Game Scoop! 825: Virtual Insanity

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19:17Mark Medina:So I got to go play this BTS at Nintendo. and so this is before I even knew about the price or anything like that. So knowing that, I got to tell you all about what I thought of it and I thought it was really, really cool because there was nothing that was connecting DK Bonanza to the 90s series. It was connected to Odyssey a little bit through the Pauline stuff but I really think this is cool to throw that in there. I mean, I think I agree with everybody that it'd be great if this was just in the game but it does feel like a completion of what the game's content kind of needed. And then I love Emerald Rush.

19:56Mark Medina:I think it's awesome. I think it's really cool. I think running around the game and getting all the bananas that you hadn't got yet wasn't that much fun for me, even though I had started doing that. I had started doing some of the post-game challenges, which are called Encores. And this is just a lot more interesting than that. It's this really cool time-crunchy mode that you can play across many of the layers. that it's just, it has you kind of like plan these cool skill runs. And I just thought it was good. I thought it was like the best use of destruction gameplay in a game that didn't really think out destruction gameplay that well.

20:31Mark Medina:It thought it out and made the levels work, but it didn't. And nothing ever made me think like, wow, this game is so smart. I can destroy this tree. And this is a really interesting thing, destroying this tree. It was always like, oh, you can do this. And it's either a shortcut or it's not. Everybody knows how I feel about this game, but I like this DLC a lot. those perks that you're getting, do they, are they, do they last between rounds? No. So when you, yeah, well, it's a road. Like it, no, yes. Okay. It does it. There's 10 rounds and your skills as you build them up. Yes. Last until the end of those 10 rounds, but you do not keep them when you go to the next set of 10 rounds.

21:07Yeah.

21:08Mark Medina:It's every time it's like you're starting from absolute scratch. Um, okay. I think, I think it's so fascinating to me that even Nintendo has succumbed like the perk like you know you level up and select three perks it's like it's the vampire survivors vacation of just everything yeah what is different though i don't want people to be misled is that if you learn where everything is in a level then everything's there every time you play the round it does not shuffle anything it does shuffle some of the challenge like there's like little challenges like go kill these three guys on the beach that'll like give you um some bonuses um but like if you really wanted to just like so you're starting from zero and then if you really want to go run and get the elephant skill and then just start like eating as much emerald as possible from the mountainside or whatever you can do that and you can actually add some other perks that that allow you to get multipliers on that yeah it's really cool yeah if everybody's

22:03Justin Davis:mad about it being 20 bucks i totally get it though yeah i'm still confused though there's dk island and emerald run but do you just do emerald run on dk island it's not like you can

22:13Mark Medina:unlock it for the other layer so you start it here and it's kind of fun because like you know this island doesn't have benandium gems or anything like that like this is a good way to kind of destroy and explore the island even as a funny little quest like go give dixie a high five and you have to like where's dixie con let's just like by the treehouse go run again so it is kind of a cool way to explore this after you get through the tutorial and then do a few other like challenges and it really ramps up in difficulty then you can lock up with the other layers and other layers have like a little transformation when this mode plays out so you know it's a it's i think i think it's a better way to revisit the game than going back and being like i'll do all the challenge rooms and i'll get all the nindium gems and stuff like that just because it was a

22:55Justin Davis:fun shake-up well i don't know it seems interesting i'd like to try it out but there are other things to play.

23:03Mark Medina:We'll let it up in the office and then you can check it out on a lunch period.

23:07Justin Davis:Yeah, that's a good call.

23:13Justin Davis:Okay, we also did finally get our release date for Metroid Prime 4. That's coming December 4th, the same day as... Say it with me. The same day as... Octopath Zero. Octopath Traveler Zero. Nicely done. Did I get that right? yeah completely that was completely from the head yep that's right man i i think i think metroid looks so stupid i think the bike looks so stupid wait wait wait do you know the bike's name justin the bike has a name it has a name viola i saw the uh yeah viola i saw the amiibo which the amiibo actually looks kind of sick um look super metroid's my favorite game i really like metroid prime you know one two three but i'm not precious about the metroid games like i want them coming out and I want them you know being good I just I think this game continues to just not show that well in like trailer form and demo form we've been saying it ever since they re-revealed the game like oh that was a little bit of a weird demo um I believe in retro like I hope that the finished product turns out great but like just I wasn't particularly impressed with the footage we saw this week.

24:22Justin Davis:I agree with you, Justin. I hope this game is good. I think it looks generic. And it may actually look like Metroid Prime did in 2002, but it's not 2002 anymore. Sam actually had a really good observation that I'd like you to share with the class.

24:37Mark Medina:Well, I am actually known for saying Nintendo games look bad before they come out because they don't show them well. So I just want you guys to do all that. And I just wanted to point out that Star Wars Outlaws has an amazing set of grassy landscapes by which you can drive a motorcycle across and it looks really good on the switch and if you put these side by side it ain't looking great for metro luckily i don't think people care about what it looks like they're you know yes they do no dig on nintendo fans but i i don't think nintendo fans are have ever notoriously like like they don't care that breath of the wild ran at 30 fps but the wild looked good yeah i know but i just i i i can't imagine that this game is going to like i i don't think the graphics are going to sway anybody anybody that's sold on this game or just they're just gonna get it and and that's fine well it's certainly not gonna be the box art that sways people did y 'all see that i didn't see it yeah i know and the villain they slapped nintendo 2 switch edition in like crappy text on the cover art on the cover of the game it's so weird looking well and how long are they gonna are these switch two games gonna say nintendo switch two edition forever like is this just what we're gonna be dealing with six years from now i'm like you don't need to do this anymore i assume pokemon will be the same way right because it's also on the original switch so it's they they tease the villain who's psylux which i know because he also has an amiibo he's at the very end he's in like the final you know he or she's in the final like few seconds of the footage who i think is from federation force and now is like appearing again in metroid prime 4 and like a a very prominent antagonist role so it's like man i don't know so i i think that there's they're just making some bad choices in showing this game like i i don't i i just if i'm gonna do glass half full you all did think wonder and and bonanza look good in preview i thought those looked bad like i don't think those games previewed well and for the same reasons that this did it's not showing me the the core of what i want about you know this metroid game however i would like at some point we're going to see 30 minutes of single player gameplay that has nothing to do with the intro level with space marines and you know i hope hope that looks good let me just compare this like there are games that are shown right and they look amazing and there's like the the the um complete bullshot version of that, right?

