The Besties - The Besties Podcast 47 - Proteus and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Episode Date: March 1, 2013

Call it a sick day. Griffin succumbed to the Andromeda Strain this week, leaving Frushtick, Hoops and myself to brave The Besties without him. I confess, it was tough. Fortunately, we had two very different, very unusual games to discuss in the forms of Proteus and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Proteus is what you might call an art game. Drawn in colorful and simple polygons, the game lacks traditional goals and rules. When Proteus was released a few weeks ago, a band of perturbed critics claimed Proteus wasn't a game at all. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on the other hand is the stereotypical action video game. The neo-future world is chock-full of robots and foot soldiers that can be sliced like a watermelon in Fruit Ninja. The game has a clear goal and that's KILL, KILL, KILL! To kill or chase a frog: that is the question. 03:00 - Proteus 16:30 - Half Time / The spread of the Andromeda Strain 20:30 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance 40:30 - What's next? Tomb Raider and SimCity 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!

Did you tell me it was my idea? Uh, me, no. You did not. It didn't come up. Uh, you played an integral role in the creation of the idea. Wow. No, I mean it was my idea. Yeah.

Okay. It's pretty tough to write a sentence. That's like saying That's like saying that two parents Play an integral role in the birth of their children It's like yes but I mean Okay I'll agree I was the mother Who birthed the child whereas you were the father

That injected sperm into my womb You were at best the midwife That observed the birth And then had to breastfeed the baby And had to nurse it back from the birth to death. It was a teething, teething child. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Frustig, and I know the best game of the week.

Chris, you sounded like a... Did you hear that? I was trying to decide, am I going to do a Griffin impression? And then almost the second I started, I said, no, I'm not going to do that. I don't know. That sounded pretty much like Griffin. Except for when I said my name. Yeah. Should I try again?

Other than that. Yeah, try again. Hey, my name is Griffin McElroy, and I live in Austin. Burritos! I never knew that my brother was Poochie from Itchy and Scratchy. Goodbye, I'm going to my planet now. Yeah, Griffin's out super sick. I'm barely alive, but I wanted to come tell you guys about the hottest, latest video games as we do every week here on The Besties.

As we look at the new games and talk about them, just kind of like most podcasts. From time to time, yes. We do that. Like most video games. I want to start off talking about Proteus, a new indie bonbon from two guys who made it. I have a lot of thoughts about this game. No, you don't. You didn't play it.

Chris Plant, give us the skinny on Proteus. Okay. Wow, there's like a giant helicopter that is flying over our apartment right now, and I feel like this is the end. And second. Okay, it's gone. And now I can tell you about Proteus. It was the video game police, because many of the video game people don't think this is actually a video game. So that's something to consider going in.

So in Proteus, you are in a bright, colorful, three-dimensional island. You walk around, and then the game ends. Okay. So it turns out I actually did play it. That does sound like a fair explanation. That is the game. The entire game. that is the that is the game the entire game uh but uh it's very pretty this island and it's responsive in some ways like there are frogs that you can chase uh and there are fireflies and there are kind of little tricks to uh making other things happen like i'll spoil just one uh

to making other things happen. Like, I'll spoil just one, because there isn't a lot, so I don't want to spoil the whole game. But there are kind of like religious-looking stones, and if you approach them at, I think, the nighttime, that's how it worked for me, like a storm happens, and this kind of colorful religious event occurs.

But everything's very slight and very soft and very beautiful and then it just ends so it's essentially like you were dropped into like a minecraft server and you just sort of wandered around for a while and every once in a while there'd be like interactive moments no um interactive is maybe the wrong man i guess interactive interactive in the sense that you are walking towards them but there's nothing else you can do um yeah there is no action you can take um i described it on twitter as what it's like being an octorok waiting for link to come kill you like that's pretty funny that thank you i'm a professional uh i i uh i think the problem in proteus you really don't i mean there's nothing you solve nothing

you sort of like do there's not an action that you have to do um it's simply the passage of time and uh and you're not really interacting with the environment in any way other than observing it observing things uh can can change them um i i think the problem with proteus and and not in it and it is not endemic to proteus i think it is fine for what it sets out to be i think it achieves the things it sets out to achieve. But it's not a game. And I think that it really betrays sort of a lack of how little vocabulary we really have with dealing with interactive electronic things. Because it is not, I don't think of it as a, I don't think it is a game. I think for something to qualify as a game, there have to be objectives.

