otherwise be throwaway characters, but I remember them because they had like this identity in this crazy world where human animal hybrids existed. And like, there was a town called like armor outposts and it's where you got your armor upgraded. Like I love that shit. Like that,

that is, it is a simplicity that like those old nes games had and it's the reason we remember them is because of that like charming simplicity and they they nailed it yeah willingness to be like really weird really super random yeah yeah um i just i i really dig it i it's. It's a shame it's not on Mac. I had to play it at work for a little bit and really enjoyed what I played at work, but it's not on Mac yet.

I know it's coming there. My only qualm with the game was that the economy of it was a bit rough because they do have all these cool systems like the checkpoint system and the death system, and you're constantly scouring each level for hidden areas that you can find more money in because there's a lot of stuff to buy um but i managed to purchase every upgrade

in the game with like like two-thirds of the way through the game and then the rest of it i realized like how important those systems were because i stopped like giving a shit about them because i really had no need for for money anymore like i would just throw myself into a level and die and be like well whatever i wasn't going to use that money anyway yeah it's tricky there because it's like you you don't know whether to design for like the super crazy gold collecting maniac or like a more casual player it just feels like they meant to make a more long likeform experience because you can play New Game+, which I did. I've almost finished my second playthrough of the game,

and there's not any new stuff really to buy in New Game+. And so your New Game-plus run, you don't have that impetus at all, and that's a huge bummer. There's also like it feels like they have perfected what they have put in there but it feels like there should be more in there like there's they are going to update the game because there's some kickstarter like stretch goal rewards that they just haven't implemented yet like the multiplayer battle mode and the extra playable characters like it feels like it needs that stuff um and i mean they'll get there it's just kind of a bummer

that it wasn't there at launch yeah but if you haven't played it seriously pick it up it's it is it's on the wii u it's on wii u it's on 3ds it's on uh pc um i'm curious how 3ds goes i know they said that it wouldn't have the multiplayer battle mode, but that doesn't exist yet anyways. I'm playing on 3DS. Oh, is it good? Okay. Well, just find out. I mean, the only thing I don't like,

neither the thumbstick nor the D-pad are particularly satisfying. I've been making it work with the D-pad, but neither of those control methods are particularly feel great for a retro style game like this it bums me out that it's not on vita because i just love that d-pad on vita that would be great that's a good good d-pad trish play it play it on something it really is i'll say it's my second second favorite game of of the year so far which really surprised the hell out of me like i did not i did not think this was going to be the game that would like i was in sort of a post e3 funk and this game pulled me like right out of it griffin you played it on pc played it on pc yeah does it support the

ps4 controller natively oh i don't know i played through i have a wired 360 controller that i use just almost well i mean it's like it's like mean, it's like $25. La-dee-da. It's like $25. Yeah, it's really good, though. I agree. Should we do some post E3 feelings? Yes. How do we feel? Do we have those?

We do. Do we have feelings? Actually, E3 robs your feelings. It takes your feelings and it turns them into explosions and muscles. I did feel a little bit deadened by the end of the week it was it was let's be let's be fair i i feel bad because i like i didn't i feel like i didn't see this this is every e3 by the way but i feel like i didn't see the shit that everybody was talking about like everybody was talking about how dope

evolve is and it looks dope but i just didn't play it and i think you need to do that oh man that makes me sad blood blood bloodborne oh yeah looks looks dope but i didn't get to see that presentation the only like i spent most of my time playing wii u stuff which was cool um like everything i played on the wii u was really great but it just like kind of made me more sad that the wii u's not doing but it just, like, kind of made me more sad that the Wii U's not doing better. And I'm, like, completely unsure of whether, like, you know, this stuff is going to be the stuff to do it. Which I'm not going to get in that conversation again, because it's the conversation that made me so angry with the three of you. Yeah, we don't need to go into, like, specific game feelings.

I was more wondering how you guys felt overall about e3 like why frankly like i spend the time after i i have spent the time after e3 like not being too deep into into video games because i feel like i need it normally i would start getting excited for like the rest of the year that's what uh e3 does for me this one and and i know that probably sounds weird to people who don't like work in the industry but when you deal with something every single day and it's sort of like you're the first thing you're talking and thinking about when you wake up and the last thing blah blah blah when you stop working you can get a little it can all get a little mechanical you know you lose that sense of um fun that you used to get from playing video games and usually what e3 does is it kind of uh or it has for me is say like hey

this stuff's just around the corner and this is new exciting things going on that you can get invigorated about for the future and um here's cool stuff and i there was definitely some of that at e3 but a lot of it wasn't gonna happen this year um as a result i found the whole thing a little a little demoralizing it didn't really amp me up the way i was hoping for that is a bum i there for me it was two things that sort of um got my spirits down um and i i don't think they're down like as a whole because i really did play some exciting shit and like i am looking forward to a bunch of stuff um but the first big thing was that like we got shit we've been working on for a long time that is nowhere close to ready like ea's press conference as a

whole like made me pretty pissed off for that exact reason of like we've been working on mass effect for a while and here is some concept art we've been working on mirror's edge 2 for a while and here's like six seconds of gameplay footage um this time things will be read when you need to interact with them like thanks thank you that is how stuff happened but i think the other thing is like i think the other big thing is just like there weren't that many surprises like there were a few games that we didn't know about but there just wasn't like at the end of the week the stuff that you saw that turned out to be cool you kind of like i thought evolve was going to be cool already and like outside of the new rainbow six

game which i think we all expected i mean we expected patriots probably to i didn't expect it to be as good as it was that rainbow six game that was a nice surprise for sure that was a nice surprise but i thought no man's sky like no man's sky but like we knew that was gonna be cool the uh the uh the division looks really cool that looked cool last time i saw it too um the surprises were a bit smaller like the fact that they finally showed off dragon age and guess what it actually looks pretty fucking tight i was ready to write that game off because they've been playing it so, so, so close to the vest. And, like, it seemed like they were trying to bury it a little bit, which was weird.

