Game Scoop! 827: Game of the Century Watch Begins!

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21:49Justin Davis:Okay, Half-Life 2, definitely on my list as well. Sam, drop a game on us. Well, mine are just going to be all the same ones that Nick has, I'm realizing now. So I'll do one of the weirder ones. I'm going to do 2003's Game Boy Castlevania masterpiece Aria of Sorrow. Oh, man. It's really, really tough to pick a best Castlevania. Yeah. They don't make them anymore. It's really sad. But we used to get them once a year, as we talked about a million times in this show. they had perfected basically pixel art based sprite based actually actual sprite based map metroidvania exploration at this time and it just doesn't get any better like you just you just fall into these games and you just don't want to do anything else because every corner of the map has something that helps you get to the next place and it might be you know a drop from a monster or a you know a false wall and just all the boss designs everything are gory and cool and it's just so much risk versus reward if they're just amazing and yeah they they you know there's a lot of great beautiful wonderful metroidvanias now but they just don't have this this balance that these games have and this this is the one yeah i mean i think the fact that we got you know six of these games in you know 10 years or something like that it's like you know you don't know that you're in the good times when you're in them sometimes you don't know until they're over and like that golden era of the metroidvanias you know was just incredible and yeah i think aria of sorrow is probably my pick for the one there's also like a hardware thing here where it's like i mean it's amazing that the game boy advance was out making super nintendo games basically in the 2000s like that's cool right like it felt cool but then you'd get like the backlit ones like the you know i don't know the sp or whatever and they looked really good on that and then you had the game boy player and things looked really good on the game cube and at this time too like emulators were out and people were able to like emulate these games and like they were just kind of like these great it was like the last vestige of great 16-bit games until now that we're in the 3d hd or 2d hd era where they're like made a different way yeah the fact that this was like basically an annualized franchise and the pixel art is so good every year like it's just

24:06Sam Claiborn:it was like really a lost art like my annual christmas game where it's like oh a new castle of any i gotta i gotta ask for that for christmas and just i completely associate it with christmas and just playing it to the wee hours of the morning yeah they always came out in the fall i think so yeah you're right and apart aside from like the gorgeous sprite work in the game and just i just like the modern setting of the game like castlevania set you know in medieval uh fantasy Transylvania, but being transported to a more modern era where like, you know, Alucard is someone different who you don't expect and just having those childlike oh my gosh, I know that guy and also the sense of humor like continuing the trend of being able to sit wherever there's a chair Excalibur literally being stuck into a block of stone that you can't pull it out of the stone so you just swing the entire sword and the stone It's just so cool and fun and clever.

25:02Sam Claiborn:Yeah. Is this the game that just has straight up guns in it too? Yeah, there's pistols. Yeah. Pistols. Yeah. Which are useful in the beginning. I remember them being like a little bit OP just for just enough time to get you to be back to like being a sword boy.

25:14Justin Davis:I mean, Konami's kind of back. Metal Gear Solid Delta, Silent Hill F. Silent Hill 2 last year was well received.

25:23Sam Claiborn:Let's get back to Castlevania. Another Castlevania.

25:26Justin Davis:Yeah. That was Aria of Sorrow. So kind of along the same lines, for my first pick, I'm going to go with Metroid Prime.

25:33Sam Claiborn:Yeah.

25:34Justin Davis:On my list as well. Same. I mean. The top game of my life. Yeah. We talk about this game often on this show. It's weird. Just like Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, they took the classic Metroid formula and just complete success translating it into 3D. It's just like it was the best looking console game at the time when it was released. Probably the GameCube era. That was the last time Nintendo tried to compete on the same level as its competitors in terms of graphics and polish and presentation. Yeah, fidelity. It has such great atmosphere. And it's just the best formula for a game. Like we were just talking about with Castlevania.

26:14Justin Davis:Explore a cool environment. Occasionally encounter a dead end. But then find something that opens up larger areas of the map so you're ever expanding your explorable area. It's just the best formula. Mm-hmm. I mean, you mentioned that transition to 3D. Like, there's so many inspired choices in Metroid Prime that, like, it could have gone wrong dozens of different ways. Like, even the decision to make it first person, incredibly controversial at the time. Now, so obviously the right call. Right. But, like, you know, then does pull out to third person. Like, if you're watching the show, you're seeing the Morph Ball segments.

26:51Why not both? yeah like you know so the amount of thought and care that went into sort of like what is a modern you know sort of graphical powerhouse metroid mean and that it's a bold choice they made a lot of bold choices that all absolutely work again it's kind of like like we're talking about half

27:10Justin Davis:life there's a lot of lore built into the game that you find yourself just by scanning things right it's a it just it turned in learning about the world and the environment into sort of a

27:20Sam Claiborn:minigame yeah uh a lot of environmental storytelling as well and i i mean this was the game that i remember playing the demo kiosk at like sears and like looking at my mom and being like i think i need like i need to have this this is incredible this is this is unlike anything i've ever seen before and you know as i got older the things that always stick out to me about metroid prime is uh the music you know once you hit that title screen and you just hear that that and it's just that that's so good and then hitting fendrana drifts for the first time and hearing that like the the glacial wind passing by and uh above all the thing that sticks out to me is the way the game does a really good job of reinforcing the um loneliness of samus and it's always doing that by reminding you that you are playing as a human in this armor whether it charging up your beam, unleashing it, and seeing the quick reflection of her eyes, seeing the steam up on your HUD.

28:23Sam Claiborn:All that stuff just felt so immersive and unique for its time. No one ever calls you. It just never happens. It's a lesson they could have learned from Metroid Other M. Yeah, exactly. We didn't mention this, but the music in Shadow of the Colossus is also amazing. and I think both these games are just fantastic just for their soundtracks even as these kind of standalone soundtrack pieces. So this got compared to Half-Life all the time too because graphically we've talked about a lot before but I want to throw out another thing like when you watch that Half-Life 2 you see a lot of gore and a lot of like adult stuff that's happening.

