Game Scoop! 817: Well, That Sucks

Summary

Game Scoop! Episode 817: "Well, That Sucks" Summary

Host: Damon Hadfield
Guests: Sam Claiborne and Justin Davis
Release Date: July 11, 2025
Network: IGN & Geek Media

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I. Return from Vacation and Initial Updates (02:32 – 06:39)

After a brief hiatus due to a European and UK vacation, host Damon Hadfield rejoins the Game Scoop! team alongside Sam Claiborne and Justin Davis. Damon shares humorous anecdotes from their trip, including a visit to a unique sushi restaurant in London featuring a bathroom filled with piranhas.

Notable Moment:

• [04:04] Damon Hadfield: “We spent a week in London and even had to cobble together a makeshift studio setup at the IGN UK office.”

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II. Perfect Dark Cancellation and Its Industry Impact (00:00 – 22:58)

The episode takes a somber tone as Damon announces the cancellation of Perfect Dark, following Microsoft’s significant layoffs impacting over 9,000 employees. The discussion delves into the implications of shutting down an internal studio after five years of development, highlighting the frustration and disappointment within the gaming community.

Key Points:

• Perfect Dark was highly anticipated, being a reboot of the beloved 25-year-old franchise.
• Cancellation is attributed to internal turmoil, leadership changes, and development challenges at Microsoft’s Initiative studio.
• The shutdown is likened to other canceled projects like Everwild and the sequel to Elder Scrolls Online.

Notable Quotes:

• [08:21] Sam Claiborne: “Because Microsoft owns the IP outright, it’s such an effective way of killing a game when an internal game is canceled by its own publisher. Oh, brutal.”
• [09:35] Damon Hadfield: “Seven years is... it's like 10% of your entire like working life.”

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III. Ghost of Yotei State of Play Presentation (22:58 – 35:19)

Shifting gears, the hosts turn their attention to the recent Ghost of Yotei State of Play, expressing excitement and optimism about the upcoming game. They discuss the game’s innovative features, such as multiple director modes inspired by iconic filmmakers like Kurosawa and Miike, and compare its open-world design to titles like Breath of the Wild and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

Key Points:

• Ghost of Yotei promises a rich, open-world experience with diverse gameplay mechanics.
• The game includes unique visual modes that alter the aesthetic and atmosphere, enhancing player immersion.
• Positive reception to the State of Play highlights the game’s potential as a contender for game of the year.

Notable Quotes:

• [24:23] Damon Hadfield: “Perfect Dark is dead, period.”
• [25:59] Sam Claiborne: “I think this is really appealing. I think it’s really admirable.”

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IV. Top Selling Games and Industry Reflections (35:19 – 62:58)

The hosts review the top 10 best-selling games of May 2025, noting that several are Xbox titles, including Monster Hunter: Wilds, Oblivion Remastered, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows. They critique the trend of remasters versus new original titles, praising Nintendo’s consistent and timely game releases. The conversation also touches on the impact of Xbox Game Pass on game sales and developer confidence.

Key Points:

• Monster Hunter: Wilds leads the sales chart despite mixed community reception.
• Oblivion Remastered secures the second spot, raising questions about Xbox’s focus on remakes over new IP.
• Comparisons highlight Nintendo’s successful strategy in maintaining a steady flow of quality releases.
• Concerns are raised about Microsoft's ability to retain developer trust following recent cancellations.

Notable Quotes:

• [41:57] Damon Hadfield: “Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is the sixth best-selling game of the year so far.”
• [46:08] Justin Davis: “There’s a threshold by which, okay, this is the limit. And now we don’t need games to look better.”

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V. Gameplay and Narrative in Modern Games (62:05 – 72:42)

The discussion shifts to the concept of ludonarrative dissonance, exploring the tension between gameplay mechanics and storytelling. The hosts use God of War and Death Stranding 2 as examples to debate whether collectibles and side quests enhance or detract from the overall narrative experience.

Key Points:

• Ludonarrative Dissonance refers to conflicts between a game’s narrative and its gameplay objectives.
• Collectibles in games like God of War can either enrich the experience by providing power-ups and extending gameplay or disrupt narrative immersion.
• The debate underscores the challenge of balancing story and gameplay to cater to diverse player preferences.

Notable Quotes:

• [60:21] Justin Davis: “Video game stories are more than just their cutscenes and like the script, it's, it's the vibes and it's where you're going and what you're doing and what you're exploring and how is it making you feel.”
• [59:11] Damon Hadfield: “It's not a problem for me. It's well documented. I just, I just don't really care about stories in video games.”

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VI. Listener Interaction: Video Game 20 Questions (73:01 – 76:53)

Engaging with their audience, the hosts participate in the "Video Game 20 Questions" segment. A listener named Nick from Emmitsburg, Maryland, challenges the hosts to identify the game Jackal, an arcade and NES title by Konami. The segment highlights nostalgia and the joys of classic multiplayer gaming.

Key Points:

• Identification of Jackal through a series of targeted questions.
• Discussion on the game’s mechanics, including vehicular combat and cooperative play.
• Reflection on the preservation and appreciation of classic games.

Notable Quotes:

• [69:28] Sam Claiborne: “It could be like there’s no series.”
• [71:34] Sam Claiborne: “Great game though. I really end up liking it like, you know, just like in terms of like civ. I like civ.”

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VII. Closing Remarks and Upcoming Content (76:12 – End)

The episode wraps up with acknowledgments to listeners and contributors. The hosts tease upcoming segments, including their participation in upcoming events like Comic Con and future content offerings from IGN’s podcast network.

Notable Moments:

• Announcement of future shows such as CineFix Top 100 and Next Gen Console Watch.
• Invitation for listeners to engage via email for suggestions and interactions.

Final Thoughts:

• Damon Hadfield reflects on the episode's heavy news, balancing it with discussions on exciting upcoming games.
• The hosts express gratitude towards their team and listeners, maintaining the community-centric ethos of Game Scoop!.

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Conclusion

Episode 817 of Game Scoop! delivers a compelling mix of industry news, personal anecdotes, in-depth game discussions, and listener engagement. From the unfortunate cancellation of a beloved title to the anticipation surrounding Ghost of Yotei, the episode captures the dynamic and often tumultuous landscape of the gaming world. The thoughtful debates on game narratives and the nostalgic nod to classic games like Jackal further enrich the conversation, making it a valuable listen for both seasoned gamers and newcomers alike.

Notable Quotes for Reference:

• [00:00] Damon Hadfield: “Perfect Dark is canceled. What the heck.”
• [08:21] Sam Claiborne: “It’s such an effective way of killing a game when an internal game is canceled by its own publisher. Oh, brutal.”
• [25:59] Sam Claiborne: “I think this is really appealing. I think it’s really admirable.”
• [60:21] Justin Davis: “Video game stories are more than just their cutscenes and like the script...”
• [73:34] Damon Hadfield: “Let the questioning begin.”

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Note: This summary excludes all advertisement segments and non-content sections as per the guidelines.

Transcript

[Damon Hadfield]

Foreign I'm away from gamescoop for one week and Perfect Dark is canceled. What the heck.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh yeah.

[Damon Hadfield]

We will pour one out for Joanna Dark and discuss the Ghost of Yote State of Play. Plus much more on this week's Game Soup coming right up after these messages. Planning any exciting trips this year? I bet something you might not be planning is learning the local language. Well, with Babbel you only need a few weeks to learn. This year, speak like a whole new you with Babbel, the language learning app that gets you talking. Babbel's quick 10 minute lessons, handcrafted by over 200 language experts, get you to begin speaking your new language in three weeks or whatever pace you choose. And because conversing is the key to really understanding each other in new languages, Babel is designed using practical real world conversations. Babbel's tips and tools are inspired by the real life stuff you actually need when communicating. With a focus on conversation, you'll be ready to talk wherever you go. I've actually got a trip to Amsterdam coming up and I'm looking forward to using Babbel to learn some Dutch. Babbel has over 210 hours of Dutch courses and more than 15 hours that specifically address traveling in the Netherlands. Need proof that Babbel gets you talking? Studies from Yale, Michigan State and other leading universities continue to prove Babbel works. One study found that using Babbel for 15 hours is equivalent to a full semester at College. With over 16 million subscriptions sold, Babbel's 14 award winning language courses are backed by a 20 day money back guarantee. This year I want you to learn another language so I'm teaming up with Babbel to gift you 55% off subscriptions, but only for our listeners at babbel.com Gamescoop get up to 55% off at babbel.com GamesCoop spelled B A B B E L.com GamesCoop rules and restrictions may apply.

[Sam Claiborne]

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[Damon Hadfield]

Discover Area 51 [e-mail] what's up everybody? Welcome to IGN Gamescoop. I'm your host, Damon Hadfield. Good to be back after a short little European and UK vacation. But joining me this week is Sam Claiborne.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, it was a pleasure to host last week as my alter ego, which I go by my middle name, James.

[Damon Hadfield]

James Cooper. James Coop. That's perfect. Well, thank you so much for stepping in in my stead. Back here is Sam now and Justin Davis is here. Scoop, got a great show for you this week. We will talk about that ghost of Yote state of play which just wrapped up a few minutes ago. I think that was. I was already excited for that one. And I continue my excitement. You might say that my frothing demand for this game increases and we are now halfway through the year. So that means we're obligated to check in with the best selling games of the year. Game of the year. Watch the Damien Haffees, all of that. I don't make the rules. These Damie Haffies. It's time for the Damie Haffees.

[Sam Claiborne]

You've done that before, Okay, I think.

[Damon Hadfield]

We'Ve done it before. But first, yeah, imagine me. Well, first of all, we spent a week in London which hopefully you caught the game Scoop that we recorded from there. Justin, I know you couldn't make it, but it was kind of funny because they're just in the studio in the IGN UK office. There's just nothing set up in the studio. So I just had to sort of.

