Game Scoop! 850: Konami's Own Antiques Roadshow

Summary

Game Scoop! 850: Konami's Own Antiques Roadshow

IGN Podcast — March 24, 2026
Host: Daemon Hatfield
Panel: Nick Limone, Sam Claiborne, Justin Davis

[For more: Visit Geek.com | Podcast: Game Scoop! | Episode 850]

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Episode Overview

This week's episode dives into several hot topics in gaming culture and news:

• The ongoing struggle of the Final Fantasy series to connect with younger generations, as discussed by Yoshi P (Naoki Yoshida).
• Impressions and in-depth analysis of Crimson Desert's rocky, fascinating launch.
• Excitement and nostalgia over Konami teaming up with Jupiter for Picross S: Konami Antiques.
• Listener letters — from Trails in the Sky remake hype, to the legacy of lesser known JRPGs.
• Lighthearted banter about retro game collections, Disneyland adventures, and hard-won discoveries in gaming preferences.
• The climactic Video Game 20 Questions segment, featuring a new-gen action RPG from Asia.

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Table of Contents

1. PAX East Plans & Panel Catch-Up
2. Generational Gaps & Final Fantasy’s Future
3. The State of Crimson Desert — First Impressions & Critique
4. Konami Antiques Roadshow: Picross S Announcement
5. Listener Letters: Trails in the Sky Remake
6. Extracurricular Activities: Movies, Disneyland, and More
7. Video Game 20 Questions: Black Myth Wukong
8. Notable Quotes & Moments

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PAX East Announcements [02:11–04:39]

• Why record on Monday? Damon and Nick share they're heading to PAX East for a live Game Scoop! at the Trolley Sour House.
  • “We're gonna be giving out sour gummies, and doing a whole Game Scoop show there.” — Damon Hatfield (03:29)
• Miranda Sanchez (from Unlocked) will be guesting; giveaways and prizes are promised.
• The group fondly remembers previous PAX experiences and harrowing cold weather, musing about the infamous “T-virus” joke post-2020.

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Final Fantasy & Youth Generational Struggle [04:50–18:18]

Yoshi-P laments that Final Fantasy's lengthy development cycles disconnect new generations from the franchise. The panel unpacks this:

• Yoshi-P’s comments: Kids grow up without new entries in a favorite franchise.
  • “Kids are going through their whole childhood and never getting to play one of these games.” — Justin Davis (06:38)
• Modern cycles vs. '90s era: FF7, 8, and 9 released within 3 years; now 7–10 year gaps.
• Are Final Fantasies disconnected anyway? Each mainline game is thematically and narratively different.
  • “Every Final Fantasy is kind of unconnected to begin with.” — Justin Davis (07:56)
• Comparisons with Nintendo: Zelda's reinvention with Breath of the Wild contrasted to Square Enix’s caution.
  • “Nintendo managed to find as bold of a way forward as Zelda.” — Justin Davis (16:15)
• Panel’s personal opinions:
  • Nick admits FF9 is not his favorite (“I don’t really like IX very much.” — Nick Limone, 19:10).
  • “Just make a game about Tifa. Can’t we all agree on Tifa?” — Sam (19:41)

Timestamp Highlights

• [06:00] Intro/explainer about Yoshi-P & Final Fantasy disconnect
• [10:14] Discussion on development time and its impact on brand loyalty
• [13:49] Roblox, Fortnite, and shifting youth gaming culture vs. traditional RPGs

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Crimson Desert Impressions [22:55–41:41]

A spirited, critical breakdown of Crimson Desert, a visually impressive but controversial new open-world RPG.

• Justin's take: “I agree with that 6 out of 10, but I like it anyway…It’s a little hard to explain.” (25:37)
• Nick’s critique: Stunning visuals and ambition, but “it all feels not connected in any meaningful way.”
• Empty Calories Metaphor: The game offers a sprawling, visually rich world but lacks cohesion and depth.
  • “It’s kind of like empty calories—the game.” — Justin Davis (34:29)
• Rapid fixes: Developers are patching bugs and issues at record speed — inventory bugs, controls, and more.
• Player friction: Systems are plentiful but often pointless or broken; movement feels unresponsive.
• Nick positions himself as playing “for academic reasons,” seeking to understand the appeal despite flaws.
• “I don't like it particularly much. However, I am playing it for what I'm justifying as academic reasons.” — Nick Limone (30:11)
• Hope for future patches: “I suspect this might be a really good game in a year.” — Justin Davis (36:10)
• Genshin Impact Comparison: Both Nick and the group assess its similarities and divergent audience.

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Konami Antique Picross Announcement [43:18–48:18]

Excitement over the recently announced Picross S: Konami Antiques Edition — Picross logic puzzles themed around classic Konami IP.

• Host reactions:
  • “I love these games.” — Damon (44:09)
  • “It's just a perfect, you know, peanut butter and chocolate marriage of nostalgia with puzzles.” — Justin Davis (45:23)
• List of included titles: Metal Gear, Twinbee, Gradius, Jackal, Blades of Steel, Kid Dracula, and more, including deep Konami cuts.
• Meta banter: Joking about being an “antique gamer” and wanting merch that says as much.
  • “We need shirts that say I'm a Konami antique.” — Sam Claiborne (47:57)
• Jupiter's history with Picross on DS and Switch, Nintendo's naming rights, and franchise evolution dissected.

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Listener Mail: Trails in the Sky [48:18–54:50]

A listener writes in to bemoan IGN's lack of review for the Trails in the Sky remake, sparking a conversation about Falcom’s underdog RPGs.

• Justin’s advocacy: Justin is deep into the Trails series, explaining its “MCU of JRPGs” interconnected lore.
  • “I described it on IGN: it’s a little bit like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but in JRPG terms.” — Justin Davis (50:44)
• Remake philosophy: Trails in the Sky remake exists to modernize the experience for new players, and success may lead to more remakes.
• IGN’s review strategy: The panel muses on logistics of reviewing lengthy, niche titles and why some games fly under IGN’s review radar.
  • “Opinions on the Trails games are kind of pre-baked in...” — Justin (54:59)

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Extracurriculars & Retro Fun [57:36–65:50]

Lighthearted closing chatter covers:

• Rookie of the Year: Damon watches the 1993 baseball comedy for the first time with his family — “Funny movie, but an ugly movie. Daniel Stern is very funny in it.” (58:42)
• Disneyland new Star Tours scenes: Group discusses Star Wars rides, randomization of ride scenes, and operational trivia.
  • “I really appreciate how well run the park is... Disneyland has it figured out.” — Damon (65:21)
• Amusement park safety and management, childhood memories of “Adventureland.”

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Video Game 20 Questions: Black Myth Wukong [66:20–80:32]

This week's challenge: Guessing the Asian-developed action RPG that’s similar to a Souls-like... but not quite.

• Panel’s deduction process: Smart genre/geography questions lead to correct identification: Black Myth: Wukong.
  • “Is it Black Myth?” — Nick Limone (76:29)
  • “It is Black Myth: Wukong.” — Damon Hatfield (76:30)
• Discussion on Souls-like traits: Dodge-rolling, boss difficulty, but with unique Devil May Cry/Bayonetta influences.
• Memorable twist: Nick highlights the clever final boss: you fight your own character, who can even steal your healing.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

On the Final Fantasy generational crisis:

• “It takes so long to make these games that kids go their whole childhood without a new entry.” — Justin Davis [06:38]
• “Maybe Final Fantasy is just for my generation and then it's done.” — Nick Limone [13:39]
• “Just make a game about Tifa. Can’t we all agree on Tifa?” — Sam [19:41]

On Crimson Desert:

• “I think it’s wide net that it casts is interesting. One of the most expensive looking video games I've ever seen. But... it all feels not connected in any meaningful way.” — Nick Limone [30:11]
• “It’s kind of like empty calories—the game... but I like empty calories.” — Justin Davis [34:29]
• “If they fixed everything, it can’t ever be more than an 8—because you can’t patch a personality into the game.” — Justin Davis [37:44]

Picross S: Konami Antiques

• “Instead of some generic cactus... I’m making the Gradius ship instead. It’s just a perfect thing.” — Justin Davis [45:23]

Trails in the Sky Remake & Long-form JRPGs

• “It’s a little bit like the MCU... interconnected but building to one big crossover event.” — Justin Davis [50:44]

20 Questions Victory

• “Do you play as a monkey?” — Nick Limone [76:17]
• “It is Black Myth: Wukong.” — Damon Hatfield [76:30]
• “You fight yourself, and if you try to heal, he takes your jug and heals himself—it's the coolest thing in the world.” — Nick [79:45]

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Flow & Tone

Lively, nerdy, and collegial. The IGN crew riff on each other’s gaming histories, poke fun at the state of modern RPGs, and celebrate the weird, deep corners of gaming culture. Their discussion offers both cutting critique and genuine affection for the medium, seamlessly weaving high-level industry analysis with personal anecdotes and inside jokes.

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Useful for New Listeners?

Absolutely! This episode covers a broad range of topics (JRPG nostalgia, modern game design, listener mail) and features both passionate debates and lighthearted fun — a classic Game Scoop! blend.

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Advertisements, sponsor messages, and meta chit-chat omitted for clarity; focus remains on core gaming content, news, and discussion.

Transcript

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[Damon Hatfield]

What's up everybody? Welcome to IGN gamescubes. I'm your host Damon Hatfield. Yes, there will be multiple scoops this week. I'm joined in studio by Nick Limone.

[Nick Limone]

I'm back baby.

[Damon Hatfield]

Sam Claiborne is here.

[Sam Claiborne]

Why on a Monday? Why did you drag us in here?

[Damon Hatfield]

I will. I will get to that in just a moment. And back after a couple of weeks away is Justin Davis.

[Justin Davis]

Scoop.

[Damon Hatfield]

People were worried about you, Justin. They were wondering where you were. Yeah, you're back.

[Sam Claiborne]

You're still alive.

[Justin Davis]

I'm the one that should be saying I'm back.

[Sam Claiborne]

He's like Jon Stewart. He only works Mondays.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

And it is a Monday recording earlier this week. We've got a great show for you. We've got another really fun announcement from Konami making good use of their ip. I don't know if you guys have seen this one yet, but it. Oh, I know about this in particular. I think Justin is going to be excited for this. They're opening up their antiques and also we've got Yoshi P. From Final Fantasy saying, am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.