So that's a relief that that is shaping up to be all right. I think it's fair to say that it was a safe year. Like, it didn't feel like a lot of companies took risks, and that's sort of what you'd expect, you know, in this generation, like, where we are in the console cycle like new consoles are launching they don't want to risk like screwing up a franchise at the dawn of a console cycle um but yeah it makes covering it a little less thrilling because there really aren't very many surprises i think my big bummer with it is i'm now pretty much convinced they know how to market a game through E3 perfectly.

Like they know, the marketing people and the PR teams and just the publishers in general have mastered the E3 demo and that I am like happy to be excited by the stuff I see at these presentations. But I feel like it's like almost an entirely different thing than the game that we will end up reviewing and i think watchdogs is like a pretty perfect example of that yeah and i think we've already begun to see and kind of hear about

changes with what the division will be um and ea's entire thing was just promises i mean it's like it'll be but i wouldn't say you want it to be just that's not for every scenario obviously like for example granted it won't play out exactly like it was during the demo but i think far cry what four will play pretty like it'll play like far cry sure it'll play like far cry but no i'm not i'm not saying that they're all bad i'm not saying that this means you're saying that they're staged yeah not just that they're staged but they know exactly what to hit they know how to make the that the special sauce uh and and i think that's what both feels it's weird because like these games on one hand i'm excited about them but on the other hand it's like eating mcdonald's all week where it's like this tastes good but i don't really feel like i'm gaining anything yeah

unfortunately that's the only way to show those games not true do you know who do you know my best moment of e3 my highlight of e3 was the smash brothers invitational that represented like nintendo's nintendo strategy like went so far against what everybody else was doing of that like here's a pre-prepared package that we're going to show like 20 people, 40 different times during the show, or we're just going to like show them the same shit that we showed during our press conference. Cause this is our message.

Yay. Nintendo was like, fuck that. Like we've been working on this game for a long time. People probably know what they're getting into with a smash brothers game. It's at a point where it's pretty good. Let's just like have a thousand people play it for 13 hours nintendo wasn't the only people that did that consider if ea hadn't had

battlefield leak how crazy it would have been on the stage to be like hey the new battlefield game go home and play it today i'm gonna play it or come that would have been like insane so i think that like if especially with the ea press conference the reason it fell a little flat is because they were really planning for that to be their like headline and the trouble was only having one thing but that's like that was just the one like nintendo on their on their like booth space on the show floor and i know that now this is only germane to people who were at e3 but like that's where i was like they announced games that they would then let you play for a long time down on the show like splatoon was out on the show floor mario maker was out on the show floor the new kirby canvas curse game or rainbow curse which like holy shit i can't believe that's

actually a thing that's coming yeah um that that you know what that that was a surprise that e3 delivered that was good yeah good good job like nintendo did a lot of like seriously all the stuff i played was really great and then not only unfair by the way in the regard with like respect to nintendo nintendo had probably the highest percentage of uh uh surprises there but just to take you folks uh behind the curtain a little bit the way that came about was that nintendo actually let press watch uh the the uh the nintendo direct the day before the night before the night before right so as fun as it might have been for you to see new Zelda and to see Kirby,

imagine it is, I guarantee you, it is substantially less fun just getting it dictated to you by a harried Brian Crescent. It is slightly less, it is slightly less enthusing when delivered. Maybe, but like we,

that medium, we didn't all, that was like two of us that actually got to see it, like actually watching the presentation. No, I got it worse. I got it just dictated to me by Brian. I didn't get to watch it at all.

Also, I don't know if you know this, but it's like, yeah, and there's a new Zelda. And oh, you don't believe it. She's got a bow? Don't worry about it. There might be some Kirby stuff. Go ask Mike. Go ask Mike. He watched, yeah. I yeah don't worry about it there might be some kirby stuff go ask mike go ask mike he watched yeah i still don't know like i think nintendo had those surprises like

that if there was one thing that left me excited it was it was that idea that there are there are some really good games coming to this platform that like i was totally ready to write off um and now i'm like i'm like excited that i have one again i just don't know if it's enough i think that it's just the latest indicator and there have been a lot of these i think it's just the latest indicator the thing things that are going to be really exciting about the video game space are not going to be coming from people who are going to e3 that's not where the cool stuff's going to show up. That's not where the exciting games are going to show up. That's not where the surprises are going to come from.

