Game Scoop! 830: Our Favorite Nintendo Switch Games

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20:09Justin Davis:I think, you know, obviously the best-selling Nintendo Switch 1 game. best Mario Kart game ever, best looking game in the series, the amount of tracks in there. It's just like, it was a perfect package and I think that's why Mario Kart World ended up being a disappointment ultimately, which not a bad game in its own right, but just compared to the perfection and the amount of content that's in 8 Deluxe. It was like, well. They finally did the Nintendo Kart thing too, right? Where they added characters from Zelda, places from Animal Crossing and stuff. And it's like,

20:42Nick Limon:that world went backwards on that so far at least i mean i think it's the same fate the next smash bros will suffer as well right where ultimate is so complete everybody's here is like their catchphrase yeah and it's like and then they're gonna come out with a new smash and it's gonna have you know 20 characters but maybe it'll have an open world and you have to press up to jump around yeah i think i think it's a perfect game um i think you know like there's not really that much to say about it just because it takes this kind of formula and just like just make just perfects it like you know like there's not there's not a lot to get into um i will say the jazzy soundtrack i think is sort of an underrated like i really the more i played world the more i kind of missed you know the horns and the jazz of mario kart 8 and i still i don't even play mario kart 8 that much but i still kind of wander around my house sort of humming and singing some of the tunes to this day like i think it's just become become a part of me as a person um yeah and then the booster course pass yep you know you could take or leave a lot of those courses like a lot of them are from the mobile game like you know they're not necessarily the best but it just made the game i mean you're right mike like it gave it that that mario kart 8 feeling of like it's just the canonical mario kart experience at this point yep yeah i mean i think i think again both this and smash i think they went the platform route where it's like this is the ultimate version of this game we're gonna just keep adding to it and this is like graphically they're both fantastic and so it does kind of put them in a bind where you like you play mario world and you're like or uh sorry mario kart world and you're like oh man this this does feel like a little bit of a step back this is mainly because the open world game open world didn't have anything to do it yeah this is the wii u this was a wii u game like breath of the wild right yep yeah yeah which is crazy I mean, that means that we had a really great library.

22:35It kind of did.

22:38Nick Limon:It also got it. Also, you were stuck on a desert island with a Wii U. You would still at least have you'd have Breath of the Wild. You know, this did we did the booster? You the booster course passes and on the Wii U version. Right. But I think the other DLC was that now. Because because this is this is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. That's the one that got all the DLCs. Remember the BMW or something DLC? it was like a licensed car dlc yeah mercedes maybe i think it was the mercedes yeah i do remember that yeah that's great that should have been 10 underrated it probably would be now yeah yeah all right mark you mentioned smash

23:15Justin Davis:brothers a couple of times i'm not really a smash for this guy but would you nominate it for

23:18Nick Limon:game of this injury i i think i think i would i would call for someone else to nominate it like someone that actually knows what they're talking about i think it deserves to be up there but i can't tell you why i don't know anything about i can't explain why i like melee the best but i'm sticking with it because of the what is it wave dashing mainly he's a wave dash expert very very fast um yeah i mean you know if if smash will be on my list right um i i think it's a clear sort of tier below zelda zelda and mario for me um but like the hype you know you already kind of talked about it mark but the hype of like everyone is here it's just you know it's one of those moments that like i'm not sure we're ever going to get in video games um and i think it almost killed sakurai so you know we'll see i don't know um you know it's got sora it's got yeah i mean i'm it's got joker i'm a relatively casual player and so i i you know i guess i kind of already talked about this with mario but nintendo's gotten so good at sort of servicing all those different play styles of like you know if you're a real tryhard and like a smash sicko like you know they fix the tripping and they fix like i know people still prefer melee but like by and large ultimate like seems to be pretty well respected in that regard but like for me like I'm pretty casual and I really, really enjoyed they took the trophy hunting from previous Smash games and made it, we put 9 ,000 stickers into the game and I thought the campaign was pretty fun and I thought the I don't know, all the modes that's what I'm in Smash for is you can come back night after night after night and play a different character and play a different mode and set new high scores I never play Peach, but I'll play Peach a few times and learn a skill set a little bit to set a new home run target, for example.

25:17It's just a very chill game to play casually, I think. And so, yeah, I mean, I keep meaning to get my kids into it because I think they would like it, but we've not booted up Smash for them yet.

25:30Justin Davis:The fact that the Wii Fit Trainer is in it is so good. Yeah, it's really funny. Okay, Sam, anything else you would nominate? Pikmin 4? Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yep. It's we haven't talked about a Pikmin game yet, really. And it's the best Pikmin game ever, in my opinion, by like just it's not even close. It's just it just looks and feels so good. And I just want to play it all the time. I can't believe how good they made the fourth Pikmin game. It doesn't make sense to me. And then we I don't we can't really do anything about this, but Metroid Prime remastered is better than Metroid Prime on GameCube, and it's better than Metroid Prime on not we.

26:06Hmm.