There has to be a fail state. And Proteus has neither of these things. It is an interactive work of art, and I think that that's great. I think it's – and, you know, some people enjoy it. Some people won't. That's fine. But I think putting that label of game on it is problematic. I mean, I feel like putting a game in that sort of box is a little worrying.

I guess we all define games differently. But I don't know that it needs to necessarily have... I feel like someone creating a world and letting you, like, explore that world wherever you want, that sounds like a game to me. I get you can't really do anything apart from, like, look around. But I guess I don't see... I'm really torn between both of those arguments because on one hand, I think with a video game specifically just video games

when we say games i i kind of agree with frush dick that you know it's a virtual space and you can do things in it even if those things don't have like a very clear cause and effect uh but then if you think about just the history of games you know thousands and thousands of years much broader than video games this idea of just walking around isn't isn't a game on that side justin's right you know you do need some rules or objectives or fail states uh like if you walked around a theme park that's not a game it's funny you said that chris when you uh when i was a kid when you go into uh the world of imagination in epcot yes this is disney world if you've only been to disneyland you won't go off this as much but uh there's a world of

imagination in epcot and at the end of it you're in this sort of um i guess playground for lack of a better term and you uh you can like jump on tiles and that makes them create certain noises and you can chase lights around and you can interact with those and there's like uh you know funny funny cameras that distort your image and and it's like a science museum uh yeah yeah exactly except there's like a science museum. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's no actual science going on. No science, no objective. No learning. There's no learning, exactly. And to me, I don't think that it makes sense to delineate between that and a, you know, I don't think that making that experience completely digital would make that a game. I think when you talk about words, though,

and I love that we're going down this road. Yeah, I mean, I hesitate to even do it. Why not? I mean, I think it's worthwhile. I find it as interesting as the our games art conversation, which is to say, like, maybe no one really knows. I think this is a lot more important than that because art, it's anything. I think this is a lot more important than that because art, it's anything.

I think what's interesting here is you have schools or all these arguments are around the word game. And I don't think that's the right word. I think play is something closer to it. Like you said, you know, when you went to Epcot as a kid and you went into this playground. And I think specifically when you say you weren't learning things, I don't think that's entirely true. I think that's what games are and even experiences like this are. Play is a safe place to learn.

That's what play is. You're learning certain experiences. You're learning how to play games. You're learning how to do things in a safe venue. And I think in that way it falls under that and that's super super heady uh but in terms of looking at this i that's why i don't think it's like just an art piece i think it is a playful experience i think it's something where you're walking around this world and learning what it is and that's exactly like what's happening at Epcot. The truth of the matter is probably somewhere between art and game.

I mean, it... Gart. It's Gart! It's totally Gart! Hey, Gart. No, the only reason I make... For me, at least, this isn't a completely... This isn't a completely – this isn't just semantics because I think the lens by which we evaluate games often is, is it fun?

