Game Scoop! 850: Konami's Own Antiques Roadshow

24 Mar 2026 · 1 h 22 min · 33 chapters

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In short

The hosts discuss (1) why younger players may struggle to connect with Final Fantasy due to long gaps between releases, (2) early impressions and critiques of Crimson Desert and Resident Evil Requiem, and (3) Konami’s new licensed Picross “Konami Antiques” puzzle collection.

Guests (in-studio)

Nick Lamone, Sam Claiborne, Justin Davis (regular hosts). No outside guest appears in the transcript, though Yoshi-P (Naoki Yoshida) is discussed as a quoted figure.

Guest backgrounds

Nick Lamone and Sam Claiborne are IGN/GameScoop hosts. Justin Davis is an IGN/GameScoop host who returns after time away; he’s also referenced as playing Resident Evil Requiem and Crimson Desert.

Key claims

  • Yoshi-P says younger generations can’t connect with Final Fantasy because new games take too long to arrive.
  • Crimson Desert is “empty calories”: impressive visuals and exploration, but janky controls and systems that feel disconnected; multiple hosts rate it around 6/10.
  • Resident Evil Requiem is praised for replayable “arcade” unlock challenges (e.g., no-heal/no-crafting runs, infinite ammo unlocks).

Notable examples

  • Crimson Desert opening: character dies, returns, then quests include arm-wrestling a stranger and rescuing a woman who disappears into petals/dust.
  • Konami Antiques Picross: includes licensed tie-ins like Metal Gear, Gradius, Contra/Probotector, and more; puzzle art recreates pixel ships/characters.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

PAX East Live Show Announcement

2:30 to 4:14

Details about the upcoming live Game Scoop! show at PAX East.

“We've got another really fun announcement from Konami making good use of their IP.”

PAX Memories and Health Tips

4:14 to 4:45

Reflecting on past PAX experiences and health precautions for the event.

“But what if I want to have only games and no fun?”

Challenges for Younger Gamers

4:45 to 10:01

Discussing the disconnect younger generations have with Final Fantasy.

“I've been drinking my emergency to prep my immune system and I'm excited.”

The Future of Game Development

10:01 to 14:06

Exploration of game lengths and development challenges in modern gaming.

“And then Nick, you're going to call Koshin Nakanishi, who directed Resident Evil Requiem.”

Exploring Game Length and Experience

14:06 to 16:20

Discuss the impact of game length on player experience and the balance between linearity and open-world exploration.

“I don't understand what you're talking about.”

RPG Resurgences and Accessibility

16:20 to 16:42

Analyze the resurgence of classic RPGs and their appeal to new generations.

“We're like, what does it mean to make a big mainline Final Fantasy game?”

Final Fantasy's Identity and Evolution

16:42 to 17:57

Examine Final Fantasy's unique identity and the challenges it faces in evolving its mainline games.

“and combine that with something that is a little more demanding gameplay-wise like Rebirth, because I would argue 16 is relatively straightforward.”

The Concept of Numbered Sequels

17:57 to 19:31

Discuss the implications of having multiple numbered sequels in gaming franchises and how it affects perceptions.

Tifa's Potential Game

19:31 to 21:04

Debate the idea of creating a game centered around Tifa from Final Fantasy and its market appeal.

“into playing Final Fantasy is just make a game about Tifa can't we all agree on Tifa?”

Resident Evil Requiem Gameplay Insights

22:33 to 23:17

Share experiences and strategies from playing Resident Evil Requiem, focusing on replayability and challenges.

“I should get Justin and Nick's thoughts on Crimson Desert in a sec.”
Show all 33 chapters

Crimson Desert Impressions

23:17 to 24:51

Discuss initial impressions of Crimson Desert and its gameplay mechanics and narrative.

“So for everyone who's wondering, if you're doing a no health run, you can upgrade your health.”

The Bizarre Storyline of Crimson Desert

24:51 to 28:05

Delve into the strange storyline of Crimson Desert, exploring its odd quests and character experiences.

“actually enjoyed the game a lot as well.”

Questing Through a Buggy Game

28:05 to 29:50

Discussing the bizarre opening quest of a video game and its strange narrative elements.

“But instead it just comes off as weird and completely crazy.”

Gameplay Experience and Graphics

29:50 to 31:08

Exploring graphical fidelity and the disconnect in gameplay mechanics of a new title.

The Grown-Up Version of Breath of the Wild?

31:08 to 34:12

Examining comparisons between the discussed game and Breath of the Wild, questioning its depth and engagement.

“Like there's no almost like there's no intention behind all of the things that you can do.”

Patch Updates and Game Potential

34:12 to 37:48

The impact of patches on gameplay experience and the game's potential to improve over time.

“It's kind of, you touched on something pretty important there, Nick, which I think that this is, it's kind of like empty calories, the game.”

Personal Gaming Experience Reflections

37:48 to 41:21

Reflecting on the unique aspects of the game and their overall enjoyment despite flaws.

“the thing like they can't patch a personality into the game and like so that's that's like The absolute peak it could ever be for me is an eight.”

Konami's New Picross Game Announcement

43:06 to 45:50

Discussion about the new Konami Antiques Edition Picross game and its nostalgic elements.

“Find them at your local Kroger in the creamer aisle.”

The Evolution of Picross Games

45:50 to 47:16

Exploration of the history and evolution of the Picross game series over the years.

“Yeah, Mario's Picross, which is why it's a little bit wild.”

Trails in the Sky JRPG Discussion

47:16 to 50:39

In-depth discussion about the Trails in the Sky series and its unique storytelling mechanics.

Remakes and Modernization in Gaming

50:39 to 52:51

Discussion on the remaking of classic games and the impact of modernizing them for new audiences.

“the final ones like you know the series is like finally wrapping up after multiple decades and And what they were finding, I don't agree.”

Review Process and Game Reception

52:51 to 55:23

Insights into the review process for games like Trails in the Sky and how reception can vary.

“That's an interesting spelling of Charizard.”

Setting the Stage for Game Discussion

56:00 to 56:18

The hosts discuss the positive attributes of a game series, hinting at a well-received game.

“And it sounds like that's always consistently good and they're always going to try to get more people to get on board with trails.”

Movie Night with Classic Films

57:15 to 57:59

The hosts share their recent family movie nights featuring classic films.

Reviewing 'Rookie of the Year'

57:59 to 59:19

A detailed discussion about the movie 'Rookie of the Year' and its elements.

Experiences at Disneyland

59:19 to 1:00:24

The hosts recount their recent Disneyland experiences, focusing on rides and attractions.

Star Tours Updates and Variations

1:00:24 to 1:02:39

Discussing the new scenes in Star Tours and how variations impact the ride experience.

“I cannot believe they're showing these lions moving this fast.”

Comparing Disneyland to Other Theme Parks

1:02:39 to 1:05:24

A comparison highlighting Disneyland's management against other amusement parks.

“what scene you get, but not completely random, basically.”

Video Game 20 Questions Begins

1:05:24 to 1:10:00

The segment kicks off with a gaming discovery anecdote and discussion about favorite games.

“To start, I had never played a Resident Evil game.”

Discussion on Souls-Like Games

1:10:00 to 1:10:39

Exploration of personal experiences with Souls-like games and their mechanics.

“It's just quietly been going on for decades now.”

20 Questions Game Segment

1:10:40 to 1:19:40

Engaging gameplay segment where hosts guess a video game based on yes/no questions.

“Okay, that brings us to his suggestion for 20 questions.”

Unique Last Boss Mechanic

1:19:40 to 1:19:58

A surprising twist in the last boss fight of Black Myth: Wukong that showcases creativity.

Discussion on RPG Maker and Game Mechanics

1:24:21 to 1:25:02

The hosts dive into a discussion about RPG Maker and game design elements.

“I do love that the graphics just say 20.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

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1:36Justin Davis:Two teams, one cup. The primetime stage is set for the TGL presented by SoFi Finals, Los Angeles Golf Club versus Tigers Jupiter Lynx. Keep up, it's playoffs. Tune in Monday, March 23rd, 9 p.m. Eastern on ESPN2 and Tuesday, March 24th, 7 p.m. Eastern on ESPN and on the ESPN app.

2:00Justin Davis:What's up, everybody? Welcome to IJ and Game Scoops. I'm your host, Damon Hatfield. Yes, there are going to be multiple scoops this week. I'm joined in studio by Nick Lamone. I'm back, baby. Sam Claiborne is here. Why on a Monday? Why did you drag us in here? I will get to that in just a moment. And back after a couple of weeks away is Justin Davis. Scoop. People were worried about you, Justin. They were wondering where you were. You're back. I'm still alive. I'm the one that should be saying I'm back. He's like Jon Stewart. He only works Mondays. Yeah, and it is a Monday. We're recording earlier this week.

2:29Justin Davis:We've got a great show for you. We've got another really fun announcement from Konami making good use of their IP. I don't know if you guys have seen this one yet, but it's... Oh, I know about this. In particular, I think Justin is going to be excited for this. They're opening up their antiques. And also, we've got Yoshi P from Final Fantasy saying, Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong. Am I unk? No, the kids are. The children are growing up too fast is what he was saying. Yeah. Yeah, and they're making the games too slowly. But first, we are recording on Monday because this week Nick and I are going to Boston for PAX East.

