Game Scoop! 853: Daemon Reflects On 20 Years at IGN

21:23Justin Davis:Yeah. I mean, they started up the Daily Fix. When we moved offices from Brisbane into the city proper, into San Francisco, into Soma, which by the way, we initially shared an office with MySpace, if everyone remembers. because upstairs uh fox interactive media we were owned by it we were well no we were owned by fox by fox yeah they bought igin and myspace at the same time so we ended up sharing an office with myspace until you know myspace became no longer relevant and moved out when we first moved in and they had to send out an email of going don't hoard the free snacks they're they're free just get them and then they they lasted another week and like all right fine we're putting them in a machine thanks for nothing yeah yeah yeah when we first moved in there my space didn't last like the downfall was weird too because myspace had refashions itself as a streaming service very briefly so upstairs for many years until we moved fully in up there there was like band posters everywhere yeah they're really music focused right that's what you would find old ghosts you'd be in some supply closet and find some weird pile of like you know myspace mouse pads and stuff like I remember in the, in the Brisbane office, there were some executives from Fox came down to just do like a talk or like a Q and a or something.

22:40Justin Davis:And someone I want to say it was actually Eric Hart asked about Facebook, which was, you know, gaining popularity at that time. And then, you know, asking if they were like worried about, you know, Facebook and they were very, the Fox execs were very dismissive of Facebook. It was just for college kids, whatever. Anyway, it's Which is funny because obviously my space is not relevant today. This is a great video we're looking at here for people listening. You should tune in to see some of these old videos. But this one has a bunch of people goofing around the office. And I just want to note that it's dark outside.

23:10It's just a weird vibe. Y 'all, we lived in these offices. We were all living. I mean, this is, you know, again, the downtown SF office. So this is even later in timeline. But like, I mean, you couldn't pry us out of the office, especially Brisbane, where it was. we had that awesome demo room in the guitar hero and rock band parties that would go on and on all

23:29Justin Davis:night long and sing if this if it's dark outside here this could be like a the child's play marathon are we are we here all night we did that i know it was just that in san francisco the sun goes down at like 4 45 once you get into december because it's so far north i mean so i would walk home in dark darkness until the time change i just remember that being that thing yeah so So I've been in a host position for a long time now. They started The Daily Fix, which was created as a vehicle for Jessica Chobot. But when they started it, you know, we were shooting it in SF and she lived in L.A. And she didn't, you know, it took a while for her to move up to SF.

24:06Justin Davis:So I hosted like the first hundred episodes of The Daily Fix. And somehow I'm still hosting it today, which is crazy. But I remember Sam joining in the Brisbane office. Was that 2008, Sam? Do you think? Yeah, it was 2008. And you and Greg had done some episodes of Game Scoop by then. Definitely had it. Because I was aware of the podcast by the time. I had listened to every episode, I think. I remember there's a bunch of in-jokes, Ryan Geddes and stuff at that time. It was very news-focused and inside-joke-focused. Yeah, he's made of lava. No, I can... And there was something called the Jeff Bell.

24:43Was that from that podcast? That's from Xbox. Jeff Bell was Xbox. Yeah, it was TRL. That was TRL. That's what it was called.

24:52Justin Davis:Yeah, GameScoop was, we started GameScoop in June, so it's not quite GameScoop's 20th anniversary yet. We can do that at IGN Live because that same first weekend in June. That's fun. Yeah, we'll celebrate GameScoop's 20th anniversary at IGN Live. One thing that sucked about the Brisbane office is that it was around a central kitchen kind of corridor thing. And then it was cubicles and a big kind of square around that. So where you and Greg were was actually really far from where like Mark Ryan and Colin and Stephen Ng and I were. It was just like, it didn't feel like the same office in some respects.

25:22It was like the game health area was just really far away.

25:25Justin Davis:Yeah. It felt strange. It's very different in the Soma office where it's like you just peek up. You can see literally everybody you work with. Well, I mean, you're looking at the Brisbane offices here with how high these walls used to be. You didn't know what the hell was happening on the other side. The people's close were high too. Because that's the thing is on the other side of that wall where if you're watching right now is guides. That was originally Jason Allen. And then it was Nate Ahern and Mark Ryan was one over. and then obviously, but it was like, might as well be the moon for as high as these walls were.

25:52But since we had expanded, I remember they put in Brian Altano and Scott Bromley right next to us when they came in. So I was definitely sitting next to them. Yeah, yeah, because that was one near down over there, yeah.

26:02Justin Davis:But they weren't at IGN, were they, they initially weren't with IGN, they were with GameSpy? Team Xbox? Oh, GameSpy, you're right, you're right, it was GameSpy. That was the Brian's, but Scott was with IGN, I think. Okay, all right. And Greg, we're freezing here, why? Because Ghostbusters game came out or something and you're... The Ghostbusters, yeah, the Ghostbusters, the video game had come out and the bit was that I'd waited, you know, whatever it was, 18 years for a good Ghostbusters game and I didn't know what another one would come. So you guys would freeze me for another one. And Damon, I want you to know, I want you to know, we were this close to having an ad deal with one of the Ghostbusters VR games and I pitched them unfreezing me.

26:42Yeah, we'll do that. It just came together. I wanted it to happen so bad. Brisbane, recycle bin. you have to go find that office dude i've thought about it i'd love to go through there even the old soma office i when i go by and i see the furley sign i'm like what if i just faked it i just want to walk through there again what if i was like we're looking for an office damon i don't know if you've seen this recently but if that that part of brisbane is like a downtown city now there's like i don't know what did you say great 25 new giant office there are so many office buildings over there it's ridiculous they're all like it was like three before it's like walmart us and hitachi yeah and now it's like every biotech for firm has a 20-story office building i remember when they built the first one over there you're like that's a weird location yeah every yeah like

27:23Justin Davis:oh okay cool you're ahead of the game this is like a gamescube news break that the video that we're looking at tv right yeah what they became which is we just do them whenever we felt like it no one ever told me to do this i would and i ty root would shoot them and we would just have an idea we'd say hey let's let's just shoot this video today and we would just do it nobody told me to do it nobody told me not to do it we're just doing what i think that's the biggest thing you know to interrupt you on your trip down memory lane damon is that you're just not giving yourself enough credit for embracing the opportunities we were given i you know when people talk about me and ign like well what you know what was like how did you you know break out how did you become you know a personality of the site and i was like you don't understand it was me and damon and we just wanted to do it yeah i remember when we got there and like there's another video from like i would say my first three months in the office that was dave clayman playing pac-man championship edition me talking about reviewing one of the fantastic four video games and it was ty had shot it and at the very end ty turns the camera and walks down the aisle and pear walks at him and goes oh shooting the putting the editors on camera you know novel idea because he had said that and that was the thing where damon and i were tip of the sword where legitimately we were like we want to be on camera and do stuff and they were like we don't really do that but okay and then it be when we started finding success i remember distinctly them saying craig harris can you come beyond this and he goes no i got hired to write i don't want to be like it was the old guard was so like we write we don't want to do this and me and damon were like we will do everything anything and that was why where you know you self-starting and making game scoop what it was and inviting me into that and having that fan base that we would then go i remember starting and there was a pax where or Andre Segers went and he came back and he was like, dude, they hate us there, they hate IG.

29:13And I had turned my badge around. And I was like, oh, that's so weird. And I remember the first panel we went and did there, just standing room only audience, people were so excited. It was like, Damon and I were like, whoa, like we have something here, but that's only because Damon and since he was first doing it and then me fought to be on camera and not even fought as much as just said, hey, can we do this? And nobody would stop you. They just go, yeah, sure, whatever. We don't see why that would work, but go for it. I replaced Andre Segers. That was the person who I backfilled.

