Game Scoop! 828: Maybe Xbox Should Give Up On Hardware

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21:26Justin Davis:Well, Per, you mentioned this no hardware future, the hardware-less future, because that's actually what was, a rumor was swirling about Xbox last week when they're having their terrible, no good, very bad week. an insider an insider which is one of the most annoying things about video game news reporting insider with air quotes just some random person on Reddit or YouTube is like I'm an insider and I heard this happen they're claiming that the new the response was so bad to the Game Pass price hike that now they're reconsidering whether or not they would even continue with hardware and have a next gen console but that forced Microsoft's hand they released a statement on Sunday the statement was on Sunday to, who was this, to Windows Central.

22:09Justin Davis:They said, we are actively investing in our future first-party consoles and devices designed, engineered, and built by Xbox. Okay. Well, that, you know. There you have it. Yep. That sort of, that's not the Xbox ROGX, AllyX, XboxX approach that they're taking, right? Where that is first-party hardware. So it's not like, we will have hardware, but it's built by Dell, right? Like this is them actually saying we're still going to have a platform. They say there are. but whenever the day comes that they announce that next gen hardware like they just they have their work cut out for them you know because now it's two generations in a row they've just been completely stomped well costco sam's club don't even stock their consoles anymore i mean that's

22:49Peer Schneider:kind of what i mean about consumer confidence like i'm an xbox guy like i really like my xbox but it's like when the next one comes out it's like am i going to want to buy it like am i going to want to invest in it like it really like it's hard to dig yourself out of that well it depends on what's on it right like i always i mean you buy xbox for the power but the ps5 pro is more powerful now right yeah so um i i think we need to know is the xbox going to arrive when all the other hardware is feeling a little long in the tooth then you're not going to be able to resist and jump on it and then the question like will every xbox franchise come to other platforms which is you know it's seeing forza horizon doing really really well on playstation 5 right like what will it look like?

23:30Will 6 come within a year as well? Or debut at the same time?

23:34Justin Davis:They're having such success, like we were saying, with their software releases finally, that makes me think maybe they should just become a publisher. This was the topic of Next Gen Console Watch this week, right? We were just, I mean, it's tangentially related. It's all. Last week, is that what it was? I can't remember. We had this conversation. We were, go ahead. There are also rumors that PS5 will be hybrid handheld, right? Like Sony's been messing around with a little portal and streaming to it and all of that. And we'll see what happens there. If everybody now has hybrid handhelds, maybe Microsoft's like, well, let's keep developing our standalone home consoles and see.

24:15Justin Davis:Yeah, Sam, our next gen angle was all about how, why Xbox does need hardware. And it's because their whole value proposition is Game Pass. They have to have their own. They can't just be like Game Pass for PC. that can't be what game pass becomes just game pass for people why not on playstation and switch to I don't think they'll allow that if the hardware is gone they'll allow it they let Ubi do it right well maybe there's three our whole careers there's been three ways to sell games the one has been you put out a box and then you put out games to sell that box that's a strategy right another strategy is publish your software on a bunch of platforms that's another strategy Dreamcast went into to Sega doing that, right?

24:58And then there's the strategy now of subscription services, which is like another way to play games and buy them. Microsoft is doing all freaking three. Like maybe that's not working because they need to focus on one of them. And like, if you think about it, there is a future in which they could take all their toys and go home and say, we're putting out a console and every company that we have is gonna make exclusives for our console. And they would sell a billion consoles because they own Bethesda and they own Activision. And if they really wanted to sell Xboxes, they still have that option. And I'm pretty sure that that makes them feel real good that they have that option.

25:34They don't have to publish.

25:35Peer Schneider:They betrayed their own, you know, they're kind of like they own Call of Duty and they own Skyrim and they own this stuff and they own Minecraft and then they still put it on every other platform, which sort of, you know, a lack of confidence in their own kind of vision. Like we said it when that, acquisition closed, if this were happening the other way with Sony acquiring them, there is no chance any of that stuff would be appearing on Xbox, right? And we see that with Nintendo, right? And when we were talking about this in our next-gen console watch planning meeting, I was mentioning that Nintendo briefly really got into iPhone stuff.

26:11They're still doing it. They just put out a Fire Emblem social deduction game. But they actively pulled stuff. They're doing a new fire them yeah but they actively stop putting mario and stuff on there and like we thought they're gonna do all this stuff but they're like yeah we got a system that we can do this on what we can sell these for 50 bucks over and over again every generation but but what you're seeing the the other strategy you didn't mention is nintendo's strange strategy and kind of cool strategy of creating a shelf or something right like you're buying a virtual boy shell they own that design the experience that's not whatever nostalgia but me but but they wouldn't need a switch to for that strategy that could literally be a phone sitting in that thing right um i know it's weird right probably better if it was a phone be lighter on your face that's right well i mean you just you're kneeling at it right you're not wearing it it's unclear with the cardboard one because you're i think you're supposed to hold it up with the controllers this cardboard one you have to hold in front of your head and then your thumbs you're using the controllers like this Wait, is that true?

27:13It is true. It's hilarious. It's like you're wearing giant glasses. Because they made that up for Labo already. And Labo has little novelty temporary games you play that way, right? Yeah. It is not the preferred way to play for them either because they want to charge you$100 for an empty shell. The fun thing to do with Virtual Boy that people that never had a Virtual Boy, which is literally everybody on Earth won't know about, is that you can put it on your face and lie back on your bed and position pillows just right to play it comfortably like that. And you can just hook up an IV and then you can just play Wario Land for the rest of your life.