I feel like it's getting increasingly sort of antiquated. Where are they going to come in? From the underground, from the people who aren't paying for booths. Yeah, but even in mid-range budget stuff, it's happening on PC. Yeah, exactly. And PC is not represented in E3. No, yeah. for the people who yeah but even in like mid-range budget stuff it's happening on pc yeah yeah exactly and pc is not represented in e3 no yeah i don't know i think there's still like i don't know that's the thing i like i don't know i didn't play i didn't play like that new rainbow six game like i didn't play like a lot of the shit that people came away from the show talking about

how okay but like think about the things was. Think about the things that have excited you over the past six months maybe about video games. Here's a few that I know that I've gotten excited about. Rust was very cool. Shovel Knight, just to use a more recent example. That Dark Room game that I played. Bounden is another cool one. And none of those did I hear about from E3. game that I played, Bounden, is another cool one. And none of those did I hear about from E3.

It's coming completely from word of mouth and bubbling up from people's blogs and Twitter feeds and whatever. It's just not... Next year, I would be surprised if we sent nearly as many people. You're already seeing outlets scale way back on the number

of people. Yeah, but we'll have to send twice as many people you're already seeing outlets scale way back on the number of people yeah but we'll have to send we'll have to send twice as many people because every game next year will be a multiplayer game there will not be a single thing i think i think single player if anything this e3 has made me realize that i should stop using e3 and i think we all should stop using e3 as a barometer for where games are like i used to treat it like that i used to treat it like oh man nothing's come out yeah like nothing's come out in the last like couple months has got me really excited i really need something to like show me that games are like what to look forward to like get get me like psyched about where games are at and i don't know that like as as diverse as gaming platforms are becoming

um and as like as many game developers are sort of like spreading their their seed out there like i don't know that e3 is like it can do that to a certain extent but i don't i don't know that it's the end all be all zoe quinn is working on an FMV game, like, starring Greg Sestero. What? Yes, Griffin. So, like, sorry, E3. You have a long way to go for a year nearly as exciting as that. I will say that I spent one of my, like,

better, like, few hours I spent at E3 was actually at the little, like, weird Devolver Village, which was like around the corner from from our studio where we were shooting all of our video stuff um or i got to play like i'm miami 2 which is hot as shit i got to play that titan souls game that game is really good that game is so so good if you guys didn't see the video we did where we had them come in and play it with us it's like a demade Shadow of the Colossus. They were also showing off a pigeon dating game. Yeah, it was definitely that Devolver parking lot

felt like an Alterna E3. And they also had a little IndieCade area in one of the halls. I will say it was the quietest E3 I've ever been to, both in terms of actual volume, and also like there were huge chunks of the like halls where there was just like that's also like pulling back the curtain on that they've decided basically to move all the demos inside a booth now i guess to control who

can see things or just how crowded and busy things get or you know maybe to optimize the experience but it was i was shocked how few things were actually out and available on the floor for people to play for the most part you had to talk to pr and go behind some sony had a ton of demo sony like microsoft are always going to have that and sony's show floor was almost entirely indie games like they had sony show floor was like a huge open area with like these long rows of like open rooms sort of surrounding it and those rooms would be like the you know little big planet three which i can't believe i've forgotten to mention that up to this point looks pretty tight um and you know they had like a bloodborne booth and they had a one for the

killzone dlc like they had their like first party stuff there but most of the the actual like exposed show floor area of their booth which was humongous was just rows and rows and rows of indie games like james jamestown plus and uh they had a they had a bunch of minecraft which i felt bad because nobody was playing it because it's like it's minecraft guys we we got it but they also had like uh hell hell divers um just like a bunch of stations finding isaac on finding of isaac on vita like a bunch of like that was pretty refreshing to me just to put a pin in this um uh i i don't want people to think that we're like i think a lot of times being jaded about e3 can come off as being jaded about video games. The exact opposite.

I don't feel that way at all. Like, video games are awesome. There's so many crazy, weird, oddball, like, video games that are being made and released by one, two, three, four, five-person teams. Like, I am not in any way, like, down on video games. And it is solely about e3 and i know that if you're somebody who's like always wanted to go to e3 or something that that may come off as like i don't know like gross cynical jaded journal stuff but just from my perspective the exciting things that are happening aren't aren't happening there right now to me for me

personally i don't i still think i mean there's definitely you could that as much i mean like you can you can apologize for but like that's not the and the show may get to that point but like that's not the show it is it all comes down to like i think if you're one person covering the show you can fill your your schedule the entire week with seeing nothing but cool shit it's just the nature of how we like and and most outlets cover this thing is we send a bunch of people and then you get you know different things so you get like a pretty wide array of stuff and it felt like this year you had to work just a little bit harder to like a find like playable shit because there were a lot of like theater presentations hands-off stuff for games that are coming out in like october um and also

to like find stuff that got you like just excited um so like i don't know that it's it's it's it's hard to talk about because you're talking about like the entire the entire like ecosystem of e3 uh because there is definitely definitely cool shit to see um but it's just like the the entire bubble felt a little more insubstantial cool cool cool cool is there not any news that we can talk about no i mean I mean, E3 was the news section, which is fine. This really, there hasn't been anything. Let's talk about this fucking Hearthstone thing. Yeah, we can talk about that.

There's this Finnish tournament led by the Finnish Assembly that is only allowing entrants in the Hearthstone tournament to dudes. And here is the reason. dudes. And here is the reason. Is that the original reason that the head admin of the Assembly Summer 2014 Hearthstone Qualifier

told the publication in accordance with the IESF tournament regulations. Since the main tournament event is open to male players only, this is to avoid possible conflicts. e.g. a female player eliminating a male player during round of eight, among other things. What does that even mean?