26:07Justin Davis:So there you have it. That's easy. that's an easy little asterisk to take care of yeah i'm i'm kind of used to i mean not every nintendo sequel obviously not mario and zelda but i'm used to um a lot of nintendo games sort of giving us like there's there's like a a monkey's paw like we'll grant your wish and we'll give you pikmin 4 but there's going to be some weird drawback like you know there's some fatal flaw that like stops it from being kind of the perfect game and pikmin 4 actually does the exact opposite of like we're gonna take all the best stuff that you loved about all the pikmin games and you know and then we're gonna make the main campaign accessible but we're gonna make the final post game challenges really really hard and crazy again and the new pikmin types aren't gonna be annoying they're gonna be fun and interesting like i really like they made the perfect pikmin game yeah they also have this like creature battle mode where you can just pick one of the enemies and just it's like a kind of like a boss rush mode and kingo loves to play he'll just play it forever he just picks some different monster and throws pikmin at it until they're dead and he loves a lot of games out right now but if you were looking to play a game you could find this used somewhere or something and want to play it like you don't need to play the other pikmin oh no you just play this one and it's it's it's a rts about ants and it's really fun yeah and i actually think they're they're i'm speaking from memory i think pikmin 4 actually retcons the previous pikmin pikmin game so not only do you need to have not played them but i think it's actually like no don't worry about it don't worry about that so yeah it just seems to unmoor itself from the timeline yeah and we don't i don't think we ever covered this on the show a new pikmin game was kind of shadow announced with that animated video that nintendo released yeah yeah we don't know like what anything about the game right or that pikmin is you know well anyway yeah it was at least a pikmin short yeah weird that was a weird thing pikmin is still on the minds of people at Nintendo.

28:04Justin Davis:As it should be.

28:09Justin Davis:Okay, Mark, anything else to nominate?

28:13Nick Limon:So, I like this game.

28:16Justin Davis:Hold on, these should be like the best of the best.

28:19Nick Limon:I know, I know, but hear me out. I'm thinking about, so I love cultural moments in video games, right? So we had 2016, Pokemon Go, right? Everybody played Pokemon Go. And Animal Crossing New Horizons was absolutely a cultural moment for 2020. It came out right when lockdowns happened. And it's not a game I really would have played. If New Horizons 2 or a new Animal Crossing came out tomorrow, I probably wouldn't play it. And yet, maybe. But I played 200 hours of New Horizons because that's just what you did, right? In 2020. Everybody was playing this game because it was like the one thing that we knew everybody was doing right and so the game will kind of always have this like special moment it i i don't know if i would go back and be like this is this is incredible i i think it's a really really good game it may not be a marking but uh i i think it deserves at least a word in there about like how this game did kind of take over i mean it's found its way into human history because of that because of a pandemic that will remember for a very long time as they all are and how it was related to the technology that completely jumped the way everybody worked the way everybody went to school and everybody gamed was all like tied together and this was just part of it you know like i get like just a flood of memories good and bad from this era just just seeing this game again and we had brought up animal crossing as a gamecube I did as a just an outstanding innovation in sim games I I think I love it love the game people want then there's a series of good to okay to great ones and then there's this one which does enough I think to bring it into the realm of like a a classic game yeah I mean it it finally fulfilled that animal crossing wish that people had had since the beginning of like you know I just want to be able to place anything anywhere I want to be able to terraform my whole island like i want to be able to go like just as completely hardcore and into it as i want and instead instead of having this little teeny tiny sandbox in which you have to express yourself the entire game and the entire island was that and that that from an end game perspective was like really fun um really satisfying i think watching this footage it's like i'm reminded like the writing in the animal crossing games is really good and really clever too um you know like even when the characters are mean to you, like they're mean in kind of like an interesting way.

30:52That's like really charming. Um, it's great, great game.

30:56Nick Limon:Well, and this is where I learned that Tom Nook is not a villain at all. Everyone, everyone, I had always thought Tom Nook's a villain. He's the, he's the one that like you owe him all this money. Homeboy gives you an interest-free loan. That is the nicest thing in the world. Like you'll never get that. Yeah. Uh, he's, he, he is a little bit toned down compared to some of the previous ones but yeah you're not wrong uh and then i heard the dlc was really good the happy homemaker stuff where you go to islands and and they'll ask for things and um yeah i i hear it's really good yeah i i really do like this game and i i but i i do i do think like yeah is it is it more of a weirdly even though it's only five years old is it a nostalgia thing.

31:41Nick Limon:Cause it's like, yeah, this is speaking about that time. Like I edited the, the doom eternal review from home and I was like, we're editing a review from home. Like what? Like, and this is, this, this game is what I did. I had to produce this review from home. Yeah. Like it's, it's what I did. I did a lot of VOs for a lot of videos for this. And I was like, I'm doing a VO like at home, not in the VO booth at the IGN office. So there's just a lot of things, a lot of feelings come back when I see this. To your point of like what, why, you know, it may not be a classic, maybe it's just tied up in nostalgia.

32:17I think one counterpoint to that, and we talked about this with Stardew. There's a genre now called cozy games. This is by far the most played cozy game ever. Besides unless you count like Farmville or something, right? Like which we didn't call cozy games. It's like Stardew had a resurgence because of Animal Crossing. And people played all these other games because of it. But most people just played Animal Crossing. That's the most cozy playing that happened. At least concurrently, over the years, people play all these other games. I mean, there's not a lot of games that men and women, young, old, like a four-quadrant game.

32:56And this is one of them.

33:00Justin Davis:All right, Justin. Any final nominations? No. Okay, cool. I think that's actually pretty good. But I did think this is probably a good point to just sort of mention any indie games that have come out over the years that we haven't mentioned yet and maybe they get looked over. Things like Hades, which we were talking about at the end or right before we started filming, that was a Switch exclusive at launch. It was our game of the year that year. Hades 2 was a Switch console exclusive at launch. Hades is great. Some of the best writing and the most clever way of doling out story and lore over a roguelike game that you are meant to play over and over again.

33:37Justin Davis:It's actually kind of baffling how they fit all that in there in a way that didn't feel redundant or repetitive and all just, it seems to be doled out to you at regular intervals as if it were planned as if they knew how many times it would take you to get through the game. It's pretty genius.

33:52Nick Limon:Yeah, every time you go back to the house of, you know, like there's like new dialogue. Yeah. No matter how far or not far you got, there's just always someone has something new to say to you. Recorded voice acted dialogue. And it's all so good. Darren Korb is, he's just, he's a beast. He's just too good.