27:08Mark Medina:Which can really hype you for a game, right? Like, and I'm not saying this is a bullshot, but like watch the Witcher 4 demo from that conference earlier this year. Like if you want to be hyped for a game, like they didn't show much of the Witcher gameplay, but boy, what they showed looked really awesome. It wasn't just because it was graphics. It was like systems and complexity and like all this neat stuff. And it kind of showed you like what they're, what they're aiming for. And sometimes games show really well before launch. sometimes they don't and and you just see these little slices and that's why it's really important that people go preview games for y 'all i'm not joking we're drawing a distinction between you know like the game may or may not be good but what this is an inside baseball conversation of it's weird that they're not showing it off differently or better in the run-up and it's not necessarily maybe it means that the game won't be that great but it has more to do with like why is this how they're choosing to present it to the world yeah i i the only argument i'll give against that is that this is actual gameplay and that witcher trailer was completely fake that's true there's nothing about that that was not according to them well i believe that that section was built i don't believe that that is what the game will look like well they called it a tech demo yeah yeah i believe it is 100 just a tech demo we thought that's not the point i do want to make sure that people understand that's not the point i'm making i'm pointing i'm making like if you're going to show something about your game you can either make something up completely crazy and show it to people and hype them that's what a cinematic trailer is too and then it still gets you hyped but like why show that like what yeah i mean that bike when he does when they do the wheelie it's like two frames i i some of the discourse i've seen i'm not a metroid prime person at all everybody on this podcast knows that but um people are not loving on that it looks like an open world game and that like even though metroidvanias kind of just are but like this whole going across a desert, that's just not what people want.

29:05They want to be in hallways. And also that desert is just awful looking. It just does not look good. I 100 % agree that every time they've shown this game has been not their best. In summary, Metroid Prime 4 sucks and Nintendo is dead.

29:27Justin Davis:We should probably point out Retro rarely misses. you know prime prime two three even hunters hunters on ds wasn't terrible right i like that game then they did i don't think i like it anymore but i like it is donkey on country returns they did mario kart 7 they did tropical freeze so that you know that's a pretty good track and i think sam you touched on something like i i i believe the most likely outcome is exactly what you described as we're going to get a metroid you know direct a month or two whenever it would come you know before it comes out and it's probably going to look incredible right like that's what i think is the most likely sort of thing here is we'll see more like unbroken unfiltered you know fps gameplay and it's going to look super rad and i'm going to be like okay good great yeah yeah i was

30:16Mark Medina:actually a little worried about um metroid dread and then they showed that kind of like treehouse footage or something and i was like oh this this is this is much better and like the more that we saw like again going back to like wonder it was like they did show like this like really like cartoony like different mario and i was just like but once it became clear that it's like oh this is like made by this team at nintendo that's making you know like mario levels for the first time and they have these really interesting takes on levels and there's these transformations that didn't show like all that stuff is like made for i think a really good game in the end um but i was not hyped for that game because what they showed that's a problem and it was very good i love that it.

30:58Mark Medina:Well, we have one other thing to say about this. The reason that we all all care about this is because it's interesting, like in the inside baseball part, it's like, hey, how do they show a game? What's what's video game marketing? Because we don't do that. We are not video game marketers. It is interesting for us to see that the thing that we offer you, the audience, is that we can critically assess something and try to separate ourselves from that marketing. So whatever marketing is trying to tell you about something, you as a critic need to kind of drop that and say like, is it fun? That's the main question you answer as a reviewer, right?

31:37Mark Medina:And you answer a few other contextual things. You don't answer like in the end, like was this marketing great? But that's an interesting conversation for GameScoop. But we're all very capable of just stopping and then evaluating a game. I just did that for the Donkey Kong Bonanza DLC, I will point out. I ended up beating the game. I said, I can preview this. I went in and I gave it a fair shake and ended up really liking it. That is what we bring you as people that are not marketing video games. That's my endorsement of the critical industry. Cool. I think everybody here agrees with that. I do.

32:12Yes. I agree. I do because I not to go scorched earth on marketing, but seeing how many people on social media are falling for the whole like, this is an Xbox, blah, blah, blah. Like that stuff just makes me go crazy. It makes me laugh. Also, just the whole I've talked about it before, the whole notion of influencers and trusting influencers that are literally exist to sell you things. Because they like the thing you like a lot.

32:37Mark Medina:So you can trust them. Like, I get that. I get the appeal of that.

32:40Justin Davis:It's just they're also being paid to like it. So, yeah, it's just a different offering. they're being paid because they like it. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Metro of Rime 4, December 4th. I wonder if they picked a month with a four release date on purpose. We're also getting a new Fire Emblem, Fortune's Weave in 2026. Well, I hope it's good. With silence. We can move on. I wanted to hear from Justin because I think Justin liked Three Houses the most out of this group. and this is either a prequel or a sequel.

33:16Mark Medina:Yeah, I mean, it's all a blur though.

33:17Justin Davis:It's like, I like them all.

33:18Mark Medina:It's Fire Emblem. I don't know. I mean, I have mixed feelings about this franchise, which I say half goofing and half seriously, which is I really like the Fire Emblem games. I played them all, I like them all, but I'm mad that they took over Advance Wars and we just don't get Advance Wars games anymore. So, you know, like it's a complicated topic for me. It would be cool if they went like a complete 180, like completely different direction and like change something. But I think also refining what people like about it and trying to pick the things that people like is also fine. Like, I don't know.