What are you talking about? player beat a male player there would be outrage and tables flipped and people would just question why they're even alive at this point that's the dumbest that's the dumbest and worst they have separate i was also reading this so there's separate tournaments for male and female which is crazy to me right because when you beat the when a female wins the female tournament there's not like another female like tournament on the ladder higher up for them to move up to is there and and for the men for that case like why is there why is it even separated i thought okay so so here's the thing i think this is stupid and dumb and wrong there's precedence for it in dumb stupid wrong shit also no no there no there's precedence for it in dumb stupid wrong shit also no no no there's precedence for it in the world of chess uh and in the world of chess there aren't many um women players and so

the the rise of uh female leagues uh in chess has largely been to promote growth and like put more of a focus on women players the difference being the key difference i think and the one that like is so sort of sketchy in this case is that it doesn't preclude women from participating in chess tournaments that that i think is when you... So essentially there's a women's only tournament, but there's no men's only tournament. Correct, right. Which, I mean, let's be honest,

sounds like kind of an imbalance for us dudes, huh? Oh, God. Jesus, please. It's a satire. It's just parody. It's a parody of those. It does suck. And this is so stupid like even if you're not like even you have to be pretty deep down the mra rabbit hole to not see that this is

ridiculous right and it's it's also finland which i thought was a pretty like that's a cool i thought we were cool i thought they were a cool group i thought we were thought we were cool. I thought they were a cool group. I thought we were buds. Yeah, I guess I don't want to judge all of Finland based on one tournament. But I will. Watch me do it. But it's outlandish. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, there was a time, actually, I remember historically when Finland was in the grips of war. Okay.

If only there was a game to recreate that moment. Oh, boy. Heavy. I don't know if Finland was in World War I. They were probably involved in some way. It was the World War, Justin. We were all soldiers on that day. We were all involved in different ways.

Valiant Hearts is a game about the First World War, and it is a war game in which you are not explicitly tasked with killing people which makes it very different from many war games many many games also not not true you kill quite a few people pretty early i said you're not specifically right if you happen to kill people in your travails so be it when do you kill people like what about that time at the very beginning when you blow up a bridge full of people on it they all they all they run away oh really yeah they they go to great lengths and to show it's like the lego like even when you blow up a tower or whatever it shows the people like jumping out of the tower i'm not saying that you never kill people but like sure that's like the Lego games? Like, even when you blow up a tower or whatever, it shows the people, like, jumping out of the tower.

I'm not saying that you never kill people, but, like, that's not the main thrust of the game. That almost seems disingenuous. Like, to make it like a cartoon. It makes it maybe like just talk about the game. Yeah, sorry, sorry. I'm being a jerk. So you play, it's sort of a branching narrative that tells a few different stories in parallel. And by and large, the people that are profiled in Valiant Hearts aren't war heroes per se in the traditional sense that we think of them.

They seem to be sort of everyday people that are bringing their own baggage to the war and their own reasons for being there, telling their own stories. And the game is mainly told through sort of a puzzle mechanic, similar to like what you'd seen in an adventure game where you find, you know, the right item to use in a specific scenario, interspersed with like some more-y type bits. It is so, I think, refreshing to play a game that... We have so many games that glorify violence, and it, for me, is really refreshing to see a game that deals with war in a sort of very human way. One of the most interesting things about the game for me,

and I think this is a real your mileage may vary, not everybody be into this. There are in each level, there are facts that pop up that you can read, interspersed with each of the levels that provide like actual historical context about what you're doing and the area that you're in, what the reality of the war was like for people in that time period. And as such, I think I feel like playing Valiant Hearts gives me a better idea of what the actual experience of being in this war was like, so much better than in a first-person shooter where i'm

basically just you know mowing down the bad guys or whatever more so even really interesting more so even i think than assassin's creed which does sort of a similar thing with like if you come across like a famous building where they talk about like a famous person that actually existed during that era i never read that supplemental information because like it's just not super interesting to me what valiant hearts does is it breaks it down into like topics so it will talk about like um like trench warfare like what that was like it talks about chlorine gas and how it was utilized and like the crazy shit that soldiers did to survive getting bombed by chlorine gas like peeing on rags and tying it around their faces yeah it's almost like a museum

exhibit but rather than like a diorama or a video that's playing alongside of things like you the game is the av component i because you're actually like experiencing chlorine gas for example right effects are and i learned like i learned shit which i'm not sure i'm comfortable with yeah but i got like actual brain smarts put in my head in a way that i like it's called And I learned, like, I learned shit, which I'm not sure I'm comfortable with. Yeah. But I got, like, actual brain smarts put in my head in a way that I, like. I think it's called edutainment. I enjoyed. Yeah, but it didn't, like.

It should be more clearly labeled. Right. It's dangerous. Information is dangerous. Yeah. I felt the same way about Oregon Trail 30 years ago. How do you say the name of that state again? Oregon.