34:13Justin Davis:Yeah, it's too good. I've been enjoying Hades 2 as well. And then I would throw in Dead Cells, which is just, you know, maybe the prettiest modern pixel art, I think. And just a huge sprawling Metroidvania with so many secrets, secret ways to enter biomes and reach secret bosses and items. And then they've just built on it and expanded it so much. It's an absolutely huge game. This could absolutely be a desert island game for me. The Castlevania stuff is so good. Also talking about game feel and like Mario Odyssey, just the feel, the joy that comes from just moving your character around the space in the game.

34:49Justin Davis:This game totally has that as well. Nice.

34:52Nick Limon:Yeah. So something I talked about before the show was a game that I don't know if I would consider it a Switch game, but I played the one-hour trial of Bellatro on PS5 and then went, this is great. I'm going to go buy it on the Switch because this is a Switch game to me. And I never do that.

35:11Justin Davis:I mean, I bought Bellatro on PS5 and on Switch and on my Steam Deck. And I have it on, because of Apple Arcade, I have it on my iPad. Bellatro is another game that I think is also worth it. It works so good on phone.

35:21Nick Limon:Yeah.

35:22Justin Davis:I still think, I would love it if Sam gave Bellatro a shot. that's okay it's so good i'll try i can give it a try it looks really fun um except for all the parts that don't look fun to me which is basically the whole thing but i'll check it out cool um i uh i noticed in the comments that people were a little saucy that we haven't even mentioned minecraft which i'm pretty sure we mentioned but uh yeah i don't know i mean that's definitely i mean look we're not snubbing minecraft it's just the format of how we've constructed these episodes right like when when what counts as its release date no yeah i mean minecraft's absolutely a formative game for me um i've played it alone i've played it with my kids um i think it's another four quadrant game um i it's almost too like we this this moment i feel like i've shared this anecdote before so i apologize if there's hardcore listeners that have heard every episode of the show but like the idea of like you know you can express yourself in a game and like you can shape the game world the way that you want like that's right like every game's like that now but it was that was not the case when minecraft came out like there's a world that i had my bike

36:34like build a course and excitement we there was this valley separating like i had one mountain peak where my home was and another mountain peak where like my mind was or something and it was a pain i'm like i'm always having to go all the way down the hill and back up the hill to get to where I'm going. And then like that light bulb moment of like, oh shit, like I can just build a bridge like, and then I can decorate the bridge. Like I can put glass up and I can build it how I want. Like that was so mind blowing when Minecraft was new. And you know, now that sense of like shaping the game world, how you want, you know, playing, I always played it single player just cause it's kind of like, I'm just going to log into the game and vibe for a while, but even the seamless drop in, drop out multiplayer in a shared world, like that was a really big deal when Minecraft came out.

37:18So yeah, it absolutely deserves a place in the top 25 of the century.

37:23Nick Limon:One of the first conversations I ever had with Mr. One, Jared Petty, was him talking about how his favorite moment in a video game like ever is the first night in Minecraft, right? Because you drop into the world, it's daytime, you're chopping trees, you're doing whatever, and then it starts to get dark and you're like, well, shoot. So you build this like the worst house ever and you get in it And then you just hear zombies and monsters and stuff like that. And then you like kind of wake up the next morning and that's when the loop hits you, right. That you're like, Oh, okay. I need a better shelter than, than, than what I, this hole in the ground.

37:59Nick Limon:Um, yeah, Minecraft's great. Yeah, for sure. If you like that day night cycle, you should check out Castlevania to Simon's quest. What a terrible night,

38:09Justin Davis:terrible night to have a curse. I will, I will say about this. I don't, you know, I've, I just never spent any time with Minecraft, but because of the movie, Kingo has become interested. And so I was like, oh, we have it on Xbox. I'll just put it on. Here you go. The game just, unless I'm missing something, I don't think the game explains anything to you. And so he couldn't figure anything out. And he's like, daddy, how do I do this? And I was like, I don't know. I've never played Minecraft. So it doesn't have a very nice onboarding experience, in my opinion.

38:38Nick Limon:Well, because the purpose is, is it doesn't want you to do anything. thing it wants you to do what you want to do that's that's kind of the point but there's a middle like it doesn't tell you like go punch a tree like you know it could benefit from having like a three-minute tutorial for six-year-olds like the game is it doesn't need much at this

38:57Justin Davis:point how many copies it's sold how many years how have they not just put in a little tutorial like yeah okay yeah i mean it's got to be deliberate at this point like they're probably afraid to like you know they've sold 200 million copies and it's working for them so far i guess they're probably afraid to mess with it. Yeah, I think there's a whole cottage industry of YouTube channels explaining how to play Minecraft.

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41:46Justin Davis:Okay, those are old games. Let's talk new games. Sam, you've beat Ghost of Yote. This is a game that I love. I would love to get back to. I've been playing a lot. I wanted to play Outer Worlds 2 because I want to be able to talk about it when we're allowed to, which is next week based on when we're recording this episode this week. But I'm looking forward to getting back to Yote. You've beaten it. What do you think? No spoilers. Yeah, I took my time beating it because I ended up really liking battling and doing some of the side quests that involved difficult duels. And I liked a lot of the open world stuff in the end.

42:19The game absolutely clinches the ending. It is a remarkable masterpiece, I think. I think it's just an incredible Sony game that this team is just one of the most talented teams on Earth. And I did not think that for the first 20 hours of this game, but I still love the first 20 hours. But those back 20, I was just repeatedly amazed by a simple framed shot that just looked amazing. Or, you know, some kind of battle sequence, which was just cool again, because they're pulling out swords and, you know, it goes really quiet and there's flowers everywhere. Like that happens over and over and over again.