27:53There's nothing fun about Virtual Bar. I'm sorry. I love Nintendo, but like 15 minutes and I get a headache.

28:00Justin Davis:14 games to be released over time. That's what the IV is for. It's a tap of morphine and nutrients. but maybe maybe some of that was the refresh some of it was the refresh of the original display as well um i always assumed it was that everything was just red no it's not there's no refresh lcd screens have like amazing refresh yeah so why do you get a headache with virtual boy i don't mean you i mean every person i don't know it's shooting red light into your eyes separately. It ain't great. How does that? Nope. Okay. In any case, Microsoft, like we said, even though they're having a really great year as a software publisher, they're just, for years now, it seems like they're only ever two or three months away from the next big...

28:48Justin Davis:Catastrophe. Yeah, the next big rake that they step on is Ryan McCaffrey. Ryan.

28:56Justin Davis:Let's check in with listeners. Hey, listeners. Listeners, remember, you can always reach us at the email address gamescoop at igna.com, just like Tony from Irvine did. Well, hold on. Regular Tony style. What kind of style Tony is that? It's just Tony from Irvine. Just regular-ass Tony from Irvine. Got it. Question for you. With the outrage from the community about the Xbox price hikes, it got me thinking about other questionable business decisions from developers. Oh, there's been some good ones. Some that come to mind in the past year-ish are digital key cards from Nintendo and then how Sony handled Concord.

29:23Justin Davis:Got me thinking, what are some other notable times companies made questionable business decisions that put the company or the community up in arms and how they play out. Did they end up helping in the long run or did they stick around and we just got used to them? I would love to hear, learn more history on these types of situations. I mean, very famous E3 conference. Yeah. Where Microsoft came up with the idea on how to lend games to your friends. Well, no, this, your PlayStation did this. Oh, PlayStation, yeah, yeah. And then Microsoft reacted to it and said this is how you do it. Yeah, aggressive, public-facing dunk I've ever seen Sony take on Xbox.

29:56Peer Schneider:Some console wars, old school console wars kind of stuff. No, there was like, this is, I don't know how much of a deep cut there is, but the example that came to mind to me was Sega Surprise launching the Sega Saturn early. And, you know, surprise, the Saturn's out now. It's not coming out this fall. But like none of their development partners were ready with software. And then that allowed Sony to be like, our console is going to be$100 cheaper in like three months. So just wait and get a PlayStation instead. And it benefited no one. retailers weren't ready, no one was ready. And then it changed the trajectory of that company.

30:31Peer Schneider:I mean, this adner might not have worked anyway. And then the launch pricing for the 3DS and the PlayStation 3, right? Nintendo gave you an apology pack for everybody who bought the 3DS for too much money. What was the original price? I don't remember. It was$9 ,000. No, it was they dropped it by like$50, I think. And then you got a bunch of free Super NES games. And then Sony doubled down and said, well, they had this sort of... They'll want to get a second job. Got to get a second job. 599 US dollars. Yep. Giant enemy crab. And I would also include the Nintendo 64, which was, they had amazing games and great graphics and all of that, but they misread the market and it lost them.

31:14Some of their biggest licensees were paying lots of money. Square with Final Fantasy was a huge moneymaker during the Super Iniesta, and Square went to a competitor. And Nintendo's decision created the PlayStation in many ways, right? They probably would have gotten Tomb Raider on their machine and everything else. I can walk it back from there. So the Super Nintendo was a hugely controversial system. People don't remember this. Really? But it's because parents really wanted their kids to be able to play their damn NES games on it. Yeah. And it was in the news. And it was apparently pissed. And Nintendo at the time had weird excuses and stuff for it.

31:52but it was totally possible to to put a you know an adapter or a chip or something to play an nes game into super nes like it was a hundred percent a decision to get people just to suck it up and buy the new system and that was that was a classic one and then we you know famously atari made the interesting decision to just put out like just one shitty game after another for its entire life cycle until people five years into it were like, this sucks. This thing sucks. You also remember the hardware iterations? Atari kept on redesigning the console and doing a new one and a new one and a new one.

32:30That was after they crashed the market because they were just trying to get back into it. But by 1983, they just put out a really bad Pac-Man and a really bad ET game and a really bad series of other arcade ports. And people were like, screw this. Yeah, and competitors like Intellivision Coleco kept making better sports games as well. And Atari was sort of caught flat-footed there. I mean, it feels like every company in the history of gaming has done some stuff. Nintendo created a machine called the Wii U. I don't know if you know about that one, Damon. I've never heard of it. Few people know about it.

33:01Sounds like an accessory for the Wii. You don't want to tell your friend that you own a Wii U. No. Like, it's not. It's brand. It's confusing. It's terrible. Everybody's like, it's so cool. I can take games with... No.

33:14Justin Davis:Disconnected. Yeah. Playdate is still clean, right? They got a clean record. The Playdate is fine, yeah. The Playdate has not stepped on a rake. Playdate is perfect. It's got root bear. They should make a little stepping on rake game for it where you crank that rake up into people's faces. Sega tried to get at Nintendo by pushing that their handhelds didn't have color for the longest time, if you remember back then, but that didn't work. Everybody just loved Tetris on the Game Boy. Nobody cared. And the battery life was so bad. You can paint on your Wii U and play board games. Yep, yep, yep. All these things.