[Sam Claiborne]

Cobble together David rolled in. You borrowed a laptop and sorted it out, right?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. The show must go on is just something that I like to say, you know.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, just a little phrase you made up.

[Damon Hadfield]

And so I have an anecdote about the three locations we went to in London. We ate at a sushi restaurant called Piranha. And it was not just a gimmick. They had a huge fish tank in the bathroom that was just piranhas in it. Oh no, it was great. It was all just piranhas. They said they brought them all their.

[Sam Claiborne]

Little underbites and teeth. Is that what they look like?

[Damon Hadfield]

That's what they look like, yeah.

[Justin Davis]

Do you have any time? I experience. Not that I experience Piranha. Tanks all that often, but the couple times in my life I've seen tanks of piranhas, I have such an intrusive thought. My brain says, stick your hand in there. Just do it.

[Damon Hadfield]

No, but I get that. And I understand those thoughts, too. I have those thoughts where if I'm ever, like, if I'm high up somewhere and there's, you know, there's nothing. There's nothing preventing me from just jumping over the side, I could do it. I could just jump over here. I think about that every time.

[Sam Claiborne]

Growing up, my mom had a stuffed piranha, like, just standee. Like it was like, you know, I mean, like, it was like dried.

[Damon Hadfield]

A taxidermied.

[Sam Claiborne]

A taxidermied piranha on her desk at school. And a student one time, one of her, like, graduate students put her finger in the piranha's mouth as, like, a joke. But the piranha has reverse teeth. And even the taxidermy one is still bone or whatever this fish's equivalent of that is in that fish. And had to have it surgically removed by a doctor.

[Damon Hadfield]

Wow.

[Justin Davis]

Jeez.

[Damon Hadfield]

Even in death. Even in death runs.

[Sam Claiborne]

So resist the urge, no matter what.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, it was actually. The sushi was also very good, so it wasn't just a gimmicky place. And they had a whole fish tank full of prawnas that they brought over from Peru. So that was cool. And then we went to Greece, and Greece was very nice. We were on the island of Zakynthos, and it was cool from, you know, we'd sit in the resort at the pool, and you could see there's just the silhouettes of the neighboring islands, which is very cool. It made me think of Assassin's Creed Odyssey or Wind Waker. Exactly. It was Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Wind Waker. That's exactly.

[Sam Claiborne]

There were no piranha.

[Damon Hadfield]

There were no piranhas there.

[Sam Claiborne]

Do you think at the end of the night, they take all the leftover sushi and put it in the piranha tank? That's the solution. You know, places have chickens on hand for eggs and they just put all their stuff in the chicken.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, for sure. That'd probably be the. The.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's good eating for a piranha.

[Damon Hadfield]

I was gonna say they have to be like, the most well fed piranhas in the world.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. Did they look a little sluggish?

[Damon Hadfield]

They were sluggish, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Chunky boys.

[Damon Hadfield]

And then on our way back, we spent two days in Amsterdam, which is great. We actually wish we could have spent more time in Amsterdam. I know. Sam, you were saying you're a big fan of Amsterdam. I love it. Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Love going there.

[Damon Hadfield]

Just a great city. It's actually great for kids. Very walkable, very bikable. I think there's two or three bikes for every human being in Amsterdam. It's crazy.

[Sam Claiborne]

100% physical. You can't get across the bridges because there's so many bikes parked.

[Damon Hadfield]

I know, it's true. It's true. But then I was thinking, like, it's such a visually striking city because of the canals. I was like, oh man, this is great. I'd love to spend more time here. I'd love to play a video game set in Amsterdam. But I was looking around, I don't think there are any. I think there's like no video games in Amsterdam.

[Justin Davis]

We got close with that Deus Ex sequel. Wasn't that in like Prague or somewhere? I don't even remember now, but it was vaguely like, you know, I mean, not. Not that close. I'm being a little bit rude, but like we're getting people like, I bet.

[Sam Claiborne]

There'S like one James Bond level or something in some game, you know, like, I don't know. Are there games set in Venice, which is a similar canal based city? Like.

[Justin Davis]

Well, Assassin's Creed 2 is Venice.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, that's just straight up Venice. I never played that game.

[Damon Hadfield]

That's at least one of the big areas. Yeah, that makes sense because there's like.

[Sam Claiborne]

The piazzas and they all have towers in them. That's kind of made for Assassin's Creed. That's great.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

But not Amsterdam.

[Damon Hadfield]

But it was while I was in Greece, relaxing by the pool, a Paloma in my hand, when I thought, I'll just. I'll pick up my phone here, I'll check in. What's going on. What's going on in video games. Yeah. Oh, no is right. Yeah. This all went. Everyone's heard by now. This all went down last week. Huge layoffs at Microsoft 9000. Some people laid off. And it was a real bloodbath at xbox. Lots of people laid off. Developers closed down, including the initiative which was making Perfect Dark. And I mean, this is a huge disappointment for me. I'm very much looking forward to Ghosts of Yotei, but I think Perfect Dark, since it was announced in 2020, has been like my just my in general, most anticipated game. But I don't really know what I was expecting now that it's been.

[Sam Claiborne]

Over.

[Damon Hadfield]

Five years that it's been in development.

[Sam Claiborne]

Because Microsoft owns the IP outright. It's not like this team could get snatched up by a publisher and have the game come out. Like, it's like such an effective way of killing a game when an internal game is canceled by its own publisher. Oh, brutal.

[Justin Davis]

I mean, so the initiative was formed seven years ago with talent from Naughty Dog and Blizzard and a variety of other places, never released a game and now is shut down.

[Damon Hadfield]

It's so insane. It's so insane. Like I've been thinking.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, it remains an initiative instead of an accomplishment.

[Damon Hadfield]

Sam's been waiting seven years for that one. No, no, I'm not. I don't know, man. I just think this is. It's so. It's such a waste. Seven years. Like you've got to think there are people. I know we've heard, you know, rumors of turmoil and troubled development here and a lot of the leadership has left and there's been turnover.

[Sam Claiborne]

Hold on, is this Amsterdam?

[Damon Hadfield]

That would be the worst. We almost got a perfect door game and in Amsterdam.

[Justin Davis]

What the hell?

[Damon Hadfield]

There's gotta be people there that were there that entire seven years and they just didn't release anything. Like seven years is. It's basically 10% of your entire like working life.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Damon Hadfield]

Right.

[Justin Davis]

It's been happening more and more often lately. Right. It's like, you know, like Jade Raymond I think has had two back to back projects like kind of canceled that didn't work out. It's like just the artistry and talent of like, you know, it's just gone. It'll never come out now. Can you imagine working on something for years and years and then it's just never going to exist?

[Sam Claiborne]

The Spears Edge stuff too. Like this was something to look forward to.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah. Like this. So this, this is like that showcase from last year. Yep.

[Sam Claiborne]

We've talked about this before. It's like that unique combination of the team is like what makes the game. It's not like a auteur usually, you know.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

And so it's like an artur. It's like this. They probably came up with some really cool solutions and new things and stuff. Like stuff that was special. We'll never see that because no matter what happens, they're just be broken up into a million different parts.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

And whatever assets were made, you'll never see. It's just crazy.

[Justin Davis]

They canceled that. That rare game Everwild.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep, yep.

[Justin Davis]

They canceled the Elder Scrolls Online. Zenx Online was making another mmo. It sucks, man.

[Damon Hadfield]

I mean it really sucks.

[Justin Davis]

I don't know, like maybe not like, look, I've said it before on the show. Like, you know, we don't know what was going on behind the scenes and like presumably the project was canceled for a reason. But like it's still like that doesn't make me feel any better. It's like it's like my day is ruined and my disappointment is immense.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yes. And like, yeah, I know what you're saying. Like I'm sure they didn't cancel a game that was awesome in like in ready to ship in the not too distant future. Right, sure. But also they should have. It shouldn't have taken this long. Like they should have had had a game released by now. Like I know, I've said all along that they had kind of an uphill battle marketing, perfect, dark giving. It's a 25 year old N64 game now, but it's like they have a rock solid foundation for like idea that they can build on. Right. It's just a great first person shooter with a spy theme. It's a little bit slower paced. You could do so many cool things with providing gadgets and providing lots of different ways people can approach levels and problems. And then there's the huge multiplayer possibilities there. And then there's the nostalgia which we.

[Sam Claiborne]

Never even heard about. Right.

[Damon Hadfield]

They never talked about. Yeah, multiplay for this.

[Sam Claiborne]

Which makes me think that like this could have been for, you know, kind of urged in one direction towards, you know, the anthem Suicide Squad type situation and then pulled back to a single player. Like who knows? Like we're gonna hear about this at some point because there's a bunch of really bummed developers out there now. Right. And, and it's really, really terrible. But like, I, I don't know what like the single. Because you think like, well, could they have just put out a shorter single player game, kind of finished this up and like made some product out of it. But like no, like full on cancels is like when they shut down, you know, the Bat, the Batgirl movie after it's made, it's like wasn't there enough there to like salvage. It's like a big decision just to tank everything.

[Justin Davis]

And like even projects that do come out, you know, it's like so they. We make. We got three really good Batman Arkham games in like six years and then it took eight years to make Suicide Squad. Like everybody hated like even, you know.

[Sam Claiborne]

Even you know that they made three games in that time. Right. Like that's the assumption is that they had to switch so much. They made the quantity level of Production could have been three games.

[Justin Davis]

I mean, I guess so. Or like, even a game like Ghosts. Like, there's five years between Ghosts. And this seems like. It's like. It doesn't even feel like. That feels fast now of like, oh, we're getting the sequel. And five years later, and it's like, it looks pretty good. And it's like, like, but that's become the norm now. Or everything went smoothly and went well, as it takes you five years.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep.

[Justin Davis]

There must have just makes me. Yeah, makes me sad.

[Damon Hadfield]

There must have just been a lack of, you know, leadership at the initiative, because like I said, like this. It shouldn't have been that you already had. No, Wait, what?