42:55but it's great um the story is what we criticized which is about you know another story about uh family members and loss in a sony game which i think is a you know a funny thing that that's returned to a lot but that's also part of human culture i just want to add i'm not defending it i'm just saying like that's a lot of stuff is about that um but um the the way that this game actually does put together like a crew and what amounts to a family is really cute and has the feels and I think it does a really good job and then what this does that you know I respect Assassin's Creed for doing the the seasonal changes that on you know on a whim you can change the season this this game handles it by having regions have seasons basically the regions have seasons but it works it's not as impressive technically but when you get to the point where they're like okay you're gonna be in a rainy area for a while and they play it up it's really cool and then yeah just like i really like the stance pokemon you know that the rock paper scissors when you're fighting stuff um later game bosses have you switching out that stuff a lot and you you feel good i felt like this is i think i mentioned this before this might be the only game i've ever played recently an action game where the i felt like i was screwing up the parrying and it was all fast enough that like i got good at parrying and i liked it.

44:18Whereas a lot of games, I'm like, my character is way too slow for me. We want to sit around and wait for a boss fight. This is all Souls games. And learn how to parry and learn their moves. I just don't like those boss fights. I really like the bosses in this game, or just the combat. And then the mob combat is great, too. I got no qualms passing on this game as an essential must-play for people.

44:37Justin Davis:It's great. So you also loved Assassin's Creed Shadows. How do you compare the two of them now? Yeah, I like them. I like them equally. I think they're both incredibly talented people that made a game about, you know, a very, very beautiful Japanese set historical romantic game. Like, it's so cool. We're so lucky to have these two games.

45:00Nick Limon:I mean, Assassin's Creed Shadows and Ghost of Yotei are my desert island games, meaning I just want someone to lock me on a desert island with these games so I can force myself to finish. Yeah, getting a platinum would be really fun in this game, for example. Like, it just would be great. Like, I can see how great it would be.

45:16Justin Davis:Sam, I'm absolutely... I'm just taking my time. Instead of pushing through the story, I just open my map and see what's nearby that I can go check out. I'll just go and do that. I've done three of the Yotei 6. If I decided to just sort of mainline the quest, do you think it would take me that long? No. I've done the snake, the oni, and the kitsune.

45:36Nick Limon:I think the whole game is only supposed to be if you mainline it, just north of 20 hours. So that's one, two, three, four, and then there's a fifth area, and then it kind of has an end sequence. So yeah, you're you could finish it in five or six hours. Okay. Well, I'm going to keep it down. But just, but here's the thing though, is that it really, I mean, there is a difficulty level to contend with in this game, at least on like whatever settings I was playing on. And like, it is really helpful to get a bunch of stuff. Like, and specifically I do recommend, um, it's a little grindy, I think for some people, but I liked it, but I get the expanded weapons.

46:11We'll get all the weapons, but then do the one thing where you do a quest where you can do the triangle square attack.

46:17Justin Davis:Okay. you know what i'm talking about oh yeah so yeah each sensei usually they teach you the weapon and they're like go do these three battles and then come back and then they'll give you a triangle square um easy a spirit attack instead of the hold the triangle spirit attack it's really worth it and the spear one is so awesome okay it's really really cool and then the the kusura gama one is um i believe well it's one that one's great too it allows you to drag people over to you like yeah i got that that one's so fun to do stealth kills that way and it's a stealth thing yeah it's so like oh cool yeah it's really well thought out but the spear one really is awesome and i just got the odachi that's the giant sword yeah yeah the giant sword i did that oh so i killed the oni and

47:06Nick Limon:And then I got the Odachi. And then I, what are they that I knew? The people with like the face painting and stuff like that. So I did that. And then that was, that's how far I am in the game. Cool. Yeah, it's, it just, it gets better and better. It doesn't have a rough start. And also all those hot springs look really, really delightful.

47:24Justin Davis:Yep. And your horse is great. A good boy or girl. Love, I love Ghost of Yote. Might end up being my game of the year. but let's talk about ball pit yeah yeah ball pit is the business uh i i've been playing ball pit and i i like a lot but who who wants to gush about it justin or mark what is ball pit you can go because i i if there's time i have a different game okay what uh

47:54Nick Limon:yeah so uh i a little bit of backstory so i i've become this weird handheld gamer i don't know happened that weird but uh i'm a ps5 guy but all of a sudden i'm just like i'm steam decking it up i don't know what it is i started playing mega bonk which which is silly as mega bonk is and there's a weapon in there that talks about clapping in the enemy's cheeks and stuff like that it is a genuinely really really good game justin are you playing make a ball no hold on we're talking about both hold on i know i'm not gonna talk about it we're gonna get there so so after 40 hours of Megabog, you would think that I would be done with the auto-shooter roguelike.

48:34Nick Limon:Nope. So then I picked up Ball Pit last night. Oh, just last night?

48:38Justin Davis:Oh my gosh, okay.

48:39Nick Limon:Just last night. I've only played like two hours of it, and I'm, I could tell I'm in. I'm in for another 40 hours, just like Megabog. So, I mean, it's immediately clever, right? Because it takes Breakout and Arkanoid but turns it into an RPG, you know, that slot machine mechanic of this crazy stuff. So it's like, it's not like it takes like five hours for its sort of like juice and like satisfaction to reveal itself. No, you immediately know what it is. It's got that, it's got that roguelike thing that like either it's a game balance decision or I don't like some games feel afraid to do it where this game just lets you build the most insane.

49:14Like, I don't even know. It's not a character build ball build, I guess. I don't know, but like it just that it like it's got that Bellatro feeling of it just lets you break the game and encourages you to and wants you to. And then it's just the moments of like, what? I can do that. I could combine this with this is like that's what the best roguelites do. And that's that's like all this game is.