3:03Justin Davis:And we're going to do a live game scoop there. It's going to be a little bit different, though, from what you might have seen in the past. We don't have a panel. We're going to be, where is it? We're going to be at the...

3:12Sam Claiborn:We're going to be at the trolley sour house there at the entrance of PAX East.

3:16Justin Davis:Yeah. Oh, boy. So, yes, we will be giving out sour gummies. We're also going to be doing a whole GameScoop show there.

3:22Sam Claiborn:Yeah, that's going to be on Thursday at 1 p.m. If you show up, you could get some prizes, some fun giveaway stuff happening there. And then Friday, there's also going to be – I've heard that IGN does do other podcasts, but Podcast Unlocked will be there on Friday. And I'm going to be helping produce that as well. Same time, same place. Same time, same place. Trolley booth. Same chances for prizes at the Trolley Sour House. Wow, it sounds like mouth puckering fun. What's your favorite Sour Bright Crawler? That's the worm. I'm a big fan of the red, blue ones.

3:58Justin Davis:Well, yeah, probably. That's probably going to be my favorite too. I'm going to try them all. You can't even stop me. It'll be me and Nick, and then we'll be joined by Miranda Sanchez from Unlocked. If you're there on Thursday, 1 p.m. at the Trolley booth, come by, say hi, for some fun and games. Not fun and or games. I've planned fun and games to happen simultaneously. But what if I want to have only games and no fun? Then maybe it's not for you, Justin. Maybe GameScoop's not for you. It actually says that when you walk into PAX

4:24Sam Claiborn:you must be willing to have fun and games. Yeah. I want only fun, no games. Remember when we did a GameScoop with Seth at PAX East six years ago? And then the world collapsed.

4:35Justin Davis:I was just going to say the last time I went to PAX East was with you and Tina and Seth was there and it was in late February 2020. and kind of a big event happened just a couple weeks after that this is what happened they unleashed the tea virus at the convention center you got two guys cartridges um and there was really good retro game shopping there we had a good time i think this is us doing that um that was great but yeah if we are the harbinger of world doom then you're you're set up well again yep that's true that's true although i should point out i i did not get sick at all last time just as a little side note.

5:13Sam Claiborn:I've been drinking my emergency to prep my immune system and I'm excited. This is my first PAX ever. I've always wanted to go and finally making it happen. Thanks, IGN. Nice. There you go. You're going to have a blast and hopefully it won't be 10 degrees like it was when we were there.

5:28Justin Davis:It is going to be cold and rainy, which is not a good, not my favorite combo. I like, I would, I'd prefer it get a little bit colder so we could have snow, but we'll see. Yeah, snow and cold is cool with me. Okay. Okay, headline this week, younger generations are struggling to connect with the Final Fantasy series because it takes so long for new games to come out, Yoshi P says. Nick, who's Yoshi P?

5:50Sam Claiborn:Naoki Yoshida. He is the creative director of Creative Business Unit 3. They made Final Fantasy 14, A Realm Reborn, and so on and so forth. He's partly responsible for that game being a giant success. He also most recently made Final Fantasy 16 and also oversaw the remaster of Final Fantasy tactics the evil lease alliance where's the p come from uh i don't know okay yeah good question i've actually never thought about it he's like he's mr final fantasy these days right he's he's

6:23Justin Davis:a very nice guy yeah very charming yeah oh no i mean oh go ahead go ahead oh just that what he's talking about is there was a news story about this recently right of like some games are taking so long to come out now that kids like dragon quest was like this too of like kids are going through their whole childhood and never getting to play one of these games. And so they're not able to connect with them. Like we were able to, when we were kids, for example, where there are video games coming out every couple of years in a series. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it cuts both ways. Like we're sparing the generations of kingdom hearts, but they're also not getting to take that back right now.

7:00I just heard a gasp. Did somebody hear a gasp?

7:04Justin Davis:Oh, some hard, hard pro clutching happening. But jokes aside, and I think that wasn't a joke, that was just true. Kingdom Hearts, it is a really good intro to Final Fantasy and action RPGs and stuff. And it is funny that, you know, kids, I don't know, like, you know, seven or eight year gaps in which you should play this as a seven or eight year old. You're not going to play these games. But yeah, this is totally true. But then we also remember they put out two giant Final Fantasies in one year, like two years ago. That's true. Which was pretty amazing. No one made them do that. they chose to do that that's true two giant final fantasies which ones rebirth and 16 oh yeah yeah like six months apart oh that's right oh my gosh three months apart yeah yeah they but what's a little bit strange about this argument is that final fantasies are already like you know drockway or these other franchises have things that like you know oh i can't wait to get more slimes and like hear the music again and do this and do that whereas like every final fantasy is like kind of unconnected to begin with, like super different from a gameplay perspective.

8:06Obviously, they don't have story connective tissue between them, like completely separate, unique stories. So it's weird, Justin, because last week Mark was on this show saying that you thought that Final Fantasies were direct sequels and he argued with you about it. Got it.

8:19Sam Claiborn:He told I'm not joking. That's not a joke. That actually that was a conversation that happened last week. OK, I'm pretty sure it was the exact opposite. That sounds like it, right? Yeah, that's what you just said. yeah I was I thought it was weird usually I think it's whatever

8:35Justin Davis:Mark would sound like Mark is wrong that's what is the fighting words but he did agree that Final Fantasy these are not sequels okay so Final Fantasy 7 was 1998 7 or 8 it's 7 or 8

8:53Sam Claiborn:8 it's one of those 7 8 it's one of those

8:57Justin Davis:But then Final Fantasy VIII. Someday the truth will be known. Was right there. They released three in the PS1 generation. That's what I'm saying. And then Final Fantasy, I know Final Fantasy IX was 2000. Correct. So they're right there. Three giant Final Fantasy games.

9:12Sam Claiborn:Final Fantasy X, like shortly after. Like 2001, 10, 2. Video games are cooked, man. They can't make them anymore.

9:18Justin Davis:Final Fantasy XV came out in 2016. Final Fantasy XVI came out in 2024. Yeah. it's an interesting new dimension i mean look we've been talking on scoop for a long time about like video games are so time consuming expensive to make that they have to sell a million billion copies and a game can sell eight million copies and still be a failure right when it takes you know two thousand people seven years to make it but like honestly like this new dimension of like you know the young kids and the youth not being able to get attached to these franchises and form these kind of like you know i am really a big fan of this thing because it comes around every couple of years.

9:54It's like, I just hadn't really thought about that until I started seeing these reports. And I think it passes the smell test. It makes sense. And it makes me sad. Yep. So I have Yoshi P's number here. Let me call him. And then Nick, you're going to call Koshin Nakanishi, who directed Resident Evil Requiem. And we'll do a three-way call. And we'll just have Capcom tell Square Enix how they're doing it. Yeah, how they do it. Bro, just release more games.

10:21Sam Claiborn:Don't tell Square Enix, just cut your games like in half. well well like final fantasy 16 i i really like that game but i think once it gets into act three and you're like 50 hours in it's like all right i think i'm ready for this to be over i think i think a lot of what people enjoy about modern final fantasy tends to peak after it's act one which is approximately 30 to 40 hours in and i think at that point that's probably a contributing factor to the games taking such long uh times in their development cycles and and granted look at clear obscure right exactly and that's a 30 hour rpg 30 hour being like that's if you really wrench it of all of its content and juice i feel like 30 to 35 hours is a sweet spot that's games don't really need to be longer than that yeah you would think the creator final fantasy 14 would be like we always have a new final fantasy it's updated yearly it's ready for every generation and please look forward to the release of dissidia duodecim coming to your mobile

11:18Justin Davis:devices sometime this year maybe yes one game a generation could be a hundred hours but like not

11:24Sam Claiborn:that's it that's all you really need well i also think like i half jokingly but like what's tetsuya nomura been doing like make let that man make some more video games it's been a minute and he because back when he was making them say what you will about uh his his taste i i personally enjoy it quite a bit but 15 uh i did enjoy 15 but he did not do 15 no that was hajime tabata okay uh he was well now it's complicated okay all right because the tetsuya nomura was overseeing final fantasy versus 13 which was the emo prince which then became final fantasy 15 that was taken over by hajime tabata okay okay but tetsuya nomura did final fantasy 7.

12:03okay and he's still making

12:05Sam Claiborn:video games somewhere uh allegedly he also did kingdom hearts kingdom hearts 2 and supposedly kingdom hearts uh 4 he also did kingdom hearts he's on all the kingdom hearts that's what's happening is that the kingdom hearts games are behind a soft lock of yeah but we don't have we

12:22Justin Davis:don't have like the data whatever prompted yoshi p to even make this uh guess as to why younger fans aren't connecting with final fantasy we don't have the data that shows like final fantasy rebirth and 16 90 of copies are to gamers 35 and older something like that right we don't we don't see that well i think what they're looking at is the uh sell-through rate of plush chocobos and it's just plummeted yeah well um the comments on our article are all like oh yes that's what it is it's the length of time it's not that the games are mediocre now but what they're doing is they're taking his comment and saying no that's not why i don't like it anymore but his comment was really it wasn't talking about the readers of of this article right it was talking about younger gamers

13:04Sam Claiborn:yeah they're just conflating them i i have a long long as a man who adores all things final fantasy I have long thought that perhaps this is the thing that qualifies me as an unk because maybe it's just destined for to be and only resonate with a certain group of people, uh, namely young men in their like 28 to like 40 is range. That happened with halo. Yeah. And it's like, maybe it's just the time and place thing and maybe it will come and go. It makes me sad to say, but like, yeah, maybe final fantasy is just for like my generation. And then it's done. But the kids today, their brains are all cooked because they don't play anything, you know, but they grow up on Roblox and Minecraft and then they graduate to Fortnite and then they're never, ever going to play Final Fantasy 7.