29:05This was like at the time FPS games they didn't have walking simulators really there was a couple adventure games like this but first person shooters were like about ultra violence and they were about they were you know debated in congress and stuff and this was like a little bit of an attempt at making like an adult nintendo game but not relying on you know the grand theft auto level of like goofy gore anything like that it was like kind of a serious um game but like also cartoony and and and nice and it's just about killing plants that want to kill you.

29:42Justin Davis:Yeah. Metroid Prime. I know we've been a little bit down on Metroid Prime 4, but when I remember how good this is and remember that Retro has never shipped a bad game, that gives me confidence.

29:51Sam Claiborn:It's why I'll be there day one for Metroid Prime 4 regardless. Super interesting at the time too to have any US-based company working on the development of a mainline Nintendo game.

30:01Justin Davis:Yeah. It worked out for them. All right, Nick, what's your next game?

30:06Sam Claiborn:Oh, man. I didn't think we'd get back to me at this point. I think I'm going to stick to the GameCube. I think this is easily one of the most, not only important games ever made, but still holds up to this day. It's got to be Resident Evil 4. I'm sorry. Oh, wow. You're just sticking with my list. So I'll divert from here. I love it. That was on my list as well.

30:27Justin Davis:Well, so I thought about this too, but you wouldn't recommend people play that over the remake, would you? I don't know. Wow.

30:35Sam Claiborn:I think 4 still holds up as a standalone experience. It is very similar to the remake, obviously. Not 3 and 2. Not 3 and 2. No, no. Resident Evil 4 specifically had an arcade gameplay value to it that I think the remake is totally good at. It's great at getting at it, but it's a different game. It's also a game that is very clearly made in a time and place with its, again, its humor, its action sensibilities, and what it was trying to, what it was paying homage to in terms of its horror. You know, Capcom of the era would never admit that they've ever seen anything that they've been influenced by when they made their video games.

31:14Sam Claiborn:But retroactively since then, they've been like, okay, yeah, we might have been inspired by a couple of things like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And again, just, everyone's always going to say this about the original Resident Evil 4, but it's for good reason. The opening 20 minutes of that game are just going to stick with me for the rest of my life as the quintessential action set piece of dread, thrill, cat and mouse. And it's a perfect distillation of why people like Resident Evil because for the longest time, survival horror is a game of cat and mouse. You are running out of ammo. You get more ammo.

31:49Sam Claiborn:You get new guns. You suddenly become the cat. And then the game figures out how to become the cat once again. And then you revert back to the mouse. That opening 20 minutes is that down to just a science. It is somebody, somebody extracted the essence of Resident Evil and said, here it is in all of its glory. And I just so fun from a value perspective as well. There's so much game in this game to enjoy. Not to mention the GameCube version specifically does not have Operation Ada or the sideways mission, but we can just all count it together. there uh the mercenaries uh minigame alone is also just would go on to be its own full game on 3ds later and it's just the the guns feel good man i don't know what else to say it's such a good game those roundhouse kicks and roundhouse kick suplexes yeah it could go on if anything i would say the wii version because it includes that assignment ada and it has a more expanded mercenaries mode and the Wii controls were fantastic the pointer controls helped yeah it actually made it a better game a lot of really clever stuff in RE4 again that it doesn't necessarily get the credit for like the over the shoulder view and sort of tight over your like left shoulder when you're aiming down the sights of your gun um stuff like that and like just it didn't like following Resident Evil 1 2 and 3 and Code Veronica like they didn't have to go this hard.

33:16But they did, right? So it's like it's an incredible game as a standalone without any context of the franchise or anything else, but it feels all the more unbelievable and incredible sort of just the momentum that they had to overcome and like the preconceived notions of what Resident Evil is that they had to sort of break free of makes it an even more impressive achievement.

33:37Justin Davis:Yeah. It's wild that Nintendo got this as an exclusive for a while.

33:42Sam Claiborn:And then again, failing that opening mission playing on a gamekeeper like okay well the game over i'm gonna get it nothing crazy and then your head gets cut off with the chainsaw and you see it roll off your shoulders and then game over appears i was like oh my gosh this is crazy yeah the ps2 version never really got to the graphical level of the gamecube version though like it just it was it was not as as as strong of a system it just couldn't pull it off yeah there was a lot of weird aliasing in it but it did have the uh operation ada in it which was you know as the as as a 12 year old in me i'm like well there's more game in the ps2 version so i need that removal removal yeah yeah you're right

34:25Justin Davis:oh my gosh yeah that's true resident evil four justin what's the next game i have two i really want to get through okay uh i'll talk about world of warcraft there you go um i have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder because I sometimes think MMOs get sort of shoved into the MMO bucket. And it reminds me a little bit of how like, like, you know, they talk about a comedy game can never be nominated for best picture and they get overlooked for like, you know, the acting and the comedy and like being the best comedy game is not enough, right? Like they're just not considered, you know, sort of prestige enough.