49:39Nick Limon:Yeah. Once once I understood what the fusion was, because you start with what are they called? Just baby balls or something like that. and uh so they're they're just the white balls and then eventually you'll get a ball that like does fire damage right so it's like you do fire damage but then and then let's say you get a ball that is a ghost so it'll go through the bricks and hit everything then eventually you can get a fusion and you can fuse the fireball with the ghost and then you're cooking and then you can fuse that with one that you know hits entire rows yep it's insane like i got the one where where my first like big fusion like that was there's a ball that when you hit it it'll either there's two of them there's one horizontal and one's vertical where when it hits the brick it's supposed to hit it'll hit all of them in that vertical row or horizontal row uh and then uh if you get a lightning ball it'll hit that brick plus the five surrounding ones i then put the lasers together so now it's hitting in all four directions and then fused it with the lightning and it just i was just melting and it's yeah man it's when those things come together and you start seeing the big numbers and all that stuff you're like all right cool and then you get put in this completely awful farming okay i'm glad you said that i'm glad i'm glad i'm like i think so good because it's also it's also break out in arkanoid like it's so clever i it's clever i don't think it's fun at all well i mean boo this man i love it i mean maybe it has to like build its way out

51:15Justin Davis:i've you know i've played for several hours i've beaten a run with the first character but yeah so for like mark the farming thing is i could build a couple wheat farms and i could farm it and get one wheat and that's kind of it so maybe it gets more involved later on i don't know it does because

51:32Nick Limon:eventually it's like you could build a house and and like it'll say like this house this is how you unlock this character and so it's like it does get more like you it does kind of make you realize why you're doing it i just feel like it kind of just slows it down like going back to mega bonk like you you collect silver that's your that's your uh constant progression yeah and then you just go to a menu and you're like cool i'm unlocking this item unlocking this character good back into the run where it's like with this you're like you're moving plots of land around and you're doing whatever and then you're sending your guy on his thing again i think it's clever I don't think it's miserable I think it's the worst part of the game

52:07Justin Davis:I do want to just get into my next run

52:10Nick Limon:just get just just yeah it's really hard for me when you when you finish a run it's really hard for me to not just click the restart button because I'm like I know that I should go back to the town and do it because you can only do it once per run so it's like I shouldn't but I want to just get back into breaking blocks

52:27Justin Davis:that's good Sam what do you think you gonna check out this game yeah it looks fantastic if I didn't have 10 billion games to play for work and for pleasure, then I would be able to do it. I mean, I'm playing Pokemon and Keeper right now, you know? Which I don't think either one you're that crazy about, right? I mean, I respect Pokemon and Keeper, so I want to keep playing them and find what I like about them. But yeah, they're not dragging me in. I mean, Pokemon never does at the beginning, and Keeper should, but it doesn't. But I'm going to stick with them. And then, Mark, I haven't played Megabunk yet.

53:02Is it 3d vampire survivors, 3d vampire survivors?

53:06Nick Limon:It's that's what it is. Yeah. It's a much faster pace, 3d vampire survivors where, where, you know, you can move the camera and stuff like that. Um, it's, it's a lot faster than vampire survivors. So it's a lot like it doesn't take long for it to start being really fun because, um, because you're just moving around. Uh, they just added a map to the game like yesterday. So that's awesome. Um, but yeah, if you like vampire survivors and you like, this idea of your character just shooting out in in thousands of projectiles at a time to kill monsters like then you'll like this game because i it's very very addictive it has a lot of characters which is uh which is great because they all play very differently like some will be like it increases your luck every level or increases your life still some are just super fast where you can just get around the map in no time at all and so it's i i find it it's very fun very addicting again i've played like 40 hours of it but there is this weird thing happening where it's like saturday i was home alone all day and i have my ps5 right there i got these ghosty yotes and i'm just sitting on my couch on my steam deck playing megabonk all day there's something about handheld games they they got their hooks in me right now yeah so yeah because i'm also playing pokemon as well just they're definitely kind of like well pokemon's not this but like megabonk and ball pit are, you know, like dopamine hit the game, right?

54:30Like they're, they're not like the games can be really hard, but they're not challenging. They're just zone out games. Right. So it's like, you know, if you're stressed and just want to kind of like de-stress and relax, it's like they're good candidates for that.

54:44Nick Limon:After the first few hours of Megabonk, I muted the music because you've heard it all by the time you played the first few hours and I just throw on a podcast or a YouTube video, whatever. And I just zone out. and just podcast games that's the yeah 100 as a millennial you know we always need to be double consuming and these are games that are good for that yeah i my daughter is 11 and i went downstairs and she was watching a youtube video of zelda uh tears of the kingdom and she was playing tears of the kingdom and the youtube video was on a computer and then on the television she had a netflix show going and i'm like you're melting your brain don't yeah don't don't do this yeah i'm not it's also worth sorry but then she made a good she just made a good she's like you like i don't get very much screen time you really limit my screen time so i have economic she's like i only get an hour she's like you mean four hours if i have four screens that was exactly like i'm like okay well yeah if i could have watched up tales played by a commando and you know yeah red nintendo power yeah i would have yeah that's my free time the last time the last thing i'll say about megabong i don't know if this is the same with i i'm calling it ball cross pit but uh it's made by one guy and it's like kind of nuts because blueprints was made by one guy and i'm loving this trend of just one developer because like vampire survivors the same way someone just kind of tinkers away at a game it ends up being the best game you've ever played it's it's wild it's megabonk's been you know if you don't count like counter-strike and stuff like that right under battlefield since battlefield came out as far as like steam concurrence and stuff really oh yeah megabonk has been up there so i just wonder like 100k people since release

56:37Justin Davis:do like do like execs at ea look at that and go like what the what the f yeah yeah how can we hire one how can we just pay one person to make our game yeah

56:48Nick Limon:because they have a 600 000 concurrent game right now but i'm sure other devs are going like megabonk is selling this game's 10 bucks and it's easily sold you know a million copies like i mean i i say this like look i've played and enjoyed dozens of ubisoft games and ea games and activision games over my life but like they don't foster an environment like a game like this could never come out of a developer like that that's just not it would not get out of like it wouldn't get resourced right so like i don't know maybe there's an opportunity for some self-reflection there if you were in charge of this company it would though you need to have some foresight about stuff like this right maybe but then but then the thing is there's there's an element of like like what was the stat that i read that like there's fewer than fewer steam games now making over 50 grand than there were 10 years ago.