33:44So little of this came to fruition with the Wii U stuff they're showing here.

33:48Justin Davis:I have a few more recent examples. Xbox has actually happened a few times. The Xbox One reveal. The whole reveal of the console. I'll remember it.

33:57Peer Schneider:Have you ever seen an avatar's foot? Bam! Oh, that one! Kuro Tsunoda had his twisty feet.

34:06Justin Davis:The Kinect. It was going to be always online. It was going to be bundled with the Kinect. It had to be always online. You couldn't sell or trade your games. and their whole presentation where they're revealing the xbox one they're really downplaying the fact that it would play video games and it was more this like entertainment device that would be in the center of your entertainment console you'd plug your cable tv into it and you just connect to operate on xbox on yeah on xbox and then like executives were like hostile towards fans who were like you know who were bothered by the fact that you had to be online all the time yeah one of them said adam orth is that the name he said he like tweeted at them get over it yeah no it was it's um oh that sort of art of pissing off the community is almost lost thank you borderlands thank you randy still working on that one all this the hubris is what causes us right it's always after the xbox 360 that being after the ps2 yeah after the ps2 and then of course after the Wii.

35:08It's very funny. It gets built up so much. And that happened with Sega a little bit too after the Genesis. They just never really found their crowd.

35:15Justin Davis:They have a successful generation. They go, we can do anything we want.

35:19Peer Schneider:They'll eat it up. If you're a younger gamer, you've only seen my Xbox on the back foot. And it's easy to forget that the Xbox 360 was the biggest thing. And it was really good. It was deservedly in the top spot. People are so used to some of the quality you have live stuff in the Xbox 360. If you hit the jewel on your controller, a menu would instantly appear and let you do stuff like connect your friends. There's an operating system in a console. It was all new. OS was so fast, whereas in every other system, it had to be done in software, in the game, or it was really, really slow. Remember Blades?

35:54Yeah. The best operating system they'd ever had. It's so much worse still. Xbox is still just this jumble of rectangles that's just trying to sell you stuff. It's so weird.

36:04Justin Davis:I don't really like the current Xbox interface Star Wars Battlefront 2 even before release it was in early access and they had these pay to win loot boxes that people didn't like and then even if it was also EA so EA had already pissed people off with Mass Effect and SimCity had to be always on and then crashed on day one and nobody could play but with Battlefront 2 they had these hero characters that were locked, you had to grind to get them and it would take like 40 hours to grind to unlock something like Darth Vader.

36:38Peer Schneider:It is the most downvoted comment in Reddit history, if I remember right.

36:42Justin Davis:I have the comment here. So people were complaining about it on Reddit and EA's community team responded by saying it was intended to give players a sense of pride and accomplishment. And at least as of 2017, that was the most downvoted comment on all of Reddit. Really? That's amazing. Horse armor obviously was a big one too. Oh, sweet children, if only we had known. We're paying for shoes now.

37:03Peer Schneider:Well, the irony is that horse armor is now the preferred way to do it. Oh, it's only cosmetic? Great. I love that.

37:10Justin Davis:Yeah. A couple more quick ones. I don't know if you remember this one. Street Fighter X Tekken. That's the one. The disc shipped with paid DLC on the disc. You bought the game. You had the disc. That drives people absolutely bonkers. You had to pay extra to unlock the DLC characters.

37:26Peer Schneider:I think there were other games. I think there were unlock codes. It was like a conspiracy theory of like, is this dlc just unlocking something it was an entire yeah it still is it went on for a while

37:36Justin Davis:about it yeah usually true and then konami's very public split with kojima and then canceling pt and that was ugly yeah yeah i also remember when nintendo showed this cool zelda game demo and everybody was hyped up and said gamecube is going to be the best ever and then they showed wind waker yeah and then one entire internet lost its collective mind i like he was so mad i liked wind wake up every moment i saw it everybody likes it now yeah but it was a controversy for a long time it's demo though you know like look at it it's like that's not what you're getting though no and then that twilight princess tried so hard to get back to this yeah yeah this looks so bad it looks funny now right there's a wii u one too where link fights the um the goma like the spider as well which was never made into a game so nintendo's done this a few times

38:40Justin Davis:yeah oh let's look at some classic video game controversies okay game of the century watch last time we were looking at the ps2 xbox and gamecube generation so the nominees that we've mentioned so far pair just to catch up to speed we did perfect dark because we're including late in 64 games, anything after 2000. Perfect Dark, Metroid Prime, Half-Life 2, Knights of the Old Republic, Shadow of the Colossus, Resident Evil 4, Castlevania, Aria of Sorrow, World of Warcraft, Animal Crossing, Final Fantasy X, Halo 2, and GTA San Andreas. That's some good stuff. Joseph wrote in to say, you guys covered pretty much everything from 2000 to 2005, but forgot The Sims.

39:16Justin Davis:Ah. And well, that's a blind spot for me. I don't play The Sims, and I also, I don't know, I think it's a pretty casual audience. I don't know what the overlap is between The Sims and Halo 2. Sims 1, 2, and 3 was that generation.

39:29Peer Schneider:Yeah. And now 4 has been every generation since. It'll be for 10 more years. Sims 3 Pets was like a GameCube release. Until Rene arrives. Sims is great. It's a valid one. Worthy late edition.