29:41Justin Davis:Did he do GameXplain? Yes, he went and founded GameXplain, which is still around. Yep. These videos we're making, we're doing skits. We're doing little bits, right? Which is totally my background. Everything worked out. I grew up doing theater and music, and I thought, well, I'd like to be an actor, or maybe I'll write music for games. But whatever, I took those. I just went on a different path, and I'm here. I perform every day. I get to be on camera and perform and just create things. And it just, it just worked out perfectly for me. Yeah. You were just at the, I not, you weren't even at the right place, right time.

30:15You're at the right trend of the industry. And I think a little bit ahead of it, right? Because it was us doing this and one up at the time doing the one up show where it was like, here's like video game, video content featuring personalities talking about video games. Yeah. Is that the parking garage? Where is that? Yeah, that's parking garage. I was threatening to throw myself off. There's all those stray cats living in there. you know that Ghostbusters game was pretty good it was 8.0 IGN.com

30:38Justin Davis:I liked it a lot Sam you mentioned all the inside jokes in GameScoop that was by design from the beginning my like inspiration and like hosting style is lifted directly from the Colbert rapport like I it's recurring segments and inside jokes that makes the audience feel like they're like you know the part of something they're in on some kind of secret that's all by design and justin i remember when you arrived at ign you replaced levi buchanan i did who levi never worked in our office he always lived in portland but levi came from nintendo power which so how cool is that he at at one time or another he was a retro games editor and then he was also a mobile gaming editor and i yeah i didn't remember the mobile part of that i only remembered the except that's that's what justin was brought in to do yeah to place him so he must have been mobile editor when he left he the retro was gone by the time he left he was only doing the mobile game stuff and then i was the mobile games editor so i reviewed angry bird space and infinity blade 2 and 3 and that was the that was the era like a really good era for the app store actually yeah where's my water cut the rope yeah who could forget infinity blade 1 was the one that we gave a 10 to yeah uh no i gave a i gave a 10 to infinity blade 2 and three i think i think hillary gave hillary gave the first one a 10 yeah yeah so you know kind of boxed it on score there a little bit and then i did many hundreds of episodes of tech fetish with scott lowe and then subsequent tech editors mark ryan was on that podcast and i i don't know i mean i'm sure the story knows i don't know what my first appearance on game scoop was but it was somewhere in the 100s and the thing that's crazy like well i mean it might have been 200 but like you know we have photos like i have a firm memory of celebrating 250 and i'd already been on the show quite a bit by then so like that's probably how the math works out and like i remember you know what are we at now to 800 and something yeah i think this is 853 853 and like i remember when i joined i'm like game scoop has been going on forever it has so many episodes it was it was like you guys were at like 140 by the time i started yeah but that was that was how it felt and I feel that way like I'm at in a couple months I'm at 15 years at IGN and like so that's half of IGN because IGN's celebrating 30 this year but it felt like you know such a big established storied brand already by the time I came in yeah and I was never in I was never in that Brisbane office I was always on second street and it was um it was well by the time I started one up was already in the building but I know that it was like you know there was a row of like one up GameSpot IGN, like all like a couple blocks apart.

33:23Yeah. Second,

33:24Justin Davis:second was like that for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned, Oh, go ahead, Justin. Oh, just after mobile games, I ran features for a long time. It was like the main, main, main gig. And then what was the Xbox channel we had called? There's team Xbox. Team Xbox. Team Xbox. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned 15 years for you, Justin, 18 years for Sam. Like I've been here 20 years. It's, it's very unusual for anyone to stay at a job that long, but like there's something special about IGN, like, you know, pair our co-founders. And I was freelance before that, but, but even with that, it felt like you and Greg had been in the industry forever.

34:01Exactly. Yeah. Sorry. That's the feeling. And I also heard by then what, you know, at least 52 episodes of game scoop, which is like you, you start getting, you know, parasocial relationship developing. Like you think, you know, these people are right. And then it's like, that was like a very strange, Like, I, again, I think it was not unfriendly, but just intimidating and overwhelming to start at IGN by that point. It was just like, there's a lot. You guys had already started a lot. And it was like, I had a really like heads down job, you know, just felt really different. Yeah. I found the environment very welcoming and very friendly.

34:37And everyone, you know, like I'd never, I had never done a podcast. I had never done anything on camera. And it was Scott Lowe. He's like, hey, what are you doing right now? And I'm like, oh, I don't know. Nothing. And then he's like, come podcast with me. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if I can do that. And he's like, just come do it. It'll be fine. And like, that was how, like, that was it, man. Like that was the, that was the vibe was just, you know, just do things, which I actually still, you know, I mentor and coach a large staff now, as do you, Sam. And like, I coach a lot of people on like, you know, the culture at this company is like, open the door and walk through it yourself.

35:12Don't wait for someone to open it for you. those are the types of people that seem to succeed and thrive best yeah self-activating as we said

35:21Justin Davis:earlier yeah yeah i mean here we are uh i still think of myself as an nbc cast member okay this is just a guest gig that was the first craig had me on nbc all the time and then i hosted it for a long time yeah so you know this is just the side gig greg to this day there is still more um podcast Beyond episodes because back in the day you and Colin were just religious about never skipping an episode ever so yeah that was Dunham beat that into me on gen one of podcast beyond and so then when we added in Clements and we added in uh Colin and it kept I guess Clements was a founder we added in Colin we added everybody else I kept that mantra running yeah it's it's it was very much and I think that's the other thing about it you know what I mean is I'm just here to put over Damon of what in, I don't, I don't know the modern IGN how it is, but like at least back then what an unforgiving role it was in what an unsung hero you were, David, because I remember you and me once not getting into a fight, but having loud words in a conference room once where it was that you were just like, you, we were going back and forth and I flaked on a game scoop as I did.

36:31And so many of the other editors did do or did, I should say, because it wasn't our job role. So a review would come along or something else or whatever. Yeah. Pull you away from going to do this podcast that also at the time management didn't really stress as this is important. We should be doing this. There was a lot of man hours conversations about podcasts. And I remember you. What was the VP? It was like VPH views per hour. But this is even before then when it literally was just there's no views. It's a podcast. Nobody's tracking them. We're not putting ads in them. We don't know what's happening.

37:03but we had a conversation uh in heated terms at one point where you i'd flaked and you were mad at me because i'd let you down understandably and you just said i just feel like you know if you had to choose between beyond and game scoop you'd choose beyond and i was like well yeah i would because i'm the only person here with playstation in their title like i'm now the only playstation editor and you were like oh and it sunk in for you what that meant but it also sunk in to me what it meant for you to run scoop and how hard it was to herd chickens and cats that had a million other things going on and when we weren't told to take it seriously nobody else took it seriously it was a fun lark i remember you and me walking out of conference rooms after podcasting with soleus the ac unit for an hour and look at each other that was great can you imagine if this is all we had to do what if this was the job i remember that being a dream still

37:49Justin Davis:yeah i still i still daydream about that just 24 hours you kept you kept the torch lit and kept it moving and the fact that you're this far along and have this many episodes is incredible and yeah It was just the opposite, I think, of that conversation galvanized what I already believed from Dunham, stressing to me that there needed to be Beyond every week. So that when I was running it, I made sure it happened. But again, at that point, I probably had a PlayStation team or voices underneath it that made sense. Beyond was a, not Beyond, but the PlayStation coverage in general was in a really tough spot right then.

38:22Because there was so, like the PS3 was kind of, you know. Not great. Yeah, it was just like, it was like Nintendo. It had just slow trickle of games. And the 360 was just, you know, ascended. It was just this weird time. And it was like it got to the point where like the 360 team like, you know, became this kind of granted everything's going to go easy for them team. And then you had to make kind of a personality behind PlayStation and it being the underdog, which then came into GameScoop. And I remember that being this like this great way of developing fan space and camaraderie and connection with the audience when the only thing to cover was like a weird you know downloadable game about hurting people as a superhero that week i mean it had to be personality forward right like there was no other there was no other choice yeah it was commiserating i think right and again it was that you had this audience that all had bought this very expensive thing and now they're looking for the silver lining on it which again i think is what then made it hard for Damon to keep GameScoop going at a normal clip when it's just him.