33:52Mark Medina:Like they are showing there's like this kind of like Academy build your area thing. I liked awakening. That's, that was my fire emblem. And I thought like, what I liked about that is the generational stuff, how well thought out that was. And I just hope that's in these usually like, I like the kids that that become like super powerful or super interesting. so you can have an in-game set of characters that is kind of manipulated by you and that way. It's cool. It's weird that they don't permadeath anymore. I think that's the weirdest thing about the series. Is that not even an option for like a hardcore mode or anything?

34:20Mark Medina:No, it's an option but like what's an option? I mean that's what Silksong has too like nobody thinks of it as like oh that game is famous for permadeath you know where that's what it was. You just have to turn off the game if you died.

34:32Justin Davis:I used to restart that battle. Who's this Alucard looking character? I was just going to say Alucard. I mean, like, they've gotten so much mileage out of the rock, paper, scissors, you know, what is it, spears, archers, and what mounted guys, and, like, there's way more to it than that. That's, like, me distilling down this very sort of complex battle system. But at its core, it is basically rock, paper, scissors. And they just keep scaffolding more and more and more interesting gameplay and combat scenarios on top of that. And it totally works. Like, I'm down to play this model. Like, just give me this game twice a console generation and I'll play them all.

35:10Mark Medina:We're in an era that's like when the Castlevanias were all out once a year. You know? Like, don't mess this up. Like, it's going to be fine. Like, even if you get an 8 out of 10 Fire Emblem this year, let's keep them coming. Let's keep them coming. I think it's great. I always look for that moment in the game in which most of my characters are like Pegasus or Dragonflyers. And for some reason, they're still pretty strong against arrows and I can drop units near stuff. And I'm like, this is great. That's the moment. And then I basically stop playing 10 hours after that.

35:43Justin Davis:Yeah, I never finish these games, but I play them all and like them all. and that finally brings us to the virtual boy coming back to the nintendo switch online plus the expansion pack but that's not all there's a whole new piece of hardware that i think is two new two new pieces well yeah there's the there's the hundred dollar one which is cardboardy joe there the labo edition and then there's a cardboard one which i don't think they've released the price for that one i think it's i think it's 20 25 30 25 bucks for card and then this one was what like 100 yeah this one is 100 but it's just a shell right that you put your switch to into yeah what what is creating the 3d effect okay here's what's creating the 3d effects

36:32Mark Medina:here we go is that this is just like any of any of these cardboard things that you can put your iphone into this has been around for a really long time they basically are separating your eyes And so each eye sees a different screen and then they bisect the screen of your phone into two like little screens. And then probably on this, there's what you see when you look at the hardware there. They're actually doing a little bit of lensing to where there's a, you know, a red lens for each eye. That's kind of like bending it to be proper. everything. And that is also doing another thing, which is making it so the black background of your Switch 2 screen and the red pixels are being filtered in a way that you don't see the contrast between them as being super jarring.

37:16Mark Medina:It kind of like smooths it out. It's an old trick. A shaded plexiglass is over all these arcade machine screens too. Kind of makes the contrast a little bit easier on the eyes. What I was surprised by though, is that this would have been a great opportunity to not put those red lenses in and let you select a color palette that wasn't red it would have been really nice even if it was just like blue or green or something like the red is it's really harsh and it's it's the greatest system ever made and it's my favorite system ever made and it has the best library of any console ever but the red is a little harsh in your eyes that screen of the games that's like the entire library yep that's like no it's not it's missing some so we have something to look forward to well yeah i mean we am i weird for wanting to buy this like i think it's really cool i think it's like nintendo like nintendo knows the virtual boy sucks right but they're just doing it anyway i don't think you're weird for wanting to buy it at all because i think there are tons of people that are saying the same thing right now that are like they cannot wait to buy this thing that they'll use once and never use they didn't announce water world for it right yeah blood world the only thing that bums me out is that the games you can't you can't just like buy the games they're locked behind the switch online with expansion pass so that's kind of an expensive sub and if you ever stop subscribing then you don't get access it's worth every penny so i i i can't wait i'm gonna get both pieces of hardware i'm

38:49Justin Davis:never gonna open them sam you are you're gonna say you own a virtual boy in the entire library

38:53Mark Medina:right yeah i'm gonna keep him in my my uh extend it belongs in a museum end of indiana jones situation right i just put it on a cart and i wheel it to the you know tupperware containers that are sealed against the elements and it goes into storage i can't wait so the virtual boy always had issues with like how to use it right it's like you can like put it on a table and like you know do this whole little guy but like how are you gonna do the uh i think people can figure it out now um but like how how do you do the labo one does it come with a strap like can i strap it to my face i didn't see that so no or do i just got to get really low on what they were showing was that you hold just like the labo you hold the switch up to your face and have the controllers next to it like elephant ears no way that's what they're serious yeah i remember labo had a few things imagine a worse way to play a video game so you can like you're gonna have to jury rig a strap who knows what they're gonna do with it i mean i was always surprised that the virtual it has those little nubs in the side but they never made it so you could strap it they were like they ended up being worried about it i don't know why oh sam is right yeah yeah you just hold oh you can make that a hashtag people would love to use it in the youtube comments that's sam is right man I can't imagine a worse way to play a video game than to hold this card.

40:18Well, the red just pierces my redness. I'm having a great time right now.

40:24Mark Medina:After you play it, you won't ever be able to imagine a better way to play video games.

40:30Justin Davis:Well, I think this is insane, but I'm glad it's happening. It is so insane.

40:36Mark Medina:I mean, this is the reality, right? This is the Bernstein Bears paradox reality that we're in, where we are getting the virtual boy as a new piece of hardware and a librarian didn't expect

40:48Justin Davis:that here we are do we know can you play the games without the hardware and just don't get the 3d

40:54Mark Medina:effect i yeah that's what they're showing here so they've done some kind of some kind of tv so

41:00Justin Davis:we'll get them with our position of them switch online subscription we don't have to buy the

41:05Mark Medina:hardware i'll just point out too that they're showing japanese games there and japanese are some of the unique versions, but they're also just showing the Japanese versions of the American versions, like baseball and Tetris and stuff. It's missing some games. Snow Brothers is a Shin Megami Tensai set start. I always say that, Snow Brothers. Jack Brothers.