[Nick Limone]

Am I unk. No, the kids.

[Sam Claiborne]

The children are growing up too fast is what he was saying.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, yeah. And they're making the games too slowly. But first, we are recording on Monday because this week Nick and I are going to Boston for PAX east and. And we're going to do a live game scoop there. Gonna be a little bit different though, from what you might have seen in the past. We don't have a panel. We're gonna be. Where is it? We'll be at the.

[Nick Limone]

We're gonna be at the Trolley Sour House there at the entrance of Pax East.

[Justin Davis]

God. Oh boy.

[Damon Hatfield]

So, yes, we will be giving out sour gummies. We're also gonna be doing a whole gamescoop show there.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, that's gonna be on Thursday at 1pm if you show up, you could get some prizes, some fun giveaway stuff happening there. And then Friday there's also gonna be. I. I've heard that IGN does other do. Does do other podcasts, but Podcast Locked will be there on Friday and I am going to be helping produce that.

[Damon Hatfield]

Same time, same place.

[Nick Limone]

Same time, same place, Trolley booth, same chances for prizes at the Trolley Sour House.

[Damon Hatfield]

So if you want to.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, it sounds like mouth puckering fun.

[Nick Limone]

What's your. What's your favorite? Sour Bright Crawler. That's the worm. I'm a big fan of the red blue ones.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, yeah, probably. That's probably going to be my favorite too. But I'm going to try them. I'm going to try them all. You can't even stop me. It'll be me and Nick and then we'll be joined by Miranda Sanchez from Unlocked. So if you're there on Thursday 1pm at the trolley booth. Come by, say hi for some fun and games. Not fun and. Or games. I've planned fun and games to happen simultaneously.

[Justin Davis]

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

[Damon Hatfield]

Then maybe it's not for you, Justin. Maybe games. It's not for me.

[Nick Limone]

It actually says that when you walk into packs you must be willing to have fun and games.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. I want only. I want only fun. No games.

[Sam Claiborne]

Remember when we did a game scoop with Seth at PAX east six years ago and then the world collapsed?

[Damon Hatfield]

I was just gonna say yeah. The last time I went to PAX east was in was with you and Tina and Seth was there and it was in late February 2020 and kind of a big event happened just a couple weeks after that.

[Nick Limone]

Is this what happened? They unleashed the T virus?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yes, this was it. The convention center cartridges and there was really good retro game shopping there. We had a good time. I think this is us doing that. That was great. But yeah, if we are the harbinger of world doom, then you're set up well again.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Although I should point out I did not get sick at all last time

[Nick Limone]

just as an I've been drinking my emergency to prep my immune system and I'm excited. This is my first PAX ever. I've always wanted to go and finally making it happen. Thanks ign.

[Justin Davis]

Nice.

[Damon Hatfield]

There you go.

[Sam Claiborne]

You're gonna have a blast. And hopefully it won't be 10 degrees like it was when we were there.

[Damon Hatfield]

It is gonna be cold and rainy, which is not a good. Not my favorite combo. I like. I prefer it get a little bit colder so we could have snow but we'll see.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, snow and cold is cool with me.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay. Okay. Headline this week. Younger generations are struggling to connect with the Final Fantasy series because it takes so long for new games to come out. Yoshi P. Says. Nick.

[Nick Limone]

Who's Yoshi P. Naoki Yoshida. He is the creative director of Creative Business Unit 3. They made Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn and so on and so forth. He's partly responsible for that game being a giant success. He also most recently made Final Fantasy 16 and also oversaw the remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, the iValice Alliance.

[Damon Hatfield]

Where's the P come from?

[Nick Limone]

I don't know.

[Justin Davis]

Okay, that's a good question. I've actually never thought about it.

[Nick Limone]

Nail.

[Justin Davis]

He's Mr. Final Fantasy these days, right?

[Nick Limone]

He's. He's a very nice guy.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Nick Limone]

Very charming.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Oh, go Ahead, go ahead.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, just that what he's talking about is there was a news story about this recently. Right. Of like some games are taking so long to come out now that kids like Dragon Quest was like this too. Of like kids are going through their whole childhood and never getting to play one of these games. And so they're not able to connect with them like we were able to when we were kids. For example, where there are video games coming out every couple years in a series, right?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean it cuts both ways. Like we're sparing the generations of Kingdom Hearts, but they're also not getting to the Final Fantasy.

[Nick Limone]

Take that back right now.

[Sam Claiborne]

I just heard gasp. Did somebody hear gasp?

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, hard, hard. Pearl clutching, happening.

[Sam Claiborne]

But jokes aside, and I think that wasn't a joke, that was just true. But Kingdom Hearts, it is a really good intro to. Especially for younger C and action RPGs and stuff. And it is funny that kids first for the, I don't know, like, you know, seven or eight year gaps in which you should play this as a 7 or 8 year old. You're not going to play these games. But yeah, this is totally true. But then we all remember they put out two giant final fantasies in one year, like two years ago.

[Justin Davis]

That's true.

[Sam Claiborne]

Which was pretty amazing.

[Justin Davis]

No one made them do that. They chose to do that.

[Nick Limone]

Two giant final fantasies. Which ones?

[Damon Hatfield]

Rebirth and 16.

[Nick Limone]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

They're like six months apart, right?

[Nick Limone]

Oh, that's right. Oh my gosh.

[Sam Claiborne]

Three months apart.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. Yeah. But what's a little bit strange about this argument is that final fantasies are already like, you know, Draque or these other franchises have things that like, you know, oh, I can't wait to get more slimes and like hear the music again and do this and do that. Whereas like every final Fantasy is like kind of unconnected to begin with. Like super different from a gameplay perspective. Obviously they don't have story connective tissue between them. Like completely separate, unique stories.

[Sam Claiborne]

So it's weird, Justin, because last week Mark was on this show saying that you thought that final fantasies were direct sequels and he argued with you about it.

[Justin Davis]

Got it.

[Nick Limone]

He told me.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's not a joke, actually. That was a conversation that happened last week.

[Justin Davis]

Okay. I'm pretty sure it was the exact opposite.

[Sam Claiborne]

That sounds like it, right?

[Nick Limone]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

From what you just said. Yeah, I always. I thought it was weird.

[Damon Hatfield]

Usually I think it's whatever Mark would sound like. Mark is wrong. That's what is the

[Nick Limone]

hiding words.

[Sam Claiborne]

But he did agree that final fantasies are not sequels.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, so Final Fantasy VII was 1998. 7 or 8. It's 7 or 8. It's one of those.

[Nick Limone]

7, 7, 8.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's one of those. But then Final Fantasy 8, someday the truth will be known was right there. 8 or 1998 or the PS one. That's one thing.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

And then Final Fantasy. I know Final Fantasy 9 was 2000.

[Nick Limone]

Correct.

[Damon Hatfield]

So they're right there for the three giant Final Fantasy games.

[Nick Limone]

Final Fantasy X, like 2001 tend to.

[Justin Davis]

Video games are cooked, man. They can't make them anymore.

[Damon Hatfield]

Final Fantasy 15 came out in 2016. Final Fantasy 16 came out in 2024.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, it's an interesting new dimension. I mean, look, we've been talking on scoop for a long time about like video games are so time consuming and expensive to make that they have to sell a million billion copies. And a game can sell 8 million copies and still be a failure. Right. When it takes, you know, 2,000 people seven years to make it. But like, honestly, this new dimension of the young kids and the youth not being able to get attached to these franchises inform these kind of like, I am really a big fan of this thing because it comes around every couple of years. It's like I just hadn't really thought about that until I started seeing these reports. And I think it passes the smell test. It makes sense and it makes me sad.

[Sam Claiborne]

So I have Yoshi P's number here. Let me call him. And then Nick, you're going to call Koshi Nakanishi who directed Resident Evil Requiem and we'll do a three way call and we'll just have Capcom tell. Tell Square Enix how they're doing it.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, how they do it, bro.

[Justin Davis]

Capcom will release more games.

[Nick Limone]

They'll tell Square Enix just cut your games like in half. Well, well, like Final Fantasy 16. I really like that game. But I think once it gets into Act 3 and you're like 50 hours in, it's like, all right, I think I'm ready for this to be over. I think, I think a lot of what people enjoy about modern Final Fantasy tends to peak after its Act 1, which is approximately 30 to 40 hours in. And I think at that point that's probably a contributing factor to the games taking such long times in their development cycles.

[Justin Davis]

And, and granted, I mean, look at Clair Obscure, right?

[Nick Limone]

Exactly. And that's a 30 hour RPG. 30 hour being like that's if you really wrench it of all of its content and juice. I feel like 30 to 35 hours is a sweet Spot that's. Games don't really need to be longer than that.

[Sam Claiborne]

You would think the creator of Final Fantasy 14 would be like, we always have a new Final Fantasy. It's updated yearly. It's ready for every generation.

[Nick Limone]

And please look forward to the release of Dissidia Duodecim coming to your mobile devices sometime this year.

[Damon Hatfield]

Maybe one game a generation could be 100 hours, but like not. That's it. That's all you really need.

[Nick Limone]

Well, I also think like half jokingly but like, what's Tetsuya Nomura been doing? Like let that man make some more video games. It's been a minute. And he. Cause back when he was making them. Say what you will about his taste. I personally enjoy it quite a bit. Did you do 15? I did enjoy 15. That was Hajime Tabata. He was. Well, now it's complicated because Tetsuya Nomura was overseeing Final Fantasy versus 13, which was the Emo Prince, which then became Final Fantasy 15. That was taken over by Hajime Tabata.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, okay.

[Nick Limone]

But Tetsuya Nomura did Final Fantasy 7.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay. And he's still making video games somewhere.

[Nick Limone]

Allegedly. He also did Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2 and supposedly Kingdom Hearts 4. He also did Kingdom Hearts.

[Sam Claiborne]

He's on all the Kingdom Hearts. That's what's happening is that the Kingdom Hearts games are behind a soft lock of.