39:44Justin Davis:Okay, beginning into this, 360, PS3, Wii generation. Pear, I know you came prepared. What's your first pick? My first pick is Red Dead Redemption. Yep. That was such a... I love Grand Theft Auto. I love open world games in general. I love Westerns. I grew up watching them with my dad. He would let me stay up late on Saturday nights. And Germany Westerns would be at like 10.15 in the evening on a Saturday. Westerns can be long. Those old Westerns are long. Children, television, you had to show up at a certain time. Otherwise, it was gone. And so I watched all the old Ford Westerns, Leone, Spaghetti Westerns, all of that with my dad.

40:20and playing this game was like going right back to that era. And I just love the sort of the pacing. I like games where I get to explore and like Red Dead was like all of that. And then there's a bad part to it. Like, you know, I think RDR2 is better. There's Mexico in this game that slows everything down, but then it ends so well. It does. That whole prologue.

40:41Justin Davis:So good. It's got a really good story. John Marsden's great. And they also did, you know, the Undead Nightmare part of it too,

40:46Peer Schneider:which is probably the best DLC. Yep. Great. Amazing.

40:49Justin Davis:amazing great gunplay we showed a little bit of it earlier the the dead eye like the slow motion stuff is really good yeah total clint eastwood moment there right like with a multi-shot that's

40:59Peer Schneider:on my short list uh justin how about you uh my first pick would be skyrim the elder scrolls five i almost said four nope it's five um no i don't know like i kind of don't even know where to start right like a really unmatched sense of exploration there's a reason that skyrim is still around and still getting played 15 years later um well that reason is that it's so moddable but like no i mean there's trade-offs right like there's an argument to be made that morrowind to oblivion to skyrim is sort of like dumbing down each step of the way but i think that it makes the game really accessible and really um you know i thought that the the um combat system like people give it a hard time for being very basic just sort of like swinging your sword but i my memory of that game is like i had a lot of fun with the options for my character build like i can be stealthy and i can use a bow and arrow or i can be i was always like i was sword and board for a while on that game and then i was sword in one hand and magic in the other hand for a while um no i mean it was the towns are alive right like the people do their own things and you can disrupt them and doing so it really was it's a little bit hard i mean i made the same comment with some of the games i was talking about the first uh game of the quarter century game of the century watch but like a lot of the stuff that was so amazing in Skyrim is more common now, but it felt less common and felt like a bigger deal when this was coming out that like there's an actual economy in the game world and you can steal from people.

42:26Peer Schneider:And then the characters will react to you if they catch you doing that. And, you know, you can be thrown in jail and then break out of jail. Like, you know, this is very sort of bog standard open world RPG stuff, but you know, it's like that now because Skyrim set the tone that's still being, you know, followed and often not lived up to 15 years later people want like there's the feeling of like people want to recapture that feeling of being in that world for the very first time and every elder scrolls game has that moment where it lets you loose you're out of the prologue in the tutorial it's like oh man what like do it north south east or west i can go wherever i want do whatever i want like elder scrolls games still do it better than almost any other game um and so it is hard it is one of those things where I tried to go back to Skyrim and you kind of can't go back again.

43:16Peer Schneider:It was of its time. Stiff and like... Yeah, so, you know, but it's definitely earned its place on sort of the video game Mount Rushmore for sure.

43:26Justin Davis:Yeah, I would agree. That's on my show list as well. Alright, Sam, your first pick. I'll do Arkham Asylum. Yep, that's on my list too. We're all in agreement here. God, love it. So good. Yeah, and I feel bad. I'm not trying to troll people, but I legit think that Arkham City sucks. So I think that Asylum is a really, really great Metroid game. And Arkham City ruined everything I liked about it. Wow. I like City as well. But Asylum is so compact. At least City has cool moments and good combat and stuff still. The flying around is cool. The reason for it being said in Arkham is so cool. And it takes place over this one evening.

44:05and you know the like you the the glimpses you get into the batman universe are all part of the setting like it is exactly metroid prime that is why metroid prime works it's the second best metroid prime game so far yeah yeah it's like can you put batman on an alien planet probably not this works just as well yeah yeah i totally agree it's my favorite arkham game because

44:30Justin Davis:of the die hard rule it just works better to keep it contained yeah one basic area yeah i love this game oh man so good yeah um okay i think my first pick would be mass effect 2. okay ooh yeah generation big game yep some of the best writing and like characters and all of gaming and like the structure of it how it's a suicide squad you're going on a suicide mission you have to build your team and then you go on the whether the loyalty quests yeah that determines who survives in the end it's just such a like a cool clever samurai yeah yeah yeah that works too yeah it's

45:02Peer Schneider:good well and i you know i guess sound like a broken record like this idea that's less new now but like your choices from the first game carried over like it was insane yeah it was completely nuts that it would read your save game and like characters that you were close with or characters that were alive or dead or like moral choices you'd made were reactive and included in the sequel like that was unbelievable and it it had such a unique look too right like you could like a lot A lot of things start to look the same in the sci-fi genre, but this one, like Mass Effect, just after the first game, you felt like you lived in this universe and you knew it and you knew the alien creatures.

45:37Peer Schneider:The lore is so good. Just the reason why, you know, just with the... Now I'm such a fake fan. I can't remember their name. The Mass Effect relays, I guess that's what they're called, right? The reason why only certain pockets of space are explored and the rest is unexplored. I thought the world design and alien design and politics of how they interacted with each other was just so great. The combat was really improved too. It was much better than it was in one. Yeah, especially kind of the mixture of magic skills with your attacks. It felt really good to just run around and kick butt in the game.