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, he. He's trying to get you to avoid saying that they shown more initiative.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

See, Justin thought of that joke, but.

[Damon Hadfield]

He didn't want to come back. I just think, like, so here. Here's. Here's the timeline in my mind. If I'm Phil Spencer, I'm the boss of Xbox, you announce the initiative in 2018. So, okay, they probably had a pretty good idea they were going to start working on Perfect Dark. Okay, so here you go. Here's your bag of money. Go make a Perfect Dark game. Okay, Two years passed and it's signed. So I'm saying, okay, can we announce that you're making Perfect Dark now? Okay, good. We'll make the announcement that you're making Perfect Dark. Make a little teaser trailer. Cool. Now that a news is out there, everyone knows it. Okay, get back to work. I think maybe two years after that is when I'm like, okay, it's been four years. Do you have something we can ship now? Oh, no, you're still years away. Okay, well, maybe now's the time to reconsider. It's just insane.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, it was that. That four year check in where they said, okay, we'll get started on it now.

[Damon Hadfield]

Mm. But.

[Sam Claiborne]

But. So that's taking. But that's ignoring exactly what we were just talking about where it's like a bunch of Batman developers were probably like, we can make a Batman game in three years. It'll be the best one we've ever made. It's gonna be on a new generation of system. We have this great new engine. And they're like, no, you need to make Destiny.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

And then they're like, well, okay. And then, you know, halfway through that, they're like, your Destiny game sucks. And that's somebody else saying that, you know, like, okay, well, we'll spend more time like, maybe, who knows, you know, like Microsoft doesn't have this. Like, like, well, they have Call of Duty now, but at the time they didn't have, you know, the Halo successor.

[Justin Davis]

There's definitely a pattern.

[Sam Claiborne]

This could have been the plan.

[Justin Davis]

Seemingly a pattern of them mismanaging developers. Right. Like a lot of project cancellations. Although, like, here's the thing. It's like there's this narrative in the movie industry and the games industry of meddling executives that come in and ruin things. Right. And it's like, maybe the Xbox executives should have meddled more. Maybe they were too hands off. Like, okay, go forth and do whatever you want. We'll talk to you in a year and see how you're getting on. I don't know. This is very easy for me to sit here and throw stones because I've never worked in game development. Right. Although we're adjacent to it. I'm close ish to it. But surely that's an executive's job. I'm not here to tell you how to make a game or make design decisions for you, but we are going to have these milestone check ins and there are going to be hard conversations if you're not meeting, you know, meeting your milestone pace.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

Now granted there was a pandemic, so that happened.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yes. But everyone in the world had to deal with that. That wasn't unique to the initiative. Right. Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

It did kind of feel like it messed up video games though.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Those are the two paths. One is that the game was meddled with from the top level a lot. Or it wasn't. You know, I don't know which one it's going to be, but we'll hear about it.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's it for Perfect Dark, like the franchise. Like, I mean it was already 25 years after the original game. Like there's not gonna be another Perfect Dark, which is too bad.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean, this is the success, like successfully stamping out so many of these rare beloved series. You know, it's like, how would we ever get a Banjo Kazooie game now? Like, it just doesn't seem.

[Justin Davis]

There are banjo rumors this week actually.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh my God, really? Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

That they're shopping it around to like some third parties. Like they're taking pitches for a new banjo game was the rumor.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, that's cool. So 10 years, 15. The, the preview that we did of Donkey Kong. Yeah. Bonanza, y' all get to see it. But the, there's like a lot more rare style things in it. One of the things put googly eyes on the eyes.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, everything's on his eyes.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's so funny. That's great. Like, I'm glad Nintendo was like, we should take it because like, that definitely wasn't a Donkey Kong thing. That was like a Banjo Kazooie thing, you know, it's just great to see.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah. Of course Rare wasn't making this Perfect Dark reboot, but it's just, it's a little bit of a reminder. Like, remember, so 2002 is when Microsoft acquired Rare and it has not been good for Rare. But at the same time, I don't know what the other path was because so many people left after Perfect Dark and went to Free Rabbit.

[Sam Claiborne]

Maybe Sea of Thieves is their dream job and that's all they have to work on now. And that's great.

[Damon Hadfield]

I mean, that's true.

[Justin Davis]

They. They do have. Presumably. I mean, I. Here's the thing is that game seems they're on like season 18 of content, so presumably it's popular and making money and they found a live service model. But I have never met or spoken to anyone that plays Sea of Thieves.

[Sam Claiborne]

So that first year, right, when it was just kind of being tried in.

[Justin Davis]

The office, you know, but there's still like, it's still cranking and like every single time I see a content update, I'm like, should I try Sea of Thieves? And then I don't.

[Sam Claiborne]

There was. They were. They did their first like direct stream this week and talked about some like behind the scenes stuff that's going on there. This is. This can't be what it still looks like, right?

[Damon Hadfield]

This is out originally in 2018. I mean, it's a big, you know, it's not supposed to be a big graphical showcase, you know.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, the trailers, which is all I've ever seen of it, make it look really pretty and colorful and stuff. It's at a big black ocean.

[Damon Hadfield]

So really bad news for Xbox last week. I guess what it leaves me wondering is like, how damaging is this to Xbox's reputation? A reputation that was already not super stellar. Right. Like, I don't know well.

[Justin Davis]

And like then it's gonna do such long term reputational damage to like, let's say you're a talented game developer, artist or wherever do you want to go work on an Xbox Studios game? Like, do you have faith that they're gonna see it through with you? That they're gonna be like responsible for you?

[Sam Claiborne]

Or if your studio is being snatched up by Xbox, is that just the scari. Because a lot of it goes out of your. Gets out of your control for sure.

[Justin Davis]

Right. And again, this is an outside looking in perspective of like, maybe these executives had too much faith in the studios that they acquired. But regardless, like, if you are an artist and you're involved in a creative endeavor, you want your stuff to see the light of day. And if you lose faith or confidence that there's a good chance that that's going to happen anymore, you'll go work somewhere else for sure.

[Damon Hadfield]

One of the most maddening things about all this is that this news broke last week. To my knowledge, Xbox has not publicly said anything officially about this.

[Sam Claiborne]

Like, to gamers, speaking to gamers, internal.

[Damon Hadfield]

We know this because Matt Booty had an internal message to his teams. They haven't said anything to their fans. That's crazy to me. Like, one of their big first party games that they announced years ago has been canceled and they did not actually message that to their fans.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's interesting. I didn't think about that.

[Damon Hadfield]

Insane to me. Yeah. I don't know.

[Sam Claiborne]

What are you looking at here? What is this?

[Damon Hadfield]

This is ever wild. Yeah. This was gonna be the.

[Sam Claiborne]

One of the canceled games.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah. Which.

[Sam Claiborne]

What type of game was this supposed to be?

[Justin Davis]

I mean, this is the rare game that. I mean, I don't. I can't even remember too much about the gameplay, whether you could.

[Sam Claiborne]

So it was like new rare. IP looks pretty magical. Probably it was cameo at some point.

[Justin Davis]

It was a cameo. Like, I can't quite recall what the gameplay loop was gonna be in it, but, you know, I always thought the visuals of it looked striking.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah. So it sounds like it's a mess at Xbox, but at the same time, we have sales data from May in. And half of the top 10 bestselling games in May were all Xbox games.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yep.

[Justin Davis]

I mean, and PlayStation. You know, granted, Ghosts of Yotei, which we're gonna talk about in a sec, looks sick. But like, you know, we've talked on Gamescape many times about the drought of first party games there as well. Nintendo is the only company left on earth that like, knows how to consistently make games on time and on budget.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's a big deal. Right. Like they have this schedule that they're sticking to and do you remember that kind of like shock of getting used to that schedule when There was a GameCube only and we had to wait for like there's like five Nintendo games a year and everybody's like, this sucks. This is so few games because nobody third parties are making games until Capcom started. And like all that stuff was going on and then now it's like, wow, they're making five games a year. You know, it's like times have changed so much. It's just like, how did they. You look back at previous years like, oh, Pikmin 4 and a paper Mario came out alongside, you know, Tears of the Kingdom or like, whatever it is. Like, their years look really impressive always.

[Justin Davis]

There's also these persistent rumors and like, not even really rumors. It's just sort of my headcanon and my theory that, like Nintendo sits on games. Like, I think Donkey Kong was done like 18 months ago. And they're like, just save it for the Switch.

[Sam Claiborne]

2 definitely started as a Switch 1 game because we got that in an exclusive interview.

[Justin Davis]

And so I think that they finish games and just sit on them and sort of strategically release them at the time that makes the most sense. Which. Which has the side effect of like, that team's been. If that's true and that game's been done, the team's been sitting there working on something else for a year.

[Sam Claiborne]

You will never hear about what Nintendo canceled because they know they're putting out that game. It's a project. Hammer aside, you just aren't going to see those, you know.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. They'll sit on an idea for like 20 years and then bring it back.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hadfield]

My son is so excited for Donkey Kong Bonanza. Every day he asks if it's out yet.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, it's not too long, right? So next week.

[Damon Hadfield]

Next week, Yeah. I was going to title this episode Perfect Dark is Dead. Long live Perfect Dark. But I learned something that's actually. It's actually doesn't make sense because it's meant for like when the king dies, it's. And they already have the new successor, so it's the King of Zed. And then the Long live the king means for the new king who's over there. So. And there's no new Perfect Dark. So it's just Perfect Dark is dead, period.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did you see? I don't think we use this title for last week, but I was making a killer app joke because I think Logan said that Donkey Kong was a killer app and I came up with Killer Snack, which is like, great a great reason to buy a system, but maybe, you know, it's bite sized.

[Justin Davis]

Nobody liked my. And I'm sure. I'm sure someone did this, but I suggested Killer Ape.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, yeah, that was good too.

[Damon Hadfield]

But it is good to think of documentation.