57:37So it's like the mega hits, like the Bellatros breaking through and the Megabonks breaking through, like the bigger getting bigger, but it's kind of harder for like indie developers and single developers to eke out a living, you know, making Steam games now. Here's my plea to people that are making games as a single person. So first of all, congratulations, you're a millionaire now. You can just stop making games. That's your call, right? Please don't. Or you could keep on making games by yourself, which I think is the worst idea ever and I think you should not be allowed to do that or you could sell your idea or make a team and have somebody make your sequel and that is what you should do and here's why because then we would actually have another game after Stardew Valley by now but we don't.

58:20Haunted Chocolatiers out there somewhere. Yeah or we'd have maybe a third Hollow Knight by now. You like the scaling without ruining your game is a good idea and possible. That's all I'm going to say. or the biggest of the big, like, look, be responsible with your money. But if you are literally a millionaire, if you hit the Bellatro Vampire Survivors, you know, Megabonk jackpot, your responsibility is now to go on and fund five more games that are made by one person. That's part of my employer team point, right? It's like, pay it forward. Yeah, I'll pay you, you know, whatever it is, 100 grand a year, 120, like whatever they need to live for like three years, you go forth and make your own weird game And like, that's how it should work.

59:06I love it.

59:08Nick Limon:Yeah. I mean, that's animal. Well, it's kind of that. That's kind of what donkey, you know, that's that publishers. Yeah. And there are publishers that are that look for stuff like this and then like try to hit it rich. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just wish there was in there. Has this has happened before too. I won't name names, but there's been there. It's cool. And there's a division within a company that tries to do this stuff also, you know, even in Nintendo does this a little bit, right? They try to fund some Indies and say, yeah, you can use Zelda for this one. You know, that happens.

59:39Nick Limon:Or, or, or obsidian making grounded, which was like the biggest thing ever that had a team of like four people when that game came out, because it was just like a couple of people in the corner of obsidian's offices being like, let's make a honey. I shrunk the game or kids game. Yeah. We're, we're goofing on big publishers here, but they do, they do actually try pretty hard to try to, you know, try to have output like this, you know, but it's just. I'm goofing on the single developers right now. I just think it's funny. They're like, I'm going to take my toys and go back to make more toys. I will say, I am stoked for the new Avatar game, which is the old Avatar game, but in third person.

1:00:19Justin Davis:All right, that came out of nowhere. Low on time. Justin, what are you playing? Oh, well, my game's not new, so I'll keep it short because it's a little random. I've been working my way through my Steam backlog, and I discovered a game called Against the Storm, and I'm absolutely obsessed with it. I think I've put 25 hours into it in the last week. So like, you know, that's a lot for me. That's like every evening, you know, it's a roguelike city builder. So Damon, I think you would actually maybe be interested in it too. The best part of every city builder, base builder, or, you know, whatever tycoon type game is like the opening hour or two.

1:00:58And then after that, you either know that you've won and then you just have to sit there and wait eight hours for the game to play out. Or like what you've built is on fire and you need to restart anyway. And so this game dodges all of that because you build, I'll not get into the whole storyline, but like each city, you start from like a central base and then you're expanding outward in sort of like a caravan. So you place a city and then the next one's a couple more tiles away and the next one's a couple of tiles away. And there's a meta goal that you're working toward. And so because it's a roguelike, you're in a different biome that gives you access to different resources.

1:01:35And there's a few different fantasy races that you can play at. And they have different demands. Like the humans really want to eat, you know, this, whereas the lizards want to eat jerky. And so even though each city that you build lasts, I don't know, maybe 60 minutes, 60 or 90 minutes, and then you abandon it and you go on to the next one. but it doesn't feel repetitive because the buildings that you have access to and the goals that you're working toward are different in every single city are they planning on adding breakout to this i wish man um but it's really good and like the meta structure like the stuff you're doing between runs and the permanent upgrades are like also really satisfying and really good um so it's it's it's had overwhelmingly positive steam reviews and like i don't know how this game came out in 2023 i think and it just it completely passed me by even though it's the most justin game possible out of justin games and you know it turns out once i started playing it i'm like yep this is dangerous for me um it's really well done and it's clearly made by people that like understand at a deep level what makes these kind of like you know tropico style city builders tick and takes all the best parts from them and strips away everything about them that like is not

1:02:52Justin Davis:essential and it is steam deck verified if anybody's interested mark i'm in i'm in cool i'm in against the storm

1:03:15Justin Davis:okay that brings us to video game 20 questions i have i have a show until i have to do this week Okay, okay, okay. I'm sorry, I'll make it fast. Okay, that does not bring us to Video Game 20 Questions. That brings us to Show and Tell. This is in the show notes. I know it is, but here we go. What are you showing the people that are listening to this, Sam? So, what I'm going to show the people that are listening to this is the new Metroid art book. It's called Metroid Prime 1 through 3, A Visual Retrospective. It's a little bit of a misnomer because it also has Metroid Prime remake in it. but uh what's cool about it and i'll go really fast here because i wrote a lot about this on the site which everybody can check out but it so it's got art it's got things like storyboards in it which i'll show up here on still store do that real quick and this one i'm using as an example all right put that up in still store um so that is a storyboard of the bonus scene at the end of metroid prime and in the description of it there's notes from kintsuke tanabe who uh uh worked on a bunch of great games, including Super Mario Brothers 2 and Super Mario Brothers 2 USA.