13:50This is my most like old man coded opinion. Is that like, you know, that's what it doesn't have. It doesn't have building or shooting in it.

13:58Sam Claiborn:And then they get a disposable income and then purchase Crimson Desert and then spend 120 hours playing that game. And then they say, this game's great. I don't understand what you're talking about. I think we talked about how long these games are. Would Final Fantasy XVI be one ounce a worse game if it were 30 hours shorter? And then, in fact, it might actually be a better game. And I realized that they'd have to rework this scenario and yada, yada. These really big, long, gigantic games, part of what makes that experience fun is when it's an open world and when you have freedom to go north, south, east, or west, explore wherever you want, feel like you're having an adventure that you authored a little bit versus an adventure that's being guided.

14:45If it's more linear like a Final Fantasy, it's like they can start to feel very, very, very long. We get it. You like Crimson Desert, Justin. I actually do like Crimson Desert. The comebacks are not super common in video games, especially when a game comes back and becomes popular with younger generations. but I would argue that an RPG from 1988-89, just like Final Fantasy I, had a big resurgence. That's the Zelda II RPG, which had a resurgence from Breath of the Wild where all these kids started playing Zelda. And they were not playing Zelda that young until that game came out, right? And that was a way that the game was reframed a little bit after Minecraft, right?

15:29A little bit after kind of accessibility ideas to reach younger audience. And then because there's these perennial games like Mario Kart, which is just going to stay a younger played game forever. And we went best generation of Smash Brothers right now, but it doesn't really matter because everybody's still playing the last one. But but the but for Zelda, they really did have to have a comeback. So it's possible to bring like there's enough elements of Final Fantasy, which I think are universally appealing and great. But I don't think it's a gritty Game of Thrones, Final Fantasy 16. No, I mean, but how good is Nintendo at this?

16:03Right. Like Zelda? Zelda is a great example because Zelda is just as old as Final Fantasy, almost exactly down to the year. Right. And then it made a generational game. One of the greatest video games ever sold made that sold a million billion copies. Whereas like Square Enix doesn't seem they seem a little bit more stuck. We're like, what does it mean to make a big mainline Final Fantasy game? And what is it and how do we reinvent it and sort of get to the core of that experience while keeping it, you know, relevant and interesting to another generation? and they haven't quite managed to find as bold of a way forward as Nintendo managed to find with Zelda.

16:37Sam Claiborn:I think they were close with this amalgamation of something like Rebirth and 16. If you take the grittiness of something like 16 and it's more entry-level style storytelling and combine that with something that is a little more demanding gameplay-wise like Rebirth, because I would argue 16 is relatively straightforward. it's a pretty simple action brawler game whereas rebirth has this very interesting hybrid action turn-based rpg at its core that i think is super duper unique um but honestly a lot of me also for for the past few years has also been thinking uh final fantasy tying itself so heavily to its numbered entries might be to its detriment once you're 17 games in now you know at least 17 main mainline entry games it makes me wonder if the next one we get will be the final fantasy you know something some sort of not reboot of the franchise because it's every game is kind of a reboot to some extent but just something that loses the numbered branding for it because i think maybe that's like mark they'll think i need to play the last 16 of them in order to enjoy the new 17 i i don't know but i do think i'd be curious to see what the reception was like um and i'm sure these numbers exist for stuff like stranger of paradise you know a final fantasy dark souls like game which rules by the way if you haven't played it highly highly highly recommend that game but like how how something like that fares compared to something like 16 a main line final fantasy game i got me wondering what game franchise has the most like numbered sequels like as final fantasy 16 like you know whatever i've been in this business my entire adult life so it doesn't seem weird to my ear it's just like yeah it's final fantasy 16 but if you take a step back and look at it from like you know an outside in perspective it's insane it's like it's the 16th sequel and it actually has that in the title right and like has any other game ever done that before rpg maker

Read the full transcript

18:39Justin Davis:probably yeah no they don't put the number in the title like that that is a good question like what's the highest numbered sequel in a video game series i'd like to look at i think it's final fantasy like did something reach 20 like i don't know dynasty warriors maybe yeah is there nick is there any mainline final fantasy you don't like uh i'm gonna be a little bit controversial i don't really like nine very much you son of a bitch uh yeah i think nine i think it's it's just too slow it's too slow the game there's so many about final fantasy 2 is right there you don't need to do this AI says that Final Fantasy 16 is the highest numbered sequel in video games which obviously we can verify with human sources it's AI Justin, it's right yeah, Mega Man is going to get up there my pitch to get everybody back into playing Final Fantasy is just make a game about Tifa can't we all agree on Tifa?

19:35Sam Claiborn:yep, I'm listening, go on Sam knows what the kids want yeah

19:42Justin Davis:yeah, that seems like a pretty safe bet

19:43Sam Claiborn:the bouncer but with Tifa You know, it's a fighting game, but with Tifa only. She's the bouncer. She's the bouncer.

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22:00Justin Davis:No long-term contracts, no hassle. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for$15 a month. If I were in the market for a new wireless plan, I'd be looking at Mint Mobile. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash gamescoop. That's mintmobile.com slash gamescoop. Upfront payment of$45 for three-month, five-gigabyte plan required, equivalent to$15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. I should get Justin and Nick's thoughts on Crimson Desert in a sec.

22:37Justin Davis:but since resident evil requiem was mentioned i'm doing it i'm in the basement i have not healed i'm not healed i'm not crafted it worked but how many hours i don't know it doesn't have an in-game timer i don't think so if you look at your stats to make sure you didn't screw up i i checked my stats yeah and then i upgraded my health from the parlor and i was like oh i hope i didn't mess with everything and that was okay yeah it was fine i don't what are you talking about so justin to catch you up we've all beaten resident of a requiem it's very replayable you You can unlock things like infinite ammo if you do things like play it again without healing, no crafting, beat it under four hours, this sort of thing.

23:12Justin Davis:So that's what I'm doing. I'm doing a no heal, no crafting run right now. But I did upgrade my health in the parlor and I was like, I hope I didn't screw myself over. But nope. So for everyone who's wondering, if you're doing a no health run, you can upgrade your health. That's allowed.

23:26Sam Claiborn:Steroids are fine, but the herb, not so much.

23:29Justin Davis:Don't. Yeah.

23:29Sam Claiborn:Got it. Say no to herbs. Don't partake of the herb. And I think you're through the kind of hard part because, you know, after this, it's like you just shoot everything Leon for a couple hours and then you're in the medical facility and it's pretty easy to avoid the zombies in there.

23:41Justin Davis:I can tell you exactly where I am. I'm in the sewer where they're dumping the bodies into the blood. I'm ready to do that. On my second run. Yeah. I'm there too. I love it. And if you also, you can also set up a big CP payoff there too by doing the final challenge, which you have to activate at that part. So if you want to read about that and then do that part, you basically have to leave your game on for like 15 minutes. Yeah. It seems complicated. You find the doll in Marion's empty cell, but you can't take it.

24:06Sam Claiborn:No, yeah, you have to trigger the circumstances to get a different doll later on.

24:10Justin Davis:Okay.

24:10Sam Claiborn:But, I mean, check the IGN Games guide for it, because it's a very solid guide.

24:15Justin Davis:We got there first. At least right at the start. The game is just really fun.

24:19Sam Claiborn:It goes down smooth, man.

24:20Justin Davis:I hardly ever immediately restart a game after I finish it, and I'm still having so much fun with it, even on my segment. Yeah, it feels like an arcade version of it, right? Yeah, exactly. The Resident Evil, I mean, they're not my cup of tea, as I've said, but I do really respect them a lot for exactly what you're describing. It's just got this old school infinite ammo. When was the last time you heard a game talk about that cheat and unlock it? It's just so fun. Big head mode. Metal Gear is like that too. And we talked a little bit about Crimson Desert last week. Mark was on and he actually enjoyed the game a lot as well.

24:54Justin Davis:And so Justin, you said you were enjoying it. I like it. I should say, so we're recording on a Monday. I was hoping I was going to have a couple more days to play and I was out of town. So I just got home. So these are night one impressions of like I played on a Sunday and I didn't know how hard M the game was. I know it's rated M, but I'm like, I think I'm okay with like my 12-year-old watching some violence, but then they're just throwing around C words constantly. Oh, wow. They really go to the deep end on bad words for that one. Yeah. And like, I'm like, I'm sorry, you can't. This game's too grown up for you.

25:28Anyway, no, I mean, so I, there's we ign gave it a six out of ten and i agree with that six out of ten and but i like it anyway i don't know it's a little bit hard to explain i think having your expectations kind of set of like i understand i'm going into a six out of ten experience and then like am i going to get enjoyment out of this and the answer is yes um think of the context that for that that you have to like set up though it's like hey justin you want to play a real piece of shit yeah sure I got some extra time. No, it's like, it's what you're in the mood. I'm not saying that's what Crimson Desert is.