41:23Justin Davis:It's a

41:24Mark Medina:Mega Ten universe set game for the Switch 2, for example.

41:27Justin Davis:They say 14 games will roll out over time. Only 14 games were released in North America, but like Mark was saying, They could swap out Waterworld with a Japanese release or something like that.

41:42Mark Medina:Master's Funky Bowling has a different bowling game that's sitting there with the Japanese game. It's called Something Else Bowling. That Wario game is pretty fun, though. Yeah.

41:51Justin Davis:Isn't that probably considered the best one?

41:54Mark Medina:Yeah, I mean, Mario Clash is good, too, just in terms of more traditional, weird games that use 3D in an interesting way. But there's some other fun games. I mean, I think the pinball stuff is good. There's a cool one called Red Alert, the Star Fox one. That one looks incredible. We're still in the honeymoon phase of the Switch 2. And my theory is that this is the only window in which Nintendo could do this. If they tried to do this in one more year, everyone would be like, get out of here. But they're sneaking it in within that first 12 months of the Switch 2. And everyone said, ah, you rascals.

42:31All right.

42:32Justin Davis:Sam, I know there's supposed to be a survival horror game that was only released, or a horror game that was only released in Japan, and I saw a box art there that looked like it could be that game, and it's supposed to be good.

42:42Mark Medina:Maybe it is that game. I'd have to look at that screen to give them. I can't remember what that game is. I have them all, but I can't remember.

42:50Justin Davis:Alright, well, Virtual Boy comes to Switch on February 17th next year. Wait, when does Resident Evil come out? This is it. This is the horror game. Yeah, and this is supposed to be. I hear good things. That's a cool monster. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

43:05Mark Medina:This looks great.

43:05Justin Davis:So many shades of red. Look at all of them.

43:07Mark Medina:Wow. They had body difference. Yeah, this is, I remember this being a lot like the Goonies parts that were not fun. What does that say? Password. Game over. Password. Oh. Yeah. It looked like a death metal band. I'm just trying to see when Resident Evil Requiem is out.

43:25Justin Davis:The 27th. Okay, so we have 10 days of Virtual Boy before we jump over to Resident Evil Requiem. That's our February. That's not enough time.

43:44Justin Davis:okay mark borderlands 4 how did it turn out i think it's wonderful wait am i the only one playing it i just got i just got a code today so i haven't started yet but i'll check it out tonight oh cool uh yeah so i played it uh pre-release and so everything everybody is saying because we only got PC codes pre-release. Everything everybody's saying about the PC launch is correct. It runs like absolute garbage. I wasn't able to play on my actual work computer, which has a 4090 because of just work security stuff. It blocks some games, but I played on the computer in the background there. And that computer has a 3090 Ti, runs the game terrible, which is crazy because that card is from like 2022.

44:2922. Um, but that's unreal engine five for you. I've said it before on the show, unreal engine five, the worst, it's just the worst. So, um, yeah, but as far as the game goes, so now I'm playing on PS5 pro. I think it's great. I think it's super fun. Uh, I, uh, after a long year of like games, like kingdom come deliverance to games that I'm like, these look like they could be my kind of game. I I'm not meaning to knock that game, but it's like, I love open world, just exploring games and and between like that and like monster hunter and stuff like that this is this is a mark game just shoot things and they die and there's tons of numbers and it's awesome yeah so i like it a lot i think the story is a little like meh it's trying to do a more um if you believe it a more serious story than the first three where this one is is more uh like it's still borderlands silly but it it feels a little bit more grounded and and why you're doing what you're doing i'm still also just like very early um but the characters are fun um but the gameplay just it's just so good it's so good they they they never run out of ways to make enemies die in these games and it's like you feel like i played so much borderland serena i i always wonder like what guns can they come up with and then we find out that they came out with a gun called rainbow vomit that is a shotgun that shoots three different elements at the same time and it's like i don't know it's just it's just a blast to play every time i i boot it up i i never want to stop because uh it's i think it's just super super fun there is like a weird memory leak issue on the console version still where the longer you play the worse it starts to perform so you eventually have to like restart the game um but it's only after it's after like a couple hours it's funny what was it skyrim on the ps3 yeah did that or something like that it's like it's probably not like despawning any game any any gun ever right yeah that's something like that like so then you have to reset it yeah it is like there there's eventually so many things happening that exactly it's it's because it's mostly happening in the big open world because this game is a little different than the other ones where the other ones were more segmented you like loaded into big open zones this game is quote unquote more of an actual open world but there are loading zones that you can go into um for different quests and stuff like that and it runs beautifully in there but in the big open world it runs pretty good but it can get a little chaotic there's also i'm playing mostly co-op online um and uh the game runs way better when i'm by myself if you go to your like party settings and click it to like local i've heard it runs much it does run much better um but yeah i i i don't really know what to say like it's borderlands it's fun okay getting new guns and let me it's exciting and answer a couple of questions for me is it funny yeah yeah it's funny i i think it's still really funny i think clap trap's super funny um just like he always is he's not in the game a ton like as as much as as uh like he was

47:44Justin Davis:in the previous games but yeah it's still super funny okay 100 i loved borderlands 2 i did everything played all the dlc i got bored of borderlands 3 pretty quick so how do you think i will find 4 yeah i think you'll like it better so the the main thing the main complaints i had for 3 was that it was too talky uh and this game is not nearly as talky and that's great um this game also does a really good job at switching between the like i don't know what you would call it but it's like a character's talking to you and then you run away and all of a sudden it just switches to where they're on their like they're on the radio i appreciate that and so it's like if if rush wants to tell you about this mission like they'll give you the map marker and you're like cool keep talking buddy and you just start traveling oh i love that and it'll just switch to he's on the radio talking to you or you can like run around and loot while somebody's talking and if you just get a certain amount of distance away they switch to the radio so there's that also i found borderland street to be very hard to navigate the world was very layered in weird ways that you constantly have to open your map to like see what level of the world you're on um where this game is uh it's just more of a flat open world like obviously there's mountains and stuff like that and i have seen some people complain about like i need to get to this area but like i can't and i need to like follow the mountain line and find where i can get up and then kind of parkour over there but i don't know that stuff hasn't bugged me how does leveling work does everybody level with you they do yeah so uh you can just get sucked into the open world stuff and just do side quests and stuff like that but you'll never over level the content the the enemies will always just scale with you Can you turn that off?