1:04:28But he's been working on Metroid Prime games. He's a producer. So he did a bunch of notes in here. And that's the best part of this book is that there's a bunch of behind-the-scenes stuff. So for this one, he says, when the art director first showed me the storyboard for the 100 % ending of Metroid Prime, he explained, this is a scene where Metroid Prime absorbs the material from Samus' cells and regenerates. Naturally, the idea arose, well, then let's use the character to create a sequel. around that time i recall that some movies specifically announced as a trilogy from the outset were a hot topic so i told the team why not make it into a trilogy so where where did the metroid farm trilogy came from it came from uh them adding a hand at the end of metroid and showing to not down to bay and then him liking lord of the rings cool well yeah he likes lord the rings and star wars and the matrix yeah whatever was announced as a trilogy right so that's totally star wars matrix type stuff there's a ton of his notes in here and a bunch of just really great stuff so it's not just an art book and then it has an occasional note from retro as a development team and it is really worth it for a read there's actually a really good meaty background information in it and I just I had a really good time I read it over a couple of nights and it you know would fall I would fall asleep and it would fall on my face and it hurt yeah check it out it's really really good is it out now

1:05:41Justin Davis:next week oh next week cool I think that'll go on my Christmas list okay

1:05:57Justin Davis:Now that does bring us to Video Game 20 questions and our suggestion comes from Spooky who says I think it would be pretty funny To do redacted for 20 questions given all the Redacted And with that let the questioning begin Is this Game a spooky game?

1:06:20Justin Davis:in a sense it has spooky elements oh tis the season after all I think it stubs the zombie

1:06:31okay did this game come out in the 70s 80s or 90s no there was one commenter last week by the way that was very mad that I asked that question that's cheating you're asking three questions ask if it's in three different genres

1:06:46Nick Limon:us yeah um we're just would you open and goofing up here yeah was this an exclusive for a console at some point no never wait what's the 70s 80s or 90s was no right that's right yeah uh can you play this game on the switch uh yes uh

1:07:18When it was originally released, was it contemporary to the switch? No, that's five. Ported to the switch later. Yeah. Could be Stardew Valley. Was this developed in Japan? Yes. Not Stardew Valley. Nope. Is your character a human?

1:07:39Justin Davis:I'll just say I don't know. I don't know. Can't answer that one. Hmm. Actually, I think yes. I think you at least begin, you start out as a human.

1:07:54Nick Limon:What? Maybe it's Space Station Silicon Valley. Although I think you start that game as a little computer chip. Start as a human? Is this from the PlayStation 2 or 3 era? Yes. Cool. start start as a human final fantasy tactics advance was this game on playstation 2 or 3 yes is the answer to that it was on 2 first no that's 10 all right we got a ps3 game everybody so ps3 xbox 360 that was so many questions well we didn't have to ask if it was a from many other generations. Yeah. Dart is a human. Do you pilot cars or vehicles in this game?

1:08:48Justin Davis:No. And I'm aware that you wouldn't say you pilot a car, but you know, get over it. A car is a mech suit. For speed. So a Japanese PS3 game that also came to other stuff. Yep. Not bad. Yeah, you're right. Oh, developer might be helpful. Yeah. We can. Let's do a three, three for we could do. I agree. Capcom. Capcom. Namco. Sega.

1:09:20Nick Limon:Yeah. Was this Konami? We should do. Yeah. You want to do Konami? Yeah. Let's do Konami, Capcom and Sega. You want to just do all four? No, that's like, let's do it. We got to pick. Okay. It could be square. Oh, yeah, exactly. No, that's why the four would be good. Oh, no. Maybe we shouldn't do it. Developer. Should we do it? Even do it developer? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do. Okay. Is we could do the E3 press conference version of this? Well, we know it's it's probably not PlayStation because everything. Okay. So was this made by Capcom Konami or Square? No. Whoa. Okay. Well, that's a lot of games.

1:10:01What's this made by Namco, Sega or? namco sega or koi koi tecmo yeah it was not made by any of those okay we mean published well that's okay what that's the original question we were talking about publishers not creators i bet it was published by sega no no no no no it was made by one of those it was

1:10:30Justin Davis:published the answer is was it published by any of those three yes it was published by one of those three yeah yeah yeah you gave us the answer that's good and why would they what it was who were they i don't remember now koin nam tecmo sega right yeah yeah tecmo so possibly um

1:10:49Nick Limon:a persona game do you start as a human then become a monster become a persona is this an rpg of a sort oh cool not persona because that's easy maybe it's who no never mind I wonder if it's a gacha game I was originally thinking Genshin Impact but that's not any of those that's not published by any of them and also PS4 so an MMO RPG could be one of these could be a Memorpega Momor Puga, although you don't get a lot of those out of Japan. Especially from... Could be Final Fantasy XIV. No, because it's not Square. Except it's not Square. Coe Tecmo or... I'm also like... Sega. It's got to be on Switch as well.

1:11:38Yeah.

1:11:40Nick Limon:Yeah. But Atlus did make some RPG-adjacent games, right? Yeah. But did Sega publish those? I don't think so. They published Metaphor and stuff. they own atlas i think don't they man think about if sega was still um they would have what types of rpgs we got here we got tacticals yeah mms action and action i think it's an action rpg probably so that would be what's an example it could be maybe it could be neo it wasn't that isn't that tecmo yeah Yeah, I think so. If it's a Souls-like. Yeah. It'd be interesting because it was on our list from last week, and maybe they picked it because of that. Is Elden Ring published by Namco?