Okay. Like polygon. Sure. Yeah, i agree with everything you've said i i would note also though with all that in mind i don't think it's a very good game quote unquote game like as a standalone like if you took all the historical stuff out of it i mean it's it's interesting like i was really digging learning stuff but as an adventure game i don't think it really pushes any boundaries it's pretty straightforward i don't know i don't agree at all i think that it does some actually some really clever stuff like if you think about it as almost like a side scroller adventure game which is what it is you don't have like a full plane that you can move around sure you have a very limited like scope to do everything in and so um with that in mind

you would think that like the solutions to the puzzles would be very difficult but actually it just sort of broadens what an adventure game puzzle can be a lot of it it comes down to like the interpretation of symbols whether that is like there's there's no like written dialogue in the game. You'll just see like a speech bubble pop up with some sort of symbol in it. And then you have to sort of identify a sim. I mean, it's like a blimp, a picture of a blimp or like a wine bottle. It's pretty obvious. No, well, not always.

Like there's one puzzle where you have to toss a guy dynamite. But then and there's different numbers of dynamite bundles oh yeah has like his symbols are just like he'll just say the number two three two and sure you have no idea what that means but you're on like a pretty limited 2d plane like everything you need is in eyesight there's no like obtuse solution waiting for you it just comes down to deciphering what what the game wants from you in any given situation i actually i like that a lot more than some some more recent adventure games that have come out that do adhere to that like give the rubber chicken to the pilot and yeah i don't think that's certainly not something i'm applauding either like i'm not looking for super vague like no i'm just saying

that this is a way for them to get around it. And I thought it was a really clever system that made the game, like, super accessible for me. Sure. Yeah, I... I'm so mixed on the game. There's a lot I really like. I like what Justin talked about with the historical facts. It reminded me of another game that I think most of us liked,

which was Call of Juarez Gunslinger, which had these bits of information pop up or be discoverable throughout the game. But what I liked about that game is it kind of drew a line between the fiction of the game and these bits of information that you were finding, where it's like, hey, everything you're doing is wacky, but here's the real deal here's what really went down um and what i kept running up against with this game was the issue of tone where i didn't know what i was supposed to be feeling that like it's a goofy cartoon and like you guys are describing they go out of the way for people not to die but at the same time like then there will be a bombing and you'll see like the entire uh background littered with dead bodies or or even like the

puzzles so like uh finding the bone early on there's the moment where it's like you escape from a bombing you're a pow you've got a big spoon you're like digging through the ground with the big spoon avoiding like unexploded shells in like a 2d space and it just felt kind of goofy in comparison to like obviously reality's war so it's it's a weird dichotomy where it's like they want to tell this these true stories of these true people but also it becomes like this outlandish like not realistic but why not that's interesting though because i don't think that it's less is that actually less true to war than call of duty is i mean is that actually like a worse representation so i think this is a much better wreck like representation

i like seeing people experimenting and like doing these things i i think it is more of like we're in the growing pain stages of okay we want to make games about real serious things we have very minimal experience doing that how do we do that without having the goal be shoot as many people in the face and how do we get tone right in a video game because you know you're playing and how do we make sure that you know is who's who's the audience with this game you mentioned that it felt kind of like a museum exhibit and i think that's pretty dead on because it feels like something i would see it like almost like a children's museum that is trying to explain like a very very serious topic

like world war one to a really young audience that might have trouble dealing with the complexities of it uh and i think that's great like from that angle it actually makes me appreciate the game more um but i i think the other problem for me though is i don't feel like people are always finding designers are always finding a gameplay hook that matches the actual idea or the setting. And I think throwing a gun at it has been the solution for a long time for most developers. And I think right after that is the throwing kind of puzzles that, if you stripped away the setting, could be in any game. What I look at, that game coming out about

My Own War, or whatever it's called, about the people who are civilians during a war that I think is happening in, like, Eastern Europe, the idea of using, like, tower defense basically as a representation of, oh, we have to go get resources, and then we have

to protect ourselves when we're home at night. That feels like a match. I get why those two are connected, but I don't always understand why the puzzles exist in this game other than having something to do. I think a lot of them are based

around giving the characters identity, right? The Freddy guy, the American big beef tank fellow is almost always about, like, blowing shit up and knocking shit down while

the other characters have their, like, areas of expertise, and I think that stuff lends itself to, like, some really great and, like, surprisingly super fast character development. By, like, level two, you two you are like the plight of these characters are are so like established at that point well not if you're chris plant who had some trouble following that story which one you were like wait no that guy's french

why is he on the german side very beginning when i was trying not to make you feel bad because I come from a French heritage and you come from a German heritage and we all know. Oh, yeah. It's an interesting point about the tone plant because you know what I, my takeaway, like, what I got from it was the, um, a lot of our best

fiction about war has highlighted the absurdities of it. i'm thinking here specifically of uh uh like catch 22 for example or slaughterhouse five is another is another example of like the most honest representation of wars is probably not like the high wattage action of uh uh like the high wattage action of uh uh like call of duty but it is also not completely sorrowful and it's not like papers please you know it's probably something closer to absurdity like because it is the the the uh layering of these very absurd things that are hard for humans to process, like the death of millions of people and things like that. And I think having an absurd tone is not all that far off

from representing warfare. Oh, I agree. Do you think this game has an absurd tone? I never got that. I think it's playing pretty straight. I mean, you're digging holes with a giant spoon, and there is a puzzle where you have to make hot dogs. Yeah, but I don't think that...