[Damon Hatfield]

But we don't have. We don't have like the data. Whatever prompted Yoshi P. To even make this guess as to why younger fans aren't connecting with Final Fantasy. We don't have the data that shows like Final fantasy rebirth in 1690 of copies are to gamers 35 and older. Something like that.

[Sam Claiborne]

Right.

[Damon Hatfield]

We don't. We don't see that.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think what they're looking at is the sell through rate of plush chocobos and that's just plummeted.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Well, the comments on our article are all like, oh yes, that's what it is. It's the length of time. It's not that the games are mediocre now, but what they're doing is they're taking his comment and saying no, that's not why I don't like it anymore. But his comment was really. It wasn't talking about the readers of. Of this article.

[Justin Davis]

Right.

[Damon Hatfield]

It was talking about younger game.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

So they're just conflating them.

[Nick Limone]

I have a long, long. As a man who adores all things Final Fantasy, I have long thought that perhaps this is the thing that qualifies me as an unk. Because Maybe it's just destined for to be and only resonate with a certain group of people, namely young men in their like 28 to like 40 ish range.

[Sam Claiborne]

What happened with Halo?

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, and it's like, maybe it's just a time and place thing and maybe it will come and go. It makes me sad to say, but, like, yeah, maybe Final Fantasy is just for like my generation and then it's done.

[Justin Davis]

The kids today, their brains are all cooked because they don't play anything, you know, but they grow up on Roblox and Minecraft and then they graduate to Fortnite and then they're never, ever gonna play Final Fantasy 7. This is my most, like, old man coded opinion is that like, you know, that's what it doesn't have. It doesn't have building or shooting in it.

[Nick Limone]

And then, and then they get a disposable income and then purchase Crimson Desert and then spend 120 hours playing that game.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. And then they say, this game's great. I don't understand what you're talking about. I, I think, I think we talked about how long these games are. We're like, would it, would Final Fantasy 16 be, you know, one ounce a worse game if it were 30 hours shorter? And then like, in fact, it might actually be a better game. And like, I realized that they'd have to rework the scenario and yada, yada, like these really big, long, gigantic games. Like, part of what makes that experience fun is when it's an open world and when you have freedom to go north, south, east or west, explore wherever you want, feel like you're having an adventure that you authored a little bit versus an adventure that's being guided. Like, if it's more linear like a Final Fantasy, it's like they can start to feel very, very, very long.

[Sam Claiborne]

We get it. You like Crimson Desert, Justin. Jeez.

[Justin Davis]

I actually do. Like, I do kind of like Crimson Desert.

[Sam Claiborne]

So the comebacks are not super common in. Especially when a game comes back and becomes popular with younger generations. But I would argue that an RPG from 1988, 89, just like Final Fantasy 1, had a big resurgence. That's the Zelda II RPG, which had a resurgence from Breath of the Wild, where all these kids started playing Zelda and they were not playing Zelda that young until that game came out. Right. And that was a way that the game was reframed after a little bit after Minecraft. Right. A little bit after, you know, kind of accessibility ideas to reach younger audience. And then because there's these perennial games like Mario Kart, which is just going to stay a younger played game forever and we might best generation of smash brothers right now. But it doesn't really matter because everybody's still playing the last one. But for Zelda it really did have to have a comeback. So it's possible to bring like there's enough elements of Final Fantasy which I think are universally appealing and great, but I don't think it's a gritty Game of Thrones. Final Fantasy 16.

[Justin Davis]

No, I mean, but how good is Nintendo at this? Right? Like Zelda.

[Sam Claiborne]

Zelda.

[Justin Davis]

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

[Nick Limone]

I think they were close with this amalgamation of something like Rebirth and sixteen. If you take the, the grittiness of something like sixteen and it's more entry level style storytelling and combine that with something that is a little more demanding gameplay wise like Rebirth. Because I would argue 16 is relatively straightforward. It's a pretty simple action brawler game. Whereas Rebirth has this very interesting hybrid action turn based RPG at its core that I think is super duper unique. But honestly a lot of me for the past few years has also been thinking Final Fantasy tying itself so heavily to its numbered entries might be to its detriment. Once you're 17 games in now, you know at least 17 main mainline entry games. It makes me wonder if the next one we get will be the Final Fantasy, you know, something some sort of not reboot of the franchise because every game is kind of a reboot to some extent, but just something that loses the numbered branding for it. Because I think maybe that's like Mark, they'll think I need to play the last 16 of them in order to enjoy the new 17. I don't know. But I do think I'd be curious to see what the reception was like. And I'm sure these numbers exist for stuff like Stranger of Paradise, you know, a Final Fantasy Dark Souls like game which rules by the way, if you haven't played it, highly, highly, highly recommend that game. But like, how, how something like that fares compared to something like 16, a mainline final Fantasy game?

[Justin Davis]

You got me wondering, what game franchise has the most like, numbered sequels? Like, is Final Fantasy 16 like, you know, whatever. I've been in this business my entire adult life, so it doesn't seem weird to my ear. It's just like, yeah, It's Final Fantasy 16. But if you take a step back and look at it from like, you know, an outside in perspective, it's insane that it's like it's the 16th sequel and it actually has that in the title. Right. And like, has any other game ever done that before?

[Nick Limone]

RPG Maker, probably.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

They don't put the number like that. That is a good question. Like, what's the highest numbered sequel in a video game series? I'd like to look.

[Justin Davis]

I think it's Final Fantasy.

[Damon Hatfield]

Did something reach 20? Like, I. I don't know.

[Sam Claiborne]

Dynasty Warriors?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Is there. Nick, Is there any mainline Final Fantasy you don't like?

[Nick Limone]

I'm going to be a little bit controversial. I don't really like nine very much.

[Justin Davis]

You son of a bitch.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, I think nine. I think it's. It's just too slow. It's too slow.

[Justin Davis]

There's so many of us. Final Fantasy 2 is right there. You don't need to do this. AI says that Final Fantasy 16 is the highest numbered sequel in video games, which obviously we can verify with human sources. Mega Man.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's AI. Justin. It's right.

[Sam Claiborne]

Mega man is going to get up there. My pitch to get everybody back into playing Final Fantasy is just make a game about tifa. Can't we all agree on tifa?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yep.

[Nick Limone]

Everyone listening? Go on. Now Sam knows what the kids want. Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, that seems like a pretty safe bet.

[Nick Limone]

The Bouncer. But with Tifa, you know, it's a fighting game, but with Tifa only.

[Damon Hatfield]

She's the bouncer.

[Nick Limone]

She's the bouncer.

[Damon Hatfield]

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[Justin Davis]

The longest part of the process, I'm thinking, is going to be staying on

[Damon Hatfield]

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[Justin Davis]

I mostly use it to just scroll

[Damon Hatfield]

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[Nick Limone]

I've not crafted by how many hours?

[Damon Hatfield]

I don't know. It doesn't have an in game timer. I don't think so if you check

[Sam Claiborne]

your stats to make sure you didn't screw up.

[Damon Hatfield]

I checked my stats.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

And then I upgraded my health from the parlor, and I was like, oh, I hope I didn't mess every. Yeah, it was fine.

[Justin Davis]

I don't. What are you talking about?

[Damon Hatfield]

So, Justin, to catch you up, we've all beaten Resident Evrem. It's very replayable. You can unlock things like Infinite Ammo if you do things like play it again without healing, no crafting, beat it under four hours, this sorts of thing. So that's what I'm doing. I'm doing a no heal, no crafting run right now. But I did upgrade my health in the parlor, and I was like, I hope I didn't screw myself over. But nope. So for everyone who's wondering, you can you. If you're doing a no health run, you can upgrade your health. That's loud.

[Nick Limone]

Steroids are fine, but the herb, not so much.

[Damon Hatfield]

Don't. Yeah, got it.

[Justin Davis]

Say no to don't partake. Don't partake of the herb.

[Sam Claiborne]

And you're. I think you're through the kind of hard part because, you know, after this, it's like you just shoot everything, Leon, for a couple hours, and then you're in the medical facility, and it's pretty easy to avoid the zombos in there.

[Damon Hatfield]

I can tell you exactly where I am. Am. I'm in the sewer where they're dumping the bodies into the blood. Yep, I'm ready. I'm ready to do that on the.

[Sam Claiborne]

On my second run. I'm there too. I love it. And if you also. You can also set up a big CP payoff there too, by doing the final challenge, which you have to activate at that part. So if you want to read about that and then do that part, you basically have to leave your game on for like, 15 minutes.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, it seems complicated. You find the doll in Marion's empty cell. You can't take it.

[Nick Limone]

No. Yeah. You have to trigger the circumstances to get a different doll later on.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay.

[Nick Limone]

But I mean, check the IGN games. Guide for it because it's a very solid guide.

[Sam Claiborne]

We got there first.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's.

[Nick Limone]

The game is just right at the start.

[Damon Hatfield]

The game is just really fun.

[Nick Limone]

It goes down smooth.

[Damon Hatfield]

I hardly ever immediately restart a game after I finish it and I'm still fun with it even on my.

[Sam Claiborne]

It feels like an arcade version of it.

[Justin Davis]

Right?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, exactly.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. The Resident Evils, I mean they're not. Not my cup of tea, as I've said, but I do really respect them a lot for. For exactly what you're describing of like it's just got this old school, you know, infinite ammo. When was the last time you heard a game talk about that cheat and like unlock it? It's just so fun.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Big Head mode.

[Justin Davis]

Metal Gear is like that too.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yes, exactly.

[Damon Hatfield]

And we talked a little bit about Crimson Desert last week. Mark was on and he actually enjoyed the game a lot as well. And so Justin, you said you were enjoying it.

[Justin Davis]

I like it. I should say so. We're recording on a Monday. I was hoping I was gonna have a couple more days to play and I was out of town so I just got home. So these are night one impressions of like I played on a Sunday and I didn't know how hard M the game was. I know it's rated M, but I'm like, I think I'm okay with my 12 year old watching some violence. But then they're just throwing around C words constantly. Oh wow.

[Nick Limone]

They spend on bad words for that one. Ye.

[Justin Davis]

And like I'm like, I'm sorry, you can't. This game's too grown up for you anyway. No, I mean, so I. There's. We. IGN gave it a 6 out of 10 and I agree with that. 6 out of 10 and. But I like it anyway. I don't know, it's a little bit hard to explain. I think having your expectations kind of set of like, I understand I'm going into a 6 out of 10 experience and then like, am I going to get enjoyment out of this? And the answer is yes.