49:29Justin Davis:Can you turn it off? I hate level scaling. It should never be required.

49:34Mark Medina:What's the point of the numbers if they all just equal zero all the time?

49:38Justin Davis:What's the point? Well, I mean, to prevent overleveling, right?

49:41Mark Medina:But that's what I want to do. I want to be overleveled.

49:44Justin Davis:That's the little world level. I put in the time. I put in the time. My reward is I'm OP. Well, I mean, your reward in this would be that you get cool abilities. But yeah, you're never I don't think you'll ever be super overpowered until we've seen some late game builds that they get absolutely nuts. Yeah, but the co-op stuff is also super cool. So like, I don't know if this is probably not a game you play with your kids, but like if you play co-op, you can play on hard and they can play on easy and the game can adapt to both. You'll get hard loot. The enemies won't like they take less damage from your guns, but more damage from their guns.

50:23It's it totally works. And it's really, really cool.

50:26Mark Medina:Is there a gun that takes the numbers that come out of people and turns those into projectiles and kills other people with those numbers? God, that'd be cool. There is a funny thing where if you kill an enemy too fast and they're just losing big chunks of their health bar, it'll just start saying oof on the health bar. That's pretty funny. That's pretty good. Yeah.

50:47Justin Davis:Well, I'm looking forward to it. I think you'll like it. Yeah, I'm looking forward to checking it out. It's interesting. It's got all these problems on PC. And according to you, it's not even perfect even on console. So we'll see how the Switch 2 version turns out next month. Oh, I totally forgot that this game. I don't even know how that's going to be possible. There's no way, man. I mean, I forgot that that was a thing.

51:09Mark Medina:When a developer spends some extra time with a game, they can optimize it for the systems. That was what the correction note said under a Randy Pitchford tweet this week. Yeah. So the developer is responsible for a setting.

51:23Justin Davis:Randy Pitchford, he just. What's going on with that? Like we know it's been known for a long time. He, I mean, I don't even know what you call it. He just can't help himself. This is a guy, it's a very wealthy guy. So there's no one to stop him. Well, that's what I wonder. Is his boss Strauss Zelnick at Take Two? Is that his boss? And Strauss can't just be like, Randy, you got to just. just well and i think i i don't know if you want that i think the real answer is that he makes gobs and gobs and gobs of money for strauss zelnick and so they don't they're just like uh like well randy's just gonna do randy things once in a while and that's the cost of them putting

52:02Mark Medina:out games on time and on budget like i don't know kind of a commonality in american ceos right now so yeah i i've i've been seeing his messages and it's like he he's like the evil version of uh of what's his name sean murray from uh hello games where like sean murray just like didn't really have a pr person so he just kind of said whatever and then the game wasn't great so then he just like went on this apology tour and he's been doing everything to fix it randy pitchford same deal but instead of apologizing he's just like no you're the problem i mean i do and i don't need to i don't i don't need to carry water for randy pitchford so you know randy stop tweeting please but like like i will say like he's trying he's trying to get in there and wait in and mix it up and be like you know like like context is everything like if it's like oh i'm sorry you're having problems like you know steam has a refund option feel free to take advantage of that but like that same tweet can be like well you know steam has a refund option like you know it all depends on like how you read it like you know he's he's not like hiding in his he does literally own a castle like he's not hiding in his castle right he's out there mixing it up with the gamers and so i can respect that a little bit but he's just bad at it like just just don't yeah he just i i don't

53:20Justin Davis:know it's like it's just the game little passive good aggressive and like just totally unnecessary like yeah do they not have a like a community manager or something like well and it just distracts from like how hard is it to be like you know sorry some of you are having issues we're working hard to get it fixed that's literally all it's literally all it has to be there's no there's never there's never in in the history of the internet there's never been an example where arguing with your fans worked out well just literally never it never works out well it does

53:52Mark Medina:remind me of the magazines that we read sometimes that kind of like edgy turn of the century developer speak you know that we saw from like dumping is illegal and stuff like that like it is this like old mentality about you know us us versus the world it's great yeah yeah i i guess i guess my issue is that he just doesn't have much of a leg to stand on the game does run poorly so this whole idea of just like basically like kind of waving it off and making it your problem and it's like dude you've seen the videos your game runs bad and also we gave the game an eight Like they released an objectively like great game.

54:32And it's like just the, the whatever anti-media training of just like, you're just making things worse. Dude, the same thing happened with Borderlands three where, where he, he did that big speech about how like, there's no microtransactions in the game. And then it turns out there was microtransactions and he like went after the media and he was like, you guys are screwing me over all this. I, what I meant was blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, but that's not what you said, bro. You said there was no microtransactions. The game does have them. And it's like. Did that all happen?

55:04Mark Medina:I missed that. Yeah. I mean, it happened in 2019. Forgotten about that. But it's like the game objectively runs not good. There's nothing you could say about that other than we're going to try to fix it. He's just a really good illusionist, so it must be working for something.