35:00And like, wow, for me, you know, A, it was an absolutely incredible unbelievable achievement when it came out like i i just so much stuff that people take for granted now about obviously this is how mmos and theme park mmos work right but like no like wow wow invented all of that like collecting quests just dozens and dozens of quests like guiding you through the game world and having every single quest have a story that like you could read the story when you accept the quest and then complete it and it all ties in with like the lore of the game world and the storytelling they were telling like mmos didn't do that before wow um but like for me like i was thinking about what games do i want on this list like it's got to be the class design right like and the class fantasy is like so strong of like you can be a hunter and have a pet and you go out into the world and tame the pet or you know you can be a priest and you can be a good guy priest or you can be a shadow priest and deal damage and like all of those class fantasies are super strong all of those classes are super distinct and i mean look they were not anywhere close to balance when the game came out but like to this day it's like it's a it's a absolute feat of game design that they have i don't even know i'm such a fake fan i don't know how many classes there are 12 classes in wow maybe and each class has three specifications that are not like different flavors of the same class but play completely differently with completely different abilities so 30 plus different ways to play the game that are all viable all valid all balanced all fun you know it's it's it's an absolute miracle of game design that

36:39Justin Davis:anything like that is possible like it it's not really in the headlines these days but aren't there still millions of people playing this like every month there's a new expansion coming too and i mean i don't know like obviously final fantasy 14 was on was the top for a long long time and i believe that you know i don't like i think there's some controversy around that game where people have not been so happy with some of the design decisions in ff14 for a while so it's like wow you know wow is a chance to come back um you know i mean really i guess my kind of closing thought here if we want to get through these slightly faster is like just from a world design standpoint like part of this is nostalgia right i was like i don't know 18 or when i first started playing this game um and so you know what can i say about running around elwyn forest and you know duskwood and all these areas and seeing them for the first time but it's like it's really good it's a really good really interesting really satisfying world to explore like it takes these 2d warcraft games i i i talked about it on the show last week i did just go back and play some of warcraft 1 and warcraft 2 and there's way more like direct connective tissue from those into world of warcraft than i thought there was like i didn't i didn't remember clock any of that at all but like seeing these zoomed out rts areas and now you get to be down in it and living it is like super cool and super bold and brave i i can't believe that it worked

38:02Sam Claiborn:yeah world of warcraft did you ever get yeah i mean it's again this was in an era of my life where i did not really have a very good pc and i was on dial-up and it was just my parents like gateway computer and i just played did the level 20 you know free to play uh arc during the burning crusade era but the thing that always stood out to me about world of warcraft is it's um the persistence of it the idea of you know as a final fantasy player who only played single player offline rpgs that this world existed still when i wasn't a part of it and that always stood out to me and sure that's the case for every mmo like anarchy online and all that stuff but the thing that always appealed to me the most about world of warcraft is the fact that it was the biggest one so this is the one that had the most active community so things were really happening when i wasn't there and that's what i really appreciate about the the promise of the game and the sheer scope and honestly the audacity of it is just so cool and interesting 40 people raiding together which you know everquest had done that too but still that 40 humans have to get together playing different classes they all have to be working together they all have to not stand in the fire

39:15Justin Davis:to defeat the boss amazing all right sam what's your next game all right i'm trying to predict what everybody else is going to pick here and choose something from my longer list than five that'll make sense so this is a weird one um i'm going to throw off animal crossing for gamecube no pitsunomori um i have i love that we all played animal crossing during the pandemic and i know there's been a lot of animal crossing games but that gamecube game it's so good and it was so out of nowhere and it was like what what is nintendo's answer to the sims what's nintendo's answer to um you know just kind of harvest moon right but it wasn't that it was about like living day to day and what nick was just talking about this persistent world that maybe you uh that was going on while you weren't there um and it had its own aesthetic and it just nailed it on that cutesy level uh very japanese feeling too it was like living in japanese village which i thought was really neat at the time right and it had a lot of like tie into japanese culture the holidays weren't just like pure american holidays they were kind of weird and variations on holidays and then some Japanese stuff.

40:27So that was really cool. And then you could play like 15 NES games in this. Just put them in your house and play them, which was really neat. So I had this retro game tie-in. And of course, at this time, not everybody was probably in this situation, but I'm sure a lot of people played this with their siblings in their house and they each had a house in the game. I played it with roommates in college and everybody had a house in the game and you could share and that whole stuff was really complicated. And it just felt like an endless, an endless cool sim game and a life you could live. It was very ahead of its time, you know, mobile games would reintroduce the concept of like gating progress and MMOs, right?

41:06But like, you know, in Animal Crossing, plant a tree and that tree is not going to do anything for like five days in real life, right? And like, that was really amazing and really piqued my curiosity when Animal Crossing was new that that it would just parcel out the game over a period of weeks and months you know the seasons changing in real time like you could cheat and change the clock on your GameCube although Mr. Rossetti would come after you but like really if you wanted to experience winter in the game you just had to wait till it was winter right and that's just the way that it worked like a practice and patience and a practice in this game being something that's more of a lifestyle that you're just going to check in on a little bit each day like you know it was cozy games and mobile games and all that stuff a decade before they would be a thing.

41:52Exactly.

41:54Justin Davis:Would you say this is like an early example of Nintendo acknowledging its past, celebrating its past? Because I'm seeing there's Zelda imagery here. Just like Smash Brothers was just starting to do. Full-on NES games in here, right? Exactly that. I love how this became a Nintendo genre that's kind of about Nintendo and about living in Japan. It's great. Well, sticking with Nintendo, I don't know how popular this one will be, but I don't think it's going to surprise anyone here, but I will nominate Perfect Dark, which was out in May of 2000. And for at least 18 months was the gold standard for console first-person shooters until Halo came out, probably.