[Sam Claiborne]

Think of the context that for that that you have to like set up though. It's like, hey Justin, you want to play a real piece of shit?

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, sure.

[Sam Claiborne]

I got some extra time.

[Justin Davis]

No, it's like it's what you're.

[Sam Claiborne]

I'm not saying that's what Crimson Desert is. I'm just making a joke about the way he set it up.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yep.

[Justin Davis]

No, it's absolutely like you need to be in the mood for like a big open round world F around. Like I Want to play a game where I'm going to chop down trees and harvest lumber and get iron and collect bugs and collect flowers and just accomplish nothing for like a whole night. And like, you know, and then elements of it are going to be really janky but then elements of the exploration are going to be really rewarding and I'm going to find something, something behind a waterfall and it's like, it's just that kind of game. So I really like, I'm actually really impressed with the combat. I think it's very snappy and responsive and smooth. And then it couldn't feel more different than the non combat which is like Cliff controls like a tank and like it's completely crazy, like even doing something. I had to walk up a spiral staircase and he's just like, just like slowly turning to walk up this staircase and it feels so different than how it feels when you're fighting, you know, these armies of dudes that like, I think the combat's really good and I think the sense of exploration in the game and the world design and just general immersiveness feels good. Like it's kind of like a take it slow kind of game of like, I'm just going to walk around town and I'm not trying to like check off missions and do stuff as fast as I can, but just like immerse myself in this game world. I'm having a great time, but I can't believe I thought for sure everyone was exaggerating how nonsense the storyline is. They're not like, did you talk about this last week?

[Damon Hatfield]

No, not really.

[Justin Davis]

This is, this is not an exaggeration. This is literally what happens. And this is the opening 20 minutes of the game. So if you don't want to have this spoiled for you, skip ahead. But the game opens and your character dies and then they're brought back. You don't know why or what happens. You're just alive again. And then you get a little thing pops up that your quest is to go into a tavern and arm wrestle someone. You don't know who he is or why you're doing it. And then you win the arm wrestling match and then the quest changes, the quest pops up and the next quest is go outside and give a coin to a beggar. It doesn't say why, so you go outside because Cliff is an inherently good person.

[Nick Limone]

Justin.

[Justin Davis]

It literally feels bugged. I'm like, am I missing story? Like what's going on? And then you give a coin to the beggar and then it says the Quest changes. It says, go down into the sewers. And you go down into the sewers and there's a woman down there tied up. And you rescue her and she's like, oh, thank you so much for rescuing me. And then she disappears into like dust and petals. Like she's like a magic woman. It's completely insane.

[Damon Hatfield]

Awesome.

[Justin Davis]

And like you, you can't. And I'm.

[Sam Claiborne]

And it's not like this is cloaked in a central mystery or anything like that. Like, as the game progresses, people are like, oh, you're back. Because they all knew that you died. But that's like basically the end of it.

[Justin Davis]

No. And I honestly can't believe that that's how the game opens. It's so baffling. And it feels like if I'm being really generous to the developer. Pearl Abyss, that feels a little bit like a fever dream. And I think maybe it's supposed to feel that way. Like, is it supposed to be mysterious, like why am I back and what's going on and who is that woman and why did she disappear? But instead it just comes off as weird and, and completely crazy. And like once you kind of just, you have to just shrug that off and be like, this world is really beautiful and I'm, you know, and I'm collecting bugs and I'm collecting quests and I'm collecting loot and like, you just can't. You have to kind of enjoy this game on that level and meet it at that level. And I mean, look at this footage that we're watching now. Like, the combat's really beautiful and fun, but man, what a, what a strange, weird game. I do, I do like it, I like it. But I agree with the 6 out of 10. It's hard to go much higher than that.

[Damon Hatfield]

And Nick, how did you find it?

[Nick Limone]

I'm like 10 hours in right now and I played the game pre the patch that dropped today. Plus I played a little bit after the patch dropped this morning or last night. I find myself, I'm, I've. I've come to terms with the fact that I don't like it particularly much. However I am playing it for what I'm justifying as academic reasons. I need, I need to understand, and I think I do understand why people like it because I do think it's wide net that it casts is really interesting. I think one, it's one of the most expensive looking video games I've ever said or seen. And expensive as in it looks very nice. It looks very cutting edge in terms of Its graphical fidelity and all of the physics and particles. It makes great use of my PC hardware and it's nice seeing how far I can push my PC in some really meaningful ways. At, you know, 4K 240Hz, it's very, very fun and cool. I like exploring the worlds, I like the possibilities of what I might find. However, it seems like it all feels not connected in any meaningful way. Like there's no, almost like there's no intention behind all of the things that you can do, just the fact that you can do these things. But there's nothing intuitive about how it goes about showing you you can do these things, you know, Right. Leading up to launch I saw a lot of like Instagram Reels and TikToks getting served to me saying how this is a finally a grown up version of Breath of the Wild. And I, I had to pause at that a little bit and I, I like took that to heart to some extent. I was like, well, this is how a lot of the world is framed. Like people who are not, you know, people who are not at ign, people who are not me and people who are in the content creator space. So my peers to some extent, and this is how they're framing it, like, do they view Breath of the Wild as a childish game? It raises a lot of questions, but it has me thinking, well, why, why is it that this is a grown up version of, of Breath of the Wild is because they say the C word like eight times within the first 10 minutes of the game? Is it that the game doesn't explain anything. And I think that's what a lot of people like is the fact that it doesn't explain anything. But I think the beauty of something like Breath of the Wild is it also doesn't tell you how to do anything or say how to do anything. It teaches you intuitively how to do these things. And this doesn't really do that. In fact, you kind of accidentally discover you can do a lot of things because of a lot of the systems that within the game currently as of March 23, 2026 are broken and just kind of don't work in any meaningful way. And to Justin point, yeah, Cliff moves horribly.

[Damon Hatfield]

Like I remember maybe better now.

[Nick Limone]

It's supposed to be a little bit better now. I played it again this morning, I was like, nah, he still doesn't feel great. He is a little more responsive. But I was telling Damon this earlier. I was watching one of our other co workers before the game had come out. One of our gameplay capture People, they, he was playing the game and I was like, wow, that looks beautiful. Like, what a gorgeous looking world. I cannot wait to play this game. And then I got the game, I bought it, loaded it up, and within three seconds of me touching the analog stick and seeing Cliff move, I just said out loud, oh, no, he does not move correct. It's like, I know making a video game is very difficult, but when you make a. Clearly you're inspired by so many games that feel good to play, and then you make a game that does not feel good to play. Lesson failed. You, you got it wrong up front. Back to the drawing board.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, it fights you every step of the way with the controls. He's very heavy and very tanky. And if you've played, you know, our red Dead Redemption 2, it's a similar ish vibe of like, it takes him just a few too many frames and like a half second too long to kind of turn around. And like, you know, really puts an emphasis on animations instead of letting you cancel out of those animations and just go on and do the next move and next thing. So it doesn't feel. I like, look it, it absolutely does not pass the test of like, oh man, I can't wait to wrap up gamescoop and go play more. Like, I like the game, but I like it in spite of itself. It's kind of. You touched on something pretty important there, Nick. Which, like, I think that this is. It's kind of like empty calories. The game.

[Nick Limone]

100. I've been saying that in my head.

[Justin Davis]

100 and like, by the way, like, I like empty calories.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, chips are great. Fries are great.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I eat a lot of Doritos. And so. But like, that's, that's what it is, you know, where like, it has a million and one gameplay systems of like, you know, you can steal cattle and then when you steal cattle, like, you know, you have a wanted level and then you can go sell those cattle and like, you can do all this stuff. But then the cattle sell for like 10 copper and there's no reason to ever engage with that system in the game ever. And like, you know that that is a small example of the entire game is kind of like that. Like, Damon. So this is a world with thousands of NPCs in them, and it tracks your reputation with every single NPC individually. Like, you can pet a cat and then your reputation with that cat goes up by plus 5. Or greet a vendor and your reputation with them goes up by plus five. And like those are two actually maybe not great examples because you do have a reason. Like you can have the cat as a pet if you get them to max level and like everything, you just never know what's going to. Then you have the cat as a pet, then you can get armor for the cat and it just goes on and on and on and on. But there's kind of like there's not really a lot of ultimate point to a lot of it that I've seen so far. But as I said before, the world is beautiful enough that I'm willing to kind of keep playing it. And I am, I am interested in, in the combat scenarios and you know, that continues to be fun and interesting for me. There's some interesting stuff in the skill tree. So it's like I think there's fun to be had and, and I suspect that this might be like a really good game in like a year.

[Damon Hatfield]

But that's what a lot of people are saying.

[Sam Claiborne]

It might be really fast though. I mean they're updating it so rapidly. You know, for weeks and weeks leading to launch, there was a completely non existent inventory system and nobody playing this game could store anything. All their quest items filled up their menus, they couldn't drop them. It's like so broken and it was fixed in like a day. Which makes you think like, well, if you could have just done this the whole time, how was there not the feedback to do that? And then also it's impressive how fast it's being fixed. The same thing's going to happen with controls.

[Damon Hatfield]

Right.

[Sam Claiborne]

Like they're working on fixing those like pretty quickly. There's some other stuff too. Like they've really nerfed some of the challenges that we were like really expecting to be able to be stuck on. They just said, okay, you don't have to do that anymore.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

So it's like it's heartening that they're moving that quickly through this. Like, but what does that like say about this? Like what a crazy game. Like that's never happened before in our, in our lifetime. This is not a thing that normally happens.

[Nick Limone]

It's not an unusual remark. I mean for as long as video games have existed, people have always justified like it gets good after 10 hours. And I genuinely believe that this game does get good at the time at that.

[Sam Claiborne]

A lot of people are saying bosses are getting longer and you finally unlock magic after 60 hours. That's not good.

[Nick Limone]

The game feels a little more tolerable to me at the 10 hour mark, but I just Wonder, like, is that ever a. A good justification? And granted, everyone has a special game to them that does genuinely get good at the 10 hour mark or whatever. But like, I don't know if that's a thing I want to.