um if you buy into like rave costar's take on it is the experience of learning uh you know the idea that you learn a system and you can apply that knowledge and that's fun and satisfying um produce is not fun at least for me it was not fun in that uh in that regard you know what it's i've been thinking of trying to come up with a game that this reminds me of and it sounds to me exactly like what was the one where you're reading letters on that island and you're just like... No. It came out like a year ago. They did like a

remake of it. It was a mod. Oh, Esther's something or other. Oh, Dear Esther. Sounds a lot like even less much less there's no fail state in dear esther you can't lose you can't die like letters or anything in this there's okay there's no story or anything i mean there's passage of time which is yeah so the one thing that i want to know and i i don't want you to go into this because obviously it's a big part of the game but i do sort of i just want to have some indication a lot of people have talked about the ending that there's an ending

to proteus yes like people said it's 45 minutes long or whatever what does that even mean if you're not doing anything time is it just like watching the sun go across the sky uh sure something like that i mean that's probably it's the one thing that happens, so I'm not going to say what it is. Okay. But yes, there's something, it's a passage of time, and that comes to an end. You guys sure you didn't just, like, miss the chest? Like, there's probably a chest around there somewhere. Did you find the sword?

Because if you don't find the sword, you can't kill it. It's dangerous to go alone. Take this. It's boring to go alone. I actually liked Proteus a lot, probably more than Justin. But the way I played it was loading it at, I don't know, like 5.30 in the morning on a Sunday and kind of being dazed and just not knowing how long it would take

and not knowing almost anything about it. And it was just like the music just kind of washed over me and the experience happened in 45 minutes past and it felt very uh i don't know i'm not saying but kind of like meditative like i i didn't really yeah i i wasn't looking for it to be anything more i guess and it just happened and i enjoyed it but i think so like problem is if you're on lewds, essentially it's the perfect game. Yeah, I think that's perfect. If you just want to listen to the music and check out the scenery

and kind of figure out this space, because that's the other important thing, the island that you're on is different every time. It generates itself. Is it that different though? Oh yeah. I played through it about

i guess one and a half times because i didn't need to finish it again uh and is it just like how different is it i mean totally different i mean what has all the same key things they're like i don't know probably five or six things that are in each one there's a graveyard there's these religious stones there's a mountain. But where everything is, it's different. So not that different. I mean, sure. I suspect my

problems with it probably stem from the fact that I don't, and I've been pretty clear about this, I don't particularly enjoy this aesthetic. It's not, the retro aesthetic is not something that I enjoy, and i think this is even less detailed than a lot of games that would consider themselves to be retro um very much has sort of an atari 2600 vibe that may be overstating the point of it but um it is very

the graphics are very simple um it is a first person shooter though i mean first person game yes right first person game but it's a first-person game. And it's 3D, so that was probably beyond... Because it does kind of look like, when it's flat, it looks like a 2D image. And it looks kind of like an Atari cover. Yeah.

Like with crazy rainbows and shit? Yes, with crazy rainbows and stripes and red balloons. So yeah i mean that's that game i i don't know how much more we want to go down any semantic rabbit holes or if you want yeah that stuff i find horrifying the weird thing about it semantics aside the interesting thing about it is I think fun, whatever fun is, while not universal, is more universal than aesthetic appreciation. And I think that it is much easier for me to recommend a game that I find fun to someone else who likes games. that I find fun to someone else who likes games,

I think it's a lot easier for me to recommend that to somebody as opposed to something like this where, I mean, if that aesthetic appeals to you, if the idea of being in this world would appeal to you, then I think that, you know, it's an easy sale because you're really going to enjoy your time there. And if you are unlike me in the fact that you can, like, relax and not feel like you have to be doing something.

I think that's a good point. Just because I think fun is, like, weirdly coded into our shared DNA. Like, Tetris, just the idea of, like, ordering things is, like, fun fun for everyone or just pressing jump seems to be fun for everyone in a video game for whatever reason that physics things triggers some you know opiate in our heads right wow you're right you know we've we see things visually every day so we do develop kind of you know I guess biases towards certain aesthetics. This is a really nerdy version.

No, but I mean, seriously, the one thing that I keep coming back to is when we're talking about this. You got us. Good one. That was a segue fart. That was good. Russ Freshnick's classic segue fart. So how about you, Russ?