26:03I'm just making a joke about the way he set it up. No, it's absolutely like you need to be in the mood for like a big open world, F around. Like I want to play a game where I'm going to chop down trees and harvest lumber and get iron and collect bugs and collect flowers and just accomplish nothing for like a whole night. And like, you know, and then elements of it are going to be really janky, but then elements of the exploration are going to be really rewarding and I'm going to find something behind a waterfall. And it's like, it's just that kind of game. So I really like, I'm actually really impressed with the combat.

26:35I think it's very snappy and responsive and smooth. And then it couldn't feel more different than the non-combat, which is like Cliff controls like a tank. And like, it's completely crazy. Like even doing something, I had to walk up a spiral staircase and he's just like, just like slowly turning. to walk up this staircase and it feels so different than how it feels when you're fighting you know these armies of dudes that like i think the combat's really good and i think the sense of exploration in the game and the world design and just general immersiveness feels good like it's kind of like a take it slow kind of game of like i'm just gonna walk around town and i'm not trying to like check off missions and do stuff as fast as i can but just like immerse myself in this game world i'm having a great time but um i can't believe i thought for sure everyone was um exaggerating how nonsense the storyline is they're not like did you talk about this last week no not really this is this is not an exaggeration this is literally what happens and this is the opening 20 minutes of the game so if you don't want to have this spoiled for you skip ahead but the game opens and your character dies and then they're brought back you don't know why or what happens you're just alive again and then you get a little thing pops up that your quest is to go into a tavern and arm wrestle someone you don't know who he is or why you're doing it and then you win the arm wrestling match and then the quest changes the quest pops up and the next quest is go outside and give a coin to a beggar it doesn't say why so you go outside because cliff is an inherently good person justin it literally feels bugged i'm like am i missing story like what's going on and then you give a coin to the beggar and then it says the quest changes it says go down into the sewers and you go down into the sewers and there's a woman down there tied up and you rescue her and she's like oh thank you so much for rescuing me and then she disappears into like dust and petals like she's like a magic woman it's completely insane awesome and like you you can't and i'm i'm and it's not like this is cloaked in a central mystery or anything like that like as the game progresses people are like oh you're back because they all knew that you died but that's like basically the end of it no and i i honestly can't believe that that's how the game opens it's so baffling and it feels like and if i'm being really generous to the developer pearl abyss that feels a little bit like a fever dream and i think maybe it's supposed to feel that way like is it supposed to be mysterious like why am i back and what's going on and who is that woman and why did she disappear?

29:21But instead it just comes off as weird and completely crazy. And like, once you kind of just, you have to just shrug that off and be like, this world is really beautiful and I'm collecting bugs and I'm collecting quests and I'm collecting loot. And like, you just can't, you have to kind of enjoy this game on that level and meet it at that level. I mean, look at this footage that we're watching now. Like the combat's really beautiful and fun. But man, what a strange, weird game. game um i i do i do like it um i like it but i agree with the six out of ten it's hard to go

29:56Justin Davis:much higher than that and nick how did you find it uh i'm like 10 hours in right now and i played

30:03Sam Claiborn:the game pre the patch that dropped today plus i played a little bit after the patch dropped this morning or last night um i find myself i'm i've i've come to terms with the fact that i don't like it particularly much however i am playing it for what i'm justifying as academic reasons i need i need to understand and i think i do understand why people like it because i do think it's wide net that it casts is really interesting i think one it's one of the most expensive looking video games i've ever said are seen um and expensive as in it looks very nice it looks very cutting edge in terms of its graphical fidelity and all the physics and particles it's it makes great use of my pc hardware and it's nice seeing how far i can push my pc in some really meaningful ways that you know 4k 240 hertz it's very very fun and cool uh i like exploring the worlds i like the possibilities of what i might find however it seems like it all feels not connected in any meaningful way.

31:10Sam Claiborn:Like there's no almost like there's no intention behind all of the things that you can do. Just the fact that you can do these things, but there's nothing intuitive about how it goes about showing you, you can do these things, you know, right. Leading up to launch, I saw a lot of like Instagram reels and Tik TOKs getting served to me saying how this is a, finally a grownup version of breath of the wild. And I, I had to pause at that a little bit. I like took that to heart to some extent. I was like, well, this is how a lot of the world is framed. Like people who are not, you know, people who are not at IGN, people who are not me, and people who are in the content creator space.

31:46Sam Claiborn:So my peers to some extent, and this is how they're framing it. Like, do they view Breath of the Wild as a childish game? It raises a lot of questions, but it has me thinking, well, why? Why is it that this is a grown-up version of Breath of the Wild? Is it because they say the C word like eight times within the first 10 minutes of the game? is it that the game doesn't explain anything and I think that's what a lot of people like is the fact that it doesn't explain anything but I think the beauty of something like Breath of the Wild is it also doesn't tell you how to do anything or say how to do anything it teaches you intuitively how to do these things and this doesn't really do that in fact you kind of accidentally discover you can do a lot of things because of a lot of the systems within the game currently as of March 23rd 2026 are broken and just kind of don't work in any meaningful way and uh to justin point yeah cliff moves horribly like i remember maybe better now it's supposed to be a little bit better now i played it again this morning i was like nah he still doesn't feel great he is a little more responsive but uh i i was telling damon this earlier i was watching one of our other co-workers before the game had come out uh one of our uh gameplay capture people they he was playing the game and i was like wow that looks beautiful like what a gorgeous looking world i cannot wait to play this game and then i got the game i bought it loaded it up and within three seconds of me touching the analog stick and seeing cliff move i just said out loud oh no he does not move correct it's like i i know making a video game is very difficult but when you make a clearly you're inspired by so many games that feel good to play and then you make a game that does not feel good to play lesson failed you you got it wrong up front back to the drawing board yeah it fights you every step of the way with the controls he's very heavy and very tanky and if you've played you know our red dead redemption 2 it's a similar ish vibe of like it takes him just a few too many frames and like a half second too long to kind of turn around and like you know really puts an emphasis on animations instead of letting you cancel out of those animations and just go on and do the next move and next thing.

33:58So it doesn't feel... Look, it absolutely does not pass the test of like, oh man, I can't wait to wrap up GameScoop and go play more. I like the game, but I like it in spite of itself. It's kind of, you touched on something pretty important there, Nick, which I think that this is, it's kind of like empty calories, the game. Yes, 100%.

34:19Sam Claiborn:I've been saying that in my head, 100%. And by the way, I like empty calories. Yeah, chips are great. Fries are great. I eat a lot of Doritos. But that's what it is, where it has a million and one gameplay systems of you can steal cattle. And then when you steal cattle, you have a wanted level. And then you can go sell those cattle. And you can do all this stuff, but then the cattle sell for 10 copper. And there's no reason to ever engage with that system in the game, ever. And that is a small example of the entire game is kind of like that. Like, David, so this is a world with thousands of NPCs in them, and it tracks your reputation with every single NPC individually.

35:01Like, you can pet a cat, and then your reputation with that cat goes up by plus five. Or greet a vendor, and your reputation with them goes up by plus five. And, like, those are two actually maybe not great examples because you do have a reason. Like, you can have the cat as a pet if you get them to max level. And, like, everything, you just never know what's going to. then you have the cat as a pet then you can get armor for the cat and it just goes on and on and on and on but there's kind of like there's not really a lot of ultimate point to a lot of it that i've seen so far um but as i said before the world is beautiful enough that i'm willing to kind of keep playing it and i am i am interested in um in the combat scenarios and uh you know that continues to be fun and interesting for me.

35:50There's some interesting stuff in the skill tree. So it's like, I think there's fun to be had and I suspect that this might be like a really good game in like a year. That's what a lot of people are saying. It might be really fast though. I mean, they're updating it so rapidly, you know, for weeks and weeks leading to launch there was a completely non-existent inventory system and nobody playing this game could store anything. All their quest items filled up their menus. They couldn't drop them. It's like so broken and it was fixed in like a day, which makes you think like, well, if you could have just done this the whole time, like how was there not the feedback to do that?

36:25And then also it's impressive how fast it's being fixed. The same thing is going to happen with controls, right? Like they're working on fixing those like pretty quickly. There's some other stuff too. Like they've really nerfed some of the challenges that we were like really expecting to be able to be stuck on. They just said, okay, you don't have to do that anymore. Yeah. So it's like, it's heartening that they're moving that quickly through this. But what does that say about this? What a crazy game. That's never happened before in our lifetime. This is not a thing that normally happens.

36:58Sam Claiborn:It's not an unusual remark. I mean, for as long as video games have existed, people have always justified. It gets good after 10 hours. And I genuinely believe that this game does get good at the 10 hours. I don't think anybody's saying that. A lot of people are saying bosses are getting longer and you finally unlock magic after 60 hours. That's not good. The game feels a little more tolerable to me at the 10 hour mark. But I just wonder, like, is that ever a good justification? And granted, everyone has a special game to them that does genuinely get good at the 10 hour mark or whatever. But like, I don't know if that's a thing I want to.

37:32This is what you're talking about this whole episode.