I honestly don't think when they were doing that, they were like, oh, this is a real yuckster. I think it was like, you're making food, and it's a cartoon. I don't know that absurdity has to elicit yucks. Well, I guess I don't think that was intentional. I don't think it entirely was. I think it was just meant meant to be banal i think so much of the game is like look at these people doing this like either weird or like totally everyday shit on a battleground where

millions and millions of people are dying it would that that isn't necessarily humorous as much as it is like it it establishes a different tone that i don't think any video game has ever really used when broaching the subject you know oh yeah i agree i think it's i think there's a pretty significant difference between catch 22 or dr strange love and like what they're going for i think i i don't know i i think it is not especially helpful to like take any one of the game's mechanics and stripping it out and saying like well why did they do it this way because like you can't just take the educational element and say well that why did they do this and take the puzzles and say why do they do that like it is a it is a comprehensive package. And I just, I think it's so like wildly original

in almost every sense, both in like presentation, how they've used the Ubiart framework, how they have like adapted the like puzzle adventure game to a side-scrolling 2D idea, but also like how they talk about, how they talk about like the situations that war puts you in. Like it is a, it's a bundle it's like a whole thing and i think it's really really successful with all the parts you

know working together and and it does you know world war one there's a reason why it has never really been hit upon in games for the most part it's a pretty awful war it's uh not what you would quote unquote call a fun war no that game say like the shooting game would be like you hiding in a trench and like shitting on yourself right exactly which is why there haven't really been any world war one uh war games also it's incredibly complex and the us's involvement in it is hazy for most people yeah okay again i'm talking about like as yeah the you know potential gameplay mechanics but this does do two things rather well which is teaches you something and makes you feel engaged with the events that were going on for a period of time that i think most

people aren't super familiar with so i i you know, overall, I think it's a pretty impressive feat. I think it's very good. I just think it's fair to recognize that in terms of video games that are trying to do these things, we are at the early stages. And there's a reason this is the first one that's doing it. And that's why I'm being critical, because we can compare it, and some people will say we can't but against what other games have done with these topics and we are at early stages but it's very exciting i would i will take a million uh of you know shots like this over more shooters um and it's not because those are necessary it's not because those are necessarily bad it's just

like we've done them we've done them it's a it's almost only what we've done yeah and on top of it i don't feel like there is a lot of ambition in terms of the topics that are being covered anymore by shooters so on top of us having seen a million of them it's not a place that I would go to for a deep look and a thorough explanation of the history of World War I sure I'm doing my grandpa for that, my pop pops tell me about them

my pop pop was in the pixel junk wars there were so many fluid dynamics I could hardly keep track guys you want to hear about pixel junk shooter? yeah do it There were so many fluid dynamics I could hardly keep track. Guys, you want to hear about PixelJunk Shooter? Yeah, do it. Don't be a snob about it. It's not like this game.

Okay, so I don't know why I'm talking about this. I know what you're wondering. I'm just going to tell you about how great it is. Why are we talking about PixelJunk Shooter again? It came out 130 years ago. PixelJunk Shooter came out a long, long time ago. It's in Valiant Hearts. They play it in Valiant Hearts. You see a kid with a stick. Pixel Junk Shooter came out a long, long time ago. It's Invaluant Hearts. They play Invaluant Hearts. You see a kid with a stick playing Pixel Junk Shooter.

Invaluant Hearts. You're my pal, Pixel Junko. It is a 2D shooter. You fly around this world, though. I guess your character is 3D now, and there's real fluids. Gross. Are there? Yeah.

But anyway, you shoot little monster things, and you save humans, and you use fluids to get through the space. It's a very fun arcade-y type of game and there's also pixel junk 2 which is included in the package uh and that's kind of the same but also has these like 2d auto scrolling stages um and and freshick likes it a lot it came out a long time ago it's a little bit better now but you can play it on playstation vita which is what i recommend because like 1001 spikes it's one of those things that uh you might get frustrated with at times and the best place to play a game like that is on a long commute okay i'm gonna talk about why i asked us yeah because you demanded that this game i demanded

it not that there was not that there was a ton of competition. We had some difficulty. So the reason I asked for it to be included, and Plant didn't play enough of the multiplayer to really comment, but there is a multiplayer mode that I think is one of the most original multiplayer modes that I've played in a long time. It's asynchronous. It's sort of a stealth soccer blend uh or capture the flag blend where like there's two ships and you've got like a cone of vision when you're on defense and if you

spot the other guy did you mean asymmetrical earlier what you said asynchronous and there's no way that's right oh did i say asynchronous i meant asymmetrical sorry too many a's um it's very difficult to put to words but it's it's an incredibly well-made thoughtful uh multiplayer mode that i think has been all but ignored even by people that like downloaded this game and played a ton of it just because like a lot of people you know this co-op in the campaign stuff like that and that's enough for people they don't really want an adversarial multiplayer game but this uh they just made like a really creative like dual screen uh just like each player is seeing very basically there's one map and the person who is it's one of you trying to stop the person from getting humans and the person who is

being hunted is invisible until they're in a cone of vision and they grab humans and try to throw them in their goal and each character has like a few special weapons like the ability to invert the direction of the other player's controls oh that's neat or like change water to lava or have

like homing rockets there's like a ton of different upgrades you can buy um the learning curve is like not super friendly just because it's pretty complicated have homing rockets. There's a ton of different upgrades you can buy. The learning curve is not super friendly, just because it's pretty complicated. Is this new to Ultimate? No, actually. Is any of this new? The graphics are new.