[Sam Claiborne]

Talking about this whole episode.

[Nick Limone]

Final Fantasy 7 would like to have a word with you.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

If they action fixed every single thing, all the bugs, all the jank. If they made Cliff, you know, control like the Witcher 3. Right. If it was that snappy and that good, which by the way, they never will. But like, if they manage to clean all of that up, like the Add a story. Yeah, well, that's the thing. Like, they can't patch a personality into the game. And like, so that's. That's like the absolute peak it could ever be for me is an 8, you know, and as of now, my initial impression is like, I completely agree with that. 6.

[Sam Claiborne]

You know, one of the patches today is that they changed the C word to cupcake.

[Nick Limone]

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

[Sam Claiborne]

But you'll have forgotten every system and it won't matter because they're Ruby. But that's always the problem.

[Nick Limone]

Starting the old stuff. It won't matter though, because none of it's tied together in any meaningful way.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's just.

[Nick Limone]

I will enjoy. It feels like a game that's in a movie that someone is just playing in the background was like, yeah, that's what video games look like. All right.

[Sam Claiborne]

Justin, are you playing on Kohenon?

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I'm playing on the Xbox Series X and I'm playing in quality modes, which is 30fps.

[Sam Claiborne]

Does it look good?

[Justin Davis]

Yes, it does look very good. It's very. It's very sharp. So I Don't know. I don't know if that's, you know, just an artistic choice or if it's missing some kind of anti aliasing. If there's some bugs there. I'm not quite positive. But it's very noisy. I have a hard time kind of telling what my eye should be drawn to or what I should be paying attention to. But it is very beautiful. And I'm not experiencing any, you know, frame issues or, you know, bugs or issues on. On, you know, a base console. It's been fine, Damon. There's a really funny. There's different. There's just so much baffling. We can move on. But this is my last anecdote of just like, I'll go through these stretches of like, man, that was really fun. That was really good. And then, like, just the strangest, weirdest thing will happen that, like, cancels it out. And what I did was you can switch your camera angle, but one of the camera angles is right behind Cliff's head. And the back of his head literally takes up the entire screen. You can't see anything but the back of his head.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

And I'm like, how did you like. And then, because it's zoomed in. And then the next zoom in is first person, but it's like, that angle. Why does it exist? Why did you work on this game for nine years? And then that's one of your camera angles. And then like, that moment immediately follows something that was, like, super dope and super cool. And like, that's kind of the Crimson Desert experience in a nutshell.

[Nick Limone]

That camera button is pretty impressed. I was like, damn, you can really play the whole game in first person if you want. That's cool for. Happy for the people. That's exciting for.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's an interesting game. It is very interesting people who play it.

[Justin Davis]

I'll report back next.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, everyone who plays it feels some sort of way about Crimson Desert. I have not played it at all myself. I don't think Sam has either.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, I'm gonna get it started this week, though. I just out of a lot of work to do with Procopia, and so I'm trying to get through that. And that game's amazing. And it's lots of systems that make sense and all touch each other.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, that's gonna be my playing game.

[Damon Hatfield]

That's gonna be my playing game.

[Nick Limone]

Is it multiplayer?

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, let's talk about it on our. Our PAX game Scoop.

[Nick Limone]

There you go.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's a good idea. Miranda has been playing a lot of it. Although she switched to Crimson Desert before me.

[Justin Davis]

I love it. I love Pecopia so much.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay,

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[Damon Hatfield]

Your little one grew three inches overnight. Adorable. Also expensive. Sell their pint sized pieces on Depop and list them in minutes with no selling fees. Because somewhere a dad refuses to pay full price for the clothes his kids will outgrow tomorrow. And he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growth bird budget secured. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details. Okay, well, if Crimson Desert is a very expensive looking game, let's turn our attention to a game that does not look expensive but is very exciting to me. Justin, do you hear this new Konami announcement? Do you know what I'm about to bring up? What if I told you the announcement was made by Konami and Jupiter?

[Justin Davis]

Okay. Oh no, I did see this.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, okay.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, it's anyway.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, the Picross Picross S Konami Antiques edition. I like their calling.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think Antiques is A little mean.

[Nick Limone]

I know antiques.

[Damon Hatfield]

Am I an antique gamer? I'm into antique gaming. But more. Look at this list. The list is not in alphabetical order at all.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's just randomly listed over Robotech on there.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh there's. I, I've, I've, I've paused the video right at that moment because there's so many random things on here. So. Oh for. Well, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. This is Picross. It's the, the puzzle game where you, you uncover pixel art by counting numbers on rows and, and ruling out places where Mark could be. I love these games. Justin does. Para loves these games. They've made a million of them and now they're doing licensed tie ins. There's one for Sega. I looking this up, I didn't even realize Capcom has one and SNK Neo Geo has one also. So I'm gonna, that's gonna be my other playing pants.

[Nick Limone]

Nice.

[Damon Hatfield]

Anyway, this Konami one over 80 titles. Stuff like ye are Kung Fu, Twinbee, Stinger, Russian Attack, Double Dribble man, just all everything on here. Metal Gear is on there. Jackal, Blades of steel, gyrus, gradius 2. There's so many Kid Dracula, Paradius, Sunset Riders, Axley. There's a lot of deep cuts in there.

[Justin Davis]

It's a perfect like, you know, Picross is what they made. Literally 20 that were not themed and not licensed. Just like hey, here's another pack of 500 picross puzzles. Buy it. And then I'm like okay, I'll buy it every single time. But like tying it into like you get the classic music and then the art that you're making is little pixel art from these games. Instead it's just such a perfect, you know, peanut butter and chocolate marriage of like mix this nostalgia with the puzzles instead of like instead of making some generic cactus with my Picross puzzle, like I'm making the Grottius ship instead. Like it's great. It's just, it's, it's just a perfect thing.

[Sam Claiborne]

Do you believe this all started on just Game Boy?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, Mario's Picross, which is why it's a little bit wild. Nintendo hasn't done their own version of this since then, right?

[Justin Davis]

Well, there's some, I don't know, quite the relationship. Maybe I should have looked at it before. Nintendo owns Picross but they don't know. But Jupiter is an independent. They make, yeah, they make Picross but Nintendo owns the word Picross and so there's some relationship there between this stuff.

[Sam Claiborne]

Definitely appears on Switch that's where it appears, right?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. I think they're all Switch exclusives.

[Justin Davis]

Well, but. But Jupiter was making them on the DS before, right? Yeah, Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

I love this series.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, no, it's great. It's super rad. And I buy them all and then I play them until they get hard and then I stop.

[Sam Claiborne]

Probotector 2 Return of the Evil forces

[Damon Hatfield]

Finally got Mega Pro Protector.

[Sam Claiborne]

For those listening is contra in.

[Justin Davis]

I do think. I consider. I consider myself a real picross connoisseur. Not as much as Pear. Pear is the real picross sicko.

[Damon Hatfield]

I think he literally plays them all.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, like I've. I. I really like the picross games and I've played almost all of them and they did. They went through a long phase where every single picross game was adding like, oh, we're going to add color picross now. We're going to add the multiplayer picross and we're adding the giant ones, like the. Whatever they call the 40 by 40s. And then they just stop. And they stopped adding new features like 10 games ago.

[Sam Claiborne]

Before you go out and think like, oh, this is a Tetris Medios or Pushmo killer. It's more like Sudoku than they are.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, they're logic puzzles.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, you have to.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, it's literally numbers and boxes and finding an adjacent box.

[Nick Limone]

I've never played a picross.

[Damon Hatfield]

I love them.

[Justin Davis]

They're. They're logic puzzles. Like Sudoku is a good analogy if

[Damon Hatfield]

you want to start with picross. S. Konami Antiques, nick. It's out April 30th.

[Nick Limone]

Oh, man. I won't be doing any plane travel by then, though.

[Damon Hatfield]

I know. You'll be back from Japan then too.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, I'll be back from Japan.

[Sam Claiborne]

We need shirts that say I'm a Konami antique.

[Nick Limone]

That'd be a sick shirt, honestly. They should make

[Sam Claiborne]

a ship.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, let's check in with the listeners.

[Justin Davis]

Hey, listeners.

[Damon Hatfield]

Howdy, listeners. Remember, you can always reach us at the email address gamescoopgn.com Just like our friend Charlie Gadson in San Diego did. Charlie says, I saw everyone's friend Wario64 tweeting about a sale for Trails in the sky first chapter from 2025. It piqued my interest, so I watched the trailer, enjoyed it, and finally looked it up on IGN.com as one does. And to my surprise, IGN did not have a review for it despite having uploaded gameplay videos of the first few minutes. I get it. IGN doesn't review every game that's released anymore. Like they did 20 years ago. But after sinking over 10 hours into it on Switch 2, it seems like this is one that flew under the radar. This JRPG bleeds smart AAA production values and not just in terms of visuals. It has unique combat that feels fresh, snappy, and challenges the player to keep up in the same ways Xenoblade does. It both boasts voice acting, a zoned open world with seamless transitions in and out of towns, and a Final Fantasy VII esque materia system that takes center stage.

[Nick Limone]

What.

[Damon Hatfield]

How does this work? Can we commission Justin to come out of review retirement for One last dance? Crazy that this game is getting slept on. Explain Justin.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean, Justin has all this time to play total shit games.

[Nick Limone]

You might as well play a good game once.