37:34Sam Claiborn:Final Fantasy 7 would like to have a word with you. yeah if they patched and fixed every single thing all the bugs all the jank if they made cliff you know control like the witcher 3 right if it was that snappy and that good which by the way they never will but like if they managed to clean all of that up like the absolute story yeah well that's the thing like they can't patch a personality into the game and like so that's that's like The absolute peak it could ever be for me is an eight. And as of now, my initial impression is I completely agree with that six. You know, one of the patches today is that they changed the C word to cupcake.

38:14Sam Claiborn:It reminds me a lot of... All these bloody cupcakes! It reminds me quite a bit of something like Genshin Impact in that I liked playing Genshin Impact for 20 hours because I liked seeing what was in the world. I liked the magic system, and I just like to poke around and like see if I can climb stuff. And at 20 hour mark, I realized I ran into the friction point where the game wants you to spend money. And I feel like I'm going to in 10 hours from now, I'm going to get to a point where I was like, all right, I think I saw just about everything I need to in this. I think I'm good. And then I will put it away until some update comes out where people are like, no, no, it's real.

38:50Sam Claiborn:It's like really good now. And then I'll play it then for another 10 hours and then be like, cool. But you will have forgotten every system minute won't matter because they're Ruby but that's always the problem but it won't it won't matter though because none of it's tied together in any meaningful way it's just I will enjoy it it feels like a game that's in a movie that someone is just playing in the background I was like yeah that's what video games look like all right Justin are you playing on console yeah I'm playing on the Xbox Series X and I'm playing in uh quality modes which is 30 fps does it look good Um, yes, it does look very good.

39:23It's very, it's very sharp. So I don't know, I don't know if that's, um, you know, just an artistic choice or if it's missing some kind of anti-aliasing, if there's some bugs there, I'm not quite positive, but it's very noisy. I have a hard time kind of telling what my eye should be drawn to or what I should be paying attention to. Um, but it is very beautiful and I'm not experiencing any, you know, frame issues or, or, or, you know, bugs or issues on on you know a base console it's been fine um damon there's a really funny there's different there's just so much baffle we can move on but this is my last anecdote of just like i'll go through these stretches of like man that was really fun that was really good and then like just the strangest weirdest thing will happen that like cancels it out and what i did was um you can switch your camera angle but one of the camera angles is right behind cliff's head and the back of his head literally takes up the entire screen you can't see anything but the back of his head have you yeah and i'm like how did you like and then because it's zoomed in and then the next zoom in is first person but it's like that angle why does it exist why did you work on this game for nine years and then that's one of your camera angles and then like that moment immediately follows something that was like super dope and super cool and like that's kind of the Crimson Desert experience in a nutshell.

40:44Sam Claiborn:That camera button is pretty impressed. I was like, damn, you can really play the whole game in first person if you want. That's cool for, happy for the people that's exciting for.

40:55Justin Davis:It's an interesting game.

40:56Sam Claiborn:It is very interesting. I'll report back next week.

40:59Justin Davis:Everyone who plays it feels some sort of way about Crimson Desert. I have not played it at all myself. I don't think Sam has either. I'm going to get it started this week, though. I just have a lot of work to do with Pocopia, and so I'm trying to get through that and that game's amazing and it's lots of systems that make sense and all touch each other yeah that's gonna be my playing game that's gonna be my playing game oh is it multiplayer well let's talk about it on our our pax game scoop there you go that's a good idea miranda has been playing a lot of it although she switched to crimson desert before me i love it i love pacopia so much okay yes online shopping is quite literally at our fingertips but that doesn't mean it's always simple to buy.

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43:39Justin Davis:Okay, well, if Crimson Desert is a very expensive looking game, let's turn our attention to a game that does not look expensive, but is very exciting to me. Justin, did you hear this new Konami announcement? Do you know what I'm about to bring up? What if I told you the announcement was made by Konami and Jupiter? Okay, oh, no, I did see this. Okay, yeah. Anyway. Yeah, the Picross. Picross-esque Konami Antiques Edition. I like that they're calling it Konami. I think the Antiques is a little mean. i know i'm an antique gamer is that's what i'm into antique gaming but more look at this list the list is not in alphabetical order at all it's just randomly listed over protectors on there oh there's i i've i've paused the video right at that moment because there's so many random things on here so oh for well maybe i'm getting ahead of myself this is pick ross it's the the puzzle game where you um you uncover pixel art by counting numbers on rows and and ruling out places where uh mark could be i love these games justin does pair loves these games they've made a million of them and now they're doing licensed tie-ins there's one for sega i looking this up i didn't even realize capcom has one and snk neo geo has one also so i'm gonna that's gonna be my other playing games nice anyway this konami one over 80 titles stuff like yi are kung fu twin b uh stinger russian attack double dribble man just all everything on here metal gear is on there jackal blades of steel gyrus gradius too there's so many kid dracula parodius sunset riders axlay it there's a lot of deep it's just a perfect like you know pick cross is what they made literally 20 that were not themed and not licensed just like hey here's another pack of 500 pick-off puzzles buy it and then like okay i'll just buy it every single time but like tying it into like you get the classic music and then the art that you're making is little pixel art from these games instead it's just such a perfect you know peanut butter and chocolate marriage of like mix this nostalgia with the puzzles instead of like instead of making some generic cactus with my picross puzzle like i'm making the gratia ship instead like it's great yep it's just it's it's just a perfect thing.

45:48Can you believe this all started on just Game Boy?

45:50Justin Davis:Yeah, Mario's Picross, which is why it's a little bit wild. Nintendo hasn't done their own version of this since then, right? Well, there's some, I don't know quite the relationship. Maybe I should have looked it up before. Nintendo owns Picross, but they don't know, but Jupiter is an independent company. Yeah, they make Picross, but Nintendo owns the word Picross. And so there's some relationship there between them. This stuff definitely appears on Switch. That's where it appears. i think they're all exclusives well but but jupiter was making them on the ds before right yeah yeah yeah i love the series yeah i know it's great it's super rad and i i buy them all and then i play them until they get hard and then i stop probotector 2 return of the evil forces finally got mega pro protector for those listening is Contra in I do think I consider I consider myself a real Picross connoisseur not as much as pair pairs the real Picross sicko I think he literally plays them all yeah like I've I I really like the Picross games and I played almost all of them and they did they went through a long phase where every single Picross game was adding like oh we're gonna add color Picross now we're gonna add the multiplayer Picross and we're adding the the giant ones like the whatever they call the 40 by 40s and then they just stopped and before you stop they stopped adding new features like 10 games ago before you go out and think like oh this is a you know a tetris meteos or push mo killer it's more like sudoku than yeah they're logic yeah you have to yeah it's literally numbers and boxes and finding an adjacent box yeah i've never played a picross i love their their logic puzzles like sudoku is a good analogy if you want to start with Picross S Konami Antiques Nick it's out April 30th

47:37Sam Claiborn:I won't be doing any plane travel by then though I know you'll be back from Japan then too we need shirts that say I'm a Konami antique that'd be a sick shirt honestly they should make that little Gradius ship

48:03Justin Davis:Okay, let's check in with the listeners Hey listeners Howdy Listeners, remember you can always reach us at the email address Gamescoop at IGN.com Just like our friend Charlie Gadson in San Diego did Charlie says I saw everyone's friend Wario64 Tweeting about a sale for Trails in the Sky First chapter from 2025 It piqued my interest so I watched the trailer enjoyed it and finally looked it up on IGN.com as one does and to my surprise IGN did not have a review for it despite having uploaded gameplay videos of the first few minutes. I get it IGN doesn't review every game that's released anymore like they did 20 years ago but after sinking over 10 hours into it on Switch 2 it seems like this is one that flew under the radar this JRPG bleeds smart AAA production values and not just in terms of visuals.

48:46Justin Davis:It has unique combat that feels fresh, snappy and challenges the player to keep up in the same ways Xenoblade does it both both voice acting a zoned open world with seamless transitions in and out of towns and a final fantasy 7-esque materia system that takes center stage what how does this work can we commission justin to come out of review retirement for one last dance crazy that this game is getting slept on explain justin i mean justin has all this time to play total shit games you might as well play good games so the the trail series is near and dear to my heart i actually have not played the trails in the sky remake but i've played almost all of the other games so they're they're long jrpgs you know the 40 50 60 you know the longest ones are maybe these 80 hour jrpgs but what makes them interesting is that they are all interconnected so like there's and then there's these sub series there's trails in the sky one two and three and then there's trails of cold steel there's four of those and there you could start with cold steel one you don't need to have played trails in the sky but if you do they're in the same continuity and take place on the same continent and then some characters will show up like i i don't think it's much of a spoiler like the the playable character who you play as in trails of the sky shows up as an npc in trails of cold steel and you can find out what they're up to now and like what adventures they're going on and even minor npcs like some shopkeeper someone will show up you know game to game or you know a prince or someone like that and so it's i described it on ign it's a little bit like the marvel cinematic universe but in jrpg terms because they're all interconnected and they tell these individual stories but it's also building up to one kind of like big final crossover event which i think nihan falcom is um i think they've sort of announced that the final games are going to be the final ones like you know the series is like finally wrapping up after multiple decades and And what they were finding, I don't agree.