39:30And it is that I'm pulled in, you know, what Tal or, you know, whoever my boss has done him at the time, Hillary at the time, Casey at the time, what they wanted for it versus there was an, I should have contextualized this. There was an attempt at the time to make sure there was a PlayStation and Xbox and Nintendo voice on this show. That was, that was like a theme at the time. And it's, it's never really, it's not, it's not been that a really long time. I mean I remember distinctly when we were in the meeting and they were like all right cool we're gonna do channel podcasts game scoop's been doing so well and IGN AFK is still happening so we're gonna do channel podcasts now and I remember I think I was one of them where I was like why no why are we doing that we have game scoop and they're like no no it'll make sense and then it was up and down throughout the years of maybe we should cancel all these except games we don't know how we're making money off of this that conversation is cyclical it comes around every

40:19Justin Davis:so often who who it's no it's it's still to this day is a no one's job description to podcast at ign but but we do it we're very passionate can i ask you a question damon yep yep yep talk to me about when you were like you know what i'm i'm gonna be here for 20 years because there's a distinct moment i think for me personally that i remember the first time levi buchanan ever came to visit when i worked there he took you me and get us out to eat and we were at the table and And Levi, of course, always cool. It was just like, so gentlemen, I know IGN isn't the end of the line for all of you. What's next?

40:56And I remember there was a beat of silence and you looked at me and said, well, it's the end of it for one of us. I was so vocal that I was never going to leave IGN. I got my dream job. I die here. That's great.

41:06Justin Davis:Yeah. No, I don't. There wasn't ever a moment. I just, you know, like I was just talking about this, this, it's just been such a perfect fit for me. It's like, I don't know. in order for me to like go on to something else like like lightning would have to strike twice and i have to find something else that's just absolutely perfect for me so i don't know i always tell people it's been 20 years i've never dreaded a monday morning you know like i don't i never i never get the sunday scaries and like oh i got work tomorrow i was like nope i'm going to talk about video games on camera tomorrow it's gonna be pretty cool pretty cool i think i i i I would agree with that.

41:41I mean, I don't think it's a decision to like stay 15 years, at least in my case, but it's just a series. It's always a decision of like, you know, the work is still interesting. I'm never bored. You know, I'm fulfilled. I'm, you know, I'm challenged. And, you know, we have a good culture of sort of allowing people to sort of stretch into new stuff and try new stuff. And it's like, you know, that's important to me in my work. And I'm like, OK, like as long as that stays the vibe, I'm happy to stay another 15 years. Yeah. I'll just add that like, it's nice to be at a place where I think that we're always in a position where we're kind of at the top of things.

42:16And like, it's like kind of great to just be at a place where like, you know, we have the, the, the biggest, best thing. And where am I going to go? Yeah. Like I, like that, it, it, it makes sense to start your own business like Greg did, but I'm not going to ascend to a smaller site. It doesn't make any sense to me.

42:35Justin Davis:yeah it's interesting that ign's still here you know we used to like back in the day i'll i'll be honest with everyone we used to talk about game spot a lot back in the day yeah we don't talk it's it's uh it's uh what's his name from madman i don't think about you ever sorry we don't talk about anymore but i do know people like levi who wanted to make movies that's just a completely different route right it's like what i want to do is this and where am i going to find the best reach in the stability. Right. You know, I do feel like my wife is a school teacher and like, it's like, Hey, you're not allowed to be a school teacher.

43:08You have to do something else. What do you do without missing a beat? She's like architect. That's what I would do. Like, that's what I like. Cool. Whereas like, I don't have, if you ask me that question, I'm like, this is it. I have no, I feel, I feel Taylor built for doing the exact thing that I'm doing. And I have no plan B and no fallback of just like, you know, writing about video games and making this content is all I've ever done since I was a teenager. And there is, there is nothing else. I guess development is another place that a lot of people we know end up going into because they just like, they're so interested in the craft that they want to go do it.

43:40Oh yeah, for sure. If they have that artistic design background or that programming background, more power to them. But like, that's not, you know, it's not everybody, right?

43:46Justin Davis:Yeah, for sure. I do wonder sometimes like, like how, how long, how long can I keep doing this? You know, my job is to be on camera, talk about video games and two things always come back to me. Like there's no, no one did this before us. There's no, no one came before us. If the job is to talk about video games on camera, we're the first to do it. So there's no precedent for like, you do it till this age and then you transition into this other thing. So who knows, who knows how long, but I do think a good, uh, analog would be like sports commentators. And I always see dudes are old as heck talking about football and basketball on TV.

44:18Justin Davis:So I don't know, maybe I can be old as heck talking about video games. It just matters if everybody's going to be living in like a matrix that provides sexual pleasure and they don't use video games anymore because they don't live in meat space, then we'd be out of a job. But then we just got to bring back Knocking Boots. Ah, Knocking Boots. Do those episodes live in an archive on IGN? Not, well, I guess some might... They live in the dark web, Sam. They're on the dark web. The ones that we did on IGN are probably archived somehow, but it moved on. It had a life of its own outside of IGN too, and those are archived as well.

44:53Justin Davis:Anyway, guys, that's enough about me come on that's enough about me it should be the whole show you got 20 years damon that's crazy what was your favorite game scoop tv what was your favorite goofy bit we did or whatever give me the show too obviously uh we did one in in park city uh because we were there for like a sean white snowboarding event what we were there with and it was with nate ahern and we were making fun of the money hats i don't know where did the money hat even come from people accusing us of having money hats taking taking bribes for giving i said money hat around here the other day and nobody knew what I meant.

45:25I was like, oh, you're all young. Yeah, it really has gone out of the parlance, huh? Yeah, well, and it's also like the Park City thing. It's impossible to understate. I caught like the tail end of this. It was already winding down, but just how insane the video game industry was for a while of like, you'd fly to like Moscow and go to some rave in like, you know, a nuclear bomb shelter because the game had one level that was set in Moscow or something. And it's like, it was all like, because the PR people also, it's like, they're like, they just also wanted to go party in moscow it's like let's just spend the company's money like while we still can yeah and like it it's and like you know it was under like you said they're just you know trying to buy people off or they think that it'll influence the scores but the truth is that like like you know come to hawaii and play the game and then we're gonna go out on jet skis and it's like i just play the game yeah like i'm tired yeah we don't do i have to go to hawaii please just let me let me play the game in my office like i don't need to go do this for a week I have so many other things I need to get done.

46:21Yeah. It was a very wild time. The one that I remember the most was the Sony E3 party for God of War II, I think, was coming out. It was in Dodger Stadium and Incubus played and they were roasting. They were roasting whole goats on like a spit and they had men and women dancing in cages. I'm just like, this is insane. What are we doing? That might have been 2006. I can't remember now. Maybe 2005. Yeah. What about the Park City one stood out though?

46:49Justin Davis:for you, Damon. Nate and I were making fun of the fact, these accusations that IGN has paid for reviews, and we were showing us, we were getting wine and dined and pampered by Ubisoft, and then our review score kept going up for Sean White snowboarding. Listen, I've been here for a long time, 20 years now. I can tell you, it's literally never happened. IGN has literally never been paid for review. It's just literally never happened. The people that make this claim. It's never even been a question. It's never even been somewhat. No. suspicious or compromised in any way. Yeah, there was one time ever that there was a video game journalism review controversy and then it was a massive controversy and someone lost his job and it made the news and it was all over, you know, that was like Jeff Grissman, right?

47:34Like, you know, like that. We still get Jeff Grissman and IGN. It's like, no, that was not IGN. Not even, I was saying.

47:42Justin Davis:But Greg, my absolute favorite one is the Rock Band PSP one or Vita. It was the Vita one. No, it was PSP. It was PSP. That's how old we are. We did a commercial for Rock Band on PSP. It's great. But then they made the DS one. No, this was for the game. This was them doing Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP. We were making fun of it. What about multiplayer? There's no multiplayer of any kind. That's kind of dumb.