[Justin Davis]

So the the Trail series is near and dear to my heart. I actually have not played the Trails in the sky remake, but I've played almost all of the other games. So they're, they're long JRPGs. You know, the 40, 50, 60, you know, the longest ones are maybe these 80 hour JRPGs. But what makes them interesting is that they are all interconnected. So like there's, and then there's these sub series, there's Trails in the sky 1, 2, and 3, and then there's trails of cold steel, there's four of those. And there you could start with Cold Steel one. You don't need to have played Trails in the sky, but if you do, they're in the same continuity and take place on the same continent. And then some characters will show up. Like, I don't think it's much of a spoiler. Like the playable character who you play as in Trails of the sky, shows up as an NPC in Trails of Cold Steel. And you can find out what they're up to now and like what adventures they're going on. And even minor NPCs, like some shopkeeper or someone will show up, you know, game to game or you know, a prince or someone like that. And so it's. I described it on ign. It's a little bit like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but in JRPG terms because they're all interconnected and they tell these individual stories. But it's also building up to one kind of like big final crossover event, which I think Nihon Falcom is. I think they've sort of announced that the final games are going to be the final ones. Like, you know, the series is like finally wrapping up after multiple decades and what they were finding. I don't agree. I think Trails in the sky is extremely playable, the original Trails in the sky. But they thought it was getting a little bit old and a little bit dated because the franchise has been around a couple of decades. It's like a. It originally came out on the PSP, I played it on Steam, but it's like a PS1 era, kind of like more old school looking RPG. And that as like the starting off point was starting to feel a little bit off putting to like younger gamers or newer gamers that were trying to get into the Trails series now. So as kind of an experiment, they remade the original Trails in the Sky. They did a full remake, ground up remake with new visuals, new everything, new combat system to make it feel more modern, but retell that story and if it went well, they're like, okay, they're just going to keep doing the remakes now and remake all the older games. And it seemed like it did go really well, it sold well. So I suspect we'll probably start getting more of them.

[Sam Claiborne]

So are you going to review it or not?

[Justin Davis]

I'm actually not a bad candidate to review it because I have. I'm very, very familiar with the games and you know, familiar with RPGs, but I can't.

[Sam Claiborne]

You really think they're going to put out like a Final Fantasy version of this?

[Justin Davis]

What do you mean?

[Sam Claiborne]

The final game? Like they'll actually do that?

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I think so. That's interesting. It's like their big, it's like their big adventures event.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's pretty cool.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, they're really, they're. They're deeply, deeply satisfying to sort of like have some character. Like again, if you don't play them in order, it's fine, like you're not going to be completely lost. But some character that was in eight games ago show back up and have the continuity and lore sort of respect that. And then just the fan service element of like, oh man, what's this guy been up to? It's so much wish fulfillment of these games that you played and loved and then they end and then you're like, well, I'm never going to see these characters again. And then to find out what happened to that corner of the world or what happened to this town or what happened to that character and to have them come back a decade later and sort of get to spend a little bit more time with them is. It's just great. It's the best. They're really, really good.

[Nick Limone]

I believe they have the remake sequel of this announced and that's coming soon as well. I've Never played a Trails game, but honestly I was this close to pulling the trigger because like our listener, I. I also saw that wario64 tweet and I was like, I think I'm gonna do it for this. Like I always do the thing where I buy like 2 JRPGs to play on a plane and then I just fall asleep or watch something on my phone. So I don't know, I think I might dive in finally into the Trails universe.

[Justin Davis]

The original Trails in the sky, if you know the non remake version. But the original game, it's not like it's that old school and clunky and impossible to play. It's just, you know, it's an old school RPG. It's an RPG from the early 2000s. Right. But on the Steam version it has some quality of life features. Like it has a fast forward button and so like at the end of every single battle, just like fast forward through the results screen. Like I think I ended up saving 10 hours doing that because my Steam play time was 10 hours shorter than what my in game clock playtime was. Right. So this is, this B roll here is the original game. You can see it's looking.

[Nick Limone]

This looks great.

[Justin Davis]

I don't. No, I mean I know like Nick, I know you and I think it looks great.

[Damon Hatfield]

But I'm just saying if they're Interesting spelling of Scherzad.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. If you're, if you're a different type of gamer, this might start to feel a little.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think that's Charizard.

[Damon Hatfield]

That was okay. Interesting. It's just wild that nihon Falcom is 45 years old and they make beloved games. But you know, I think if you ask people to list their favorite Japanese developers, that would be pretty far down the list. They're just not as well known.

[Nick Limone]

There's some Y's fans out there still.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, east is their other big fans.

[Nick Limone]

They just got East 10 Nordics, like the super deluxe version of the east game from last year that just came out.

[Damon Hatfield]

So Justin, why do you think we didn't review it? It just, we didn't. I didn't think we had someone on staff knowledgeable enough and with enough time.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I don't know. So to be clear, like I haven't talked to our, you know, head of reviews. I'm not 100% sure. I could guess that, you know, very long game which makes it expensive to review if you assign someone on staff to it or freelance. And I could also guess that very, very long running franchise. Right. Like maybe we Imagine that. Hey, who's ever going to buy it? It's buy it. Like we like to review games where there's like this groundswell of interest of like hey, we can really help a lot of gamers out and a lot of people really want to know our opinion on this and like opinions on the trails games are kind of pre baked in I would guess but. But I haven't, you know I haven't talked to anybody about that yet so I'm not positive.

[Damon Hatfield]

Cool.

[Nick Limone]

Justin about to throw all his weight around be like I need a review in two days to make it happen.

[Justin Davis]

No, I might. I'm not, I'm not a bad person honestly because I like I said I know the games and love the games really well that I would be a good candidate to do it.

[Damon Hatfield]

I think it's man, I think it has a 90 on open critics so other it has been very well reviewed.

[Nick Limone]

Y' all about to get me to drop. What. What did Wario say was 46 bucks or something?

[Sam Claiborne]

That's one of those, I mean what Justin was talking about like not jokingly, that's like a. With a niche series like this, that's a self fulfilling type of review situation where like you're going to give it to the trails fans wherever they are and it sounds like that's always consistently good and they're always going to try to get more people to get on board with trails. So that's a recipe for a good scoring game.

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[Damon Hatfield]

This is your fix.

[Ad Read Announcer]

I am your host, Stassi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Steven.

[Justin Davis]

Because he's so evil, I do think he is misunderstood.

[Nick Limone]

You see everyone face consequences.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's intoxicating.

[Ad Read Announcer]

The writers just know how to trick. Yeah, there's always a twist in this show. Tell Me Lies the official podcast January 6th. And stream the new season of Tell Me Lies January 13th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay. Extracurricular activities. I recently just watched something for the first time. Something that some people might consider a classic.

[Nick Limone]

All right, Shrek.

[Damon Hatfield]

No, not sure.

[Nick Limone]

Austin Powers, Shrek 2.

[Damon Hatfield]

Although Shrek I find almost unwatchable now because the, the animation is so bad. It's just so. Such an ugly, ugly movie. Funny movie, but an ugly movie. Anyway, Kingo is doing baseball. Any guesses what we want?

[Nick Limone]

The sandlot.

[Damon Hatfield]

No, I think the dog will be too scary for him.

[Nick Limone]

That was a very.

[Damon Hatfield]

He has a thing about scary animals. We watch.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, clearly it's A League of Their Own.

[Justin Davis]

Then Angels in the outfield. We watch Rookie of the Year. Oh yeah, we watched that.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, but I'd never seen it. Do you know this movie, Sam?

[Justin Davis]

No.

[Nick Limone]

Is this the one where his arm gets stuck?

[Damon Hatfield]

12 year old boy slips and hurts his arm. But no, it turns out he can throw 100 mile per hour fastball. So he gets. He gets hired by the Chicago Cubs. He plays the picture for the Chicago Cubs. It was great. It's a very silly, fun movie. My kids liked it. I'm not going to say it's on the same level as like a Home

[Nick Limone]

Alone, but it was Godfather 1 and 2.

[Damon Hatfield]

No. Yeah, but it's a very. It's a sweet, cute movie. The kid is likable and Daniel Stern is in it, being funny. Daniel Stern doing funny stuff. He actually directed the movie, which I was surprised by.

[Sam Claiborne]

What?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I don't know if he's directing other movies, but he directed it totally. It's. It's a fun movie. Gary Busey is in it. He's the aging pitcher that gets replaced by the kid, right?

[Nick Limone]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

He has almost nothing to do in the movie, but he's in it.

[Nick Limone]

He's very mad at the kid at

[Damon Hatfield]

the beginning, but then at the end. Well, I have no spoilers, but the John Candy.

[Justin Davis]

Go ahead.

[Damon Hatfield]

The funniest part that I'll share with you here is Daniel Stern is with the kid. They're at like a swanky party because, you know, the kid's like famous now because he's the youngest pitcher out there. They're this party and Daniel starts trying to tell him, like, there's lots of benefits to being famous kid. Here, I'll show you. And he like leads them over to these two women. They're standing there and Daniel turns like, excuse me, ladies. And then they stand for there for a moment and then he says again, excuse me, ladies. And he gets them to move out of the way so they could play a pinball machine. It's great. It was great. I think it was a Rollerball game. Do you know which game that would be, Sam?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. Rollerball is a. Ladies and gentlemen, on rollerblades playing a battle to the death type game. It's Williams, early 90s.

[Damon Hatfield]

It was great.

[Justin Davis]

It's funny you brought that up because we just watched this within the last six months for family movie night.

[Sam Claiborne]

It looks great.

[Justin Davis]

And our family has absolutely no connection to baseball. And they liked it, too.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, it's early 90s.

[Justin Davis]

Super cute.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yep. This is when he's telling the pitcher, he's saying, pitcher has a big butt. Sam.

[Justin Davis]

Yep.

[Sam Claiborne]

Ah. Okay. Okay.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's great. And then another extracurricular activity I forgot to share last week we went to Disneyland. A couple weeks ago.

[Sam Claiborne]

There's. There's the rollerball.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yep. That was it. Yeah. This is. This is exactly why. Except for these ladies. Excuse me, ladies. Daniel Stern is very funny in this movie.

[Justin Davis]

Movie.

[Damon Hatfield]

I have to say. Excuse me, ladies.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, it's perfect.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

I love it.

[Damon Hatfield]

The other thing, we went to Disneyland. We did star tours. And guys, it's all new. All new.

[Nick Limone]

Changed it again.

[Damon Hatfield]

All new scenes on. On star tours. So if you haven't really. Yeah. If you haven't ridden this. This is a virtual ride where you fly through different scenes in Star wars. And they're interchangeable, so it's different every time. You never really know what you're going to get. However, there's, like an intro, and then there's a scene one, and then there's an intermission where a famous character tells you you need to go take. Go to this planet to, you know, meet this person. And then there's a scene two, and then there's an end. These big scene one and two are completely different that I'd never seen before. So I hope. I'm gonna. I want to tell you about it. If nobody. If people takes this seriously, thinks it's going to be a spoiler.