42:36Justin Davis:But yeah, man, Perfect Dark was so good. For years and years, GoldenEye was the one that everyone remembered fondly. Perfect Dark is better than GoldenEye in absolutely every way. Correct. super fun uh you know mixing first person shooter with sort of stealth espionage spy gadgets uh that it just made for a really really fun sort of like gameplay scenario i it's a it's a uh slower paced game which i actually appreciate it's not it's not doom or quake or anything like that you know super fun solo player uh single player campaign to play through but also the multiplayer was like at least this came out when i was in college and we played so much perfect dark between my friends i can't even tell you how many nights we spent just playing perfect dark same adding bots into there you know setting up our laptop guns whatever the the poison you can use on people that made their screen all blurry like the game wasn't blurry enough to begin with super fun and playable to play today if you do the uh the remaster that came out 10 years later on through xbox everything since since rare after this shortly after it would you know drift over to xbox after this side but it still has one of the best bot implementations in a multiplayer setup just the flexibility for you could give them sort of different personality types like one would be passive and would run away from you one would be like the highest difficulty that i think they were dark box is what they were called yeah we're just terrifying like they would you know leap through the air and leap around the corner and just one shot you and headshot you like and they were not impossible to beat but just like really really tuned at a high level so like the multiplayer was incredible as you said damon but i got me and my friends got extra mileage out of it by like you know let's do the four of us versus 12 bots or let's do the four of us versus two dark bots and see if the four of us can work together to take out the bots on the highest difficulty and like mixing and matching you know different multiplayer scenarios like that yeah it's great and like this the difficulty level would like would change the gameplay and add new objectives in the single player campaign so it's a really smart way to approach difficulty which which gold and i also did but like on perfect dark it would like really meaningfully change what you had to get up to in

44:47Sam Claiborn:the level yeah i also always appreciated just the stronger art direction of perfect dark where it was just like gold and i always just felt so bland to me it was just what am i like what am i looking at even as a kid it's like well all right sure i guess that's a machine gun i'm holding but i i think there's just a clear sense of identity in something like perfect dark where you know you got this sci-fi world that's just it's very it knows what it is and i really appreciate it about that about uh perfect dark i liked walking around the carrington institute doing all the gun challenges in the shooting range that was a good time yeah being able to shoot glass to shoot it

45:25Justin Davis:through the windows was really cool i don't know i love everything about this game still sings that that remake got canceled. Yeah. All right, let's try to do one more each. Nick, what's your next game?

45:34Sam Claiborn:I feel like I got to choose an RPG at this point because I feel like I got a reputation to uphold. And the cool guy would say Final Fantasy XII, but honestly, I think that's, as much as I want that to be my choice, I think the correct answer is Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy X, I think, is the one that anyone can pick it up and immediately understand everything about how the game works, be introduced to the world through the perfect storytelling narrative device of fish out of water and again it's the tail end of nobuo uematsu's involvement with final fantasy as the series composer but he still he still goes crazy on that soundtrack like uh i think the setting as well is just really interesting and unique and i think it's pilgrimage narrative is really a good jumping on point for people who have always been interested in final fantasy but have never known which one to pick and great combat system uh very very uh legible in terms of how you pick up and play you know exactly who's going next and i think its approach to um leveling up your party members is pretty smart by visualizing it through the sphere grid and uh yeah i think it's just a great cast of characters too so uh above all that going back to what i kind of touched on a little bit with shadow of the colossus this era of gaming to me as a kid was always uh like what's the coolest most visually impressive thing i can throw on my video game console and square enix made themselves known through its series of you know cg cut scenes like we're seeing right here and i think this still looks great to this day uh and this again was just a visual feast for the ps2 and also great voice casting all around uh i think people always take that laughing scene out of context in the way that's like profoundly upsetting to me because that scene is literally making fun of itself in that point and i need to get into it here but i just think it's such a human moment in a game that is just full of them and great voice casting all around.

47:43Sam Claiborn:Aaron Taylor, no, not Aaron Taylor, Johnson. I forget his name, but he's the voice of Obi-Wan from the Clone Wars as the lead as, I will say Titus, knowing full well his name is pronounced T-Dus in Kingdom Hearts, but I'm going to call him Titus. But just banger of an RPG. Very simple, but I think that's part of its beauty.

48:06Justin Davis:I'd never played 10 or 10.2 Me neither I don't even have a reason why I don't know I definitely had a PS2 I was playing games at the time but for whatever reason I never played 10 but maybe I should

48:16Sam Claiborn:I highly recommend I think the remaster is a great way to experience it and man B-Saint Island that OST always playing when I'm just wanting to vibe out and chill

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49:55Justin Davis:All right, Justin, next game. My last pick is, well, so honorable mentions, which I won't talk about, but it's Tony Hawk 3 and 4 and SSX 3. We're on my short list on all three incredible games. Oh, yeah, I'm glad you called those out. But my actual last pick is Halo 2. There you go.

50:13Sam Claiborn:I knew someone was going to pick Halo 2. Thank God I didn't choose it. That was going to be mine, so I'll change my next one. No, really? And it wasn't even a question between that and CE. It's definitely two. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how popular or unpopular this opinion is. I'm a Halo 3 guy, but because of the era that we're in and the years that we're covering, I'll talk about Halo 2. Halo 2 isn't the first game that I ever played online, but it's to this day one of my most memorable video game experiences and was my first introduction, I believe, to Xbox Live. And like, look, like we've talked about it a lot on this segment, like stuff that we kind of take for granted or don't think about as much today, but like seamless matchmaking, you know, skill-based matchmaking you know even leaving aside like you know getting into a match with 16 people and having it work generally pretty smoothly like that was also like a thing but like you know getting into a game getting into parties being able to party up being able to see your multiplayer stats like all of that was like truly revolutionary and felt unbelievable for 2000 i don't know what year this came out but like in the early 2000s um you know and then i still i I have such a soft spot for Halo campaigns.