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50:12Justin Davis: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 months. 5GB plan required, equivalent to$15 a month. New customer offer for the first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Okay. This is crazy. These glasses, God. Get big glasses, Greg.

50:46What are you doing? It was the style at the time. It was the style at the time.

50:50Justin Davis:Which was the style at the time. Yeah. Okay.

51:12Justin Davis:Okay, let's talk about some of these games. What is out? What's out? Pragmata. Greg, one of the things we are recurring topic on GameScoop recently is that Capcom seems to be the only AAA developer that still knows how to make games. Sure, yeah. They're having quite a run, aren't they? Yeah. Quantity and quality. Quantity and quality. They're the only ones that can do it. Ubisoft doesn't know how to make games anymore. Did you play Resident Evil Requiem, by the way, Greg? I sure did. What a game. God damn. I played through it twice. The game, so nice, I played it twice. Anyway, Pragmata got an 8 out of 10 from IGN.

51:45Justin Davis:I barely started it last night just to get a taste of it, but apparently this turned out well. After spending many years in development hell, I think this was revealed in like 2020, and then put on hold indefinitely, and then reannounced, and somehow they landed it, and it turned out okay. Sam, you've been playing a lot of this? I love it. Yes. Yes, it's like when Dino Crisis came out alongside Resident Evil. It's the RE engine. It has a lot of similarities. It's got this chill vibe music in a safe room. You go out, you do a bunch of recon, then come back and level up. It has enough Resident Evil Capcom DNA, but then it has this fantastic little gimmick here where you just have to stop and basically cast a hacking spell by entering a little button code maze and it warms you up to it really slowly but then you're like i want to do more of this by like adding a bunch and then all of a sudden you're able to add all these little uh nodes in to make it more complex but you're already you're all over it by that point you just feel powerful and great and it's got this like layer of like it's set on the moon and this crazy landscape and enemies look nuts and this little girl is like on your back just like shouting kudos the whole time.

53:00I just love it. It's just, it's just, it feels like, you know, the, this, the, that feeling of playing a 360 game, you know, in 2008, where you're like, wow, I just had so much fun for 12 hours. I recommend this game. Everybody should play this. And then there's, you know, the year has 40 more of those. We just don't have. That's how everyone describes this game in the best possible way. Like they say with love, like, it's like that 360 era of like, It's just very video game-y.

53:30Justin Davis:Yeah. In one year, you'd get The Darkness and Enslaved and Overlord. Dead Space. Yeah, all these great games all coming out at once. People taking chances, right? It's what we keep saying. Everything's got to be a sequel or some other IP. The fact that they were like, here's this weird thing. You want to try it? Okay. Yeah. Are you playing this, Greg? No. So this week, I was on Mouse and Tomodachi. So I've done the demos for Pragmata. meta uh and i'm very excited to play it because i definitely looked at him like ah this doesn't look like a great game and then when i did that first demo and did that first hack i was like oh no i'm gonna be into this yeah yeah it's got great exploration great revisiting and like the environment's cool so i nothing that was shown about this game even caught my eye i was like i don't care about this i don't know what it is it's hard for them to get it across and then i just sat down with it and it's just a totally great adventure action game that feels like capcom made it after making res evil like it couldn't be better to follow requiem with this game it just has so much in the dna yeah cool that's great well tell us about uh uh mouse then greg so i think that's i think that one got a six from igian yeah we're on the low end of that we're on the low end okay yeah but it's you're right in the wheelhouse i mean i gave it a seven on the kind of funny scale which is completely different than the igian scale and not at all can't translate whatsoever i called it good yeah you know mouse pi for hire is a black and white rubber hose animation 1930s uh you know noir detective noir film starring troy baker as a mouse talking to other mouses so it's got this steamboat mickey shoved together with this pi drama shoved together with a lot of cheese puns and wrapped into the genre of a boomer shooter it is doom it is quake it is you running through just putting endless bullets into endless enemies I think it's good.

55:20I enjoyed it. What I said on the show for Over It Kind of Funny was, if you look at any of the trailers or even hear the description and go, oh man, that sounds interesting, go play it. Try it out. Because it is a game that I think, for me, even as a fan, overstays its welcome, but it gets better the more you play it, if that makes sense. I think you start it off, you're like, oh, it's going to be very basic. It's going to be this. And it stays in that maybe an hour or two too long before it starts opening up with new abilities and new weapons and little twists and turns that make you go, okay, this is a lot of fun.

55:49So I enjoyed it. It's a fun one. Again, you're looking at like 13 hours. So we're talking about something you can get in and actually enjoy, not feel a giant commitment to. But guns feel good. It's funny. It's cool. It's a really good visual style.

56:04Justin Davis:But that's not what a private investigator does. That was the IGN reviewer's issue. It's sort of story heavy and noir-ish, but then you're just murdering just everyone in the level. Like it's a shooter at heart. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. It's a shooter at heart. And I think, you know, one of the big failings of it is like, they just try to do too much in the story without ever making you care about the stakes. So like this, the, the, you know, the dissonance here of being a detective, but not doing a lot of detecting really didn't matter to me because it is shooting. And Troy will make a funny joke about killing all the people he was supposed to be investigating.

56:40Okay. The reporter gets all mad at him and stuff. That wasn't one of my issues with it, but I totally get it. Yeah. He has a crazy accent in it. He's doing like a funny gumshoe. Yeah, he's doing it. Yeah, James Cagney. He's doing that. Yeah, what are you doing about this? Hey, I'm joking. And it's constant because it's narrated. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

56:56Justin Davis:What looks... I've played a bunch of this. Yeah. Well, the reason why I think I might check it out. I think like all the guns seem like clever and fun. Like there's a bunch of like unique weapons, right? This hacking's great. Yeah, the hacking's really fun with your tail here. Oh, cool. It's, for me, the only... And so I really like, just like with Cuphead, I like seeing how they do the animations for a typewriter or a bottle or a can or anything. That's my favorite part about this stuff and the style. And I think they actually successfully worked that into a shooter, which is like, it seems weird.

57:32They make these two video environments. Yeah, it seems hard to do. But then the death sequences, like you just saw the skeletons, the decapitations, everything, they're great. It all looks really cool. um i hate saying this about a game because this is so rare for me but this one is uh visually trying and exhausting for me really and i get i get fatigue from the black and white from the frame rate which is good good frame rate and from the you know the kind of the contrast between the animations i don't know man like you're not wrong i i think what i love the style of it and i think it's beautiful especially on a giant tv but like there's a lot i feel like because of them limiting themselves to black and white again these characters you're meeting these npcs kind of run together that was tough for me i feel like it's really hard for me at in the game playing it i was like where am i getting damaged from who is shooting me or what did i step in or what's going on like it becomes it's i think a gorgeous art style but the longer you're in it the harder it kind of becomes to differentiate certain things inside of it yeah and i that said though i want to show everybody i know this game and be like dude look how crazy this is when you're playing this game like it is it is kind of a masterpiece of like vision it's just it kind of hurts my vision it's the usual i mean not the usual i mean i guess the good thing when we're blessed with something new right of like looking at it going like man i really want to see what they do with the sequel i hope they get to try it again because i think if you tighten it up and did a few more things you could have a really special game and then there's replaced which greg i think this was

59:01Justin Davis:revealed at E3 2021, which was the final E3 and wasn't even a real E3 that you and I hosted. It was just a digital online event. I think Replace was unveiled then. Of course, the developers in the Ukraine, and there's a very good reason why it's taken so long. But I think it's turned out pretty well. I've been playing it. I think maybe it's not Inside. We should specify that right up front. It's not Inside. It's not. You go backwards sometimes. It's not as well. I'm just going to say Inside is much more of a puzzle game. This seems to be, they've spent so much time working on the presentation which is amazing it's visually it's really really stunning and breathtaking and there's not as much to the gameplay i don't think sam is that what you found you're like you're deeper into it than i am yeah you you get you get to places where you backtrack and have little side quests and do that so that does change um but not not in any extreme way and then you know a lot of the combat is um almost it feels like almost like uh batman arkham because you're constantly like, uh, luckily it fills in a lot of the between animations to get between enemies.