What interesting things do you have to tell us? I had a fight with a woman at Uniqlo the other day. You fought a woman? Well, not a physical fight. It was more of a battle of words. You fought a woman at a Japanese t-shirt shop? No, they sell more than t-shirts. Casual fashion, I would say.

Where was this? It was in Herald Square, 34th Street. Okay. And they had signs everywhere announcing that there's some sort of pants deal going on where you buy a certain number of pants. Some sort of pants deal. You get a good amount of money off. And this is what the pants deal, this is how it read. The pants deal read, if you buy two pairs of pants

you get $10 off. If you buy three pairs of pants you get an additional $5 off each pair. Now what does that sound like to you? Sounds like to me. I got some scratch paper and a pen. $15 off if you buy three pairs.

Each. So $45 off. Exactly. 100% that. That's what I thought too is that you get $15 like to me scratch paper and a pen 15 off if you buy three pairs each so 45 off exactly 100 that that's what i thought too is that you get 15 off each pair that's a great deal especially since they're like jeans are like 45 or whatever yeah so uh you know i made this argument and she's like well we've been having a lot of people coming in and and having that same issue and i'm like right because that's what the sign says it doesn't say so she was claiming oh no that just means five dollars off each pair anyway i it wasn't really sense though because like why would you make the distinction of three pairs i know so i went online after i got home and the website had actually changed

language of it because clearly enough people probably jew Jews like me, let's be honest, have complained about the fact that they're kind of scamming us with the language of their sale. The old bait and switch. But yeah, I mean, I didn't like, it didn't come to, I'm pretty level-headed and reasonable when it comes to that stuff. And I realize she has no actual control over the situation but it's the sort of thing where it's like you admit that you know the sign is misleading just throw me a bone or something like come on like a little bit of discount a little hj in the back room i mean whatever something something The jeans are already so cheap. I know. So I want them cheaper than they actually are. It's also, I go there a lot because my body is the shape of an Asian man. You got that Asian man shape.

It's very svelte. Anyway, that was my experience. If you guys want to talk about something else that doesn't involve... I've had a slow week. I've been laid up sick. It is, guys, it is hard to get sympathy when your wife is a doctor. Yeah. It is

hard. Yeah. I've been sick all day, and I've been, like, at my most pitiful. Like, I was fully, fully pitiful. I was laid up in bed, you know, watching Ripper Street or something on tv like drinking tea looking sad is there like a chart on front of your bed when you get sick and then she walks in and like looks at it actually and then walks out ignores me and then continues

talking to me as if i were healthy she doesn't put her hand on my head. She doesn't put a thermometer on my mouth. Fucking nothing. Literally no bedside manner. Like, she uses it all up on strangers, and then she comes home to heal someone she actually likes, and there's, like, nada. But have you seen her at work, like, working? No, not yet. So you don't actually know, right? She could be dr house there maybe she's house maybe she has interns go talk to the sick old ladies right and then

when they're about to die she bursts in the room is like i have an idea and then she experiments on them because she's a rogue doctor addicted to pain pills she does tell me i don't have lupus a lot yeah which should have been a tip-off. That is a warning sign. I'm deeply concerned. Hey, I want to talk about another game. Yeah, let's hear it. Yeah, me too. I just finished.

I solved, if you will. Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. You completed it. I completed this game. You sat through every cut scene there was yeah how long did that take you well my final play time on metal gear rising revengeance was five and a half hours does that include cut scenes yeah how many hours of cut scenes were there guys five and a half hours that was my final playtime i don't maybe that doesn't include

cut scenes maybe uh maybe that doesn't include restarts but when i got the preview event sorry i don't mean to cut you off but it's oh tell me about it no no tell me uh so before the vgas there was a big preview event for this game right and? And I was at the VGAs talking to a few people about it, and they're like, oh, yeah, Konami just, you know, let us play for, like, half the day. And I was like, oh, yeah, so you got, you know, kind of a start on it. And they're like, well, the weirdest thing happened.