1:12:35Yeah.

1:12:37Nick Limon:Bandai Namco? Yes, it is. Yeah. Was that in the final three? I've already forgotten. Yes. But that's not a PS3. Like, it could be a Souls game. Yeah, and actually, I don't think Nioh is PS3 either, for that matter. yeah the only ps3 would be uh dark souls one is this an action rpg or a souls like yes that's 15 good that's great we can get this okay okay yeah i think we can i mean it could just be dark souls or something could be dark could be why do you turn why do you start as a human in these well you're tarnished dark souls yeah you're hollowed uh my bad that's elden ring Yeah, yeah, my bad.

1:13:22Nick Limon:But so if you want to get technical, you start as a hollow. So so you don't start as a human. So souls and Neo are both series, right? So we can ask. I don't think it's part of a series. I think Neo is too sorry, not Neo. I meant what did you say? Dark Souls? No, you did say Neo. You did say we did, but yeah, Neo. I don't think Neo. I think Neo one would be. I was thinking of near here. Oh, near. Yeah. Yeah. That's just an RPG. Yeah. Um, I would, I would call that just a more traditional RPG. Okay. I guess not a Tom. I'm just going to narrow it down. Is this, is this souls like? Yes. It's, it's probably dark souls.

1:14:05We confirmed it started on the PS two, right?

1:14:08Nick Limon:Yes. Three. Not. But that, but that, but that it's now everywhere, but wasn't on switch when it came out. so it didn't come out on Switch until we mastered. Yep. So it probably is Dark Souls. Okay. Is this game made by FromSoft? Yes. Is it Dark Souls?

1:14:24Justin Davis:Yes. Dark Souls. Hey! Yeah, this is what you're having. I thought it'd be fun to do. Definitely spooky. Fun to do Dark Souls for 20 questions next week, given all the fuss I made in the Facebook group. It's the gentleman who was complaining that we didn't nominate Dark Souls.

1:14:38Nick Limon:Oh. Yeah, I mean, this is 100 % just, this is a 3D Castlevania game. Dark Souls 1. Okay.

1:14:45Justin Davis:100 % is well and so i haven't played it of course but as i understand it when you you're a human but then when you die you become something else and then you have to become human again is that right yes okay so that's how i was trying to say that's how i was trying to answer that as a hollowed

1:15:00Nick Limon:you start as a hollowed and then you become a human but then yes every time you die you revert back to being a hollowed yeah but uh yeah man what a game yeah bomb a genre i think you would like it damon i mean i i i goof on souls likes games a lot and they're not my favorite but i like i said i played through half of dark souls and enjoyed it yeah dark souls one is very good well and it's so distant like you know they've been building on this formula for a decade now or more so kind of going back to this one it feels a little bit like you know you you're gonna go up this staircase then oh ha ha flaming barrel like runs in you like everything felt kind of more new yeah i wonder what the best for the commenters that are fiercely typing right now demon souls was the first yeah but nobody played that at the time dark souls is what spawned also it's rude to type while we're doing our podcast we can hear you out there stop trying to gaslight us we know

1:15:55Justin Davis:that you're typing we know that you're someone in scoop nation is typing 20 questions it's very distracting well nicely job uh thank you for the suggestion spooky 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. And 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. Grab eight incredible games for just$14.99, including Atomic Heart, V-Rising, System Shock, Story of Seasons, Pioneers of All of Town, Crypt Master, Pharaoh A New Era, Hotel Renovator, and Caravan Sandwich.

1:16:30Justin Davis:Every purchase supports the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, the 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. And that's all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Justin. Thank you, Mark. Thank you to Jobert working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. Next week is Game Spook. So everybody, please be excited for that. Can we just lock you in now, Mark? Because we hear you have a really good costume.

1:16:59Justin Davis:Can you just be on Game Spook? Really good? Yeah. My name is Damon. This is IGN Game Spook around.

1:17:23Justin Davis:This episode of GameSoup 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 Aqib, and post-production editing is by, yours truly, Damon Hatfield. Graphic design is by Nicole Kaganathan. GameScoop is an IGN production and part of the Geek Media Network.

1:17:53Nick Limon:Most PS2 games in my brain are black and white, because that's all I had, was a PS2 and a black and white TV. I grew up very not with money, which is why I have not seen a lot of movies. I feel like this recontextualizes us goofing on you having not watched movies. Don't be sad. Because there's no reason I still haven't seen Terminator 1 and 2. That's what I was going to say. I have seen The Martian eight times. You could be watching two bangers a week and be caught up in like a year and a half with like all the greats. Sam was just scolding me about it last week. Me and Miranda. I didn't scold anybody.

1:18:31I said you guys would both really like Terminator 1 and 2 and I have no question in my mind that if you watch Terminator 1 and 2 they would be great movies that you and Miranda would like not everybody would like them but you and Miranda would like them

1:18:43Nick Limon:Blame Destin. He's like, oh, just watch Terminator 2 and I watched the first half and I was like I don't know what the fuck's going on Don't listen to Destin But it's got Augie and now I want to watch it again The transition between Terminator 1 and 2 is like the transition well this will have no point of reference to you but like the transition from alien to aliens which is just interesting and like it's just it's really cool incredible sequel but like what bad advice to just watch too it is a great action like if you just if you respect camera shots and action and stuff like that you could just watch it if you're like a cinephile i'm sure a lot of people

1:19:20Justin Davis:like in when it was in theaters i'm sure a lot of people hadn't seen the original term oh yeah Yeah, Terminator was kind of a VHS hit more than a film hit. Yeah, but it was just the 80s. Nobody knew what was going on in general.

1:19:32Nick Limon:But I like Back to the Future 2 more than Back to the Future 1, but I would never tell anybody to watch 2 without watching 1. That doesn't make any sense.

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