[Sam Claiborne]

One letter of app with an e and it's scalar.

[Justin Davis]

Yep.

[Sam Claiborne]

All these are good. These are all good ideas. None of them were used.

[Justin Davis]

I always think jokes and I submitted.

[Sam Claiborne]

The art like you said. I got it.

[Damon Hadfield]

I got it made.

[Justin Davis]

Good jokes are the best when you explain them. I've always said that it gets funnier and funnier.

[Sam Claiborne]

See, a killer app.

[Damon Hadfield]

The memory of Perfect Dark is too painful. I cannot bear to speak of it anymore. Let's move on to Ghost of Yote, which is a very cool looking video game that should be coming out in just a few months. They just had their state of play. Didn't need to do much to sell me on this, but I watched it and I was like, cool, good to go. I'll see you on October 2nd. Looking good. I like the idea of the Yotei 6. Yep, give me a kill list.

[Sam Claiborne]

What does that remind you of?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep, exactly. Yep, give me a kill list. I'll hunt them down.

[Justin Davis]

They, they said a lot of stuff. I liked Ghosts of Tsushima, but I didn't love it as much as like I think you two did. Like it wasn't anywhere close to the game of the year Hunt for me and like the sequel. Like man, like this. I was really sold on what we saw today. I thought it looked awesome. Like there's this vista.

[Sam Claiborne]

Holy crap.

[Justin Davis]

Like just the wide open spaces. Like they're saying things like, you know, it's not a checklist. Play at your own pace, your own way. Like I think, I think this is really appealing. I think it's really admirable. I also look, I, I don't think that's realistic at all. Like gamer brain is a real thing. And they're like, you know, it's not a checklist. Like, you know, just explore the world in an experiential way. But like, you know, gamers want, like gamers want to see a relationship bar fill up with every member of your wolf pack. And when the bar fills, confetti shoots out and, and they give you a new spear with which to go enact your revenge. And like, you know, and then there's a cool animation that accompanies that. So like it's, it's what's interesting. And maybe no one is going to make this connection but me. But like to me it felt a little bit Breath of the Wild esque in the sense that a lot of games looked at Breath of the Wild and they said, let's make it. You can climb everything and that you have physics and a glider. But I feel like Sucker Punch, you know, took some Inspiration in a more sucker punch way. And they said we're going to let people play how you want. We're going to focus on the journey, we're going to focus on wide open spaces. And I feel some of that kind of like player freedom and flexibility they really seem to emphasize. And I thought that that seemed awesome to me. Like I loved it.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, do, yeah.

[Damon Hadfield]

Sam, how disappointed were you to learn that there are cards in this game?

[Sam Claiborne]

I, I know that's the first thing I thought of when I, when I saw that. You know, so the, it's always so funny when a game comes out in a year with another game that you just have to compare it to and then the devs are just like, damn it. You know, you can just think like internally they're just like, why do we have to be compared? And then the recency bias helps a lot and stuff like that. It's just, it's just interesting. It's the same plot as Assassin's Creed Shadows, which is like really funny too. And you know, similarly said the weapon list is exactly the same. I thought that was funny too. I think that like this game, I, I, I like it doesn't. Assassin's Creed Shadows is the prettiest game I've ever played. This doesn't quite look like it's gonna be that. And let me like mention that like the vistas and like the nature and everything looks maybe better than Assassin's Creed Shadows, but the towns don't and like the fights don't and it's just like there's things that just don't look as good as that. So it'll be an interesting comparison in the end. I can't wait to side by side stuff and everything. This is, this is just the Breath of the Wild scene here. And they talk about open worlds, right at this point. I thought that was really funny that they did a little Breath of the Wild reference in their promotional material for this.

[Justin Davis]

I think, I think you're right to point out like town density and animations. Like, look, this game doesn't look bad, but on the scale of like big aaa, the biggest of the big budget games, I don't think it's quite up there.

[Sam Claiborne]

The castles were really interesting and fun in Assassin's Creed. Like that just, they just were, I mean you didn't need to do 25 of them, but there were 25 to do. And I don't blame the game for that. You know, there was a lot to do. The first five were amazing. So like, yeah, it's Got that going for it, I think. I think it's gonna look really good and be really fun. There's. It's just really funny to me that we're gonna only compare this to another game. I just. I just think it's like. It's just. Just that type of year. It's the Okami Zelda year. Well, it was Twilight Princess here. Just like, that's all you talk about. And then the factions just choose one and. Well, I mean, Assassin's Creed also has a lot of detractors for, like, a bunch of, like, shitty reasons. Right? So, you know, I don't know if this is gonna win out. Although I already saw comments accusing this game of this. Of similar stuff, which is like, it's.

[Justin Davis]

Getting about into Japan.

[Damon Hadfield]

What are you.

[Sam Claiborne]

What are y' all talking about here?

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, the. What. The premise is that your brother has died and you're going on a revenge mission against these six, you know, people, right? I'm gonna call it now. The brother's not dead.

[Damon Hadfield]

Oh, my God.

[Justin Davis]

He's one of the six. He's the final boss. That's my. That's my prediction.

[Damon Hadfield]

I thought it was. Your whole family got killed.

[Sam Claiborne]

Whole family's dead, though. So maybe the whole family is the six.

[Damon Hadfield]

You're the one that killed your whole family at the end of the game.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hadfield]

Oh, wow.

[Sam Claiborne]

So I like the.

[Damon Hadfield]

Sorry to spoil that for everyone.

[Sam Claiborne]

Like, super, like, attempts at, like, putting Japanese culture from, like, all eras in this. Like, the music stuff was just like, I don't care too much, but, like, just showing that they have the modes for the other directors, including one that's just like a lo fi mode from Samurai Champloo.

[Justin Davis]

Audio.

[Damon Hadfield]

It's hilarious.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, it's awesome. And the Kurosawa mode. And they said, like, you know, with permission from the Kurosawa estate. And so I love. I love the idea that they reached out to, you know, his daughter, whomever, and they're like, can we call it Kurosamo? And they're like, yeah, sure.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, sure.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. But I do. But I do want to say that. And I like that Sushiba did this too. It's a. It's a bugbear of mine. When someone has, you know, like, we know that people like these black and white samurai movies. So we have a black and white mode, but it's like, no, like Kurosaw. Like, there's an actual, like, art. Just like, how.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin Davis]

It's not just black and white. Like, the shading and shadows. And I, you know, I Unfortunately, is.

[Sam Claiborne]

What they call that in black and white film.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, sure. So, yeah, like, exactly. That's where Claire Obscure comes from. So it's like. But I. And I don't know, it just feels like I'm a little bit of a fake fan. I can't identify. This is just black and white, and this is more adhering to the Kurosawa vibe. But it definitely came across in the footage that we saw. It was very striking and very beautiful.

[Sam Claiborne]

So I like the gameplay of what I did in Assassin's Creed. I know I'm doing the thing that I said that was funny, but I liked my gameplay loops in that game. I did, like, infiltration of castles and stuff like that. Some of that didn't work as well. And. And the original Tsushima. Tsushima. Yeah. So, like, sneaking around and infiltration, stuff like that. Like, I don't know. Like, I'm worried when I saw, like, oh, that the bird is back and it leads you to a thing and the fox is back. Like, I don't really want to do that 50 more times. And I'm saying that. Saying, like, I got sick of that in Assassin's Creed. Also, like, I like how they changed up the Japanese Assassin's Creed and did different stuff in it. Like, it was cool. So anyway, I'm a little worried that, like, I will not have. Because it's only been five years, I will not have forgotten the time I've had with Ghost. And it might be a little samey, but. But maybe my amnesia will be complete and it'll be really fun.

[Damon Hadfield]

I'll probably ride the horse in this one.

[Sam Claiborne]

I was going to ask you that. Like, that distance looks like a long run. And with the other. The other horses are, like, kind of like taunting you.

[Damon Hadfield]

Right?

[Sam Claiborne]

So you're like, well, I wish I could be as fast as those horses.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, exactly. So you're talking about the. The different modes, the director modes. There's also a Miike mode for Takashi Miike, which just. It just makes the game grosser. It adds. Adds gore, adds more blood and stuff to it. Okay. I mean. Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

And a little bit of like a film grainy, like. Like light exposure in addition to the zoom. Like, it just.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, it's great. It also, like, changes the camera placement, so it's. It's just interesting. But that lo fi beats mode, I think, is hilarious. I don't know if it's. It was intended to be humorous, but I thought it was a. It had a humorous effect on me when I was watching It.

[Sam Claiborne]

So Justin, you just mentioned climb everything and like the revolution of that. In our interview about Donkey Kong today, the team talks about. They use a term over and over again, but they talk about how they have voxel created levels. And like they kind of came up with the idea of like, so that's just a level that can be fully destroyed. And they came up with that technology and then, you know, somebody asked them to make a Donkey Kong game and they're like, well that, that's where the just being right on its face, like, let's make a voxel game. We have to make a Donkey Kong game. So let's just combine it. That's where it came from. It's really cool getting an origin like that from Nintendo because you just never hear stuff like that. But the voxel thing is kind of like. It's like climb everywhere in that like is like destroy everything. Which is like exactly what that game is shaping up to look like. You know, I just think that's. That's an interesting Nintendo thing. Take. Take a philosophy to its like super conclusion, you know.

[Justin Davis]

Agreed.

[Damon Hadfield]

Beginning back to Ghost of Yotei. What was this? This feature with a click of the button, you can like switch to the past to revisit your family. And they said that would increase the sort of emotional connection to your journey. I was a little unclear on what all that was for and like how. How extensive that would be used in the game.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. Maybe it's like you control when you do the flashbacks or something.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

Please, please be excited. Well, you'll learn more when the game comes out this fall. I mean, I don't really like, you know, they, they said they showed the footage of like, you know, flashing back to the past in real time and Yep. I was like, oh, okay. Can you do that anytime anyway, only.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah. Do you do that just in the beginning of the game? I don't know. I thought that was weird. But another thing, you've got Blinding Powder as one of your sort of like tools that you can use. And I just thought that looked great the way the, the way the smoke like sort of clung to their body as they moved away. It looked very, very realistic and very cool. I like that. Lip syncing for the Japanese voice track will be there from launch. It was not. If I remember right, it was not there.