It looks very pretty. It was in PixelJunk Shooter 2, but it was wholly ignored in PixelJunk Shooter 2. Hardly anyone played it. So this seems like a good opportunity. And iteration no i i've actually been playing it a lot more now that it's on vita which i think is is where i want to play basically everything nowadays um but yeah i can't talk about like tomodachi life or wild star or you could talk about the resties you can like we have plenty of i'm sure other people love those games and we're going to talk about

them there i just wanted to like call attention to this mode that i thought was really cool that clearly no one else thinks is cool so can you play it online yes it's an online actually it has to be online because if it was oh that makes sense yeah you could see the other person's screen okay yeah go for it just find you can actually play it that is playing this game and you're off to the races you could actually play it with a v one person on vita and the other person on ps4 oh that's cool in the same room they just can't be looking at the big screen and it's it was uh playstation plus right that's over well yeah not anymore as of today it's out so tower falls up on that though should yeah tower falls up on that, though. Yeah, Tower

falls up next. Can we just spend some time talking about those two other games? Let's do a mini wrap-up that will include... Why don't we do Rusty's? Guys, listen. Don't turn to Rusty's for Savior. They all say Pixel's. They all

say... No, just kidding. Shovel Knight. Oh, really just kidding. Shovel Knight. Oh, really? Yeah. Everybody says Shovel Knight. Okay. Just a few others. Jake said he likes Action Button's new Vita game, Tuffy the Corgi and the Tower of Bones.

It's a really great deconstruction of the basic platform mechanic of turning around in midair. It's a rad little game. Jeremy likes Sniper Elite 3 because he's a broken person deep down inside inside he said it's fun to shoot dudes in the face in slow-mo jeremy get help michael says his favorite game of the month isn't technically a game it's the reso gun heroes expansion completely oh yeah that's really neat that was exciting title gave me an opportunity to give the developers some well-deserved money and demolition mode is deceptively deep strategic experience that i can't stop playing and finally christopher says uh it's it would be more relevant for may but it's close enough i've been playing the star citizens first real playable demo uh the arena commander module not really a full game but the first piece of playable tech

and the biggest crowdfunding game ever i think it's pretty newsworthy did you get any of you guys back it or had a chance to play with it anybody no no i'm i'm that's the thing talk about it that's about as far as i get i'm excited but i i want to wait until it's more substantial like i mean this one part might be pretty cool but like i don't want to i'll get burned out if i just like every time something comes out i play it extensively and then when the full game launches i'm like well I don't want to, I'll get burnt out if I just, like, every time something comes out, I play it extensively. And then when the full game launches, I'm like, well, I don't want to play that. I already spent hours and hours dipping into that, you know? I'm saving myself.

I'm curious whether I'm going to enjoy it as much if I don't play it with a flight yoke. I don't know. You better get yourself a yoke, bro. I got to find my yoke again. Get yourself a mad cat's yoke. again get yourself get yourself a mad cat's yolk um i'm going to talk about tomodachi life and wild star and you guys can come along with me if you want okay okay but um have i have any of you played tomodachi life no nobody wild star juice i know you got it did you play it wild star i played a little bit okay um of those two wild stars the one that

i'm going to probably continue to play tomodachi life um is is i mean it's a it's like a simple wacky life sim and i think it was sort of pitched when it came to the states as if you like animal crossing you like this um which is i believe pretty uh wrong on every conceivable level because while animal crossing had that hook of like uh like crazy amounts of customization for yourself your town you had like total agency over the world and it was very compelling to like find a new table um because of like how it would help you create a theme for your house like that stuff was so so compelling tomodachi life doesn't really have any of that it is mainly just like a way for you to put yourself and your friends into wacky situations like me and justin

and travis and a monster i made named gordon krampus started a hip-hop group and we would do a hip-hop cover of uh seals kiss from a rose um like that that stuff was really great and it's really entertaining and it was really funny whenever stuff like that or like they're um like hundreds of weird events like you stalking somebody in town for no reason um it's really funny when stuff like that happens but like i haven't really played it that much um after i finished my review because it doesn't have those hooks and i think the sim game needs to have those what does tamagotchi mean means friend in japanese friend life friend life yeah sure i think what does tamagotchi mean that means virtual friend who poops virtual friend who does poop that's great um wildstar is so so good i i i have a hard time

talking about it because like i want to pitch it to people who don't play mmos but it is the most mmo ass mmo probably ever well the combat i think is the thing that said it's really cool it is sort of like a hybrid between the action ideal that games like neverwinter and and um i mean there were games elder scrolls sure where it's it feels more like an action game but it falls somewhere between that and world of warcraft where you have like cool downs and hot bars and um stuff like that where basically weird that there's cool downs on the hot bar yeah that's weird it's like the blt of game mechanics uh but it feel like combat feels really satisfying every attack is

telegraphed by this like big red field on the ground so you have like a way of getting out of the way which makes things move with like a really crazy fast pace from even like early on like that is a the idea of like telegraphs and big like fights is usually saved for like end game stuff in mmos and this is, from the very beginning. It's something you have to, like, learn how to do. But, I mean, like, character customization is really great. The world is enormous and really interesting. Like, all the areas have very unique feelings.