[Sam Claiborne]

I cannot believe they're showing these lines moving this fast. It's so painful to see this. And it's never like.

[Damon Hatfield]

Anyway, scene one was awesome. You go to the indoor. The crash Death Star from Rise of Skywalker. You land in that ocean with those.

[Justin Davis]

I did that one.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, well, it was new for me.

[Nick Limone]

Okay. I thought you were about like, they. They did. Oh, you can witness the Gorman massacre

[Damon Hatfield]

from the first person. No, that's cool because, like, you're in there, these huge waves, and then you go into the Death Star. And then. Justin. Yeah.

[Nick Limone]

You.

[Damon Hatfield]

You see. You see that? The alien from the trash compactor, which I understand is from the First Death Star, but apparently this is a problem on.

[Sam Claiborne]

On both Death Stars, these things just unavoidable pestilence.

[Damon Hatfield]

Things just get into the trash.

[Sam Claiborne]

Or maybe it's part of the trash compactor's, like, organic recovery of goods. Right. They use the.

[Nick Limone]

That comes with the compactor.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

To make sure everyone understands what you're talking about. It's a ride where you're watching a screen, and then the ride is moving all around and.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

And so it changes. Like, sometimes you get stories from Episode, you know, the original Star wars, and sometimes you get stories from the. You know, from the prequels or whatever. And like, there's a really cool Reddit post from a guy who spent an entire day at Disneyland, and I think he rode star tours 44 times. And that's all he did, was just loop through star tours, and then he did stats on, like, you know, like, he. He basically cracked the code of, like, you know, if you get this scene, you can't get, you know, a prequel scene after it because it would break the continuity. Right. So it's like, they'll mix. They'll mix scenes from Star wars eras, but not always. Like, if you get a Kylo Ren scene, then you're guaranteed to get, like, you know, a sequel series scene after that. And so he. He broke down exactly how, like, it is random what scene you get, but not completely random, basically.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, yeah, it's in 3D now. I forgot about that.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, yeah, it is.

[Sam Claiborne]

And they used to have Paul Reubens as a custom bottom for it.

[Nick Limone]

Do they not do that anymore?

[Damon Hatfield]

They have that bot, but it's not.

[Nick Limone]

Can you not do the original experience or anything like that?

[Sam Claiborne]

No, because it's R2D2 and C3PO, fully animatronic that replaced it. So there's no way to, like, wheel out that bot. When I saw it, they had, like, piped Ahsoka into, like, a few things last time, and I've seen a guy that didn't feel very natural.

[Damon Hatfield]

Then my other second scene. Tell me if you saw this one, Justin. It was Crate the Salt Planet from Last Jedi.

[Justin Davis]

No, I haven't done that one.

[Damon Hatfield]

That was cool, too, because you fly down. You know how they get on those, like, salt skimmers, whatever they call them, and then try to, like.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's cool.

[Damon Hatfield]

The red sort of buy people time while the first order is there. Yeah, you, like, fly through that and then you destroy one of their next generation at ats, whatever they're called, that sort of thing. Anyway, that was cool. It Was all. It was all new to me.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's great.

[Damon Hatfield]

I love Star Wars.

[Nick Limone]

How are they allowed?

[Sam Claiborne]

This is pod racing.

[Nick Limone]

This is nuts.

[Damon Hatfield]

What?

[Nick Limone]

How are they filming this? This is crazy.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Not supposed to, but yeah. Although on Disney plus now, for the 70th anniversary of Disneyland, they have ride throughs of like all the rides that you can watch now. Took them forever to do that because my kids have been watching this stuff on YouTube for years. Like they can just watch rides. Anyway, final thing I'll say. Go ahead, Justin.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, I just know you can finish a different Disneyland thing.

[Damon Hatfield]

Final thing I wanted to say is that the live action Moana trailer is out. I don't want to give it any airtime. It's horrible. But the number one comment on the IGN version is. Is Moana 2016 with DLSS5 off. Moana 2026 with DLSS5 on. And whoever made that comment, a plus.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

All right. Go ahead, Justin.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, just another little Disneyland. Just Star Tours having different variations. The Millennium Falcon ride also has small variations right at the end. And I learned that like there's like a short version, a long version of the speech that. What's his name? O'. Connor, Whoever the little pirate guy is that you take the mission from and he talks to you at the end of the mission and you get the long version if the ride needs to take longer to like resell to get you all off.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, that's.

[Justin Davis]

And so it's like he's adding up the damage. Like this is damaged and this is damage and this is damaged. And part of the version that you get isn't just how you performed on the ride, but if it needs to take longer to get you off it, that's great. Isn't that clever?

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, very cool.

[Damon Hatfield]

I, you know, we go to Disneyland a lot. I really appreciate how well run the park is. And you appreciate it more when you go to other. Some other theme parks. You're like, hold up. These guys. Disneyland has a figure.

[Sam Claiborne]

Six Flags Magic Mountain. It's like a bunch of 13 year olds operating rides. Drunk. So scary. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Justin Davis]

Fist fights.

[Damon Hatfield]

At Knott's Berry, they had to like install a rule where kids cannot be there by themselves. They have to have a chaperone. Oh, my God.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin Davis]

Anyway, sorry, Tonal.

[Sam Claiborne]

Lord of the Flies.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Justin Davis]

There's a theme park in Iowa called Adventureland. That was like the place when I was growing up. I went there growing up, but now it's like now every parent just drops their kids off by their. By themselves. And they had to set the same rule. It was just like they were just running wild in the park and like, taking it over.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, that brings us to video game 20 questions. Our suggestion this week comes from Josh, who has an anecdote to share first. Hey, Scoop. I had a rare gaming discovery recently. I wanted to know if the scooper has recently experienced something similar. As a dad in his 30s, things like this don't happen often anymore. To start, I had never played a Resident Evil game. I'm not interested in the horror genre and largely look past any titles that might fall into that category. With the release of Resident Evil Requiem, a buddy of mine was going off about how excited he was and how good so many of the games are. He convinced me to give one a try. So I purchased the remake of Resident Evil 2. My friend mentioned this was a scarier but really good title in the series and a fine starting point. As soon as it started, I immediately disliked the experience, but I stuck with it. And after a while, I have to admit I am absolutely loving it. And I've started looking at the other titles in the series. So my question. My question is, has anyone on the panel recently discovered something gaming related you thought you wouldn't like or possibly hate, but ended up loving? And Sam, that blotcher would count for you, right?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good example. I was just gonna say no. Why would I ever subject myself to something I don't want to play? But yeah, no, that's. No. I did that with Metal Gear at one point too. I had to play, you know, Peacemaker for work, and I hated 1, 2, and 3. And then I really liked Peacemaker, and then I liked 5 a lot after that. So you never liked.

[Damon Hatfield]

You never liked Metal Gear Solid? I liked it at the time, but I haven't revisited.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, I mean, there's been whole genres like that that I've gone to. And I love Death Stranding. Yes, exactly. Peace Walker. Yes. Isn't that weird? But yeah, I mean, that's the thing.

[Nick Limone]

That's a very tasty one. That's a good one.

[Sam Claiborne]

It is, but it also fixed a bunch of things. It has the Fulton recovery system. So it's like really fun to collect stuff in it. But it also taught me how to play Metal Gear. I still don't like playing one, two, and three. One is better than two and three. I think one's great.

[Justin Davis]

I'm trying to think. There's never something that like, ah, I don't like this thing. And then, you know, I Played a game and it won me over and changed my mind. I was absolutely obsessed with Pocopia and have put dozens of hours into it. And it's not that I thought I wouldn't like it. Like, I was confident I would like it, but, like, I'm not a Pokemon guy.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

And so I think I talked about this on the show a couple weeks ago of, like, if you're a Pokemon sicko, you'd probably lose your mind over this game because you can talk to them and they're all really cute. It's all callbacks. I can tell it's callbacks and references to the other games I haven't played. And like, the whole game is like a post apocalyptic version of Pokemon 1, which, you know, I don't have any nostalgia for. And so I can enjoy it just as a game. I think it's a really interesting, great game. But I feel like it's like a generational game for people that, like, grew up with that, with that kind of Pokemon love in their blood.

[Damon Hatfield]

Anything come to mind? Nick?

[Nick Limone]

I got two quick ones. Oddly enough, I think it's the original Resident Evil stuff because I was a fan of the remake. I was a fan of Resident Evil 4 back in 2000, 2004 or whatever that whenever that came out. And like, I had played every Resident Evil up to that point. Like, apart from the original, I played two, never three. So there was always just like this mindset that I had that once the 2 remake came out, I was like, should I replay some of the old ones? I was like, nah, I don't think I'm gonna like them very much. And then for the podcast, is it still fun? I was like, okay, I'm gonna finally do it. And I was like, I was wrong. The original's fantastic. The remake of the original is fantastic. And I never thought I'd like the original three, but I love the original three. That was so much fun. And I revisiting a lot of the classic games now that I am less squeamish than I was back then has been really fun. And the more, I guess out of left field was probably the E series. I just. I always thought bump combat looked kind of boring. And so I started checking out the original Y's. 1 and 2. Loved them. Tried East Origin, which I liked it for the first playthrough. The rest was kind of meh. But after that, I'm all in on Y's now. I'm like slowly working my way through that entire series now.

[Damon Hatfield]

Series is kind of like trails. It's just quietly been going on for decades now.

[Nick Limone]

It's heraldic, it's stoic in its legend status.

[Sam Claiborne]

I'm waiting for this to happen with Soulslikes because I haven't liked any of them.

[Justin Davis]

Them.

[Damon Hatfield]

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

[Justin Davis]

But what's the redacted thing he likes?

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, it's.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think it's ponies.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, you're gonna get me one of these days.

[Sam Claiborne]

Ah,

[Nick Limone]

Justin, you gotta ask the first question. We gotta. We gotta shake it up.

[Justin Davis]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's not going well.

[Justin Davis]

Is the redacted thing that he likes horror games, sports games, or I don't know, racing games?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Nick Limone]

Oh, no.

[Damon Hatfield]

And he did just tell you that he doesn't like horror games?

[Justin Davis]

Well, but. Except now he does.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this from before the year 2000?