[Sam Claiborne]

So that's why they clarified that. Huh? Is that. It's just. And you were really into that in multiple games. Was that a game you waited to play it in?

[Damon Hadfield]

No, I played it in Japanese, but it wasn't lip synced to Japanese. So even though I was hearing the right language, their mouths were not okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

So it's the lip syncing specifically that was okay. Got it.

[Damon Hadfield]

So now I'm pretty.

[Justin Davis]

I'm pretty staunchly anti AI in most contexts. But like, I feel like surely there must be some software solution that could handle lip sync now. Like, I don't know that we need humans going in and. And hand. You know, a hand matching just dozens of hours of cutscenes and lips.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

But you know, that's how we ended up with Mass Effect Andromeda. So what do I know? Well, just the horrific faces in that game use some software to be matched to the audio, if I recall at.

[Sam Claiborne]

Least of which the one you design yourself.

[Damon Hadfield]

And then there's a limited edition console which I think looks very nice. But I was surprised. I think it's just a base PS5. It's not for the PS5 Pro.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. Base PS5. But they. They did. I. You know, they do have the PS5 plates for the. If you already have a PS5, but you want the style. I thought that was at least nice.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, the gold looked really nice. I thought that looked really, really cool. Like, I mean, what a awesome system design. I was in the market for buying multiple systems.

[Damon Hadfield]

I might at least try to pick up the controller. Although they're also bringing back that limited edition Astrobot controller later this year and I really need to get that one too.

[Justin Davis]

They announced new. They knew a new Astrobot. There's a little Cloud Bot.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep.

[Justin Davis]

The new levels Buster Sword. It's great.

[Damon Hadfield]

There are new levels out today, so that's my evening sorted. That'll be fun.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's great. What about Death Stranding and you go back to that.

[Damon Hadfield]

I haven't. I. I like to play more Death Stranding. I mean, you know, I was on vacation, but now that I'm home. Yeah. I'm gonna start up Tony Hawk 3 and 4 tomorrow.

[Justin Davis]

Oh yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I should give that a try.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I'm on chapter 15 of Death Stranding. I still haven't beat it. I. I spent a lot of time doing some infrastructure building. That was very cozy game. I liked it a lot.

[Justin Davis]

How many chapters are there?

[Sam Claiborne]

There's 17. But the back five are all just talkies and boss fights and stuff. You know, it's like that kind of weird pile on that happens at the end of a lot of video games. Just because you put chapters in.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah. Cool.

[Sam Claiborne]

Especially his games. Let's be honest.

[Damon Hadfield]

Are you gonna play Death Stranding?

[Justin Davis]

Justin Yeah, I talked about it on the show last week when you weren't on of. I want to go back and play one and I don't own one. So at some point, you know, actually, because I'm going on vacation tomorrow, maybe when I get back, that would be a good time to run through the first one and then I would get. Put the second one in my backlog.

[Sam Claiborne]

I love it. Every moment.

[Justin Davis]

It's been great.

[Damon Hadfield]

I mean, everyone. Everyone does seem to love it. We gave it a 9 in our review and I haven't. I haven't heard anyone speak an ill word of death Staring two.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I mean, the original, we talked about this a little last week. Like, the original is something that sort of, like, is not universally beloved. Right. Like, it's. Yeah. A little bit divisive. Whereas the sequel seems to have a little bit more mainstream appeal and, you know, more polish, which is always exciting to hear.

[Sam Claiborne]

You know, there's sometimes there's like Kojima moments which you can kind of describe as, like, unhinged because they're kind of like humorous or freaky or whatever. This game has a lot more of that than I expected. Like, a lot more. And there's like just whole, like, routines and stuff that you would not expect to be in the game. It's just very, very strange. Interesting stuff.

[Damon Hadfield]

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[Sam Claiborne]

No, I think I still like Shadows best. It's a tough call, but I have to beat death training. But like, yeah, I don't know. Like I just. That that's a tough. That's a tough one. They're not too close for me right now, but maybe I will like Death Training more after sitting on it for a little bit.

[Damon Hadfield]

Well, it'll be even more interesting to see how Ghost of Yote then lines up for you. Justin, you have a. Is it. Did you say Clar Obscure would be the. Your. The best game you've played this year?

[Justin Davis]

Oh, good question. I mean the. The game that I was the most obsessed with and completely took over my life was Kingdom Come one, which is obviously not eligible for game of the Year this year. But I think I'm getting that urge. Like I said the thing like I absolutely no life to that game. And I'm like, I need to take a break before I jump into the sequel. And it's been like three or four months now and like I'm. I'm getting there. So it's like.

[Sam Claiborne]

And if you like the first one that much, then maybe two is going to be your Easy, easy. Right?

[Justin Davis]

For sure. And I did just start. I can't talk about it yet because the review embargo isn't up when it comes out. But there's a new Zachtronics game called Kaizen A Factory Story. So that's developer.

[Damon Hadfield]

Wait, is it Zachtronics game? I don't know what that is. That's.

[Justin Davis]

So they made, they made spacechem and they made Opus Magnum and they're kind of like they get described as factory games, but they're not actually really factory games. They're like puzzle games but where you get to invent your own solution. It's like make this thing and then you get to like flip it and twist it and combine different parts and like there's not a set solution but you can just make it however you want. And you know, I really, really, you know, Opus Magnum is the one that really went over with the mainstream press and everybody loved Space Cam was his first game and that was the one that I spent the most time with and I've been playing this and you can ask for my full impressions in a week or two when I'm back on Game Scoop. But you know, I loved the other games and so I've spent a lot of time with this so far as well.

[Damon Hadfield]

Cool. That looks cool. Well, the Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is the what? It's the sixth best selling game of the year so far. So the top 10 best selling games of 2025 so far are starting at number one. Monster Hunter, Wilds Oblivion Remastered, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Black Ops 6, MLB the Show, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, WWE Split Fiction, NBA 2K and Civilization 7. So some notable entries in there. I just think it's funny that Mount Stoner Wilds is still the best selling game of the year. Of course, World is Capcom's best selling game of all time. It just didn't feel like Wilds made as big as Splash.

[Justin Davis]

I mean, Wilds is really seen as a failure. Right. Like the community all moved on and was kind of upset about some of that. I mean, I'm not a Manhun guy, so I can't articulate why, but I know that Wilds wasn't really liked and hasn't had sort of service game staying power like World did. But like what an environment where you can have the best selling game of the year and then it can be seen broadly as a disappointment commercially and critically. And I think it reviewed well too. But like the tricky thing about reviewing a game like this is like, it can be great for that first 50 hours, but then like they want Monster Hunter to be a 5,000 hour game. Right. And sometimes that those nuances don't reveal themselves until you continue putting the reps in. And, and again, I'm not a manhun guy, but I believe that like there's this history of DLC cleaning up and fixing a lot of what people don't like about Monster Hunter games. So I would characterize this as a good candidate for sort of having a renaissance eventually if they, if they release some paid add ons.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, they could, they could. Final Fantasy 14 this.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I think the.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean, I'm not surprised, but it's worth noting that Oblivion Remaster is a. Is a top seller for number two.

[Damon Hadfield]

Number two?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. I mean, that's amazing. I mean, first of all, Avowed is not even on the list, right?

[Damon Hadfield]

Oh no, it's not in the top 10. Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

So that's sad, but I like that. Yeah. So you. It's, you know, it's a remake of an old game, surprise launched, you know, with no hype for. Except for leaks.

[Damon Hadfield]

There are rumors. Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Many, many years. You know, they didn't have to go through the cycle of like, this is our game and this is what we're doing, like surprise launch. And then also it was launched into Game Pass, you know, and like, I think everybody I knew at work especially played it through Game Pass and then moved on. I'm shocked to hear that there's sales, especially in the face of some news this week about developers. One developer, arcane person from Exarcane complaining about Game Pass not selling games. I'm not saying this contradicts that person or anything like that. There just seems to be a lot of fluctuations and nuance to how much Game Pass affects Your game sales?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, sure. I mean, I don't know. The game sales data comes from Circana, which used to be npd, and they track dollar sales. So these aren't like unit sales of games is what games generated the most money. And so I don't know if Xbox is still reporting them. And somehow like, you know, it was downloaded and played this many times on Game Pass. So we.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, I hope that's estimating data.

[Damon Hadfield]

I mean, I just don't know. We're estimating this dollar value is going to be. I mean, I think, I don't know.

[Justin Davis]

Like, that game had hundreds of thousands of concurrents on Steam. Right. So that was what I was taking, paid purchases.

[Sam Claiborne]

And I think that's funny because you could have just bought a, you know, $15 Game Pass subscription and play it on your PC, but everybody wanted to play it and see, it just gets interesting.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah. A remaster of oblivion from. It's 20 years old. How. How does Xbox look at Bethesda and just say, like, why are you doing anything but making Elder Scrolls 6? Why are you doing anything else?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, or. Or Skyrim remaster. Right. Or just like a remaster a year. I mean, that's Nintendo's magic too, is that they just. They'll just remaster stuff and sell a shit ton. You know, they'll, like, they'll give something a gloss over and sell a lot of copies. And then, you know, you should just think these companies, like, we get annoyed with all the remakes and remasters, but, like, there's some big targets out there that are not getting remakes and remasters from Bethesda.

[Justin Davis]

I mean, I said this, I put this on. You know, Blue sky of like Arkham Knight came out 10 years ago, and I don't need video games to look any better than that ever again. If we can get single player big AAA video games every three to four years, just make him look as good as Arkham Knight and then I'm good for the rest of my life. Like, that's enough for me. Like, Oblivion remaster, like Fallout 3, like.