51:26You know, they're serious and funny and Master Chief is, you know, gruff, but kind of like his personality emerges as you get into the games. He's not just sort of like the blank slate generic soldier that he kind of comes off as in the beginning. And that open world sandbox design of like you approach it how you want. We're not telling you how to beat this segment. We're placing you and these tools and these enemies in this space. and you go forth and figure it out for yourself and just the trust in the game it was another physics game actually but just the trust in the game engine to like hold up and weird and zany like you could do a scenario 10 times and it might play out 10 different ways all 10 times but it's always gonna like hold up and feel solid and fun was just uh just amazing yeah so i i just replayed these and the legendary campaign is so good in this game and you really should play through it in co-op because then you can kind of like tag team with your respawns and stuff like that but you can't do it alone and it it's it's so smart because um there's this encouragement to break the levels by either making sure your marines survive right like making sure they get with good give them a rocket launcher making sure they make sure they make it through the whole level or just take that ghost through the whole level and even in legendary even that doesn't help you that much but i love cramming through doors with a with a ghost trying to get in there getting a banshee just going way up way way way far away just just kind of like spamming or cheesing from the top like there's just so much sandboxing to that that campaign it's great yeah i this was uh

53:04Sam Claiborn:i did not grow up with an original xbox so my first introduction to the microsoft family was the 360 and i got two games i got call of duty 2 which i played fairly a lot online and then i got halo 2 because i knew i needed to play halo 2 because this was just everyone says this is the game you need if you own an xbox that can play online and i i i don't know how many hours i've spent playing halo 2 online not just you know online matchmaking and the for the first time in my life experiencing what it means to try and get better and better at a video game against other real humans and like oh man i'm pretty cracked with the sniper like i'm really good with the sniper and then also just the communal aspect of it um justin mentioned like the seamless integration for the party system i would argue today halo 2 has one of the the like easiest most accessible party matchmaking that i've ever experienced in a video game i simply look at my friends list click join i'm in their lobby and then my party leader takes me wherever they want to go and there's i think we've lost our way to some respect in the modern era of gaming but but not just again not just the online matchmaking but the community that developed around creating their own unofficial game types is what really stood out to me in that era of my life you know it would go on to be a feature in halo 3 where you could do infection and stuff like that but it all started in halo 1 and halo 2 i would argue even more uh with stuff like cops and robbers which were all just honor based modes where all the players agreed we are playing cops and robbers we are playing zombies and everyone would agree okay i'm not going to use any weapon except the shotgun or the energy sword and just there's just it doesn't really exist anymore something that feels this way you know being able to now with stuff like discord or even when xbox introduced like private party where you can do like private voice communications with a set group of people i this was the last time that i really remember just making friends with randos online and just like oh yeah i'll play for the next four hours with you in a game of cops and robbers like why not and it's just something so special and just again bungie did such a good job of supporting the game on the the game's online community and they would go on to refine it even further with halo 3's online matchmaking but uh to me halo 2 nothing feels snappier than that that sniper no scope that you will always remember and you always wish you still had that montage you cut

55:36Justin Davis:together on windows movie maker nice good times halo 2 all right sam your last game well are you gonna take a gta so i don't have to i don't have gta on my list i assume someone else would do that one i know i know i mean i guess i can't don't have to my honorable mentions are just going to be a big stack of zelda games including the oracle games and uh wind waker 2000 wow yeah i know it's shocking game boy color yeah uh and and sunshine and then uh katamari marika double dash but i'll do i guess vice city i i think it's tough because you know san andreas was pretty amazing and i i think san andreas is the one i even at the time i i felt a little disappointed in san andreas i prefer vice city yeah i like the vice city soundtrack and setting so much it's just it's it is really janky to revisit and it's a lot tougher to revisit than san andreas but i mean i i can't what's nice to say about those games is that you know i spent 300 hours in them I mean, like they were like, you'd get that game and you'd have it for half a year.

56:49And that meant that meant something when games were 50 bucks and 50 bucks didn't go along. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we like I don't like to praise a game for being big because big isn't good. Right. But like San Andreas is maybe the first game I can remember just not actually being able to fathom like how big. Yeah. Like, what do you mean? There's a second city. What do you mean? There's a third city. And like in between all the cities, it's like huge wilderness and the story keeps going on and on and on. And like each city is kind of like its own chapter. But then, you know, elements and characters recur.

57:24And then the story does kind of like circle back around again at the end. Like it just like everyone remembers Los Santos and it being a send up of like, you know, 90s rap culture. But it's like the game keeps going. Like it keeps going for like another like 60 hours after that. And like and then, you know, makes, you know, does a lot of stuff like making fun of San Francisco. and the whole final city in Las, you know, it's take on Las Vegas. Like it's, it's, it's unbelievable how much game is in this game. And I think it came out a year after Vice City. I was like the Bigfoot logging countryside areas.

57:56Yeah. Riding, riding around ATVs out there was fun. Is it called tall trees in both games?

58:02Sam Claiborn:Isn't that like a crossover with Red Dead? And also one of the precursors to now every game is slightly an RPG. I loved that as a, you know, this, What stood out to me about this one over GTA 3, which I also loved, is its RPG-like mechanics. Because when I saw you could change your body weight, you could increase your strength. I was like, oh my gosh, there's an RPG in my Grand Theft Auto game. Finally, there's more substance to this. Again, I liked all of the things because I just like to drive into cars and shoot a bunch of people and see how long I can survive with five stars. but I guess what I really loved about GTA series and San Andreas specifically is it always accommodated three different play styles of one playing the game normally the way you're supposed to two playing the game with cheat codes because it's way more fun and then three just like yeah I think I want to cause a rampage for like the next 30 minutes and see how long I can survive and we me and my cousins would treat it as a two-player game where we would time ourselves to see who can survive the longest in a five-star wanted rating and just a lot of fun memories playing this at an age i probably shouldn't have but hey yeah what can i do the game had a whole like i think it's not until you return to to um los santos at the like the the final chapter of the game you're like so many hours in that i think that's when it introduces like the gang warfare and like territory system and like you can take over and control different territories on the map I'm like, you don't need to be introducing new systems anymore.

59:37It's fine. You needn't have bothered. But they did.

59:42Justin Davis:Yeah, that was a huge game. Okay. Well, my honorable mention will be Burnout 3 Takedown. But the one I want to speak to a little bit is Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. Speaking of RPGs. It's crazy. I think it was 2003. So it came out right in the middle of the prequel movies. and like the story is so much better. Oh, yeah. It's like generally just one of the best Star Wars stories across any medium. It was so good. It actually has a real, I mean, okay, it's an old game. There's a real plot twist that feels earned and is actually like, oh my gosh.