46:14Justin Davis:All the rough edges of the first one were rounded off, but this is the first one that came from EA, right? The first one was Microsoft? Is that true? I think this was EA. I think EA and Bioware maybe. We don't remember. No one can remember. And the orange overlay stuff, the holographic stuff. I mean, it's such a cool world. It was weird how they took all the characters from the first game and made you a duplicate of them and then kind of introduced those characters again only as side quest characters. Like there was like a different Krogan. It was exactly the same as the first Krogan. A different Asari.

46:48Is that what they're called? Yeah.

46:49Peer Schneider:They did. So, you know, the choice. I praise the game for respecting your choices, but it did have some narrative side effects of like you know weird stuff with who your companions were going to be but i mean it's still i mean it totally works it tricked you into feeling like you had impact it's it's a little bit like the walking dead game right like telltale yeah yeah yeah i think the romance was fun in this you know now there's a lot of games that have like these romance choices and it's part of things like this basically started that you know like it just like and it was complicated everybody had a different situation and like you know to get it wasn't just like it wasn't gamified in like the same way that like, you know, Stardew Valley is like everybody has six gifts.

47:28There's different. It's like there was there was like, I believe a romance scene with the secretary that you had to work really hard to get to work through the whole game. And that might have been three. But the point is, is that the romance was very silly.

47:41Peer Schneider:Yeah, I'm a space racist. Are you a space racist too? All right, let's go. Is that Ashley? Oh, I think so. Right. Yeah, I think that's yeah. it was whoever you saved kite and her ashley okay uh let's let's teach you one more pick pair so it i i love a lot of the nintendo games that came out of in this generation we obviously just got a re-release of a double pack of the ones that debuted in this generation but i'm gonna have to go back to playstation one more time and that's uncharted 2 yeah i think uncharted 2 as a sort of game concept um it everybody was going open world and choice and stuff and this one was it was firmly linear story driven but in a way that just felt like i don't know it felt like the acting the way everything was unfolding and building was just so much better than every other game like uncharted 2 still is one of my favorites in the series right obviously they get more advanced later and have some mini exploration areas but uncharted 2 set pieces are freaking amazing gets bogged down a little bit with the shooting and he is a mass murderer right like like the game never earns this sort of like why are we killing so many people um but man it's like it's it felt like playing indiana jones for the really for the very first time because they want your treasure pair they want your treasure i know that's uh that's not okay that's why it's not okay

49:06Justin Davis:they're not nazis and that was it was a time when the tomb raider franchise was kind of like down Before the reboot, there was Revelations, the Lara Croft Chronicles, all that stuff. It's just sort of... Everybody was experimenting with the emerging mechanics, trying to create a different experience for different players, for every different player. And this game was like, nope. It is scripted, but it's the best scripting you can get in a game. Yeah. Yeah.

49:38Peer Schneider:I mean, look, it's not like Uncharted 2 is not that revolutionary, right? But the AAA, like, summer movie blockbuster, but as a video game, like, it just did it perfectly. You know what we take for granted, too, is this game's cutscenes are while you walk, right? Like, the dialogue is natural as you explore, and a lot of games would have ground you to a halt, switched to a pre-rendered sequence or something. This just does it in-game. Red Dead did that too. And if you got far away from somebody on a horse, they would start shouting instead of just talking. So everything was recorded twice, which is insane.

50:12That's amazing.

50:14Justin Davis:This was the generation when PlayStation earned its reputation as being the premier AAA prestige.

50:20Peer Schneider:They're still making this game? I mean, yeah. Kind of. Maybe they're more open now. Well, no, they're more open now. But yeah, third-person action adventure. I'm trying to 3.0 to be my favorite just because I like the set pieces better. but obviously the whole trilogy one is pretty janky now but two and three are pretty great yeah two is amazing okay justin uh is this the right because portal to this generation okay then it's got to be portal to same year as skyrim yeah um you know portal is incredible right and spawned a whole generation of memes and kind of gamer culture stuff and then they followed it up like they followed up a 10 out of 10 game with another 10 out of 10 game 11 out of 10 off the charts 11 out of 10 off the charts.

50:59Peer Schneider:I think it's very funny. You know, like what an interesting comment. Like it's a comedy game, which there's not that many of, but also the puzzles are really smart and really clever. And how, not to get too like navel-gazy, but like how do you design a puzzle that like you feel really smart and it's hard and the puzzle doesn't solve itself. You have to work at it. But then this game still has to be completable and beatable by the masses. Right. And like that is not an easy thing to do. and the game keeps introducing new concepts as you go it introduces i mean i haven't played it in a long time so i can't remember yeah i can't remember the terminology now but like the bouncy paint and like the other things that it introduces um like it it feels like it just is a boundless well of like like i would just play these portal rooms you know forever i'd just be happy to never stop while playing it i was always struck like i went from being amazed like feeling good that I solved the puzzle and feeling really special and going like, nobody else will be able to figure this out to how did they test this and design this because they give you so much freedom and then it all culminates in what I think is one of the best ending sequences of any game.