50:47I think Trails in the Sky is extremely playable, the original Trails in the Sky. But they thought it was getting a little bit old and a little bit dated because the franchise has been around a couple of decades. It's like a, it originally came out on the PSP. I played it on Steam, but it's like a PS1 era, kind of like more old school looking RPG. And that is like the starting off point was starting to feel a little bit off-putting to like younger gamers or newer gamers or gamers that were trying to get into the Trails series now. So as kind of an experiment, they remade the original Trails in the Sky.

51:23They did a full remake, ground-up remake, with new visuals, new everything, new combat system to make it feel more modern, but retell that story. And if it went well, they're like, okay, they're just going to keep doing the remakes now and remake all the older games. And it seemed like it did go really well. It sold well. So I suspect we'll probably start getting more of them. So are you going to review it or not? I'm actually not a bad candidate to review it because I have, I'm very, very familiar with the games and, you know, familiar with RPGs, but I really think they're going to put out like a final fantasy version of this.

51:56What do you mean? The final game? Like they'll actually do that. Yeah, I think so. That's interesting. It's like they're big. It's like they're big adventures event. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And they're really, they're, they're deeply, deeply satisfying to sort of like have some character. Like again, if you don't play them in order, it's fine. Like you're not going to be completely lost, but some character that was in eight games ago, show back up and have the continuity and lore sort of respect that. And then just the fan service element of like, Oh man, like what's this guy been up to it? Like it's so much wish fulfillment of these games that you played and loved.

52:34And then they end and then you're like, well, I'm never going to see these characters again. And then to find out, you know, what happened to that corner of the world or what happened to this town or what happened to that character and they and to have them come back a decade later and sort of get to spend a little bit more time with them is it's just great it's the best they're really

52:51Sam Claiborn:really good i believe they have the remake sequel of this announced and that's coming soon as well i've never played a trails game but honestly i was this close to pulling the trigger because uh like our listener i i also saw that wario 64 tweet and i was like i think i'm gonna do it for this like i always do the thing where i buy like two jrpgs to play on a plane and then i just fall asleep or watch something on my phone so i don't know i think i might dive in finally into the trails universe the original trails in the sky if you know the non-remake version but the original game it's not like it's that old school and clunky and impossible to play it's just you know it's an old school rpg it's an rpg from the early 2000s right and but on the steam version it has some quality of life features like it has a fast forward button and so like at the end of every single battle just like fast forward through the results screen like i think i ended up saving 10 hours doing that because my steam play time was 10 hours shorter than what my in-game clock play time was right so this is this b-roll here is the original game you can see it's looking this looks great i don't know i mean i know like nick i know you and i think it looks great but I'm just saying if you're, you know.

54:03Justin Davis:That's an interesting spelling of Charizard. Yeah. If you're a different type of gamer, this might start to feel a little bit too old. I think that's Charizard, actually. Is that what it's okay? Interesting. It's just wild that Nihon Falcom is 45 years old and they make beloved games, but, you know, I think if you ask people to list their favorite Japanese developers, that would be pretty far down the list. They're just not as well known.

54:25Sam Claiborn:There's some Ys fans out there still. Yeah, Ys. Ys is their other big franchise. They just got Ys 10 Nordics, like the super deluxe version of the East game from last year. That just came out.

54:37Justin Davis:So, Justin, why do you think we didn't review it? We didn't think we had someone on staff knowledgeable enough and with enough time? Yeah, I don't know. So to be clear, I haven't talked to our head of reviews. I'm not 100 % sure. I could guess that very long game, which makes it expensive to review if you assign someone on staff to it or freelance. and I could also guess that very, very long running franchise, right? Like maybe we imagine that, hey, who's ever going to buy it? It's buy it. Like we like to review games where there's like this groundswell of interest of like, hey, we can really help a lot of gamers out and a lot of people really want to know our opinion on this and like opinions on the Trails games are kind of pre-baked in, I would guess, but I haven't, you know, I haven't talked to anybody about that yet, so I'm not positive.

55:25Cool.

55:26Sam Claiborn:Justin about to throw all his weight around and be like, I need to review two days to make it happen. I'm not a bad person. I'm not, honestly, because like I said, I know the games and love the games really well that I would be a good candidate to do it.

55:40Justin Davis:I think it's, man. I think it has a 90 on OpenCritic. So other, it has been very well reviewed. Y 'all about to get me to drop

55:46Sam Claiborn:what did Wario say was 46 bucks or something? That's one of those. I mean, what Justin was talking about, like not jokingly, that's like a, with a niche series like this, that's a self-fulfilling, type of review situation where like you're going to give it to the trails fans wherever they are. And it sounds like that's always consistently good and they're always going to try to get more people to get on board with trails. So that's a recipe for a good scoring game.

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56:45Justin Davis:details. Your little one grew three inches overnight. Adorable. Also, expensive. Sell their pint-sized pieces on Depop and list them in minutes with no selling fees. Because somewhere, a dad refuses to pay full price for the clothes his kids will outgrow tomorrow. And he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growth spurt budget secured. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details. Okay, extracurricular activities. I recently just watched something for the first time something that some people might consider a classic all

57:25Sam Claiborn:right shrek no not shrek austin powers shrek 2 although shrek i find almost unwatchable now

57:33Justin Davis:because the the animation is so bad it's just so such an ugly ugly movie funny movie but an ugly movie anyway kingo is doing baseball so any guesses what we want the sandlot no i think the dog will be too scary for him that wasn't he has to think about scary animals we watched clearly it's a league of their own then angels in the outfield we watched rookie of the year oh yeah we watched that yeah but i'd never see it do you know this movie sam no is this the one where his arm gets stuck 12 year old boy slips and hurts his arm but no it turns out he can throw 100 mile per hour fastball so he gets he gets hired by the chicago cubs he's the pitcher for the chicago cubs it was great it's a very silly fun movie my kids liked it i'm not going to say it's on the same

58:16Sam Claiborn:level as like a home alone but it was godfather one and two oh yeah but it's a very it's a sweet

58:22Justin Davis:cute movie the kid is likable and daniel stern is in it being funny daniel stern doing funny stuff uh he actually directed the movie which i was surprised by what yeah i don't know if he's directed other movies but he directed it totally it's it's a fun movie gary bucey is in it he's the aging pitcher that gets replaced by the kid right yeah he has almost nothing to do in the

58:42Sam Claiborn:movie but he's in it he's very mad at the kid at the beginning but then at the end well no spoilers

58:48Justin Davis:the john candy the we do we go ahead the funniest part that i'll share with you here is uh daniel stern is with the kid they're at like a swanky party because you know the kid's like famous now because he's the youngest pitcher out there now this party and daniel's trying to tell him like there's lots of benefits to being famous kid here i'll show you and he like leads them over to these two women they're saying they're in daniel's turns like excuse me ladies and then they stand for there for a moment and he says again uh excuse me ladies and he gets them to move out of the way so they could play a pinball machine it's great it's great it was great i think it was a roller ball game do you know which game that would be sam yeah roller ball is a uh uh ladies and gentlemen on a uh on rollerblades playing a you know battle to the death type game it's williams early early 90s it was great we it's funny you brought that up because we just watched this within the last six months for family movie night yeah it looks great you know and our family has absolutely no connection to baseball and they liked it too yeah it's early 90s super cute yep this is when he's telling the pitcher he's uh saying pitcher has a big butt sam yep ah okay okay it's great and then another extra cracker activity i forgot to share last week we went to disneyland a couple weeks ago there's the there's the rollerball yep that was it yeah this is this is exactly he walks up to these ladies excuse me ladies daniel stern is very funny in this movie i have to say excuse me ladies oh it's perfect okay i love it the other thing we went to disneyland we did star tours and guys it's all new all new all new scenes on on star tours so if you haven't yeah if you haven't written this this is a virtual ride at where you fly through different scenes in star wars and they're interchangeable so it's different every time you never really know what you're going to get however there's like an intro and then there's a scene one and then there's an intermission where a famous character tells you need to go take go to this planet to you know meet this person and then there's a scene two and then there's an end these big scene one and two are completely different that i'd never seen before so i hope i'm gonna i want to tell you about it if nobody if people take this seriously and think it's going to be a spoiler.

1:00:58I cannot believe they're showing these lions moving this fast. It's so painful to see this, and it's never like this.

1:01:04Justin Davis:Anyway, scene one was awesome. You go to the indoor, the crashed Death Star from Rise of Skywalker. You land in that ocean with those. I did that one. Oh, well, it was new for me. Okay.

1:01:15Sam Claiborn:I thought you were about, like, they did, oh, you can witness the Gorman massacre from the first person.

1:01:21Justin Davis:No, that's cool because you're in there, these huge waves, and then you go into the Death Star, and then jesson yeah you you see you see the the alien from the trash compactor which i understand is from the first death star but apparently this is a problem on on both death stars unavoidable pestilence things just get into the trash maybe it's part of the trash compactors like organic recovery of goods right they use the that comes with the compactor yeah to make sure everyone understands what you're talking about it's a ride where you're watching a screen and then the ride is moving all around and yeah and so it changes like sometimes you get stories from episode you know the original star wars and sometimes you get stories from the you know from the prequels or whatever and like there's a really cool reddit post from a guy who spent an entire day at disneyland and i think he rode star tours 44 times and that's all he did was just loop through star tours and then he did stats on like you know like he he basically cracked the code of like, you know, if you get this scene, you can't get, you know, a prequel scene after it because it would break the continuity.