We all beat the game. And I was like, what do you mean? And, like, we all beat the entire game while we were trying to preview it what were they thinking uh so let me let's back up a little bit let's pull the lid that's sort of like a before the title card and now the title card has popped up yeah right and now we're into the meat of it uh metal gear rising or vengeance isn't is an action game uh not stealth to tactical or tactical stealth espionage or whatever the hell spine ninja slide solid is uh it is a is a full-on total action game in the style of you know your devil may cries or what

have yous um it's built around raiden who is metal gear solids little brother i don't know the backstory and uh you're riding is uh taking on a a company of pmcs who want to what does private military contractors so yeah probably uh a professional military contract i don't know i think it's military contract anyway Military contractor. Anyway, private military contractor. Yeah, that sounds right. Anyway, they want to make a lot more war, and he doesn't want that to happen, and there's something about their enslaving kids to be cyborg ninjas or something. I don't know.

It's not. It's like children. You know, Metal Gear. It's Metal Gear. um so the game is built around primarily around riden's uh sword uh which is interesting because it is so different from what you've seen in other metal gear games where i think you're you know obviously guns are the preferred method of dispatching enemies. There's no guns here. Knives, yeah. This is swords, though. It's different.

Or rations. Or rations. You do use rations to kill a lot of enemies. There's your combos, which, you know, everybody likes those. XXX and then you kill a guy. You can put a sub-weapon on Y, which can be like big swords or size or something like a bow staff. And, you know, all the different Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles weapons are represented here except for Nonchalco. So it's essentially X is like quick attack, Y is like long attack.

Sort of. Actually, the subweapons are very different. Not the subweapons. That's a whole other thing. The size, for example, can help drag you towards an enemy and bring you in close to them. While the bow staff covers, it's not a bow staff, it's a pole arm basically. Helps you cover a larger area with your attacks. You can switch on the fly, not on the fly really, you have to go into a sub menu, but you can switch on the fly. Not on the fly, really.

You have to go into a sub menu, but you can switch mid-level. I feel like few games personify sub menu better than Metal Gear games. Yeah, there's some... So you can also use sub weapons, which can be everything from grenade launchers to actual grenades to pictures that distract enemies to cardboard boxes.

Can you hide in a la every other Metal Gear game? Which can be kind of an annoying break in the action because they're all pretty specific. I mean, there's very rare situations where both a grenade and a rocket launcher would be appropriate. So there's a lot of switching in between those if you're going to use them. But the interesting thing is that in addition to all these combos and regular weapons, you have what's called blade mode, which is triggered by holding in the left trigger. And basically what that does is it slows time and allows you to slice exactly where you want to. So, you know, that's everything from you can cut off an enemy's head, you can slice off their legs.

For larger machines, you can slice off, you know, specific guns to cripple them before you can actually destroy the machine itself. And as you might expect, by cutting people or machines up stylishly, you get BP, which is basically the currency of the game. Battle points. Battle points.

You just upgrade your skills and what have you um yeah so i've been playing a little bit dumb because i actually played the game so but i've been uh you know asking you questions to sort of inform the reader as it were the like the listener as it were i'm like that girl in inception that is like how does, how did the dreams machine work? Anyway. Yeah. So the blade mode thing is what I liked most about this game. I thought it felt really unique and like super, super satisfying. Because you just sort of like, I can't remember the last game where you felt like you had that much control over like manipulating a body and like effing it up right

like most games you like might shoot a leg off or like an arm or a head or whatever but here you're like the precise angle that you want to slice this guy's torso in you can do that and and it's and there's this whole like minigame element where when you're, after you slice someone, you can, like, grab this thing out of the air and crush it. And it, like, gives you bonus points. That, I think that whole, like, slicing element is definitely the, like, the most clever original thing about this game. Uh-huh. And I liked it a lot. Whatever happened to that idea?