1:00:03You're just kind of like punching backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards. And that that's kind of cool. But yeah, the game is just style. It's like mouse has style plus gameplay that you're familiar with. This is kind of style plus not really gameplay for a lot of it. A lot of it's just kind of holding right and jumping. That does change. I'm not saying it it stays that way, but it, it, since it has such a long intro and then the next part you get to is not just running, right. It's slowly exploring a city. And then the next part you get to is really combat focused. It is, it doesn't, um, it's, it's just, it's hard for me to, to recommend it outside of people that I know like game scoop for the retro stuff.

1:00:45Yeah. It has a really cool cyberpunk retro look. That's it.

1:00:48Justin Davis:Yeah. I it's, I'm happy to just sort of like hang out and live in the world of the game and and and take in the visuals just because it's that's that's enough for me but i totally get i think some people are a little bit bummed with how light on gameplay it is i don't know justin have you tried glad to hear you say that though because that's that's exactly my feeling as well like it's it's a valid complaint if you're reviewing the game you obviously have to talk about the gameplay and the combat system and how you know maybe it's a little more shallow than you wanted it to be but on an individual level on a personal level, like, you know, style points does matter.

1:01:22Right. And like just being able to just let this wash over you. And like it does matter that this is maybe one of the most beautiful video games ever made. Yeah. Right. And just, you know, you're rewarded. You get through one vignette in one scene and you're rewarded with another thing. That's just, you know, so gorgeous to look at. Like nothing's repeated. I mean, the enemies are repeated, but the backgrounds aren't. And you just keep going and you're like, how did they do all of this in this style? It's so amazing. Like that feeling of like, I would have every single one of these, any one of these on my wall as like a piece of art.

1:01:54It's like, it makes it hard to kind of evaluate and put like a score to, because it's like, okay, like once you're sort of, once you're in review mode, then you have to say, here's what it does good. Here's what it doesn't do good. It's like, it reduces sort of just the artistic merits of just the, the, the, these scenes and backgrounds that they created. It's beautiful. But, you know, the people that had a little bit more mixed sort of review perspective is like that's also, you know, a very, you know, kind of valid, valid overall opinion, I think. The insane thing is that I played all three of these games a bunch this week that we've talked about so far.

1:02:32And I don't know what I'm going to keep playing, but except for I know I'm going to be Bragg Beta, like for sure. But out of these other ones, like I'm going to try. I'm going to try to do as much as I can because I want to see more. Yeah, I've done a bit of a replace through the previews and the demos and coming off reviews, it sounds to me like exactly what I want. So it's like I'm still on Sarus right now and a redacted review. And so it's like, I'm so excited to get through those, not that they're good or bad, to get to this because just a, you know, it's from what it sounds like, it's a narrative platformer dripping with story and intrigue for what happened and why you're the AI in this.

1:03:08And I'm on such a sci-fi kick right now. I can't wait.

1:03:10Justin Davis:Yeah, I'm enjoying it and I'm going to stick with it.

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1:04:41Oh, my God.

1:04:44Justin Davis:Okay, I want to do a quick extracurricular activities. I know Justin has a hard out. We may have to dismiss him for 20 questions. We'll see. But I was in Tokyo last week. Sam, thank you for hosting. Seemed like everything went well. Yeah, my pleasure. I have two stories I want to share from Tokyo. First of all, in Asakusa, there's Sensoji Temple, which is one of the major temples. If you're looking at temples in Tokyo, you'll probably go to Sensoji in Asakusa. But it's super crowded. Lots of gaijin there. And there's this like great big lantern. And then the temple is in the back. And in between are just these rows and rows of stalls selling junk.

1:05:17Justin Davis:So what people don't know usually is that behind the temple is an amusement park that's been open since 1853. Okay. Yeah. So very, very old amusement park in Tokyo. The rides there that are operating today, obviously they're not from 1853, but they're all old. But it's great for kids because everything's kind of old timey and kid friendly. So it's perfect. but we i had i went on one of the craziest rides i've ever been on there so we were trying to get on this ride that's like a caterpillar that goes in a circle kind of fast that was that was the line that we the line that we thought we were in the ride we thought we were in line for after waiting for a little bit the line goes into a small house and then before we can realize what's happening we're sat in this like uh like a wagon bed uh where you sit facing each other and then the door closes behind us.

1:06:05Justin Davis:So we're in this small room. And it just doesn't, it doesn't happen very often where you're on a ride that's about to start and you have literally no idea what's going to happen. What happened? We look around the walls and it's Dumbo themed. Like there's pictures from Dumbo, not from the Disney cartoon, like it's off brand Dumbo. Wow. Yep. And a different big elephant with big ears. Yeah. So the ride starts, a lock disengages and the wagon is start swinging it's like free now to swing and then what happens next is the entire room starts spinning around you like an old-timey movie trick to make it look like fred astaire is dancing on the ceiling my god the room is spinning while you while we're swinging and it feels so crazy kingo's eyes were wide his tongue started coming out of his mouth i thought he was gonna throw up it's crazy but that's it that's the ride you just it just gives you the sensation that the room is spinning and the ride itself is from like 1960 it's called like the strange room or the weird rooms that's this is the ride it's crazy so the room spins it spins vertically yeah i was picturing horizontally oh no no no no yeah it's spinning around moving too much because you're just rocking you're rocking it's going around it's just totally insane it gives you a crazy dizzy feeling yeah it was so that's good i recommend that and then the other Did you have that panic moment?

1:07:23You were like, is this going to be like dropping me from like a 200 feet tower or something? Am I going to drop at the end of this?

1:07:29Justin Davis:Yeah. I wouldn't mind that, but Kinga would probably pass out. Yeah. I mean, you have your kid next year. It's stressful. You have to pedal to push that little helicopter ride. It's very fun. Oh, wow. Really? It's self-propelled? Yeah. Saving so much money. I recommend the amusement park. It's like 10 bucks for a whole day pass. It's great. Do you know what the park is called? It's like Hanashiyama, something like that. If you just look up Asakusa amusement park, you'll find it. very easily. It's good. I love that it's so old and kitschy. The other thing is that there's this hot new pizza pasta place in Tokyo.

1:08:00Justin Davis:You have to wait like 90 minutes to get in. It's called Flower and Water. And I know the three of you will appreciate this because there is a very well-known San Francisco restaurant called Flower and Water. This one in Tokyo has the same logo as Flower and Water in SF. So we were there with our friend who lives in Japan and who was fluent. And we had them ask, is it related to the one in San Francisco? And they said, no, but we get that all the time. They're like, no, please don't tell them. Please don't tell them. Damon, you're blowing them up here on this show. You're doing the same thing as this restaurant in SF.

1:08:36Justin Davis:You have the same logo, but you're not affiliated. Okay. Okay. All right. You can't just do that. That's great. It's like, I'm going to start, I'm in Japan. I'm going to start this website called IGN. It's because they've got Blue Bottle, which is an SF coffee shop in Tokyo. They've got that. They just made their own flower and water. Okay, I saw the Super Mario Galaxy movie. I know we talked about that when Sam had seen it. Greg, what did you think of the Super Mario Galaxy movie? I saw it with Greg, by the way. We held hands. It was fine. It's very colorful. It's a lot of cool vignettes put together.

1:09:14It's what everybody said about it. When I left the theater and was talking to Ryan McCaffrey about it, he was like, man, I don't know. And I was like, listen, Blessing and Tim, who are the biggest Mario fans I know, loved it. And I know my son's going to love it. So Nintendo hit the target on who they were going for. And sure enough, I took Ben to see it and he had a ball. So it was enjoyable. It was inoffensive. I haven't thought about it since I saw it either time.