[Sam Claiborne]

It doesn't look as good as that. Like, you need to get Fallout 3 fixed a little bit and put it up at the level of Oblivion. I completely agree.

[Justin Davis]

Correct. There's a threshold by which, okay, this is the limit. And now we don't need games to look better. And if someone wants to do that, if you're a Rockstar or a Naughty Dog, more power to you. But for everyone else, you don't need to do all that. You Needn't bother.

[Sam Claiborne]

And it turns out that you can probably just design all your stuff for Xbox series S and Switch 2 and then they're completely portable.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah. It's interesting that the top 10 best selling games of the year are bookended by two games that people apparently don't like. Monster Hunter wilds and then civilization seven in the number 10. It's just my first civ.

[Sam Claiborne]

I don't know what I'm supposed to like.

[Justin Davis]

Civ 7 is also a game that will, you know, be. They'll be supporting it for. For like eight years and it will also eventually get to a better state. I don't even think it's in a bad state now. It's the civ cycle of like they add all these indispensable features in DLCs and then the next game comes out and is more bare bones. Then everybody's mad and then they have to add those indispensable features back in and it's a dlc.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean this one just had like just completely obscured menus and features. Like physically like you couldn't see the menus you're supposed to use are like, you know, sending a merchant somewhere just didn't make any sense. And I think they started fixing that stuff right away. But I was long done with it by the time that happened. And it was just funny because I was just one of our guides leads in the uk, Jen. She's a huge civ fan and was covering this game and I just had like an open. Just chat with her. I'm just like, I think I'm supposed to be able to do this. She's like, yes, you are supposed to be able to do that. But it doesn't look like it's a very roundabout way that you'd explain. I couldn't have played the game without that. Like that's how bad it was at telling me what to do, you know.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Great game though. I really end up liking it like, you know, just like in terms of like civ. I like civ. You know, it was fun. I get it now.

[Damon Hadfield]

Check out. Oh, I don't know how you would. That's another game they really need to like remaster and or like just dust off and polish up Civilization Revolution. Civrev.

[Justin Davis]

Make a sit. Make a Civ Rev 3. Put it on.

[Sam Claiborne]

What is revolution? What's different about it?

[Damon Hadfield]

It's a little bit like a more stripped down casual. Yeah, yeah, I'd say arcadey, but it's still much more involved than an arcade game. But It's a. It's a streamlined, sort of simplified version of Civ that worked really well and.

[Sam Claiborne]

People liked it and they.

[Justin Davis]

And it came out on like Switch and iPads, you know, and maybe other things, but I think that's how most people played it.

[Damon Hadfield]

It was originally like a 360 era game.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, really?

[Damon Hadfield]

I mean, even.

[Sam Claiborne]

Even beyond a remaster, that just seems like something that could have been made into like an occasional series. Right. Like a game that comes.

[Damon Hadfield]

Exactly, exactly.

[Justin Davis]

CivRev3 would be a great. Would be very well received now, I think.

[Sam Claiborne]

Really?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep. It would.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. The time is right for it. Put it on all this. There's all these handheld PCs now, you know, Steam decks.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep. Well, for me, my. My game of the year so far is easily Monster Train 2. I know I've talked about it a lot, Justin. Have you checked it out yet? It's so good. It's so good. I played a lot of it on my trip. I have now. I've unlocked all 10 clans, leveled them all up to their max level. I've unlocked all the Pyre Hearts. I've defeated the three titans, the final bosses, multiple times with different combinations. So I'm at a place where I feel like I've probably gotten enough out of it right now. I could keep playing it like Balatro. Every clan. You can beat it at different increasing difficulty levels. It's the same way. So that's what I could do right now. But I'll probably set it aside. Wait for. There's going to be DLC coming out for it, I think later on this year.

[Sam Claiborne]

There's both monsters and trains in Death Stranding.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, these monsters are on a train though.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, these monsters.

[Sam Claiborne]

If monsters got on your train or tram and Death Stranding, that would be bad. A bad thing.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep, yep, yep, yep. But I have enjoyed several of the games this year. I do want to get. We were talking about Avowed. I. I'd like to get back to Avowed. Like to play more Death Stranding 2. I still have not played Claire Obscure yet, so I need to check that out at some point.

[Justin Davis]

It's on. I don't know how long it's going to be on Game Pass, but it's still on Game Pass for now.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, yeah, it's there. I mean, it's on PlayStation plus as well.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, okay.

[Damon Hadfield]

It's worth noting. I haven't. I'm probably three quarters of the way through Doom the Dark Ages, so I should probably just knock that out and finish that since that's a Little bit shorter.

[Sam Claiborne]

Where was Claire on the for sale? That's the sales.

[Damon Hadfield]

It's not in the top 10.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, it's not?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah. I don't have the full data, but it's not in the top 10.

[Sam Claiborne]

Had a lot of. Lot of kind of hype around it. Although when you have games like NBA 2K from last year and Black Ops. Yeah, it's like, it's tough.

[Justin Davis]

I mean, they had announced what they announced a million in sales and then two and then I think. I think the last update we got was 3.3. And I don't know that they've done a big, splashy social media thing since then.

[Damon Hadfield]

What's this year's Call of Duty going to be? That even. Have there been any leaks about that or rumors? I haven't.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, it's another Black Ops, isn't it?

[Damon Hadfield]

It's another Black Ops. Black Ops 4.

[Justin Davis]

Think so. Did I dream that?

[Damon Hadfield]

I don't know.

[Sam Claiborne]

Something was announced. I feel like it wasn't that interesting. Yeah, there's like some kind of thing.

[Justin Davis]

Black Ops 7 is the next Call of Duty.

[Damon Hadfield]

Oh, yeah. 6 was the last set. Okay. Well, anyway, what I did mostly on the plane was play Monster Train 2. But then I also watched your Friends and Neighbors on Apple tv. Plus.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, do you like it?

[Damon Hadfield]

It's very good.

[Sam Claiborne]

I watched the first two episodes. I haven't seen the rest yet.

[Justin Davis]

I think I'm gonna make Murderbot my airplane thing.

[Sam Claiborne]

I watched the first two episodes of that as well.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, well, so which has the best, the better first two episodes?

[Sam Claiborne]

Neither did have good first two episodes. I didn't think Friends and Neighbors had a great start at all. So I stopped watching at Murderbot. I have to just keep on watching anyways. But it doesn't. Neither of them have great starts.

[Damon Hadfield]

I don't know if I agree about your Friends and Neighbors. I definitely liked it more the more I watched.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's 10 episodes Jon Hamm unlikable, which is hard to do.

[Damon Hadfield]

Oh, I totally disagree. I think the whole show seen the whole season now. I mean. Yeah, I mean, so maybe. Yeah, I. This show is about. It's about liking Jon Hamm's character and rooting for him. I think that's what the whole show is about. If anyone doesn't know. The basic premise is that he's this big hedge fund manager who is blindsided and gets fired from his job. And he doesn't. He feels lost. And he's also going to run into some money troubles. So he starts breaking into the homes of his friends and neighbors and just stealing random things like a watch or an expensive bottle of wine. But it's a lot, it's about. It's about a lot more than that. There are a lot of great characters, a lot of well written characters. Very funny. This whole, you know, wealthy community surrounded or sort of focused on this country club and a lot of things happen. It's good. It's really, really good. It's definitely like an. An anti hero, like rooting for this guy who's a little bit shady, you know, in your. In the tradition of your Breaking Bads and Sopranos. Although it's not nearly as violent as those shows.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, I haven't heard a lot of chatter about it, but the new Poker Face season has been really enjoyable. I just finished that. There's a bunch of just kind of, you know, knives out. Rian Johnson style direction. He directs a few episodes and plotting and stuff. It's. It's really well done. Like it's a. It's a murder a week show, but it's knows about its formula and plays with it. I really like it.

[Justin Davis]

I love season one.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, it works great. I couldn't stop watching. I haven't stopped watching it. I just finished it and then I loved the bear season. It was awesome.

[Damon Hadfield]

Oh, you watched the bear?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hadfield]

I haven't heard anything about that. That's interesting.

[Sam Claiborne]

So good.

[Damon Hadfield]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's so much like more fulfilling than the last season, which didn't have a kind of a plot finisher. This, this season's a lot of plot. It's like a lot of like this is what's happening with the restaurant day to day and what's. What's happening. And it works really well for it.

[Damon Hadfield]

Because I didn't even watch last season because everyone seemed to be like, meh.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, it kind of works as like a two parter, you know, so you could kind of like stack them now. But I don't know.

[Justin Davis]

That's. That's what I've heard from folks is like season three, you know, because it's so slow paced. It's like, well, now you can binge it.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

And season three has great. A couple of great episodes and some flashbacks. The flashbacks would slow it down. The season doesn't do that in that same way where they have like that whole, you know, pocket episode that's all flashback as it's very differently. It's just what Justin's saying. It's just a different pace to it. But it works all together. And like again, just like the characters are so there. It's. I know everybody's not a comedy. It shouldn't be nominated for comedy. It's just so funny, though. Everybody's so funny in it, and everybody's just Is clearly having so much fun on that set and, like, playing, like, you know, kind of dramatic roles, but just are. Are just great, funny people to watch.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Chicago accent man.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah. And when I was in Amsterdam, I. I was thinking about that season two episode where, yeah. The pastry chef goes to Amsterdam and he's living on the houseboat.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. There's some interesting stuff with that. That plot line goes a place in the season. It's really good. But yeah, that. That whole day in the life that. That part is amazing. Little houseboat and stuff.

[Damon Hadfield]

But definitely. Andor is the best show that I've watched this year and don't know any. Any. Just. It's such a miracle that that show exists and turned out so well. That's probably gonna.