52:08It's just like when you get to that last moment, which I'm not going to spoil here because you should really replay this game. It feels

52:16Peer Schneider:like they had that idea and then created a game. And it sets you up like if you do play through the game, they kind of foreshadow it or they they're planting the seed yeah of like you know there's way i won't spoil it either but way earlier in the game cave johnson has a voiceover dialogue about moon dust and how the portal walls are made of moon dust and you're like oh these guys that made this game are very very smart it's like an unusual suspect moment where i went like oh my god and then i laughed out loud yeah yeah it's great plus there's that single-player campaign then the whole co-op campaign part of the same game yeah yeah and then uh then they were about to tie it together with half-life and then now we haven't gotten anything since nope nope yep well there's half

52:58Justin Davis:of alex but the vr game okay sam your next pick uh my next pick i mean this is really tough so i'm gonna go with rock band wow there you go totally forgot so that i think you know out of all the music games rock band you know brought back more instruments stuff like that like guitar hero is fine but like it was the room of friends playing rock band era that it's kind of like that pokemon go moment where it's like everybody was having fun doing something in the world together and it just we sports is a little bit like that too for a while right like that's important stuff you know it's important to have these like big cultural moments about games but what's really funny about this is that's related to some other things we're talking about.

53:44There was so much happening within Rock Band and releasing songs for Rock Band and Rock Band 2 and stuff that the Portal theme song was just released as maybe free, but it might have been paid. Content. You can pay for that song and add to the game. Stephen Colbert, as on the Colbert Report, had a song called You're Right Behind You Now, Charlene. Just released it in Rock Band.

54:07Peer Schneider:I forgot about that. Every week there'd be a drop of like, here's the 12 new songs in rock band this week yeah and you could decide like is this is my crew gonna like this you didn't have to like the songs but are the people that you play rock band with and i played rock band with friends like like a lot of friends like every friday you know like it was crazy every party for a while had a setup our office had a permanent setup it was just everywhere yeah that's a good one that is a really good one uh okay there's you guys hit almost every game that

54:39Justin Davis:I want to end on two. The first one, I don't know what else needs to be said about The Last of Us. Yeah, The Last of Us is the other one. I was just going to go there next. I just like two better because one... Oh my gosh, no. Really? Oh man, I feel like two gameplay-wise is such a nice step up, whereas one is a more compact good story. I guess I see your point there. I mean, I just prefer... It's the Arkham issue. I feel like the first one is such a great story that really need a follow-up, and the second one is just a feel-bad story. Like, nothing good comes out of that entire story. One is such a happy story.

55:17Peer Schneider:Well, a little bit more traditional action-adventure kind of like.

55:21Justin Davis:So yeah, Last of Us, and then I would actually throw in Borderlands 2. That was great. The big looter shooter. They have not done it better. They haven't done it better? I don't think anyone has done it better. No, that was incredible. As a pro-player game, we kept going back to, and it started every developer trying their luck at a game like this. I mean, I would toss in Mario Galaxy 2, right? This is the generation that gave us Twilight Princess and two Mario Galaxy games nonsense until three gets announced next year, of course, to coincide with a movie. But like... I tried hard to bring... That's the Wii game, but I tried to bring in a DS game, and I can't come up with one that I'd bring in.

56:04do we include ds in that generation there's a lot of ds it is probably that generation but yeah yeah it is yeah it's like scribble knots maybe like yeah those are big ones up there

56:14Peer Schneider:my honorable mention speed round would be gears of war like you know shooters were one thing and then gears of war came out and shooters were a different thing after that so you know and then the multiplayer i spent many many many hours this generation has so many so many giant hits like there's just a lot on those machines i know i have i have honorable mentions one of my honorable mentions is not bioshock but somebody should have been i was shocked that one too uh we messed up three which i think is bethesda's best game which one yeah i just like it better i personally like it better than gta we didn't really say gta gta feels like it's on every console but yeah yeah yeah and then halo 3 which i think is i mean we talked about halo a lot last week but boy what a game and then damon i think we just have to just because this is game scoop mentioned vionic commando rearmed the summer of what was it called summer of arcade arcade yeah good times right i mean shadow complex there's so many good games in that generation pac-man championship edition

57:15Justin Davis:championship edition that's amazing even that castlevania game sam the multiplayer castlevania game was awesome the one that zoomed in and out yeah what a weird game that one was crazy trauma center i'm just kidding oh actually ds has uh several castlevanias i love ecclesia and that's true that's several several zeldas yeah yeah i mean spirit tracks is pretty cool that's what xbox could do to win back some uh uh some favor with its fans bring back xbox live We're bringing back, yeah, just Xbox Live Arcade. Call it Xbox Live Arcade again. I don't know why that ever had to go away.

58:02Justin Davis:So in case you couldn't tell, I love this game. It has nearly limitless replayability since you're always trying to beat your friend's scores. The retro arcade gameplay is perfect, the presentation is fantastic, and more ghosts mean more fun. In other words, get this game as soon as you can. For more on Pac-Man DX, head over to IGN.com.

58:28Justin Davis:All right, I wanted to get Perry's thoughts on Ghost of Yotei, but we're running out of time. So just give us thumbs up, thumbs down. Love it. Yeah, I love it. Oh my god, it's so pretty. And I played Assassin's Creed Shadows. I feel like they're different apart from the similarities with the story. They feel very, very different. It's just like the combat and the feel of the character is so good. Yes. Like, oh, man. Yeah, it's gorgeous. Yeah, I'm still playing it. I love just walking around playing Shumisen like a badass. I'm putting it, yeah, that looks really cool when you stride around. Just like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

59:00Yeah, and the songs are good, too. They're kind of good catchy songs. I'm still playing it three hours a night. Yeah. And I'm playing other games right now. I just make sure to get in my Yote.