1:00:18Sam Claiborn:I mean, even knowing the twist, the game still works because it's just a good story.

1:00:23Justin Davis:Yeah, it's a really good story. Plus great characters like HK47, so good. You know, this is an Xbox exclusive at first. it didn't come to crazy I know it's crazy that they got this and to me someone who never had a PC for playing PC games it felt deep like I knew a PC RPG was definitely you know deeper than what I would normally expect an RPG to be on a console and then I liked this sort of like the sort of turn based sort of slow motion combat system that wasn't for everyone might not be for Sam but it's like it's like D &D rolling dice it worked for me it was nerdy and cool i liked it this game is great i mean that come that combat system so ahead of its time like kind of starting we were using that phrase a lot talking about all these games but there are reasons why they're the best games of the on the game of the century watch but like the start of like action rpg like rpgs can sort of have actiony elements to how the combat looks and how it feels and like you know this is bioware right you can draw a direct line between this game and like Mass Effect 1 and eventually Mass Effect 2 and you know Dragon Age right like it's the precursor like RPGs didn't look like this and play like this before KOTOR really yeah that might be my first experience with a western RPG sure Morrowind for me probably yeah I never played Morrowind okay that's a bunch of games just getting the ball rolling here game of the century watch But like I said, I want to hear from all of Scoop Nation as well.

1:01:56Justin Davis:So feel free to email me at the email address, gamescoop at IGN.com, or hit me up on the socials or wherever. So I want to know what games everyone thinks are worthy of being nominated for Game of the Century.

1:02:11Justin Davis:Okay, Ghost of Yote, it's out now. It's so good. I love it. I gushed about it all last week. Nick, how have you been finding it?

1:02:19Sam Claiborn:I've been enjoying it quite a bit. I wasn't the biggest lover of the original ghost of Tsushima. Um, I thought that it was an interesting setting. Uh, I, that, that was kind of it for the original game. I like the combat well enough, but I just think that immediately, uh, ghost of Yote is leaps and bounds better than Tsushima from moment one. I think, uh, the game is just, uh, Atsu is a way better character than Jin ever was. I think that the game is less waiting than the original Tsushima because every single side story in the original just takes so long to actually get started. This kind of just starts moving immediately.

1:02:59Sam Claiborn:And I think at first I was a little bit concerned because I thought the stance thing that made Tsushima so unique in the middle of its combat is, you know, the rock, paper, scissors of its combat. Losing that in the sequel would be kind of a loss of identity. but I think trading that stance in for weapons, which is basically just stances is way cooler. Cause it's just a new thing to look at and it plays very, very differently is a lot of fun. And yeah, I think a sucker punch learned a lot from the first game. And I think this is just better in every single way. Yeah.

1:03:33Justin Davis:I love it.

1:03:34Sam Claiborn:Sam, are you still playing it? Yeah.

1:03:36Justin Davis:Yeah. I know you moved on. It's all I want to play, but I've been playing other things, but I love it. I completely love it. I just got through the Northern Territory, which is a very long plot line with a twist, which is very good. Did you get the Kasurigama? Kasurigama. Yeah, I just got that last night, actually. But they updated the game. Did you have a problem with the cursor on the map screen? Yes. Sometimes I'm like, where is that cursor? People out there will never know the suffering we had to go through. On the map screen, it's mostly white, and your cursor was a little white dot. And it was impossible to see where the cursor was.

1:04:11Justin Davis:Well, they finally updated it. Now it's a big plus sign that's outlined in black. So thank you. Can you also skip dialogue by line? I don't think by line yet. Not yet.

1:04:19Sam Claiborn:I don't think they're adding that to the game. You could not skip any dialogue in the original, and I don't think you'll be able to do that here. Yeah.

1:04:28Justin Davis:But Sam, you are playing, you're also checking out Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. I guess mostly 2, right? Yeah. So I was redoing our sprawling strategy guide that I actually wrote 15 years ago or whatever the game came out. But I was making sure the screenshots and everything were good. We had videos up and there from way back. So that was fun. But yeah, I've been playing it. The Switch 2 version does upscale. It has a 4K resolution version of the game. And it looks great on television. It didn't show well in the previews. I was like, this looks a little muddy to me. But I was seeing those on my laptop and on my phone and stuff like that.

1:05:07But it cleaned up real nice. Like it looks like Mark was, Mark Medina was telling me, he thought it looked like a modern game and you know, whatever the case, like there's enough art assets cleaned up in it that it doesn't ever look crummy and it's very smooth and everything. But what's really interesting is like this game was made for the Wii and Nunchuck. Right. And so it's like, now you have to play it as like basically a handheld mode is like a game boy. And you know, you don't have a Wii and we point turn a Nunchuck. You have your joy cons. You can remove, you have a, you have a pro controller.

1:05:37like it's crazy how many things you have to do to how many things have to be changed to make this work so i've been playing it um with my uh separated joy-con and it works so well it probably works better than the original game you just point at the screen and your little cursor's up there and you because a lot of this game is you running around with your left stick and then you're jumping with your right thumbs but you're you're but you're doing a lot of just like you're almost controlling like two Mario's at once because you have this cursor and you're sweeping it around and picking up all these star bits all the time or you're shooting the star bits or aiming Yoshi's tongue at things locking onto them shooting so you got a point at the screen so you kind of get in that like old remember the Wii U nunchuck thing where you just kind of like sit back on the couch your hands just kind of go limp and you're just kind of pointing at the TV the whole time you don't really realize it anymore and boy it comes back like writing a fight.