1:02:28Right. So it's like they'll mix they'll mix scenes from Star Wars eras, but not always. Like if you get a Kylo Ren scene, then you're guaranteed to get like, you know, a sequel series scene after that. And so he he broke down exactly how like it is random what scene you get, but not completely random, basically. Oh, yeah. It's in 3D now. I forgot about that yeah yeah it is and it used to have paul rubens as a custom bot for it yep do they not do that anymore they have that bot but can you not do the original experience or anything like that no because it's r2d2 and c3po fully animatronic replaced it so there's no way to like wheel out that bot when i saw it they had like piped ahsoka into like a few things last time I've seen this.

1:03:11I've run into a second. It didn't feel very natural. No.

1:03:14Justin Davis:Then my other second scene, tell me if you saw this one, Justin, it was Crate, the salt planet from Last Jedi.

1:03:20Sam Claiborn:No, I haven't done that one.

1:03:22Justin Davis:That was cool too. Cause you fly down, you know how they get on those like salt skimmers, whatever they call them. And then try to like, that's cool. The red stuff. Buy people time while the first order is there. Yeah. You like fly through that and then you destroy one of their next generation at ads, whatever they're called. That sort of thing. Anyway, that was cool. It was all, it was all new to me. and i love star wars how are they allowed this is pot racing this is nuts how what how are they filming this this is crazy yeah i'm not supposed to but yeah although on disney plus now for the 70th anniversary of disneyland they have ride throughs of like all the rides that you can watch now took them forever to do that because my kids have been watching this stuff on youtube for years like they can just watch rides anyway the final thing i'll say go ahead justin oh i you can finish because I have another different Disneyland thing.

1:04:10Justin Davis:Final thing I wanted to say is that the live action Moana trailer is out. I don't want to give it any airtime. It's horrible. But the number one comment on the iGen version is Moana 2016 with DLSS5 on. Moana 2016 with DLSS5 on. Whoever made that comment. A+. Go ahead, Justin. Just another little Disneyland star tours having different variations. The Millennium Falcon ride also has small variations right at the end and i learned that like there's like a short version a long version of the speech that what's his name okana or whoever the little pirate guy is that you take the mission from and he talks to you at the end of the mission and you get the long version if the ride needs to take longer to like reset to get you all off yeah that's and so it's like he's adding up the damage like this is damaged and this is damaged and this is damaged and part of the version that you get isn't just how you performed on the ride but if it needs to take longer to get you off it that's great isn't that clever yeah very cool i you know we go to disney a lot i really appreciate how well run the park is and you appreciate it more when you go to other some other theme parks you're like well hold on these guys disneyland hasn't figured out dude six flags magic mountain it's like a bunch of 13 year olds operating rides drunk it's so scary yeah exactly it's fist fights like 100 percent at knott'sbury they had to like install a rule where kids cannot be there by themselves they have to have a chaperone oh my god yeah yeah yeah it's like total lord of the flies yeah there's a theme park in iowa called adventureland that was like the place when i was growing up i went there growing up but now it's like now every parent just drops their kids off by their by themselves and they had to set the same rule it was just like they were just running wild in the park and like taking it over

1:06:08Justin Davis:okay that brings us to video game 20 questions our suggestion this week comes from josh who has a an anecdote to share first hey scoop i had a rare gaming discovery recently i wanted to know if the scooper has recently experienced something similar as a dad in his 30s, things like this don't happen often anymore. To start, I had never played a Resident Evil game. I'm not interested in the horror genre and largely look past any titles that might fall into that category. With the release of Resident Evil Requiem, a buddy of mine was going off about how excited he was and how good so many of the games are.

1:06:36Justin Davis:He convinced me to give one a try, so I purchased the remake of Resident Evil 2. My friend mentioned this was a scarier but really good title in the series and a fine starting point. As soon as it started, I immediately disliked the experience, but I stuck with it. And after a while, I have to admit, I am absolutely loving it and I've started looking at the other titles in the series so my question my question is has anyone on the panel recently discovered something gaming related you thought you wouldn't like or possibly hate but ended up loving and Sam that Blotro would count for you right yeah absolutely that's a really good example I was just gonna say no why would I ever subject myself to something I don't want to play but yeah no that's no I did that with Metal Gear at one point too I had to play you know Peacemaker for work and I hated one two and three and then I really liked Peacemaker and then I liked five a lot after that.

1:07:21You never liked Metal Gear Solid?

1:07:25Justin Davis:I liked it at the time, but I haven't revisited. Yeah, I mean, there's been whole genres like that that I've gone to. And I love Death Stranding. Yes, exactly, Peace Walker, yes. Isn't that weird?

1:07:36Sam Claiborn:That's a very tasty one. That's a good one. It is, but it also fixed a bunch of things. It has the Fulton recovery system, so it's really fun to collect stuff in it, but it also taught me how to play Metal Gear. I still don't like playing 1, 2, and 3. 1 is better than 2 and 3, I think. one's great i'm trying to think not like there's never something that like ah i don't like this thing and then you know i played a game and it won me over and changed my mind i'm i was absolutely obsessed with pocopia and i've put dozens of hours into it and it's not that i thought i wouldn't like it like i was confident i would like it but with like i'm not a pokemon guy yeah and so i think i talked about this on the show a couple weeks ago of like if you're a pokemon sicko you'd probably lose your mind over this game because you can talk to them and they're all really cute it's all callbacks i can tell it's callbacks and references to the other games i haven't played and like the whole game is like a post-apocalyptic version of pokemon one which you know i don't have any nostalgia for and so i can enjoy it just as a game i think it's a really interesting great game but i feel like it's like a generational game for people that like grew up with that with that kind of pokemon love in their blood anything come to mind nick uh i got two quick ones um i oddly enough i think it's the original resident evil stuff um because i was a fan of the remake uh i was a fan of resident evil 4 back in 2000 2004 or whatever that whenever that came out and like i had played every resident evil up to that point like apart from the original um i played two never three so there was always just like this mindset that i had that once the two remake came out i was like should i replay some of the old ones i was like nah i don't think i'm gonna like them very much and then for the podcast is it still fun i was like okay i'm gonna finally do it and i was like well i was wrong the original is fantastic the remake of the original is fantastic and i never thought i'd like the original three but i love the original three that was so much fun and uh i revisiting a lot of the classic games now that i am less squeamish than i was back then has been really fun and um the more i guess out of left field was probably the east series i just i always thought bump combat looked kind of boring and so um i started checking out the original east one and two loved them tried east origin which i liked it for the first playthrough the rest was kind of meh but after that i'm all in on east now i'm like slowly working my way through that entire series now.

1:10:03Justin Davis:The series is kind of like Trails. It's just quietly been going on for decades now.

1:10:08Sam Claiborn:It's heraldic. It's stoic in its legend status. I'm waiting for this to happen with Souls likes because I haven't liked any of them.

1:10:17Justin Davis:Well, yeah, that's what I was going to say. Probably Elden Ring for me. I went into it expecting to not like it. I just dabbled with Souls games and I just didn't like... I don't like being locked into animations. I don't like just slamming my head against brick wall bosses over and over and over again, running back to bosses. It felt all very unfriendly to me. But of course, I ended up absolutely loving Elder Ring and it being one of my favorite games of all time. Okay, that brings us to his suggestion for 20 questions. And he says, hint, I have never played this game even though I like Redacted.

1:10:47And with that, let the questioning begin. But what's the Redacted thing he likes?

1:10:53Justin Davis:I think it's ponies.

1:10:55Sam Claiborn:Oh, you're going to get me one of these days.

1:11:01Sam Claiborn:Justin you gotta ask the first question we gotta shake it up okay it's not going well is the redacted thing that he likes horror games sports games or I don't know racing games no oh no

1:11:23Justin Davis:and he did just tell you that he doesn't like horror games well but except now he does okay is this from before the year 2000 no

1:11:34Sam Claiborn:year 2000 or after is this game made in Japan no

1:11:42is this game made in the United States no

1:11:46Sam Claiborn:what else is there is this game multi-platform yes that's five multi-plat 2000 on did this game sell more than 1 million copies yes that was a very definitive I think he just knew that you're off the top of his head can you read the anecdote again

1:12:09Justin Davis:I have never played this game even though I like Redacted cupcakes Dark Souls even though he loves

1:12:15Sam Claiborn:Elden Ring yeah except this game is made in Europe I think it's a role-playing game could be clear obscure year although that wouldn't like never played it's like it's only been a year so you're okay it's it's not quite reached never played status um

1:12:35yeah was this game made by made or published by ubisoft no i just said that because i'm assuming it's made in europe hmm

1:12:50uh was this game is this game playable on a nintendo system no oh rip okay xbox xbox playstation or yep it's not donkey kong 64 did this really originally come out in the xbox 360 ps3 era no oh ps4 era no that's five we just hit questions i'm sorry that's 10 oh shoot damn ps5 era yes okay so it's more recent

1:13:28Sam Claiborn:is this the game uh is this game the first of its name yes first of its name could be expedition maybe I was wrong maybe it is well wait the games that you mentioned earlier Justin you said horror sports or racing did this game come out last year no is this game an RPG or a shooter no what else is there

1:13:57Justin Davis:well okay okay okay I'm sorry let's see it falls under the increasingly broad category of RPG.