[Sam Claiborne]

It'll be hard to dethrone that Star wars thing ever. I mean, I guess there's this Grogo movie.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, Grog.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I liked. I liked Me and the Family, like Skeleton Crew.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, I like that show.

[Damon Hadfield]

I like the first episode well enough. And I just never. I don't know, I just never continued with it. Yeah. And then on the movie side, I think Sinners is probably the best movie I've seen this year. I think a lot of people would probably agree with that. Sinners was very good.

[Sam Claiborne]

Although Superman this weekend we'll see.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, I want to see Superman. It's like, it's. It's such a. It's a challenge. Like, I would. I. I would love to take Kingo to see Superman, but I have to, like. I have to show restraint because me, like, I'm excited to do that with him, and that sounds like fun for me, but I also know that, I mean, he's still only five years old, so.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hadfield]

No, no, no, no. I gotta. I have to hold back and show restraint there.

[Sam Claiborne]

But I saw 28 years. I liked it.

[Damon Hadfield]

28 years later, I hear good things about that. I want to see that one too.

[Sam Claiborne]

A lot of castles and zombies. What's not to like?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, there you go. Castles and Z. Okay, let's check in with the listeners.

[Justin Davis]

Hey, listeners.

[Damon Hadfield]

Listeners, remember, you can always reach us at the email address. What is it? Oh, yeah, I've already forgot. It's gamescoopgn.com just like our boy from Boston, Adam did. And Adam says, I'm playing through God of war. 2018 for the first time. Overall, I'm loving it, but I find that searching for collectibles and money feels in conflict with the story. It feels odd to have Atreus calling for me to join him, but instead I'm running in a different direction looking for trinkets. I know this helps pad out the game time, and when I was younger and I had three money and no kids, I was fine with that. But now I have no money and three kids. Please tell me you get the reference. I don't know the reference, but I did think it was funny. And I sometimes would prefer to experience the game story uninterrupted. I've had the same experience in the new Doom games. So what do the Omega Cops think? Do collectibles enhance or detract from the experience of the game for you?

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, Adam, that game specifically has the stuff where Kratos is like, hold on a minute. When you go the other way, Atreus like, oh, we should go this way. He's like, oh, give me a second.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I mean, that's the. That's the eternal video game things, right? Like, you know, I think sometimes podcasters or developers get given a hard time for using terms like this, but it's ludonarrative dissonance. And that's where, like, what the gameplay wants of you is in conflict with, like, what the narrative wants of you. Like, cyberpunk is a good example of this. It's like, you are going to die. You have a literal ticking bomb in your head. But then what the gameplay wants you to do is go, yeah, yeah, go do stunt jumps for like, you know, literally an entire evening. And so, you know, I don't know, like, this is part of why video games have their juvenile reputation, right? And why people sort of roll their eyes at them sometimes. But like, and like me as a lifelong gamer, it's just in my DNA. I don't even, like, notice anymore. Like, someone's like, isn't that weird that that's happening? I'm like, yeah, I guess. I don'. Know, I don't know. I don't think about it. It's the same as the. It's the same as the, you know, the very serious Japanese girl getting a revenge plot. And then there's a loot pinata where you get a new Plus 2 sphere. Like, it's the same thing. So, yeah, I mean, this is part of why, like, Sam, you've said this before and, and you know that video games, in my opinion, can't really tell stories as well. As televisions or movies. And that's because they can be controlled down to the second of like what you want you feeling and using the camera angles and using the lighting. Where it's a game, you're in control of it. Right. So you know, if you want to rub up against a wall to try to find secrets for 30 minutes, you can. Right. But it, it controls the narrative pacing of any kind of story you're trying to tell.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, it's not a problem for me. It's well documented. I just, I just don't really care about stories in video games. Even in something like God of War, I'm not there for the story, but I am there to explore and look for secrets and collectibles.

[Sam Claiborne]

What you may be noticing is how serious that game takes itself and that's why it's hard for it to break out of the. And there's. And I'm not saying that it doesn't have humor in it. And some of the stuff I was just mentioning where Credence kind of, you know, acknowledges that you're wandering and exploring. Like that's all like, you know, they try a little bit there. But that game is like that game got across to people because it's like this father son story that made players weepy. Like that's like, that's the way that that game got across. But then there's a lot of people that didn't feel that way and like the game because it had a good puzzles in it and like it took you out of your life and you know, and you got to explore this like world of Valhalla and stuff. But what you heard the most was like how amazing it was that Kratos frowns the whole time and then turns out to be a good dad. Like that's what you heard because that's like that was the most neat, resonant thing for a lot of people. But it wasn't the neat resonant thing for me and it wasn't the resident thing for some, some, some, a lot of people. It doesn't have to be for you.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I mean, I will say like video game stories are more than just their cutscenes and like the script, it's, it's the vibes and it's where you're going and what you're exploring and what you're doing. So like it is story and narrative of like I'm in a cave and I'm going to choose to go down this path. And like, I think it has a secret down it because I Don't think it's the name Charlie.

[Sam Claiborne]

Like you murder 500 people people, right?

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. So it's like, you know, you like just the act of playing the game is storytelling and narrative. And the narrative is not just the words that come out of a character's mouth. It's like, where, where are you and what are you doing and what's the space you're exploring and how is it making you feel? So, you know, like in that context, like there's a total, you know, journey that Atreus and Kratos go on separate from sort of the interpersonal conflict of the. The storyline that's being told and all the exploration then contributes to that. Right.

[Sam Claiborne]

One thing that's nice about this, and I can say nice things about God of War, as you can all tell, the collectibles actually give you power ups. And there's a end run of bosses, the Valkyries, that are really, really hard. And so you do gain advantage by taking a time and opening those ridiculous nornir chests that are really good puzzles that are hard to open. And that's awesome. I like that. Bosses and stuff like that, like where you get loot and like all that's great because when you play a game like Mario Kart World and like it doesn't give you anything for getting, you know, 1200 collectibles like that, that sucks. So it's like, at least it's incorporated into like the DNA of the combat of the game. It's just all of that, it has the dissonance that Justin pointed out with the story. So it's like just kind of weird.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I.

[Justin Davis]

Man, watching this footage, I haven't played this game since 2018, since it came out. Like, what a game.

[Sam Claiborne]

This is the remake and it didn't look this good originally.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, it's hard to tell, man. So seven years ago, this is what I was saying with Arkham Knight. This is. We don't need like God of War. Just make your game look this good and you can release the game like this forever.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep, summer is just around the corner. And the folks at Mint Mobile have a hot take. Getting a summer bod is out and getting your savings bod is in. This spring and summer, we want skimpy wireless bills and fat wallets. And with premium wireless plans for just 15 bucks a month, you can have both without breaking a sweat or the bank. Isn't that right, Seth? I don't know about you, but my local cell phone provider always has signs out in front that says get 45 new phones.

[Justin Davis]

For $1 when you sign up with.

[Sam Claiborne]

8 new lines for free.

[Justin Davis]

And then you go in there and.

[Damon Hadfield]

They'Re like, yeah, here's your dollar. And then there's also this delivery fee and then there's state taxes and then it comes out to being exactly how much you were paying before and then even more because they tacked on another one for like the phone. But that is not going to happen with Mint Mobile this year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get your summer savings and shop premium Wireless [e-mail] GamesCoop that's mintmobile.com GamesCoop Upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month New customer offer for first 3 months only. Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

[Sam Claiborne]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies just to see if you could save some cash?

[Damon Hadfield]

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[Sam Claiborne]

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[Damon Hadfield]

Okay, and that brings us to video game 20 questions. And I'm excited for this one. We got a good one this week. Comes from Nick from Emmitsburg, Maryland. And Nick says, been listening to you guys for many years now. I don't think I've ever heard this game used before on 20 questions. I sank hours upon hours into this game. Redacted. Thanks for making my commute awesome during the week.

[Sam Claiborne]

Do you run when people mention that, especially do you run this through the. The spreadsheet search that one of our fans made?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep, yep, yep.

[Sam Claiborne]

I did that last week. It was, it was great.

[Damon Hadfield]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

Ours was submitted by Mark Medina, fan and friend of the show.

[Damon Hadfield]

Interesting. What was the game?

[Justin Davis]

I already forget.

[Damon Hadfield]

There's no way to know.

[Justin Davis]

But he, he didn't think we would get dark.

[Sam Claiborne]

We were gonna do Final Fantasy 9. And then he got in a text thread with everybody on the show and started asking them about Final Fantasy games. And I was like, okay, can't do that one now. Something like that happened. Yeah, I don't know. What was it, Justin? You guessed it. I don't.

[Justin Davis]

I already don't remember. I've told. I've said it many times on this show. We record it and I have a good time and then I black out and don't remember anything that happened while making it.

[Sam Claiborne]

PlayStation 1 RPG. Is that right?

[Justin Davis]

Oh, I don't know. It's gone.

[Damon Hadfield]

All right, let the questioning begin.

[Justin Davis]

Does this game. Does this game have multiplayer?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yes.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay, keep going. I'm going to look at my show notes from last week.

[Justin Davis]

Did this game. Did this game come out in the 70s, 80s or 90s?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yes.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. So. So it's actually an early game for once, which is great for us.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. Did this game. Is this game a first person shooter or sports game?

[Damon Hadfield]

No.

[Justin Davis]

Okay, so a 90s multiplayer game.

[Sam Claiborne]

It was. It was infamous. Tekken Son.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, we were way off.

[Damon Hadfield]

It's not a PlayStation 1 RPG?

[Justin Davis]

No, no.

[Sam Claiborne]

But I'd asked Justin about a PlayStation 1 RPG if he would have gotten it. I think is what happened there. Remember that? It was like some game I'd never heard of and Nick was like, that's my favorite game of all time.

[Justin Davis]

It was Dark Cloud. Right?

[Sam Claiborne]

Dark Cloud, yeah. I'd never heard of that. Would you have picked Dark Cloud to give us Damon?