55:23Justin Davis:Yeah. They're called illusions, Michael. Maybe you can weigh in on this, Mark, because I was learning about the situation as I was reporting it on The Fix. He keeps telling people they've got all these, you got to mess with the, you know, tweak all of your settings. But he keeps addressing that there's, I guess, there's a certain segment of the population that is suspicious or distrustful of DLSS. Is this right? Yeah. So DLSS uses AI, right? Right. So for one, I can't even remember. They're fake frames. Yeah, I can't even remember. Is it just because there's a general distrust of AI or dislike of it?

55:59Justin Davis:Is that what it comes down to? No, no.

56:02Mark Medina:Unless it's for writing your college essay. Yeah, then it's fine. That's what it's meant for. People think DLSS is fake frames, right? So your GPU isn't actually getting 60 frames per second. It's actually getting whatever, 40 or 30 or 50. And then it's using AI to fill in the missing frames in order for the game to run 60 FPS. And like everything else on Earth, its implementation can be really cool and slick and feel magical, or its implementation can be bad. But are you saying that there's... I mean, I know this issue, but I'm just trying to illuminate the answer that Damon's looking for. So what you're saying is that people are saying that it's not really 60 frames per second, it's 50 frames plus 10 fake ones.

56:46Mark Medina:And that's why they get upset about it. A hundred percent. I mean, there is call to be upset, though. other than like my graphics cards are not actually doing this. DLSS can cause input lag. So even if you're getting 60 FPS, if the game doesn't feel good, then that's not good. Because a real frame is taking into account your button presses. And a fake frame is filling in the time to try to trick you to thinking that your button press didn't happen yet. It might say. I don't actually, you know, I don't know the input lag part of it. But like, it's also, it's just amusing of like, get in there and tweak your settings, bro.

57:18Mess you with the particle effect. And it's like, because I have a 49, the most popular GPU on the planet, like in my, yeah, the game luckily has like a auto detect thing, but you probably still have to. But the last thing I'll say with DLSS is people have shown, cause cyberpunk is a big adopter of it. People have shown a text getting warped, right? So it's like a, a, a, a name of something's on a vehicle or on a, on a building. and people have been able to look at frames where it's distorted because it's AI. And so it's pulling what it thinks that text should say. And so the more that... It's so AI.

57:57I mean, that's like the six-figure person. The more that companies rely on... Yeah, generated image.

58:01Mark Medina:...fingers, totally. Like, yeah. Like, a 5090 is... And a 5090 probably runs the game fine, but a 5090 is$2 ,500. You should not have to rely on AI to get 60 FPS. Like, you just shouldn't. yeah but it should be able to do it and so it just becomes this thing where it's like what is nvidia even selling if they have to rely on ai but they're selling a 2500 card like i don't know

58:24Justin Davis:i think there's also a worry that uh dlss could be a crutch the developers lean on that feeling that they don't have to completely optimize their game right dlss will take care of it for them yeah he's literally saying the words this game is built around dlss so it's like yeah it becomes this thing where it's like did you guys just are you just relying on ai to kind of smooth out the the imperfections which is i mean the tech the tech can be really cool to be clear like you know there's a lot of really cool dlss demos and like implementations out there and cyberpunk is one of the better ones based off the you know just the demo that i saw i haven't experienced it firsthand but like you know you're completely right that like it's not a replacement And it shouldn't be a replacement for raw horsepower.

59:11If you're on like that high end hardcore end of the spectrum, right? Like 60 FPS, 4k like that, that that's not an unreasonable expectation in 2025. Yeah. If you are running a 40, 60, even a 40, 70, and you're relying on DLSS because you only spent$500 on a graphics card. I think that's fine. I think the problem is like a 39, again, a 30, 90 T I should be able to run the game fine and it doesn't. So that's, that, that's an issue.

59:39Mark Medina:This is all so imminently fixable over time, too, that that's why it's so funny that this conversation is even happening and that Randy's getting involved because they can absolutely better optimize this game. And everybody does. And five years later, Cyberpunk, nobody even talks about it anymore. And even a year after that happened, come on. It's going to be fine. But you don't need to inflame it.

1:00:02Justin Davis:Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Well, I look forward to playing it. my wife is on a work trip so that means tonight I will put the kids to bed a little early and eat a turkey sandwich over the sink really fast and then I'll just play Borderlands 4 I love it you're describing my Valentine's Day

1:00:17Mark Medina:so you aren't you're not doing Silksong then you're just going to skip that one

1:00:23Justin Davis:not yet no because I've been playing Ghost of Yote

1:00:26Mark Medina:anybody else play Silksong no I'm still playing I don't play anything but Factorio the factory must grow All right. You're still liking Silksong, Sam? Yeah, yeah. I liked it last week, too, and I tried to explain why fans like it, but everybody told me that's the opposite of what I did, so whatever.

1:00:47Justin Davis:Well, Sam, in the history of the internet, arguing with the fans has never worked out.

1:00:51Mark Medina:I'm not arguing with you.

1:00:53Justin Davis:I'm just letting them have their way.

1:00:55Mark Medina:All because, I know. I guess Expedition 33. So, yeah. Oh, no. Dude, that game, silksong i'm in a place where like you have to do like five world bosses to get to this next area and you have to ring these bells and stuff i just finished all that stuff and um i before i did that i kind of sequence broke it a little bit and i went as fast as i could to upgrade my needle weapon because as i said last time i was like i'm really looking for advantages to like get me still a little leg up in battles and uh you get you get at least two needle upgrades in this game one at this point in the game, one very late game.

1:01:36Mark Medina:That's all I know about right now. It is indistinguishable from my original needle.

1:01:45Justin Davis:Took a lot of work. But it's not doing more damage or anything? Not that I can tell. Not that you can tell. Okay. Really? It still takes five or six hits in the world. Okay. Yeah. It is an interesting gameplay choice, game design choice of like, do numbers pop out? when you hit something or not. That's a choice every game has to make now. I think in almost every situation, numbers should pop out.