1:09:37Justin Davis:Yeah, Kingo loved it. I think Bowser Jr. is his favorite Nintendo character right now. So he just, he talks about - He got really lucky because there's so much Bowser Jr. in this. He talks about Bowser Jr. all the time. He plays like he's Bowser Jr. Before I saw it, Sam, you were saying it's just kind of like it's a beautiful movie where just things just seem to happen and there's not much of a story. And you're exactly right. That's what it is. It's just random stuff happening. Like the first movie I really like. I'm not going to try to say that the story is some kind of masterpiece, but it is a story.

1:10:05Justin Davis:And Mario and Luigi have an arc and they're different at the end of the movie than they were in the beginning. Who has an arc in the Mario Galaxy movie? like nothing nothing changes or they almost changed bowser in an interesting way but then they immediately walk back back so mario lightly has a crush on peach yeah yeah but nothing happens with that don't pay off to that yeah don't pay off to that rosalina is you know more important than you think or something i mean i'm fine with peach and her being sisters like that that's fine whatever but it doesn't really change anything justin did you see it uh we took the family to see Project Hail Mary and stuff.

1:10:41Great movie. That is a great movie. That's a great movie. Incredible movie. So no, I have not. I will happily watch this when it comes home.

1:10:48Justin Davis:Yeah. I mean, whatever. I had fun watching it. King has been asking to see it again. I'll probably take him to see it again this weekend. But there is one major problem with the movie. Do you know what this is? So it's got all these characters from Super Mario Bros. 2, right? As we're seeing right here. Yeah. Super Mario Bros. 2 was Mario's dream. Those characters don't exist. They're not real. Yeah, they're not real. My God. the Mario lore, it's like shy guys have worked their way into other Mario games and stuff like that, so I don't know maybe Mario is dreaming about something he experienced okay, maybe I'll tell you the one that my daughters are both going to lose their mind for the Zelda movie they like Mario, we play Mario Party we play Mario Kart, but like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are the most played games by far I'm so worried about that I asked my daughter, I said, do you think Link and Zelda are like a couple, and she's like, what?

1:11:36But no, he's just like, he's just like her protector. Like, why would you even think that? I'm like, well, you know, she lived in that house together and there's only one bed in that house. She's like, oh, dad. So anyway, she's got it figured out apparently.

1:11:51Justin Davis:Justin, do you mind if we spoil the final post-credits scene? No. Okay. So they introduced, so it's Daisy. Daisy just shows up. So Daisy will be in like the next movie or whatever. But isn't her introduction a little odd? Like they could have done anything to introduce Daisy. But Justin, what they have her do is punch a monkey. That's how they introduce her. That doesn't like, and she also is not, and again, I really, really like Nintendo and Nintendo games, but Daisy is not a character. It's not like a post-credits sting of like, like she only exists to like flesh out the roster in Mario Tennis so that girls have another girl that they can play as.

1:12:31Like that's it. Like she doesn't have a personality. Yeah. Tell me one defining characteristic. about Daisy as a person. She punches monkeys, apparently. Now that we're talking about the spoiler, I have a funny anecdote about Agenda. So we had somebody see this really early, and they came back saying, you know, we're like, what are the post-credit scenes? And, you know, it was like, I don't want to spoil it, but the last one has a lot of implications for the Mario universe. And I was like, wow. And I was just, I was thinking about this the night before. You know, I was like, what is this going to be?

1:13:03And so I see it, and I'm like, can't be fucking talking about daisy there's no fucking way i bet we're all seeing different smash brothers characters oh and that there's like cool yeah that there's like a different ending to each but each person's viewing and then it comes together no it turns out i had a really good idea but they did not and it was all daisy and i still don't know what unnamed person was talking about well i mean you know in the movie of course luigi's like ask if she has a friend for me so this is what that's the implication gross i did such a gross question and a gross answer um so uh but there are other smash brothers characters like littered right like they do they play to smash brothers in it from star fox onward and if we're just spoiling it and they have game and watch and it's like you know that's all funny and like people were shouting right behind you greg in the theater when the game and watch thing was oh yeah that was a cool thing but not during daisy I should have kept him for the end yeah yeah exactly that would have had implications for the wider universe

1:14:10Justin Davis:I like that they did the bridge fight with Bowser from Super Mario Brothers 1 like that was cool yeah cool scene that was fun again there's a lot of cool stuff in the film like I loved the overworld when they were going to have the Hammer Brothers there's a whole like Super Mario World montage in there and it's like well I kind of think you should have done that before you did Galaxy Could that have been the movie? Couldn't we have just done that? Bowser becoming a pile of bones and then that not getting reversed, it was insane. Yeah, nope, never reversing it. That was like a very crazy, a crazy thing that happens in that movie.

1:14:44Justin Davis:The puppet show is very cute. I like that moment. That's really good. The end is amazing. Yeah, that's good. And then when they introduce Yoshi and Yoshi explains how he got there, that was the biggest laugh out loud moment for me. I thought that was pretty funny. Anyway, we have to say goodbye to Justin, I believe. Yes, I got to go. Good luck on 20 questions. Give us a good screensaver shot for yourself. I'll do my best. We're on such a 20 questions losing streak that we need Greg's help to kind of break us out of the run. Okay. Greg, great to see you. See you guys later. Do you know anything about 20 questions last week, Damon?

1:15:19Justin Davis:No, I didn't. I don't. Okay. So it was really fun because we had, it's always this face. Yeah. We had the meta a little bit. So I reached out to people and had them submit stuff, but we actually got a submission by one of our stats keepers, Greg. And he said, you know, Justin's always talking about Black. Let's finally have, you've never had it before, the PlayStation 2 shooter game. Black, let's have it. And then we'll, you know, put one over on Justin here. And they didn't get it. Okay.

1:15:51Wolverine.

1:15:59Wolverine.

1:16:04Justin Davis:Well, we'll see. Our suggestion this week comes from Nick from Newcastle, Australia, who says, Every week I eagerly hope someone recommends this game for 20 questions, but as far as I know, it's never come up. Considering how important this game is to me, it holds a special place in my heart, and I figured why not ask myself and be part of GameScoop history. So with that, let the questioning begin. GameScoop history. Yeah. Okay. All right. Is this from before the year 2000? Yes. Whoa. All right. Going old timey.

1:16:43Is it on a Nintendo console? No. Wow, never. Okay. Did this originally appear as an arcade game? No.

1:16:56this is this is i don't like this i don't want to burn questions no you can burn questions i know i know was this a uh a well what so it's just not nintendo i guess it could be sega or yeah i should have done a better question no no no that's the accurate that's a great question to do it's it's usually um well how about this was this a console exclusive when it launched.

1:17:20Justin Davis:Yes. Okay.

1:17:26Are we do we ask about this isn't for you Damon this is for Sam. Sam do we ask about Sega or do we just play for what do we I suspect it's going to be Sega or PlayStation exclusive so let's just eliminate one or the other. Okay. Damon we'd like to know is it on a Sega console? No. That's five. Is it on a PlayStation console? Yes. Oh. So if it's before 2000, it has to be PlayStation 1. Correct. Okay.

1:18:03Does this have a score of 8 or above on IGN? I think so.

1:18:11Justin Davis:I could double check, but I would guess so. There's no way to know. Yeah, there's no way to know. Okay. Is the developer Japanese? No. Interesting. Does this have sequels that are running to this day? No.

1:18:42I'm thinking maybe maybe sports or racing or something like that like a really western hold on is it worth that? David don't listen this is for Sam is it worth drilling into does it have sequels period? Yeah David we'd like to know if it has sequels

1:19:00Justin Davis:period. It does that's 10 and I'm sorry this game did not score an eight or above. I was very, very wrong about that. Okay. So it's on the bubble, Sam. It's a game Damon would have liked. That's a way station game Damon would like from a Western developer. Yeah, that's a good clue. It's a good clue.