[Damon Hadfield]

I might if, like, if Nick Limone were on.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, yeah. But Justin. Justin got it right away. He said he could have gotten it.

[Justin Davis]

Well, and there's a conspiracy. Like, I know for a fact. I know for a fact I own that game. And it's in that closet right back there, but it's not in that closet. And so now I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what that means.

[Sam Claiborne]

You lost a bunch of games.

[Justin Davis]

I did lose. When I moved here, I lost a box that had my GameCube and OG Xbox in it. And so like that. And I packed up my consoles by generation for no reason at all. It's an insane thing to do in hindsight, but I'm like, this is my NES. This is my 16 bit box. This is my 13 bit box. And that box went missing. The GameCube, Xbox, PS2 box. Anyway, where are we? So, 90s 80s. 70s, 80s or 90s game has multiplayer, not sports or FPS.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay, so did this come out in arcades?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yes.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay. Did it come out before 1988?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yes. That's five.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is there a version on the NES?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yes.

[Justin Davis]

Is this a. Is I want to do a couple more genres. What's another multiplayer genre besides Beat Em Up?

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, shooter or like I was seeing like Contra or like space shooters.

[Justin Davis]

Is this a Beat Em up or space shooter?

[Damon Hadfield]

No.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this a. Is this a shooter of some sort of.

[Justin Davis]

Yes.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay, so is this game made By Konami?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yes.

[Sam Claiborne]

They made them all. Got Jackal, Got a couple of Contras.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. It does eliminate what they. Because it's not like Life Force or anything like that. Gradius.

[Sam Claiborne]

But it has Co Op, which is cool.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. So what? So that leaves us. So Contra is still in the mix. Although I feel like we've had that on the show before. I don't know. I don't know how else to narrow it down. I don't know. The Contra is really the only one I can think of in Jackal. I guess. Now that you mentioned it.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this the first in a series of games?

[Damon Hadfield]

No, that's 10.

[Justin Davis]

Cool.

[Sam Claiborne]

So it's not Contra. Straight up.

[Justin Davis]

It could be Super C. What about Akari Warriors?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, but that's. Who made that game.

[Justin Davis]

Was that not Konami? I don't know. This is not.

[Sam Claiborne]

No, Akari is like romstar, Trade west or some. Okay, let's do. Is this.

[Damon Hadfield]

Tell you who made.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, yeah, I know what it is. I can picture it. So.

[Justin Davis]

Why is it not? Could it be Jackal?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, because big a bit that it's not the first of. I mean, there's no series for Jackal.

[Damon Hadfield]

Right.

[Justin Davis]

But you said is this the first in the series? And the answer was no.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, so it could be like there's no series.

[Justin Davis]

Correct.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's kind of cool.

[Damon Hadfield]

I don't.

[Sam Claiborne]

I like that. Do you drive a Jeep in this game?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yes.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay. This game is really great because it has cut scenes where it's like a bunch of guys sitting in the jeep and a guy's pointing at a map and it says here, here.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Does this game have what I just described in it?

[Damon Hadfield]

Yes.

[Sam Claiborne]

All right. Is it Jackal?

[Damon Hadfield]

It is Jackal. Yep.

[Sam Claiborne]

Great game.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yep.

[Sam Claiborne]

Great.

[Damon Hadfield]

It actually. It actually is a great game. I think. I think this is a hidden gem on the NES.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

100% hidden gems. So fun to play with a friend, collect the. You can't kill the POWs. There's the two different firing modes.

[Damon Hadfield]

It's great because this is from the golden age of Konami. So. Yeah, it's like. It's got.

[Sam Claiborne]

I've never seen the, like arcade ROM for this. I would love to see the arcade.

[Justin Davis]

Version, honestly, because I've only. I was going to say I feel like either my dentist or somewhere. I've only seen the arcade. That's awesome.

[Damon Hadfield]

Wow.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Damon Hadfield]

That's cool. You can shoot down the pillars.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. The Konami adaptions of this, though, like adaptations for NES are like generally better for this and Contra and stuff. Like that, like they, they just did a better job putting them in this aspect ratio:4 by 3 on its side and stuff like that. I just think they're. They're better co op experiences.

[Damon Hadfield]

It's weird because you can drive in, you know, eight directions around the map and you can shoot your missiles and grenades in any direction, but you can only shoot your gun straight up. Yeah, that is only shoot up.

[Sam Claiborne]

Dude. These freaking Greek Medusa heads are trying to kill you in World War II.

[Damon Hadfield]

This is the thing. Other than that this game is grounded in reality. It's like a military game with like.

[Sam Claiborne]

Except for the Greek level, tanks and.

[Damon Hadfield]

Helicopters in a battleship and then there's these Greek statues that are shooting missiles out of their mouths. It's really weird.

[Justin Davis]

Damon. In the business we call that ludonarrative.

[Damon Hadfield]

That's right.

[Sam Claiborne]

Kiera Skiro.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, yeah. In between stages. I think it's. If you, you're. This is a choplifter. Like so you have to rescue hostages. POWs.

[Sam Claiborne]

It is, yeah.

[Damon Hadfield]

And if it's. If you, if you don't rescue all of them, you get the screen of them pointing to the map saying here.

[Sam Claiborne]

But then there's here.

[Damon Hadfield]

If you get them all, it's different, it's a different message.

[Justin Davis]

Gotcha.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think, I think it says. Yeah, great.

[Damon Hadfield]

And then right at the beginning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got them all.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, in the map. Look how cool that is. Like my little kid brain, like for this. And ghosts and goblins was like obsessed, you know.

[Justin Davis]

I love those maps.

[Damon Hadfield]

Bring back. Showing us the map of the entire game in between each level.

[Justin Davis]

How cool. Like, and there's certain games like God of war 2018 would be a perfect candidate for that.

[Sam Claiborne]

Like a tapestry.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, like you're going through like the teleport gate or whatever. And then like the loading screen is like you are here. And then it shows the whole journey that you're on. Like your house is like way back at the beginning on the left.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean that and cheat codes should just be in everything. Cheat codes are so fun. You know the, the new Tony Hawk game, I don't think has cheat codes in it that we're. I was reading in a review it has like unlockable characters but I think you just get them in menus.

[Justin Davis]

Big head mode.

[Damon Hadfield]

Big head. And then at the very beginning of Jackal there's a little, you know, story explanation and then it ends with something great. It says you only this is a quote from the game. You'll need a pocket full of miracles. And the ferocity of a wild jackal. This battle will make your blood boil. That's how it is. That's how it sends you out into the game.

[Justin Davis]

Wow.

[Sam Claiborne]

Look how when there's little humans in this game, they like, they have weapons still and they shoot little tiny bullets at you. It's so funny. I think some of them lob grenades.

[Damon Hadfield]

Yeah, yeah, it's good. Jackal is totally good. Hidden gem on the nes and I don't think it's ever been ported to anything. It's not on any of the recent Konami collections that they've.

[Sam Claiborne]

The only thing it's missing is you can't get out as a little guy and go inside buildings and do stuff and then get back out.

[Justin Davis]

It'll be a blaster master.

[Damon Hadfield]

Blaster master, yeah. Has the.

[Sam Claiborne]

I love that.

[Damon Hadfield]

The trademark on that Ninja Turtles.

[Justin Davis]

And it would be the Ninja Turtles level three life. That's right.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's right. And then my favorite SNES game, Metal warriors, is all about that. You get inside of Mech's ad when there's a little guy.

[Damon Hadfield]

Cool. Well, nicely job. Thank you for the suggestion. Nick in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Viewers, listeners, if you have your own suggestions for video game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address gamescoopgn.com and that is all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you to both Sam and Justin. Thank you to Gilbert and everyone working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon. It's good to be back here on Game Scoop. I missed everyone out there in Scoop Nation. And we're out. This episode of Game Soup was produced by myself, Damon Hadfield and Gilbert Adienza. Technical direction is handled by Gilbert Atienza. Technical production is by Marian Franzen and Amir Aqib. Audio engineering is by Amir Aqib. And post production editing is by yours truly, Damon Hatfield. Graphic design is by Nicole Kagempen. Gamescoop is an IGN production and part of of the Geek Media Network Junior. Yes, sir. CineFix Top 100 is back.

[Justin Davis]

It's time to pick up our quest to watch 100 of the greatest movies of all time. If that sounds good to you. No.

[Damon Hadfield]

Good. Fine. Good.

[Justin Davis]

And season four is taking some time to appreciate family. This season we're diving into movies about all the crazy things we do for family.

[Damon Hadfield]

About reconnecting, about fighting, and about finding.

[Justin Davis]

Family in unexpected places. And what better place to start than.

[Damon Hadfield]

With a movie that does a little.

[Sam Claiborne]

Bit of all of that?

[Justin Davis]

Starring our favorite archaeologist who named himself.

[Damon Hadfield]

After the family dog.

[Sam Claiborne]

You are named after the dog.

[Damon Hadfield]

And.

[Justin Davis]

Stay in touch with your Cinefix family every Sunday for more of our biggest list yet.

[Sam Claiborne]

See you little brother. Not a worry in the world.

[Justin Davis]

Tune into the CineFix Top 100 part of the Geek Media Network on YouTube, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

[Damon Hadfield]

Next Gen Console Watch is the IGN show discussing the latest gaming hardware. Whether it's the PS5 Pro, Nintendo Switch 2, or something new from Xbox. It's all fair game on Next Gen Console Watch, hosted by me, Damon Hadfield, a 20 year IGN veteran. I'm joined by my co host Ryan McCaffrey, host of Unlocked, IGN's Xbox podcast, and Max Scoville, hosted by Genesis PlayStation podcast Beyond. I'll try to keep those console war discussions civil, but no promises. Listen to Next Gen Console Watch on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Friday. Next Gen Console Watch is produced by IGN and is part of the Geek Media Podcast Network. So Justin, I'll see you at Comic Con.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I'll be there.

[Damon Hadfield]

Cool.