59:10Justin Davis:Yeah, everything that she does just looks so cool. The standoffs, like the way that feels, right? Like we brought up Arkham Asylum and the Arkham games have such good combat. Like it feels good when you punch somebody. This is the sword version of that, right? Yeah.

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1:00:59Justin Davis:okay ghost of yote that brings us to video game 20 questions and our suggestion suite comes from Alex C. in central New York. And Alex C. says, unless the archives are incomplete, no Redacted has ever been featured on 20 Questions. I am shocked. I'd recommend remedying this with my personal favorite Redacted.

1:01:18Peer Schneider:What are the Redacted words? Almost. Moba shmup. Okay, did this game come out in the 70s, 80s, or 90s? Yes. If you were to go to a bar, Damon, you personally, and you met somebody there and you would say, do you want to come over to my place and play this game? What would be your percentage, your success percentage at going home? That's not a yes or no question. That's the yes or no. Would it be, would your success chance be very, very low? Yes. Yes, yeah, okay. That's what I'm trying to get. So it's not Pushmo. Nope.

1:01:58Justin Davis:Not Pushmo. If I asked a woman that, please stop talking to me

1:02:06Peer Schneider:but what if it was a cool looking dude

1:02:09Justin Davis:he might I might have success with the cool looking dude so it's not rock band no not rock band I'm trying to figure out if it's a genre you haven't featured yet I have not listened to everything literally anyone would be weirded out if I went into a bar and asked the one to come home and play this game okay good that's what I was hoping for there was a line on gen b the other week that was like like we could they're talking about going on a date to two characters and then they're like well maybe we could just go back and play league of legends i'm like that's not how yeah yeah yeah well do you see the days of our lives i heard

1:02:48Peer Schneider:about it yeah the soap opera right like just the day time i have to leave do you want to go back into my apartment you can play xenoblade chronicles while you wait and she's like okay out of all games okay that's exactly what was the first question that you got justin 70s 80s or 90s and the answer was yes so it's it's old which is a i mean it's it's not going to be a moba do you do you pilot a ship or vehicle in this game no it's not did this originally come out as an arcade game no oh is um is it a puzzle game no that's five was this a console exclusive yes was it exclusive to a nintendo console yes uh 70s 80s or 90s so we're talking about 80s or 90s i had to come out on a cartridge because it wasn't a did it was it exclusive to the nes No.

1:03:50Peer Schneider:SNES? No. 70s, 80s, 90s, you got one more. I mean, this handheld. N64?

1:03:56Justin Davis:N64. That's 10. Pew. I got briefly worried that it was Mario Teaches Typing.

1:04:04Peer Schneider:Yep, we would have been hosed. Have you guys ever had a racing game on the show? In 20 questions? Nobody knows. A racing game? What? Were you just racing it? What are you talking about? i was hoping it was going to be typing of the dead but were there racing games in the nintendo 64 of course beetle adventure racing adventure race wave race f-zero x so n64 exclusive do we know i don't think we know really much and it didn't come out in arcades that's all we know you don't pilot a vehicle and damon cannot use it to pick up men or women no cannot probably not Are the characters generally voice acted in this game?

1:04:46N64? I know, that's what we make it spin.

1:04:49Justin Davis:Yeah.

1:04:54Justin Davis:Do you consider Banjo-Kazooie to be voice acted? I guess I'll give you a freebie. Banjo-Kazooie is a good voice. This is a bad question. You've got to rephrase it. okay we'll drop the question but like perfect dark is fully voice acted of all those other games have a bunch of grunts uh was this game made in japan no oh n64 exclusive not made in japan i don't know what to do with that i mean i guess it could be a rare game it could be i guess you're right it's not that it's a genre we haven't covered it could be a

1:05:35Peer Schneider:developer maybe we've never maybe we've never had a rare game on um you you've done like you must have had a rare game come on nobody knows was this game designed by rare yes n64 area so era we have uh mickey speedway i was just gonna say that everyone always forgets about mickey speedway banjo kazooie banjo to me conquers bad for a day perfect art perfect dark Damon, is the game one of the games that I mentioned? No, don't. The answer is obviously yes. Don't waste a question on that. There's more. Sort of. You listed almost. I will not ask this question. Is this game a multiplayer as a major component of it?

1:06:17Justin Davis:I mean. Okay. That's Banjo-Kazoo. Can you explain what you mean by a major component? Oh, can you play a co-op, for example, through this whole game? No. Okay. All right. This is helpful. I mean, we know it's not a racer because we're not piloting.

1:06:32Peer Schneider:Yep. We're not piloting anything. We did ask that. I forgot about that. Do you, in this game, do you play as an animal or two? An animal or two? An animal or two. Yes. Or more. Yes. Okay. Okay. So what? So it's either Conker or Banjo. Yep. Do you play as a bear and bird in this game? No. That's 15. Ooh. What is Conker a squirrel? Do you play as a squirrel? Conker is a squirrel. Do you play as a foul-mouthed squirrel in this game? No. Oh! shit oh my god that leaves no man i was just stuff like jet force gemini yeah well wait you're not an animal in jet force gemini you're you're just a human yeah you can play as a dog in it yeah or the dog well i was goofing around i thought it was conquer now i don't know well it can't be mickey speedway usa because you're piloting a vehicle yeah and it can't be diddy kong racing because you're piloting a vehicle did you ever have gold blast core Blast Corps is a...