And there's also, like, the best player housing system, like, ever. I played Star Wars Galaxies. No good it's way way better than i had an rd2 did you an rd2 no i didn't pick that one up um like you can play as an architect and you can play like you can pick up like a wood cutting job and then like go around cutting down trees so you can go to your crafting station and then make a chair that you can like scale you make it an enormous chair or a little chair um and then drop that in your plot that you can customize with like a garden or a farm you can do farming and then cook that stuff up in an oven that you've placed in your in your area um you can like change every single element that you can put in the house to like totally

remix it so i can make like a rope fence and instead of using it as a fence i can make it huge and like make it like a remix you can make it like a big rope that hangs from from the wall like you have so much freedom to do stuff there was a penny arcade posted uh one like somebody that they knew took all the furniture and made it really little and made a dollhouse inside their house with like real furniture that they just shrink down um furniture and made it really little and made a dollhouse inside their house with real furniture that they just shrink down. It has an effect on your character. It increases your experience

gains if you chill in your house that you have stuff in. It can give you temporary buffs. It's a really really addicting, really clever system. Let me talk to you about MMOs. The impression that I get as someone that played an MMO for six months, of warcraft back in 2000 blah blah blah uh i feel like you can't play an mmo and play other games do you think that's true or false um i mean it

is definitely they're definitely time sinks if you want to think about it in terms of like raw hours that you put into a game then sure like when i was i i think it can be a game that you only play yeah just because of the content and the like grinding and the loot cycles that exist in in basically every mmo like it can be the only game that you play yes also i think friends if you are playing with people or you start at the same time as people, that can be a huge motivator. That can be a really, really big draw. But I think any MMO you can play and play other stuff as long as you are responsible about it. Like Wildstar, I've been taking a two-week break from checking out other stuff, but I can pretty easily hop in.

um checking out other stuff but i can pretty easily hop in one of the things that wild start does that like a world of warcraft doesn't is in in wow you can have like five hot bars stacked on top of each other with like 40 abilities on it you have to like remember what they are and how you use them in combat especially in like a raid scenario where like millisecond to millisecond you have to know which abilities to use or else everybody will die and get angry at you. Like that's a really stressful situation that requires you to memorize everything you're capable of in wild star. You can only have like eight abilities active at any given time. Um, so you have to like specialize,

but there's never like any confusion as to like what you can do. You know what you can do. You know how you specialize. You can switch those out at any time. But when you're like in a big fight, you got just the eight. So there's like, you don't really have to spend a lot of time memorizing it. And it makes it a lot easier to spend time away from the game and then come back to it. Because like, you don't have to re-memorize this giant workstation of buttons that you

don't know what they mean anymore. I've been really, really, really enjoying my time with the game. and it's the first mmo i've played probably since wow i get i got kind of in a never winner um that i i could see myself playing for for some time now not on mac what is what is do you not own a gaming pc i do not own a gaming pc what okay i thought that was long established yeah i guess i just forgotten you should this come into ps4 uh wildstar am i yeah am i completely no no there's no i am that that would be the only thing that could maybe get me into an mmo is playing it on console i feel like that elder scrolls online is still or even like vita an mmo on vita i would get into i mean you can remote play like you can remote play Final Fantasy XIV.

Yeah, that's true. No, I think that could work. Just because you have a pretty limited slate of actions. You don't have to have a bunch of stuff. And I just want to be chatting. I don't want to type. It's like work. Mavis Beacon? Screw you. Mavis Beacon? Come on, say where it's right.

Sorry, I took a bunch of opiates before. That's the whole show. I think we talked about everything. It's a light month. And listen, guys, July's not going to be any better. If you've got any ideas for stuff we should talk about in July. No, I have an idea. Why don't we do the thing that I was talking about earlier?

I think that's a great idea. I forget what your thing was. Where we all pick a classic game that that person has not played yet and then bring it to the table. Because the whole point with this new format is that we'd all played everything. Yeah, but theoretically, if it's that class of a game,

other people will have played it. So, for example, Chris Plant's never played Super Metroid. Of course, I've played Super Metroid. I've played it now. I've played a level. No, he still hasn't played it. You know what Chris Plant hasn't played

that might be actually really good is L.A. Noire. Or Resident Evil 4. How about we just do a month of games I haven't played? Yeah, let's do the Chris Plant, you should be ashamed of yourself episode. That's Resident Evil fucking 4. L.A. Noire. I think that would be a fast beat. You know what, L.A. Noire, I've been playing it again. Man, that'd be a fascinating okay you know what ellie noir i've been playing it

again yeah man that is such a smart game it does not get enough credit for how innovative it was with like the way it strips away mechanics and like makes a lot of stuff it rethinks a lot of things in a way that makes sense for modern mechanics is is this incredibly smart game that made some incredibly bad choices um the way um there's there is some stuff i want to talk about uh that divinity original sin game i've only put like 30 minutes into it but it seems pretty promising maybe i can finally talk about wolf among us when does when does five come out i'll be out this month oh my god okay i haven't played it since episode one so i gotta yeah i got some catching up to do

too well that could be a good that could be a good topic there'll be stuff let's let's not worry about we're halfway there there'll be and there'll be like a spin tires somewhere in there sure a spin tires equivalent should we have talked about spin tires uh um so we're the besties you can email us besties at polygon.com um we have a lot more content on the website uh videos and uh blog posts got everything if you wanted more about E3 check out our best of

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