1:06:32So I really like that it felt great. there's also a couple other control schemes one is that when you play in handheld mode you can use tilt controls to have that cursor kind of move around while you're playing so that's kind of like when you aim down the sights in Zelda you can kind of show your bow and you can kind of slide adjust by moving the switch you get really used to that that's where the split team plays yeah so with the other control schemes that's how that works but there's another control scheme in this which is when you play co-op the other person playing with you can just basically shoot star bits and collect star bits as like another cursor um without when the person can just set down the the controller and use it as a mouse you can't do that if you're playing by yourself because that doesn't make sense because you're like your your thumb would be on the side while you're jumping like that doesn't make sense you need to be aiming at the television holding it like control i know this is hard to wrap your head around without you doing it but like I know people are like, well, can you use mouse controls for more than that?

1:07:32No, you can't. But it wouldn't make sense to you. But if you're just helping somebody out and shooting, it is kind of fun to drop the thing down and use really precise mouse controls to do your little shoots. Because when you're shooting this game as a co-op player, you can freeze bosses. I think you can stretch them and stuff. You can make fights a lot easier in the game. You can stun a lot of enemies for the person running around. Anyway, good up, Rez. Everybody's mad about the price. The price is insane. I think it's like$40 per game or$70 for both. Yeah. I have to give props to Polygon. Their headline, I think, strap, you know, was two games for the price of two.

1:08:10That's pretty good. Yeah. All right, Justin, what is Little Rocket Lab? Oh, I actually, I realized that game's under embargo. Oh, okay. But I could talk about something else I've been playing.

1:08:20Justin Davis:Okay. But I'll talk about Little Rocket Lab next week or in two weeks whenever I'm allowed to. No, I've been playing Timberborn, which is a city building game. It's on PC, but the twist, not twist, but like the game's main thing is that you're playing as beavers, as a beaver colony. Oh, I love it. And so, you know, they're human. Like if you're watching the footage, like they farm, they're not like animal beavers. They're like, you know, Disney Pixar beavers. They build homes and you construct little water wheels. And then the water wheels give you the power to like turn your lumber into planks.

1:08:51And then the planks build, you know, more structures. It's very cute. It's very charming. The game it reminds me most of is a PC city builder called Banished. That's what it's quite similar to. You're managing your food stores. I was having a great time with it. I was playing it with my daughter, sort of sitting next to me, and we were talking about how cute these beavers were. And then there was a drought, and most of my beaver colony died out. because I had not stockpiled enough food or water. Yeah, it turns out beavers are pretty defended on water, aren't they? Yeah. We really, like, if the developers ever listen to this, I think my piece of feedback would be make the game more beavery.

1:09:36Like, I think the game is at its best. It just does a lot of cute stuff of, like, you can plant a bunch of maple trees and then tap the maple trees, and then you can have these huge maple syrup reserves and like giant vats that are like as big as a building. And like when the game is really beavery like that, it's cute. But most of the time it doesn't feel that different than them just being humans, right? So like, you know, I like when you're building big dams and like doing beavery things. But super cute, super fun little city builder. It's on Steam. It's on PC and Mac.

1:10:07Sam Claiborn:These beavers are too advanced. I'm glad they died in a drought. They call it lumberpunk, you know, is sort of the aesthetic of the game of like, you know, a lot of water wheels and, you know, windmills and things like that.

1:10:20Justin Davis:Cool. Timberborn, right? Acceptable. Yeah, Timberborn. No relation.

1:10:40Justin Davis:That brings us to Video Game 20 Questions. Our suggestion this week, comes from Samuel, who says, Hi, it's me, Samuel Lewis, Corey's kid. Now, for some context, in high school, I met a guy named Corey Lewis, and we became good friends, and we started a band together called Cool Guy Club No. 9, and we went to the University of Kansas together and lived together during college, and we've been through lots of adventures together, and we're still friends to this day, and his oldest son, Samuel, is now going to KU. And it's apparently part of Scoop Nation, so. What's up, Samuel? Samuel says, I've really been enjoying listening to GameScoop, walking to and from my classes at KU.

1:11:15Justin Davis:And Sam can verify that KU is beautiful this time of year. Beautiful campus, beautiful time of year. I'm going to go in December and I can't wait. Samuel says, I have two suggestions for video game 20 questions. Pick whichever you like better. I had to hedge my bets a bit because the dashboard isn't entirely updated and I haven't listened to the whole backlog yet. My two suggestions are Hotline Miami and Redacted. Both games with interesting significance to gaming culture and absolute blast, in my opinion. Have a great day. So yes, I did not pick Hotline Miami. We've used that one before. Information about the other game is redacted for the next 20 questions.

1:11:51Justin Davis:So with that, let the questioning begin. Cool then, huh? Alright. Is this game rated M for Mature? Yes.

1:11:58Sam Claiborn:Oh, interesting.

1:12:02Sam Claiborn:Is this an indie game? Nope.

1:12:09Is it multiplayer focused? No Is it first person? No Are there guns in it? Yes that's five Third person gun game Do you kill Regular ass humans in this game? Yes Not Resident Evil 4

1:12:40Sam Claiborn:is this a well no that's a waste of a question is this a sci-fi game

1:12:49Justin Davis:um that's interesting i guess so i get well hold up i i don't know i don't know i don't know if you would consider this sci-fi has certain there's some elements in there but i won't count that question okay uh did this game come out in the 70s 80s or 90s no i guess so it's m rated so it would have had it with the 90s because that was the esrb years before yep is this play this game on the nintendo switch no is this a 3d game yes okay

1:13:28Sam Claiborn:was this a console exclusive no that's 10 multi-plat third person shooter

1:13:36Justin Davis:uh i didn't i never said it was a shooter but it's got guns it's got maybe like a ratchet and

1:13:42Sam Claiborn:clank no but that was first party mature i'm really really relying on cory lewis's son saying that the game had cultural significance like hotline miami and i'm trying to think about That's why I asked if it was M-rated. But maybe I'm overselling it. Like it's Manhunt 2? Could be Manhunt. Could be Manhunt, although that was a console exclusive, wasn't it? Maybe not. It was on... They ported them to Wii. Yeah, they ported them to Wii. Is this an open world game? No. Not any of the GTAs, anything like that.