1:07:26Peer Schneider:Oh, it could be Donkey Kong. It could be Donkey Kong 64. Oh my God. Yeah, that's pretty true, Sam. Donkey Dong. Donkey Dong. Okay, I mean, do you play as an ape family in this game? Yes.

1:07:43Justin Davis:Is it Donkey Kong 64? Donkey Kong 64.

1:07:46Peer Schneider:Some of them are found family, to be fair. I don't know that they're all related, but... It is Donkey. It's a good thing you asked this question now because we haven't gotten this on Nintendo Switch Online yet. and it's gotta be imminent, right? They're also, I know they're not all apes before the comments come after me. I know that Diddy Kong has, yeah, has a tail. Oh, is that what differentiates monkeys and apes? I don't know, man. Well, no, but that's an easy way to identify what's what. Right. I like that Diddy is a completely different species and they're like, oh, it's his nephew. Don't worry about it.

1:08:20Peer Schneider:I've never played this game. And there's still Donkey Kong Jr. out there somewhere. So I remember playing it, being annoyed, but always convincing myself that I liked it. And now I'm really curious to go back and experience it again because I was annoyed at the collect-a-thon part of it. And I replayed Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie on Nintendo Switch Online and I updated our guides and everything too. They're so good. They're incredible. And Banjo-Tooie, now that you don't have frame rate drops and stuff, it's a genuinely good game. And this one... Completely changes it. rare bit off too much here.

1:08:54It does slow down. The open world is not great. There are technical issues. What's the character swapping?

1:08:59Peer Schneider:You see a blue collectible and you have a banana and then you have to run back and swap characters and not only did they do that but they deliberately designed it to be annoying. You'd open a door as one character and another character's bananas would be behind the door. You constantly see things that you can't get which is sort of a misunderstanding from from metroid where you go like oh or zelda one day i can hit that hookshot target right and in this game you're like oh god it's yellow bananas i know what to do with them but i don't have that so there's i don't know if i can talk about i mean there's nobody else listening there's nobody left i'll just say there's a there's a rom of this game that adds in like a button where you can swap characters on the fly and it legitimately like honest to god like it increases my score of this game by like two to three points like it makes the game really good we're like you can just swap you know you hit a shoulder button and it swaps to a different character in real time i just realized there's nobody everybody dropped off because the games uh the games guest yeah the show's the show's over it's ferris bueller

1:10:05Justin Davis:what are you still doing here go home well hopefully i've trained them to stick around for the post credits scene that's right um i i really want to play this again because i want to be proven wrong after banjo to e and and i was like oh maybe banjo to e wasn't that good and then i played it again like man this is excellent it's a nine out of ten for me and like i want to go back and see if this is still a six because it's a six in my book from what i remember yeah we gave it a nine which is probably casmasina doing that one yeah and that was it was sort of like i i i think i i think if you talk to him now he'll be like yeah i don't think so i botched that one yeah i we were all really hyped and excited for this game and there are some really genuinely good things in this game we just got i mean we just got the overworld in donkey kong bonanza as a the empty level with some no with some generally cool challenges in it but um yeah i want to play nintendo come on nicely job thank you for the suggestion alex c in central new york okay viewers Listen, if you're looking for something to play right now that helps support a great cause, head over to Humble, live now through November 4th.

1:11:17Justin Davis:Grab eight incredible games for just$14.99, including Atomic Heart, V Rising, System Shock, Story of Seasons, Pioneers of All of Town, Cryptmaster, Pharaoh, A New Era, Hotel Renovator, and Caravan Sandwich. This is a really good bundle this time. Caravan Sandwich. The sandwich is intercapped, Justin. Okay, thanks. Every purchase supports the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, leading global charity dedicated to protecting whales and dolphins through research, rescue, and advocacy. By joining in, you're not just building your library, you're helping create a world where every whale and dolphin is safe and free.

1:11:47Justin Davis:And that is all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you to both Justin and Pear for joining me here in the studio. Thank you to Sam for joining us remotely. Sam, you just got to come down next time. You got to get here. I love Los Angeles. Thank you to Jobert and everyone working behind the scenes to get the gremlins out of the system so we actually record this episode. My name is Damon. This is IGN GameScoop. And we're out.

1:12:12Type, type, type, type, type, type.

1:12:22Justin 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 Mariah 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

1:13:00So it was, we've never had a Donkey Kong game is what it was?

1:13:03Justin Davis:A Donkey Kong Country or Donkey Kong 64 it just tastes more apple-y than apple it tastes like uh uh apple jacks which i'm sure parents never had the cereal uh yes i have because i had little american kids you let them have cereal yeah not just usually i tried all of them they didn't actually i lived vicariously through them and bought all the marshmallow ones and they're like man these aren't that great we can't buy the marshmallows anymore because the kids only eat the marshmallows Yep. They were like, nope, no more. Oh, man. No more Lucky Firm.

1:13:36Peer Schneider:They ruined it for themselves.

1:13:37Justin Davis:There was one cereal. I didn't do that. Aki was underweight because he just never stopped running as a kid. And so they told us, oh, yeah, I get some cereal with a lot of sugar. So we got Crave. Wow. And Crave is basically just chocolate. I don't even know Crave. Oh, isn't it like a candy snack mix?

1:13:58Peer Schneider:With a K. Crave cereal. I can picture the box. K-R-A-V-E cereal I've never seen this Well I do think they basically said Yeah maybe this is not good to give to you It says it was launched in the UK No it was here too

1:14:16Justin Davis:Yes I can hear you Jubber