That felt like after Soldier Fortune. Not that I liked the violence of it, but the idea of kind of dismantling something that has... Oh, we just played Army of Two, like, a week ago. Yeah, but as it's coming to attack you and actually, like, serving the purpose of the game. Or, it's called Dead Space. Dead Space 1 did that for a while, but Dead Space 3,

it felt like, you shot it and it just kept coming at you just as fast as it did before. And the legs wouldn't really come after, unless you, like, got unless you got him with five or six shots. And it surprisingly keeps from being too – I mean, it doesn't feel as ghoulish as it could. Mainly because the guys you're fighting are all cyborgs. Right. So it's mainly like you're seeing circuitry and not as much on the blood and guts.

Which is in keeping with the series. The series has never been very violent. It is. It is. I mean, it is. And I mean, it's violent. But it's just not, like, gory. It's like muted violence.

Yeah. It's like PG-13 violence. So, I really enjoyed playing it. moment-to-moment experience of playing Metal Gear Rising more than I like the moment-to-moment experience of playing Metal Gear Solid games, largely because when stealth went bad, and, like, it is sort of designed to go bad in this game. There are not a lot of scenarios that you can just stealth your way through. If you sneak up behind an enemy you tap B, you can do a stealth kill. You can also do those from above but like it is not intended for you to

as an example, you have a vision mode where you can see where enemies are but the moment you attack or even run, you deactivate that mode. Which actually is my first problem with the game is that it explains nothing

it explains yeah none of that none of the tools or anything that was yeah i i i love uh evan narcissus at kataku is a close friend but i his review which was glowing was followed i think maybe two hours later by so if you're going to play this game uh here are the things you have to do in the first two hours to get past that part because the game won't tell you how to get past certain enemies that you just would bat your head against the wall yeah it's but it is weirdly satisfying when you figure it out. There's like a little puzzly element to like taking on certain enemies. These things don't sound puzzly. It just sounds like, oh, so that's how I use the parry system.

Oh, yeah. The parry system is totally unexplained. Yeah. The parry system is not explained. The enhanced reality vision is not explained. Lots of essential things are not explained. You need to go through all the VR missions. You need to go into the help section to see how you do moves.

Uh, and you need to probably get on the internet and look at the pieces referring to, because it really is there. They are, they do not tell you a lot. Um, yeah,

but once you get the hang of it, I, uh, I really liked the process of playing the game a lot. It has some severe pacing issues, which I think tie into the time. The back half of the game is basically all boss fights. I mean, sometimes there's a short little run-up where you're killing a few guys. But early on in the game, it has a few guys, but, uh, early on in the game, it has a really nice flow of, you know, go through the level, and then at the end, there's a massive boss, which has its own strategy to, to destroying, um, which is only important because,

uh, you get, uh, basically a gel that can refill your life uh and you get those through the process of playing the level you know you'll find them just like anything else uh but when they put back to back to back to back boss fights on you um you don't have an an opportunity to get that gel well you just and you just don't know like when that's gonna like how if you're preserving those like resources you don't know how many you're supposed to preserve if they're just constantly throwing boss fights at you yeah exactly i mean you you don't know if like oh god i've used too many of these to get through the rest of the game uh because i you know and and you know you have a hundred uh percent life energy or whatever and there are attacks later on in the game that can take

a quarter to a half of your life in one hit so it can get like really really hard late and not through any fault of your own it just becomes like hugely frustrating um and i i don't know and there's a lot there's like several problems like that plus like the length it seems it seems really short it feels like a game somebody just wanted to get finished well i mean that's what it was though right well not only that is we should note that it's a platinum game and platinum games tend to be pretty short yeah but it wasn't always a platinum game right that's true yeah but they threw away, like, everything. I thought that was, like, the whole thing, that they were like, yeah, we made all these things, and Platinum was like, eh, we don't really want them.