1:19:25How about a 3D graphics question? Would that make sense? Were there enough PlayStation games that had 2D graphics? Or was it pretty 3D heavy? Yeah, I think it's worth it. Yeah, it's worth it. I'm trying to think of one that isn't Symphony of the Night. It's not coming easy, so maybe we shouldn't ask that. Okay. What about talking a lot or the characters you play as or things like that? Yeah, at what point do you start worrying about genres usually? Yeah, this is the time. I would say, do you pilot a vehicle? We can also do a thing where we do, is this a sports puzzle or racing game? And then if the answer is yes, you go from there.

1:20:06Oh, that's good. That's good. That's good. For some reason, I'm feeling fighting. Do you feel fighting? Fighting? Oh, that's pretty good. And there's a bunch of like crappy Western fighters. Yeah, yeah. Like the, well, that came to other systems, I think. But there's like the Street Fighter, the movie, the fighting game. Sure. Which should be relevant because of the Street Fighter trailer. Of course, never forget Cody Rhodes. Speaking of a movie that's just about scenes and doesn't have a through plot line. We could be getting another one of those of that movie. Okay, so how about this? Do the genre thing.

1:20:35Yeah, yeah. Is this a fighting, racing, or sports game? No.

1:20:44And shooters weren't really a thing at this point, right? So we could do shooter, platform, or puzzle? Sure. Is this a shooter, platform, or a puzzle game? No. Okay. Some kind of... Listen, we had RPG Maker on this, and it was impossible.

1:21:05Justin Davis:It was very big. Some kind of simulation, something like a SimCity. Oh, yeah, or strategy. Strategy, yeah, tactical.

1:21:21So, man, yeah, this is a little bit, oh, well, maybe it's a licensed game, like a movie or Marvel game or something like that, like Marvel Ultimate Alliance type stuff. hack and slash. I mean, I don't think that came out for PlayStation 1. No, it didn't, but you said like. I'm with you. How about just the license question alone? Okay, shoot for it. Is this based on a license? No. Oh! That always helps so much once we get to movies, TVs, and comics. There's a lot of that on PlayStation also.

1:21:55Justin Davis:How many questions in are we? This is a fun game. 13 questions in. Seven left. so genre is getting really tough here but you brought up once a strategy simulation sim sim and music were there music games not did you do sports did you say sports yeah yeah we eliminated sports which is crazy because i was hoping it'd be like an extreme sports game are we are we missing any bigger genre than strategy and sim did we do RPG RPG there you go that's probably worth asking is this a strategy sim or RPG no Jesus Christ

1:22:49I mean I guess there's just action and adventure games, right? What's like legacy of Kane? What would you call it? Action adventure. Could this be that? Who made that game? Who made that game? It's like pre-Uncharted, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, I think it meant the company. It is. Is it Naughty Dog? No, no, no. I mean, Amy had worked on one of them, if not all of them. Okay, but it's not. It wasn't Naughty Dog, no. I want to say was it a... No, it wasn't Ubisoft. Do you play as a republished them? Do you play as a human in this game? No, that's 15. It could be a vampire.

1:23:32Animal vampire robot is our, is our question now. Ooh.

1:23:40Do you look like a human? Are you a humanoid type character? Yes.

1:23:47I think it might be legacy of Kane. or you shoot for it well I mean we don't need to guess it out we just need to keep narrowing but I don't know a lot of is it legacy of game 2 I don't know a lot of Playstation 1 games that's just like that's one that I know so yeah I mean does this game deal with the realm of the undead and vampires well the undead

1:24:13Justin Davis:yes okay yes does this deal with the realm of the undead yes okay so maybe it's not what's a zombie game from ps1 wasn't there one where you like play as a not stubs the zombie but one where you like it's in the collection it's in the playstation 50 collection not midi maybe midi yeah i'm thinking of medieval yeah when you say like that is this in the playstation 50 collection or whatever that's called the limited mini playstation I don't know. That one doesn't count. All right. Well, thank you. Is that what that game is, though, Greg? Do you just play it? I don't know that game. You're a skeleton.

1:24:57You're Sir Daniel Fortescue. Okay. And that's like an action. On a DNA level, that's a human, so that would be a miss from Damon. He would have led us astray on that one if that's the case. Maybe it's an undead doesn't count as human, though. Okay.

1:25:16Do you play as an undead skeleton creature? Yes. Is it medieval? It is. Who made that?

1:25:29Incognito? I don't know. Don't burn a question on that part. If we don't know enough about it, is there any other thing that's just in that game that you would think of? Because it probably is that. But we have questions to burn. Well, you have one question to burn. Well, we don't have questions to burn. Do you want to go for it? Was it? I'm pretty sure. Yeah, Sir Daniel Fortescue was in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, so we could ask, is the main character in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale? Damon's too lazy to look it up if it is. Damon knows that game like the back of his hand. Was this character in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale?

1:26:04Yes. Oh, fuck, yeah, we nailed it then.

1:26:07Justin Davis:All right, go for it, Greg. We believe it's medieval. It is medieval, yes. Yay! Which I wouldn't say you're playing as a human. You're a skeleton. He was a human. on a DNA level. Wow, this game looks jankier every time I see it, but it also looks fun. Good job, Sam. Is it a, well, yeah, good job, Greg. Is this a Zelda-like kind of? It's more, the pitch was Ghosts and Goblins with Nightmare Before Christmas art. Oh, okay, okay. So it's like a hack and slash game. Yeah, hack and slash. Developed at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Ah, I wonder if they still exist. I don't think so. Absolutely not.

1:26:43No? No. I mean, does Sony Computer Entertainment Japan still exist? They have an office. I don't think there's an office there.

1:26:55Justin Davis:This is out in 1998. It got a sequel and they got two remakes, one on the PSP and one on PS4. Okay. And then what did IGN give it? Oh, yeah. Chris Roper gave it a 5.6. No way. 5.9. I thought people liked this game. But Chris would have been reviewing this way later, right? Well, yeah, you're right. because he wouldn't have been here in 98. Probably the PSP version. Maybe it was the PSP version, except it's just on the object page for the PS1 version. So I don't know. Confusing. Yeah, you're right. Easy IGN, you know. Typical. When was the last time you heard object page, Greg? It's been a while.

1:27:33Justin Davis:Well, nicely job. Yeah, I'm glad we got it. That's great. You made it there. Thank you for the suggestion. Who was this from? Nick from Newcastle, Australia. Viewers and listeners, if you have your own suggestions for a video game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address gamescoop.ign.com. Greg, I've got your reviews page up here. Oh God. First of all, you were born to eat chicken wings and play video games. I think this is every game you've reviewed. It's a very, very long list. I appreciate that. Thank you. One of the very last games you reviewed was NCAA football 14. Yeah. Whenever I click back through my profile on IGN for something that pops up, I'm like, what a way to go out.

1:28:09What a one before they were like, you know what? You just do up at new now and beyond don't review you did dead island riptide was that a standalone game or is that like a yeah yeah they did another yeah it was like a modified expansion or whatever you did

1:28:23Justin Davis:persona for golden you did zombie you why were you reviewing zombie you oh i love zombies you know how it was they're like ah here you go here's a wii a wii u game launch game we got too many of them i think i also had to update my batman review because they did batman on you walking dead was like the biggest thing in the world at the time right it was zombie you it was kind of yeah man i watched a bona fide hit there was no way it would miss the what's it called the 28 years later second one the bone i watched that last night it is so brutally disgusting oh really well it's just kind of hard to watch like it's not fun and i like the first one of the 28 years like i thought that was pretty cool but it's just pretty awful you reviewed rock band blitz which one is that one yep which one is that that was the one that came to consoles and was basically you know a lesser amplitude that you were going through and playing or a rock band unplugged is what i would have called it on it would have been the version of that they tried to do dlc for it as well the same way they were doing rock band it wasn't supported this is after rock band 4 this is uh yeah i'm pretty sure it was man rock band 4 had the piano yeah the keytar yeah never forget never forget it I had a keytar.

1:29:32I don't even remember that. You reviewed Gravity Rush. I did. I love Gravity Rush 2.