1:14:26Sam Claiborn:m rated game where you shoot people with multi-plat i never said you shoot people what the heck but but there's guns in it there's guns and there are human there are human enemies right didn't we find out that it's not multiplayer focused to be asked it's not multiplayer yeah got it was this game made in the United States? no do you mainly does your character use melee weapons or their fists to kill things in this game?

1:15:01Justin Davis:yes melee weapons is could be Red Faction although that was a console I think Red Faction 2

1:15:14Sam Claiborn:was Xbox and ps2 wasn't it i don't know i don't think so could this be a game that was a first yeah i think it might be a ninja game is this a ninja game um oh i i guess you could call it that maybe it's like a oh oh oh oh uh is this a stealth game no okay i was gonna say splinter cell that's 15 i was thinking thief maybe kind of ninja and it doesn't sound like it takes place in the past because you know sci-fi but yeah but maybe ninja gaiden something right but i mean that's that's very clearly a ninja game uh you know yeah that's true that's true unambiguously ninja i know what else is there neo and stuff like that are there souls likes like this humans sekito i guess sakura yeah not historically significant and it is rated m what about black myth yeah there's no there's no guns in black myth all right what about dmc oh that's pretty good and that's multi-plat like devil may cry three uh that's that's pretty good is this or bayonetta maybe we should ask if it's an action game that's what i was just gonna ask is this an action climax game climax action game is that what they're called yes okay devil may cry bayonetta metal gear rising but the first two are more historically significant well how many questions do we have left three questions and a guess is it helpful to know if we play as a woman because then we know it's bayonetta can we just say the franchise we'll just do the franchise is this a bayonetta game no

1:17:13Sam Claiborn:do we want to go in on devil may cry like as far as yeah i would assume it's we got two questions left yep well which one though the original i would say three is more historically significant. Although you can ask if it's a DMC. Well, yeah, I guess you have to narrow it down. You could ask if it's the first or if it's a sequel.

1:17:40Is this game a sequel?

1:17:45Does that mean it's DMC?

1:17:47Sam Claiborn:There's no way that would be DMC, right? Technically not a sequel. Got it. Is this Devil May Cry 3? room no wait oh wait i mean we had the last question we had to ask is that a prequel devil may cry 3 is a prequel maybe 4 is too oh no don't make a cry 4 is a sequel what if it's dante's inferno could it not be devil may cry could it be metal gear rising or a different climax yeah because that's not really a sequel okay okay okay is it in is it a game in the devil may cry franchise no yeah it's a different climax action game that's not dmc or there's a platinum clover things right whatever they're called i mean i don't know there's not that many not not a sequel no more heroes i mean so it could be metal gear rising i don't know it's a spinoff oh i lost i lost them at metal gear rising but i mean technically metal gear rising is a canonical sequel to Metal Gear Solid 4, but even though it has nothing to do with the stealth action gameplay, stealth action espionage gameplay of Metal Gear.

1:19:01Sam Claiborn:Do you say you lost audio? You can't hear us anymore? My IFB died.

1:19:05Justin Davis:Bad timing. Let's just finish up the show. He doesn't need to hear us. Should we just ask? Is it Metal Gear Rising? Yes, it is Metal Gear Rising. Oh, wow. I thought you said culture historically significant. Revengeance. Samuel said both games have interesting significance to gaming culture. Gotcha. but doesn't explain why fair enough yeah well this does because it was so disappointing to come out after a huge series of metal gear games and be almost the we thought it might be the last metal gear ever released right uh it was well reviewed though yeah it just wasn't metal gear solid 5 i like that they can't hear us anymore we can just say whatever i mean it's a great game it's like five hours long uh oh wait no i'm good i'm confusing this with something else yes different game i i'm surprised to learn that this came out before metal gear solid 5 though in my head this was a post metal gear solid 5 game but yeah this is 2013 what was isn't there a post metal gear solid multiplayer game uh metal gear survive that's what i was thinking yeah that was a completely different that did not review well yes that's sorry that that's exactly what my confusion was yeah yes metal gear rising revengeance nicely job thank you for the for the suggestion.

1:20:18Justin Davis:Good one. Samuel, say hi to dad for me. Viewers, listeners, if you have your own suggestions for video game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address gamescoop at IGN.com. Now, if you're looking for something to play right now that helps support a great cause, head over to Humble. Live now through October 7th. Grab eight incredible games for just$14.99, including WWE 2K25, Destiny 2 Legacy Collection, The Plucky Squire, and Return to Monkey Island. Every purchase supports Team Rubicon, a veteran-led humanitarian organization that unites military veterans, first responders, and civilians to deliver aid where it's needed most.

1:20:50Justin Davis:By joining in, you're not just building your library, you're helping communities recover and rebuild. And don't miss this bonus deal. Use the coupon code SEP2510, S-E-P-2510, to get one month of choice for only 10 bucks. And that's all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Justin. Thank you to Jobert, working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. Everybody enjoy Ghost of Yote and all the other fun games that are out right now. My name is Danny. This is IGN Game Scoop. I'm out.

1:21:27Justin 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 Marian 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 Kagempen. GameScoop is an IGN production and part of the Geek Media Network.

1:22:17Justin Davis:I don't want to live my life I don't want to live my life Not again

1:22:27Sam Claiborn:Oh no

1:22:45Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car?

1:22:48Justin Davis:I'll be moving in. Let's get started.

1:22:51Sam Claiborn:Uh, sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer's rejoice?

1:23:03Justin Davis:Ugh, I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyer's rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com.

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