1:02:12Mark Medina:I'm also starting to... I'm so used to this game now that I don't even realize it's like when you start realizing the crutch doesn't matter anymore that you're leaning on, you're like, I'll be ready for a boss fight and I'll just go change all my gear. But usually that just means unequipping my compass and putting something else in there because you always have to carry the damn compass as one of your offensive weapons? It's insane. Why am I so used to this now? Why am I accepting this? I congratulate Team Cherry. I'm so happy that everybody loves this game. The more every time I see it, it's just a more...

1:02:50I will never play it.

1:02:52Mark Medina:That was Mark Medina speaking, not Samuel Claiborne. Don't confuse us. Everybody already knows that I'm too old for Metroidvania. But Metroidvanias that are like excruciatingly difficult. No, thanks. I know they're crazy take from Mark Medina. I know. I know. Controversy. Yeah. Just not a Mark game. I think I have to take a break from this because I have other games. You'll never go back to play. And I just told Mark this immediately. I was like, I can't stop playing Hollow Knight. No, literally. I can't stop playing it. It's because if I stop playing it, I cannot go back. But because I'm I'm I'm again, I don't know if people are having the same opinion as me, but the first part of this game is a lot more linear.

1:03:40Mark Medina:As I was mentioning, you can't do a bunch of Metroidvania stuff. I'm more in the Metroidvania stuff now. Like it's getting a little bit more like that, more that I can. There's there's side quests basically now. You can backtrack for those and maybe get weapons. But that's kind of helping my ability to step away because really, if I know the sequence of areas, Hollow Knight felt different than Silksong. Like, I feel like I could get back into the game here. This is Sam explaining to his wife at night over dinner. And he's like, here's the thing. I could quit. Yeah, I could quit. Yeah. You know, I'm playing this game on Steam Deck and it's such a good Steam Deck game.

1:04:20Mark Medina:I hope people in the end play this on Switch and Steam Deck, but it's hurt my hands a little bit, but it is good. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast, so why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Prox store today.

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1:06:01Justin Davis:All right. That brings us to video game 20 questions. Our suggestion this week comes from Glenn Kirby in Barnsley, merry old England, who we've heard from before. Good to hear from you, Glenn. No hints. no sort of long spiel from Glenn this time, but at least you know where Glenn is located. And with that, let the questioning begin.

1:06:26Mark Medina:We won last week, right?

1:06:29Justin Davis:I don't think so. I don't know why it's always so hard for me to remember last week. What was the game? I think we clinched. No, maybe we didn't. I wasn't here, so you probably won. Was that LA? Was that when I was in the office? Yeah, you were here with Pear. Yeah, that was Muramasa.

1:06:44Mark Medina:Oh, that's right. Muramasa. We didn't win that one.

1:06:47Justin Davis:Yeah, that's right.

1:06:47Mark Medina:Have you ever heard of Muramasa the Demon Blade, Mark? What the heck? That was a 20 questions game? Yeah, it was pretty hard. However, that means that it probably is not that game this week. So we've eliminated one without asking any questions. You could have given me 20 ,000 questions. I would have never got it. Do you jump in this game? No. No jumping. It's not Mario or Zelda. It could be Ocarina of Time. Or Metroid. You still, well, look, clarifying question. If I run off a cliff, does my character jump? I want, I want, we can send this to the commission if we need to. I want this to count as my original question.

1:07:30Does your, does your character that you control jump in this game? No. Okay. Got it. Not, not Ocarina of Time. Not Ocarina of Time. He definitely jumps. Yeah. Just no jump button. He backflips. He literally backflips. remember how revolutionary that was when that game came out? There's no jump button. He'll just do it in context. It works well.

1:07:50Mark Medina:It's like, what? I was pretty worried about that one. That was being bandied about targeting. Yeah. There was also no jumping in dark souls. And then breath of the wild and the elder ring came out and they were like, there's jumping. And people were like, Oh my God. We need t-shirts to say there's no jumping in dark souls. You can put Tom Hanks on it. Is this from the last century? Yes. AD. Cool. Well, is that this century or is that last century? The last century. The previous century. Is that now? The previous century. Got it. Wait, where are we? This is from the 1900s game.

1:08:33Justin Davis:Okay. The 20th century. No jumping. Do you control a vehicle in this game? No.

1:08:40Mark Medina:And it can't be bump and jump Because that has jumping as vehicles in it Yeah I assume with no jumping I thought maybe it was a ship or car game Or boat I'm thinking it's berserk

1:08:56Is this game exclusive To the platform it was released on

1:09:01Justin Davis:Not Anymore Oh Was this originally an arcade game Yes that's five it's looking good looking good for berserk or centipede was this game made in japan yes can't be berserk that's no that was exity right

1:09:23Mark Medina:i don't know it's not berserk dude i'm i'm out is this from before 1983 yes you might you might be right it might be centipede no no no that was made in america yeah you're right yeah yeah you're right but are there robots in this game no what does that eliminate robotron yeah it could be wizard of war no a roman's berserk and it eliminates berserk yeah i forgot wait wait what was the answer to japan it was not made it was made in japan was made okay so space invaders pac-man it's got to be a namco game there's not a lot of there's sega namco and it's it's not it's not Mappy. Or no, Rally X. You said pre-83, right?

1:10:09Mark Medina:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rremlin. Yeah. Oh, did this game have a... I have two questions. Did this game have a port on the NES? Yes. Okay, thank you for that. And did this game originally use a joystick in the arcade? Yes, that's 10. Interesting. Interesting. I mean, could still be... Well, Space Invaders didn't get ported to the NES, did it? Did Pac-Man? Pac-Man did, yeah. Three different cartridge iterations, or at least two. No, three. Is it helpful to know if this is a maze game? What about a single screen game? I guess it almost has to be. Hmm. 3.83. Yeah, I mean, there's like tank games and stuff.

1:10:56Yeah, but you're not in a vehicle.

1:10:58Mark Medina:True. True. Is this game about eating?

1:11:03Justin Davis:Hmm.