1:14:06Sam Claiborn:So it's a PlayStation game. So it's a third-person action game with RPG elements, probably, is the vibe I'm getting. Could be Genshin Impact. Maybe he's not a fan of gacha games.

1:14:23Sam Claiborn:We just hit question what? 14. Shoot, we're flying busy. I'm still thinking about where the game's made. I was assuming it was made in Europe, but it could be from China or Korea. China or Korea, yeah. Or, you know, obviously there's other countries. But like, you know. Did we eliminate U.S.? We eliminated U.S. and Japan. Oh, we did do U.S., okay. That makes sense. Okay, okay, got it. So it could be Black Myth. Did that come out last year or two years ago? That was two years ago. Why don't we just ask if it was designed in Asia? Sure. And the question is? Was this game designed in Asia? Yes, that's 15.

1:14:59Sam Claiborn:Is this a gotcha game? No. Shoot. I mean, that's not a bad question, though. Could be an MMO. Could be Black Desert Online or one of those other South Korean MMOs. Is this a Korean-developed game? No. It's probably Black Myth. Does that mean it's Black Myth? Getting pretty close to Black Myth is sounding to me. But didn't that come out last year? isn't i didn't play isn't it a isn't it a like sort of a boss rush style souls like game maybe it came out two years not a souls like game but it's more of like an act like a devil may cry to some extent when did it come out that came out nobody knows that came out uh not last year but the year before which was okay what about where winds meet that was last year where winds meet was last year yeah it's it's probably one of those um what question are we at you have two questions and a guess oh boy like i mean we could really nail it if we asked if you play as a monkey or an ape of some sort yeah do you play as don't don't do ape of some sort that includes humans maybe fair enough do you do you do you play as a monkey yes

1:16:17Justin Davis:uh is it black myth do it it is black myth there you go i hesitated for a second

1:16:23Sam Claiborn:Finally a win. I was like, oh no, it's Enslaved Odyssey to the West.

1:16:29Justin Davis:Yeah, Black Myth Wukong. And the only reason I said no when you asked RPG, I was just thinking Souls-like in my head. But it's like an action RPG, just like all these games are.

1:16:38Sam Claiborn:Very pretty game.

1:16:39Justin Davis:Also very pretty game.

1:16:41Sam Claiborn:Very cool bosses. It's the first time I played a video game that made me want to go back and reread some old world literature. Yeah.

1:16:50Justin Davis:I played this for a bit. I liked it, but got distracted and never went back to it. Did you finish it?

1:16:54Sam Claiborn:I finished it. I didn't get the secret ending because then I looked up what you had to do to get the secret ending. I was like, I ain't doing all that. I was like, I'll just watch.

1:17:02Justin Davis:So fill in the blanks for us, Damon. I just watched the Mitchell video. Oh, I have never played this game even though I like Souls-likes. That's all.

1:17:10Sam Claiborn:Not quite a Souls-like. However, it does have a lot of shared DNA. I'd say if a Souls-like had a baby with something like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. Okay. Which is good company to be in. do you have a stamina meter uh no no there's no stamina okay i'll allow it then well i guess you have like a i think there's like a guard gauge which i think might be referred to as a stamina meter but not like a did you see that b-roll was that like ah now i don't now i don't remember but i there's nothing in the game that necessitates you need to walk because you've been running for too long okay do you dodge roll you do dodge roll i'm just like look you're the one that played it and i didn't but this looks incredibly souls like to me so i feel like it's to say that it's not it's not a soul it's not a soul's like okay all right it does have a lot of elements of it though okay do you have to go back and collect your souls once you die i don't remember actually no i mean besides the fact that you dodge roll everything and collect all your souls when you die and it's super hard.

1:18:17How dark is it? I think it was pretty challenging, right?

1:18:23Sam Claiborn:It was a pretty tough game. I think Nier, once you get past the snow-covered mountains, it starts to get a little bit easier, but everything from up to that point is pretty tough. This has been Nick's fuzzy memories of a game. I mean, it's 2024. It's steeped in... Two years ago, Sam. It's years ago. It's a steel trap, Nick. That's why you're here. Steeped in Chinese myth, so it's like one of those things where I'm just not intimately as familiar so it all is just like what happened in this game again?

1:18:50Justin Davis:They announced a sequel to this.

1:18:53Sam Claiborn:Yeah it's like a completely different character. Again I've only read like the first Black Myth or I'm sorry the first like Son Goku. Journey to the West? Journey to the West novel and that was back in like middle school. Yeah I think I read it in college. I remember the tiger shroud the tiger's like trying to he burns an entire palace and you know Son Goku covers himself with a shroud or something I was like, this all rings vaguely familiar. And then after that, I was like, I have no idea what's happening. I think we can all agree this is a Souls-like like. One of the greatest final bosses I've seen in a video game, at least in the non-secret ending.

1:19:26Sam Claiborn:I think it is so clever. May I spoil one small thing of the last boss in this?

1:19:31Justin Davis:Spoil it for me, but feel free to jump ahead if you don't want it.

1:19:35Sam Claiborn:A quick spoiler for the last boss of Black Myth Wukong. So fast forward like 10 seconds if you don't want to hear, starting now. but basically you have to fight the true version of yourself so you fight yourself and there's a part where if you walk away from him to heal he'll freeze you grab your healing jug heal himself and then continue the fight so you waste the heal it is the coolest thing in the

1:19:58Justin Davis:world i loved it so much cool well nicely job and thank you for the suggestion josh in an undisclosed location viewers listeners if you have your own suggestions for a video game 20 questions email them to me at the email address gamescoop at IGN.com and that is all the scoops that we have for you this week thank you Nick, thank you Sam, thank you Justin thank you to Jobert, working behind the scenes to make this episode possible if you're going to PAX East, you're going to be there on Thursday come by the trolley booth at 1pm for some live scoops and some free candy my name is Damon, this is IGN Gamescoop and we're out

1:20:47Thank you.

1:21:16I don't think we've won 20 questions since January. I was going to say, Justin.

1:21:23Sam Claiborn:Today's the day it all changes.

1:21:24Justin Davis:End the streak. Yeah, I missed a couple weeks, didn't I? I think last week we got one that we probably had for the third time and we still didn't get it. It's just a game that's always present in Damon's mind, so he picks it all the time i'm sure well i don't even remember it was it was narc oh yeah yeah but then the week before that justin here give me give me give me give me give me some clues give me okay well the theme they had five options and the the listener had been eating taco bell so we picked like a mild option and a fire option and there was a verity option they chose the verity option oh something a little different and okay there we got about halfway through and i was like you guys are not thinking nearly verde enough um give me give me a few clues from that one sam after you don't you don't want to open this one up if it was a compilation of games and i

1:22:21Sam Claiborn:told him it could be okay we managed to distill it down to a turn-based pixelated rpg where you can play as a human and it can be a compilation or it can't be it's the okay so it's the ps1 it's the ps1 disc that had final fantasy tactics we we actually brought that one up yeah and then there was something else final fantasy wait there was a couple of those we eliminated square enix yeah it was not square but you're thinking of anthology and chronicles the chronicles came with Chrono Trigger. Right. Was Tactics and Chrono Trigger? Is that what it was? No, that was Final Fantasy 4 and Chrono Trigger and then Anthology was 5 and 6.

1:23:11They also had a 1 and 2 compilation. Yeah, there was a 1 and 2. But 1 and 2 was on the GBA or was it on the PS1?

1:23:17Sam Claiborn:It was on the GBA for sure as Dawn of Souls. Final Fantasy 1 and 2 Dawn of Souls. Anyway. Okay. This is how it was going for us. Yeah.

1:23:28Justin Davis:Anyway, it was RPG Maker.

1:23:31Sam Claiborn:oh that's rude it's verde i still think about it there was a moment where we were showing a looping animation of fire on screen and david was like jobert please get this off of the screen it is literally making me go insane it was like showing a fire animation you could put attribute to a character just over and we were trying to guess the sound it was making a little fart each time a scream ah ah ah

1:24:03Justin Davis:alright should we start this show okay was he just waiting on us we were waiting on you this is the ploy is that he tries to get all the goods before the show so you can use it for the post show now we have no more goofs for the show

1:24:17Sam Claiborn:yeah get it all out of the system first it goes from game goofs into game scoop yep

1:24:28Sam Claiborn:that's rpg maker hp lovecraft's rpg maker driving damon insane this is the sound effect they're gonna choose

1:24:41Justin Davis:like this is the b-roll he pulled up when i revealed the game this is the b-roll you're saying that like it's jobert's fault this is just the game this is rpg that's all it is You can fade out.

1:24:51Sam Claiborn:Yeah, you can add a fade to it. Yeah, you're making an RPG. Name, don't lie. I do love that the graphics just say 20. 20, yeah. My graphics are 20. Let's cook this up to 21.

From the publisher

Welcome back to IGN Game Scoop!, the ONLY video game podcast! This week your Omega Cops -- Daemon Hatfield, Sam Claiborn, Nick Limon, and Justin Davis -- are discussing Final Fantasy, Resident Evil Requiem, Picross S Konami Antiques Edition, Crimson Desert, and more. And, of course, they play Video Game 20 Questions.
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