Yeah, I think that's probably what happened. I think it's, I'd rather, like, honestly, I felt like Metal Gear Solid 4, like, hugely overstayed its welcome. Like, I was so ready to be done with that game when it ended so i'd rather it be almost shorter than longer although five and a half hours is pretty damn short especially for a 60 price tag uh you know yeah i'm actually agree it's very rare that i say i wish the game had been longer um because i think a lot of times that's a good thing because they can leave you wanting more, that's cool but I think Metal Gear Rising is one of those games

that fails that succeeds as a game while it fails as a product because it is fun to play I mean the systems and everything they have they built in such a way that it's a fun, rewarding, challenging experience, well-balanced, etc.

But just as a product, it's not good. It's too short. It doesn't explain enough to you. The VR missions, you can go play VR missions if you want. I did not find them particularly enjoyable. There's a long loading sequence before each one so if you like fail it and start it again um you're gonna wait through i think 15 seconds or so of loading time before you get a shot we're talking about some of these that are like insta fail

stealth things um so i wasn't crazy about that um but i don't know i i enjoyed playing it i just think if you and i again i'm never this guy i'm never the guy who's like add more length but like i think if you paid 60 bucks for this game you would you would feel like you did not get your money's worth personally yeah well that's i don't know what 60 is worth to you it is fun it's fun to play I don't understand why the story in these games always has to be so bad there is actually like they're getting close to an interesting

point with some of it the guy doing the voice of Raiden is really terrible and it very much sounds like a guy who's pretending to be tough the whole time and I don't know why he couldn't just – I mean, it's always like this. Hey, let's go get a hamburger after this. Like, I don't know why he can't just be a dude.

Yeah, but that's Metal Gear, right? Are those games – are they voice directed in America? Are they voice directed in Japan? No, I'm pretty sure it's done in Japan. Like, they're guessing all Americans are yelling. no i'm pretty sure it's done in japan like they're guessing all americans are yelling i'm sure there's someone like a fluent english speaker in the audience while they're recording these things in the crowd it's not even the i mean it's not even the uh you know it's not even the the text so much as although at one point delivery it's the delivery right although at one point

ryden does deliver the line we remember don't remember exactly what it is. He said, to some extent, nothing that's on the scale of 9-11 can be good. It's like, well, yeah. Yeah, but what if it's like a parade on the scale of 9-11? Yeah, like as bad as that was, imagine a parade that is as good as that was bad. No, I mean, like, as bad as that was, imagine a parade that is as good as that. It was bad.

No, I mean, like, I don't know. They sum it up, and one of the bad guys at another point is like, it'll be just like the good old days right after 9-11. Like, okay. I mean, you're still a Metal Gear game. Maybe you should just try to keep it in check a little bit. But that stuff was fine. And I really do like the sword play stuff is neat.

And it's a cool way of, like, connecting you to the idea of using a sword as opposed to any other weapon. Because in a lot of third-person action games that have melee combat, I mean, it wouldn't matter what weapon you're using, right? that have melee combat, I mean, it wouldn't matter what weapon you're using, right? Like, a sword is the same as the blades in God of War or Batman's punches or whatever. It wouldn't really matter, but it does feel like you're using a sword in this game. Didn't it at one point have Kinect functionality?

Am I like... That's, yeah, I don't know at one point have connect functionality am i like that's yeah i don't know if that's misremembering that it feels like it was designed during the peak of connect move we you know yeah it just wouldn't there's no fathomable way it could possibly work apart from like just having an entire game where you stand in front of a screen essentially fruit ninja but if it was fruit ninja yeah it would work this is the perfect type of supplementary material you know like yeah play the game with a controller and then when it's time to like smash swipe your hand around and grab the heart and crush it like yeah but you have to like stand up no you can sit no it really doesn't work yeah it's a it's a

huge the the the cool thing about the sword play, and it's cool, but it's also... I don't know if it'll be for everybody's bag, is that it is kind of tricky. So you slow down time to almost a crawl, but you're still losing energy, so you don't have an infinite amount of blade mode. an infinite amount of blade mode. You, with the right thumbstick, change the angle at which you're going to make a cut. So by rotating the thumbstick,