1:11:08well um hmm uh well there's no eating in the game what interesting maybe it's the characters eat off screen but maybe it's burger maybe it's burger time or tapper yeah you don't eat in oh it probably is burger time because there's a jumping that's a bandai game isn't there jumping

1:11:32Mark Medina:in burger time no you can only run across burgers and throw us throw pepper yeah does this game have a pepper button yes is this game burger time it is burger time yes yeah is it about eating well

1:11:45Justin Davis:you're making burgers but nobody's eating them yeah you're the chef yeah look at him um not namco uh data east data east sam i said bandai right i think it will you said bandai or namco but it's

1:11:58Mark Medina:I said Bandai and I was wrong.

1:12:00Justin Davis:Yes. Burger time. 1982.

1:12:04Mark Medina:Burger time. When I was 11 or 12 years old in 96 or 97, one of the very first things I can remember doing on the internet was downloading Atari ROMs. Oh, nice. And then I downloaded a virus onto my family computer and broke it. Oh, no. Was it worth it? Perfect. No. Because they were Atari ROMs, not Super Nintendo ROMs. yeah that was and that was the only way i played burger time was like an atari rom of burger everyone's super nintendo roms are kind of hard to emulate versus other things or game boy and they also took you know they were like four or five six megabytes and they took a while to download on dial up that's right that's right i love this game this is one of my all-time favorite arcade games you know you own one of these sim i have the cabinet maybe 10 feet that way yeah cool i do Do you think Burger Time's up there with Donkey Kong?

1:12:56I don't think it's as good as Donkey Kong, but it's really, really good. It's a classic, and it's kind of been a little bit forgotten.

1:13:02Mark Medina:Yeah, and it has a lot of replayability and interesting stuff. This person's playing really well here. This level has an interesting situation because you have to run up this ladder as fast as possible to start the level, or there's an instant death scenario. It's really mean.

1:13:18Justin Davis:Yeah.

1:13:19Mark Medina:Is this really how burgers are made?

1:13:20Justin Davis:this is how burgers are made

1:13:22Mark Medina:I actually learned from this game to always add an egg I don't know if this is how burgers are made but I don't know enough it doesn't seem like it but I don't know enough to disprove it I never played this game we'll leave it to the professionals

1:13:37Justin Davis:I played it in arcades I also rented it on NES and then in recent years there have been some bad ports oh there's also Burger Time 2 that's insane I think it was only released in Japan And it's so much more colorful. And there's like boss fights. It's like a boss fight. It's like an acid trip of the game.

1:13:57Mark Medina:Before that, there was a Data East tape-based medium for arcade. And there's a game called Peter Pepper's Ice Cream Factory that came out for that. And it's Peter Pepper, who's the star of this. And you can tell his name is Peter Pepper, not because he throws pepper, because he has an H on his hat. Who knows? but uh uh yeah that that the maybe for hamburger i don't even know what's going on with that but uh but but uh yeah he uh he he makes ice cream it's not people's symbol for hope well this level's great nice job that's a whole burger yeah you can tell this is the nes version because the actual version is vertical screen, not horizontal screen.

1:14:43Justin Davis:Nicely job. Burger time. Thank you for the suggestion, Glenn Kirby in Barnsley, Mary Old England. Viewers and listeners, if you have your own suggestions for video game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address, gamescoop at IGN.com. And heads up that a special edition of IGN FanFest is coming October 15th. Streaming across all IGN platforms, IGN FanFest 2025 Fall Edition. We'll see the likes of Keanu Reeves, Aziz Ansari, and other celebrities stop by to reveal exclusive looks at major upcoming movies and streaming series. We'll also be announcing brand new video games and showing off never-before-seen looks at some of the year's biggest titles.

1:15:20Justin Davis:Fans can expect new looks at games like Jurassic World Evolution 3, Dispatch, No-17, Pax Romana, and WWE 2K25, along with sneak peeks and breaking news for movies and series like Netflix's Splinter Cell Death Watch. Kicks off October 15th everywhere you get IGM. And that is all the scoops we have for you this week. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Justin. Thank you, Mark. Thank you to Jobert, working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon. Gonna edit the heck out of this ending. My name is Damon. This is IGN GameScoop. And we're out.

1:15:56Justin Davis:This episode of GameScoop was produced by myself, Damon Hatfield, and Jobert Odienza. Technical direction is handled by Jobert Odienza. technical production is by moran franzen and amir akib audio engineering is by amir akib and post-production editing is by yours truly damon hatfield graphic design is by nicole kagampin game scoop is an igm production and part of the geek media network i like that every once in a while like the damon autopilot gets like interrupted and then it's like wait where am i gotta it's like i haven't thought about it time would have made a really good virtual boy game oh actually i don't know all all the enemies looking being the same color

1:16:35Mark Medina:nothing would have made a good virtual boy game we all know that we have to put on a good face

1:16:40Justin Davis:for the audience it's like the games when you're just looking at like a screenshot of them they look so cool but when you're actually playing them for any extended period of time that's when

1:16:50Mark Medina:everything goes south goes sideways that's why it'd be nice to choose a nice uh you know teal virtual boy experience when you put it on your face. Elf needs food. Mark encountered error.

1:17:03Justin Davis:Mark is about to die. Mark, do you know what game Sam and I were referencing? Nope.

1:17:11Mark Medina:Cool. I thought you just wanted me, Dad. That's a game called Gauntlet. Oh, we could have gone with I Am Error, which is Zelda 2 reference. Just a guy named Error. Hey, everybody. I'm back.

1:17:25Justin Davis:Thanks, everyone.

1:17:27Mark Medina:Bye, everyone. Thanks, everyone. See you. At ZocDoc, we know being a healthy adult is like living in a video game. Every day has side quests, taxes, laundry, birthdays. And just when you're leveling up, you have to book a doctor. The insurance portal crashes. They put you on hold. Your doctor doesn't take your plan. Game over. We see you. So we made booking a doctor easy. Download ZocDoc. Search by specialty, insurance, and availability. Book instantly. No cheap codes required. Find a doctor you love with Sock Doc.

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