1:29:38Justin Davis:Yeah. So good. You did the Vita version of Plants vs. Zombies. Yeah. You were a Plants vs. Zombie nut, I remember. Yeah. Damon went hard on Plants vs. That was your mobile, or your downloadable editor. Yeah, exactly. These cute little games that you could download. Remember when we walked around and be like, man, this is so great for a downloadable game. You did Dead Island. Remember Dead Island? remember how big a deal that first trailer was that trailer had everyone by the throat i think we all watched that in a room at e3 like on one of the conferences on a screen i think that's that's how we all saw that the first time oh yeah maybe i'm just remembering you did fruit ninja connect and then you reviewed bastion greg i did review bastion isn't that crazy yeah all of the Back to the Future episodes from Telltale?

1:30:26Justin Davis:Ugh. Oh, yeah. That was before Telltale delivered big on Walking Dead and everything came up, Telltale. Yeah, that was always the big surprise. I remember that was where being the Telltale guy post-Strong Bad. I remember going to the Telltale booth at San Diego Comic-Con. It was literally a card table, and I had to do a Strong Bad and I was like, I don't know this source material, nor do I think I like this. And then, yeah, they picked up Jurassic Park, Back to the Future. I played both those like these are so disappointing and then they're like and we got Walking Dead and I was like do not hurt Walking Dead I love that I love that comic book all it was is a comic book and then they nailed it did you play Dispatch?

1:31:03Justin Davis:Oh yeah I love that game so good Greg you did Dead Space 2 yeah that was that was when I discovered what Reddit was do you remember that? no I reviewed Dead Space 2 and it went up I was happy with it about two days later Bromley leaned over the wall and he goes do you know that you're still on the front page of reddit i was like oh what's reddit and he sent me the link and it was does anybody else think ign's review of dead space 2 was written by a middle schooler and it was like just tearing me apart for my the way i wrote it what it was and like the funniest thing about it was literally i had sent my at my draft to hillary like friday evening before i went live and he wrote back and was like dude this is exactly the kind of review I want us doing.

1:31:51This is exactly what pairs are talking about, putting our personality into it, doing this thing. And the audience just ate me alive for it. Just destroyed me. He's changing verb tenses three paragraphs in. What is he doing? Yeah, there was a cloud hanging over EA at the time. They had been voted the worst company in the world. And three years running around. And then Mass Effect 3 came out.

1:32:15Justin Davis:You did Dead Rising 2, Greg. Yeah, you did all the zombie games back then you know i love zombies man i'm all about it still am you did naughty bear remember naughty bear i do remember naughty naughty you're just you're like you're a stuffed teddy bear but you're you're naughty it's like ted it's like ted yeah you were like you it was like basically imagine like that gumdrop teddy bear island thing except you were the teddy bear has been pushed too far so you had a machete and you're an errand killing a little bit conquer is bad for a day type thing yeah but it was like you're clipping through the floor and all this stuff and it didn't run well and yada yada yada and it was a one of the at least at the time the hot button like do you have to beat a game to review it because my intro was like I've only played four hours of this game and I don't need to waste any more time oh wow yeah yeah yeah that was always a debate yeah now we're in this now we're in the days when all these reviews don't even have thumbnails but you did band hero yeah you did lips here I think band hero I think is yeah lips the single band hero will always stand out to me for one reason where there had been that you know that rock band or a guitar hero guitar hero 2 rock band this thing where no at the office none of us could get enough of it we loved it so much and you smash cut to band hero where no one cared anymore i was reviewing it i'll never forget it i was at my desk middle of the day my shoes were off they were up my sock feet were on my desk i was laying back in the chair playing with a kleenex box as a pillow and damon walked by and burst out laughter came back and took a photo of me he's like this is rock bottom like this is rock bottom for these games yeah yep you did africa right in the middle of rock bottom well nobody but me because i brought that up recently we're one of we were talking about a preview for some game coming up and they were describing i'm like oh it's like africa and he's like i have no idea what the fuck you're talking about that was like a visual experience super it was a photography same you were in africa and you had the camera but it was it was it was one of those classic vaporwares where like when they announced that playstation console they showed it and then like five years later we were all like where's africa yeah yeah greg what what review of yours featured the strap line behold the greatest comic book game of all time that is batman arkham asylum that's correct and i was mocked endlessly by i was i was mocked endlessly by clayman and brendvick for it because they didn't agree with it no no they just thought it was a stupid strap line.

1:34:38They agreed it was a great game. They were like, what a weird strap line. I thought it was all downhill from that game. I thought that was the best one.

1:34:44Justin Davis:Yeah, I agree with that was the best one. Greg, what game, what review featured the strap line? More cushion for the pushing.

1:34:52Fat Princess. Fat Princess. Fat Princess was really fun. I remember there was a really good one. Like a preview event. That ganking all princess.

1:35:02Justin Davis:Damnation. Abomination would have been a more descriptive title. I was going to say, I can't even tell you what Damnation was. I don't remember that one. Oh, man. It was more funny. I reviewed Blood Drive, which is a game none of you should remember. Just some stupid running people over with a car, zombie, whatever. Name don't lie. Exactly. And I gave it some terrible score. And years later, I was out drinking with Lucy O 'Brien from IGN. And she's like, yeah, I actually wrote for a game once. And I was like, oh, yeah, what was it? She goes, Blood Drive. I was like, oh, no, I hated that game. Oh, man, we're in the early days.

1:35:36Justin Davis:It's Jeopardy. It's TNA Impact. It's Buzzmaster Quiz. Oh, yeah. You were a wrestling guy for a while. I was, yeah. It was one of the things that cut my teeth out. But remember, Buzz was awesome because when they were trying to make Buzz a thing, they would throw, like, they would send over pizzas, and we would just go into the demo room and play Buzz all day long. Yeah. Hannah Montana Spotlight World Tour. Okay. That's enough. Back to Dunham. We're reviewing everything. We're reviewing everything. Why? Well, there's only so many games that come out, and I pay all of you to be here full time. So you're reviewing something today.

1:36:08Okay. Yeah.

1:36:09Justin Davis:We took the weekly trip down to GameStop, buy new games to review. Sam, when was last time? You go to BJ's? Yeah. You go to BJ's. You go to BJ's Brewhouse and you'd be there three and a half hours. Different work day. Okay. Well, good times, good times. Greg, thank you so much for joining us. How about we have you back for my 40th anniversary? That sounds awesome. I'd love that, Damon. Let's do it. Let's do it. That is all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you for hanging out with me all these years. Let's keep it going. Let's keep it going. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Sam. Thank you to the ghost of Justin.

1:36:43Justin Davis:Thank you to Jobert. We're getting behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon. This is IGN GameScoop. And we're out.

1:37:12Justin Davis:It wasn't the lights and sights of the city

1:37:21Justin Davis:It wasn't the storms across the world

1:37:30It wasn't any place I have been to It wasn't any sound I have heard

1:37:45Justin Davis:In fact it was you on my mind

1:37:54Justin Davis:In fact it was you all the time

1:38:03Justin Davis:In fact it was you on my mind

1:38:11Justin Davis:In fact it was you all the time

1:38:28Oh my God. Damon Hatfield is a cat. Nothing special, just a fact. Making biscuits all night long. When you did this, where did you record the music? At home. At the podcast room?

1:38:41Justin Davis:Oh, just at home? I just recorded it at home. But I'd have Greg and Craig record the vocals in the podcast room. Oh, okay, okay, okay. so you recorded some like garage band tracks i think garage band was around then right yeah yeah yeah i use reason but yeah okay yeah comments i loved thank you recently not recently but i don't know last year or two remember i don't know if you noticed when infograms came back yeah they're like we're back or whatever and i i busted out the infogram song and made everybody here watch it and like it's just so classic you and me we're like you're so musically there and I just don't have a beat and I start early.

1:39:17And I'm like,

1:39:20Justin Davis:but then Javi even animated that part in. It's so good. Yeah. Do not use this in the post show, but do you remember when, uh,