you rotate the angle you're going to make a cut at. And by moving the left thumbstick, you change your orientation, which is like a lot for your brain to process. It's not intuitive, but it's well i think you get a handle on how it works that's kind of yeah i mean there's room to like become really good at it yeah you know there's room there's reward for for practice with it um and if you cut as you're about to kill an enemy um you can cut at a certain location and be able to pull out his energy, spine,

and crush it in your hand and that refills your life and your energy. So that there is a gameplay benefit to bisecting dudes. Yeah, it's okay. I mean, yeah, it's just, I think the $60 thing is

a lot to ask for. It seems like a really good, like if it was like a, I don't know, in a couple years couple years i'm sure it'll be down probably in like four months it'll probably be down to like 20 bucks and at that point i think it's totally worth it um right now it depends it as i always tell people when they ask me if a game is worth a certain amount of money uh i don't know what that money is worth to you. So that is very, that is a possible answer. If you ride to work in a yacht made of diamonds, you probably can spring for the $60. And somebody can play the annoying parts

and explain to you what the game is not explaining. Yeah. Then I think you could really get a kick out of it. Enjoy it. That sounds great. Guys, we did it. We did it this week. It was hard without Griffin.

I mean, we need that man. We need him back. I need him. I'm worried about him. What are you guys going to – what are we going to – like, what's on tap next week? Okay, so here's the deal about next week, and it's a little complicated. Chris Plant, who you might know is another member of this podcast he plays chris plant is um traveling to japan home of middle your style solid revengeance

why are you doing that i why is it the first i'm hearing about this wait is it really yes that's amazing likely awesome uh so yeah he's going to japan to do some stuff um and so i don't know when that we might have to record without him i think next week yeah and then and with that in mind there's only one game that i want to play next week because i already played it and it's great tomb raider yeah definitely have to get into tomb raider uh is there is there something else that we can uh call it call it to i'm i'm trying to think of what else comes out check out the old electronics boutique if it's out i think you guys should play uh fishing if uh extreme oh no i know when it's coming out and it's not next week never mind so never mind so that's a. That's a pass or a go.

Who plays Super Crate Box again? No. Yeah, this website's not super helpful for telling me what games are coming out soon. Oh, when's Gears of War coming out? Is that soon? No. This is great radio, I'm sure, is us looking at release date lists. You know what I think you guys should do?

I think it's a Tomb Raider episode. You can talk about your history with Lara. You can... There's so much to talk about. All the fun we've had together. It's a big game. Maybe Griffin's playing something else that we don't know about. We'll figure it all out. We'll let you know. Maybe Griffin's got an inside line on a cool new game. On a Hot Scoops.

Okay, basically, yeah. Basically, like... I don't know what else comes out next week. That's where I'm at. This is what you need Griffin for. Oh, doesn't SimCity come out next week? Oh, yeah.

You should do that game. I'm like, oh, man. It's sort of a big game. I'm sad I can't talk about that. Yeah, I want to cover SimCity, I think. Okay. As well as Tomb Raider. Do it without me, guys.

That's a big week. SimCity and Tomb Raider is a big week. And I mean, that's an amazing Spider-Man Ultimate Edition, so that's coming out too. Yeah. Week after that is God of War 3 and StarCraft 3, or sorry, StarCraft 2 too. Oh.

Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like a God of War week for me. Yeah, okay, so let's do Tomb Raider and SimCity next week. Chris Plant will hopefully be traveling safely to many, many maid cafes and other extravagances in Japan. Not on the company doll, I hope. Only on the company doll.

Only on the company doll. Hey, thank you guys so much for listening. Make sure you visit us at Polygon.com. Follow us at Polygon YouTube slash Polygon Facebook slash Polygon. Polygon.com.tumblr.com. You know, all that stuff. Come check us out. Subscribe to our show.

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