[Nick Limone]

No, year 2000 or after. Is this game made in Japan?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Justin Davis]

Is this game made in the United States?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Nick Limone]

What else is there?

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this game multi platform?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes. That's 5 multiplat

[Nick Limone]

2000 on.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did this game sell more than 1 million copies?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Nick Limone]

That was a very.

[Justin Davis]

I think. I think the genre knew that you.

[Sam Claiborne]

Off the top of his head.

[Justin Davis]

Can you read the anecdote again?

[Damon Hatfield]

I have never played this game, even though I like redacted cupcakes.

[Nick Limone]

Dark Souls. Even though he loves Elden Ring.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

Except. Except this game is made in Europe. I think it's a role playing game. Could be clear, obscure. Although that would like. Never played. It's like it's only been a year, so you're okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's.

[Justin Davis]

It's not quite reach. Never played status. Yeah. Was this game made by. Made or published by Ubisoft? No, I just said that because I'm assuming it's made in Europe.

[Sam Claiborne]

Was this game. Is this game playable on a Nintendo system?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, okay, Xbox.

[Sam Claiborne]

Xbox.

[Nick Limone]

PlayStation.

[Justin Davis]

Or it's not Donkey Kong 64.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did this originally come out in the Xbox 360 PS3 era?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Justin Davis]

PS4 era?

[Damon Hatfield]

No. That's five.

[Nick Limone]

We just hit questions.

[Damon Hatfield]

Sorry. That's ten.

[Nick Limone]

Oh, shoot.

[Sam Claiborne]

Damn.

[Justin Davis]

PS5 era?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Nick Limone]

Okay, so it's more recent. Is this the game? Is this game the first of its name?

[Justin Davis]

Yes, first of its name could be Expedition. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is.

[Nick Limone]

Well, the games that you mentioned earlier, Justin, you said horror, sports or racing.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this game come out last year?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Nick Limone]

Is this game an RPG or a shooter?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Nick Limone]

What. What else is there?

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, okay, okay, okay. It's a. I'm sorry. Let's see. It falls under the increasingly broad category

[Nick Limone]

of rpg, so it's a place to issue game. So it's a third person action game with RPG elements. Probably. Is the vibe.

[Justin Davis]

Could be Genshin Impact. Maybe he's not a fan of gotcha games.

[Nick Limone]

We just hit question. What? 14 shoot we fly.

[Justin Davis]

I'm still thinking about where the game's made. I was assuming it was made in Europe, but it could be from China or Korea. Yeah, or, you know, obviously there's other

[Sam Claiborne]

countries, but like, did we eliminate us?

[Justin Davis]

We eliminated us. And Japan.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, we did do. Yes. Okay, that makes sense.

[Nick Limone]

Okay.

[Justin Davis]

Okay, got it. So it could be Black Myth. Did that come out last year or two years ago? That was two years ago.

[Sam Claiborne]

Why don't we just ask if it was designed in Asia?

[Justin Davis]

Sure. Was this question is designed in Asia? Asia?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes. That's 15.

[Nick Limone]

Is this a gotcha game?

[Damon Hatfield]

No. Shoot.

[Justin Davis]

I mean, that's not a bad question though. Could be an mmo. Could be. Could be. Could be Black Desert Online or one of those other South Korean MMOs.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this a Korean developed game?

[Justin Davis]

No, that's probably Black Myth. Does that mean it's Black Myth?

[Sam Claiborne]

Could get getting pretty close to Black Myth sounding to me. But is that come out last year?

[Justin Davis]

Is it? I didn't play. Isn't it a. Isn't it a like sort of a Boss Rush style souls like game?

[Sam Claiborne]

Maybe it came out two years.

[Nick Limone]

Not a Souls like game, but it's more of like an act like a Devil May Cry to some extent.

[Sam Claiborne]

When did it come out that came out?

[Justin Davis]

Nobody knows.

[Nick Limone]

That came out. Not last year, but the year before, which was.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay, what about where winds meet? That was last year.

[Nick Limone]

Where winds meet was last year.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, it's. It's probably one of those.

[Nick Limone]

What question are we at?

[Damon Hatfield]

You have two questions and a guess.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh boy.

[Nick Limone]

Like, I mean, we could really nail it if we asked if you play as a monkey or an ape of some sort.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Nick Limone]

Do you play as.

[Sam Claiborne]

Don't. Don't do ape of some sort. That includes humans

[Justin Davis]

maybe.

[Nick Limone]

Fair enough. Do you. Do you. Do you play as a monkey?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Nick Limone]

Is it black myth?

[Damon Hatfield]

It is Black myth. Wukong. There you go.

[Nick Limone]

I hesitated for a second. I was like, oh, no. It's enslaved. Odyssey to the West.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Black myth. Wukong. And the only reason I said no when you asked rpg, I was just thinking souls, like, in my head. But it's like an action rpg, just like all these games are. Yeah.

[Nick Limone]

Very pretty game. Very.

[Damon Hatfield]

Also very boss. Yeah.

[Nick Limone]

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

[Damon Hatfield]

I played this for a bit. I liked it, but got distracted and never went back to it. Did you finish it?

[Nick Limone]

I finished it. I didn't get the secret ending because then I looked up what you had to do to get the secret. I was like, I ain't doing all that. I was like, I'll fill in the

[Sam Claiborne]

blanks for us, Damon.

[Nick Limone]

I just watched the Mitchell video.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh.

[Damon Hatfield]

I have never played this game, even though I like souls likes. That's all.

[Nick Limone]

It's not quite a souls like. However, it does have a lot of shared DNA. I'd say if a souls, like, had a baby with something like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay.

[Nick Limone]

Which is, do you have a good company to be in?

[Justin Davis]

Do you have a stamina meter?

[Sam Claiborne]

No.

[Nick Limone]

No, there's no stamina.

[Justin Davis]

Okay.

[Nick Limone]

Well, I guess you have, like, a. I think there's, like, a guard gauge, which I think might be referred to as a stamina meter, but not like a.

[Justin Davis]

Did you see that B roll? Was that, like.

[Nick Limone]

Ah. Now I don't. Now I don't remember. But there's nothing in the game that necessitates you need to walk because you've been running for too long.

[Justin Davis]

Okay. Do you dodge roll?

[Nick Limone]

You do dodge roll?

[Justin Davis]

I'm just like, look, you're the one that played it, and I didn't. But this looks incredibly souls like to me. So I feel like it's sus to say that it's not. It's not a souls, like.

[Nick Limone]

It's not a souls like. Like.

[Justin Davis]

Okay, all right. Okay.

[Nick Limone]

It does have a lot of elements of it, though.

[Justin Davis]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

Do you have to go back and collect your souls once you die?

[Nick Limone]

I don't remember, actually. No.

[Justin Davis]

I mean, besides the fact that you dodge Roll everything and collect all your souls when you die. Super hard. How dark is it what I think it was. It was pretty challenging, right.

[Nick Limone]

It's a. It was a pretty tough game. I think near it once you get past like the snow covered mountains, it starts to get a little bit easier. But everything from up to that point is pretty tough.

[Sam Claiborne]

Also this, this has been Nick's fuzzy memories of a game.

[Nick Limone]

I mean it's 2024. It's.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's steeped in two years ago, Sam.

[Nick Limone]

It's years ago.

[Sam Claiborne]

And it's steel trap. That's why you're here.

[Nick Limone]

Steeped in Chinese myth. So it's like one of those things where I'm just not intimately as familiar. So it all is just like what happened in this game again.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

They announced a sequel to this.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, it's like a completely different character again. I've only read like the first black myth or I'm sorry, the first like Son Goku Journey to the West Journey to the west novel. And that was back in like middle school.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I think I read it in college.

[Nick Limone]

I remember the tiger shroud the tiger, the tigers like trying to be. He burns an entire palace and you know, Son Goku covers himself with the shroud or something like this all rings. Vaguely familiar. And then after I was like I have no idea what's happening.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think we can all agree this is a souls like.

[Nick Limone]

Like one of the greatest final bosses I've seen in a video game. At least in the non secret ending. I think it is so clever. May I spoil one small thing of the last boss in this?

[Damon Hatfield]

You spoil it for me. But listeners feel free to jump ahead

[Nick Limone]

if you don't want to spoil. A quick spoiler for the last boss of black myth Wukong. So Fast forward like 10 seconds if you don't want to hear. Starting now. But basically you have to fight the true version of yourself. So you fight yourself. And there's a part where if you walk away from him to heal, he'll freeze you, grab your healing jug, heal himself and then continue the fight. So you waste a heal. It is the coolest thing in the world. I loved it so much.

[Damon Hatfield]

Cool. Well, nicely job and thank you for the suggestion. Josh in an undisclosed location. Viewers, listeners, if you have your own Suggestions for video game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address game scoopgn.com and that is all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you Nick. Thank you Sam. Thank you Justin. Thank you to Jobbert. Working behind the Scenes to make this episode possible. If you're coming to Pax east, you're going to be there on Thursday. Come by the trolley booth at 1pm for some live scoops and some free candy. My name is Damon. This is ig. Game Scoop. And we're out.

[Justin Davis]

Sam,

[Sam Claiborne]

I don't think we've won 20 questions since January.

[Nick Limone]

I was gonna say, Justin, today's the day it all changes in.

[Damon Hatfield]

In the streak.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I missed a couple weeks, didn't I?

[Sam Claiborne]

I think last week we got one that we probably had for the third time and we still didn't get it. It's the game that's always present in Damon's mind, so he picks it all the time.

[Justin Davis]

I'm sure.

[Damon Hatfield]

I don't even remember.

[Sam Claiborne]

It was narc.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, yeah, yeah. But then the week before that. Justin,

[Justin Davis]

give me some clues. Give me some clues.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, well, the theme, they had five options and the listener had been eating Taco Bell. So he picked like a mild option and a fire option. And there's a Verde option. They chose the Verde option.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, something a little different.

[Damon Hatfield]

And we got about halfway through and I was like, you guys are not thinking nearly verde enough.

[Justin Davis]

Give me a few clues from that one.

[Sam Claiborne]

You don't want to open this one up.

[Damon Hatfield]

If it was a compilation of games. And I told him it could be.

[Justin Davis]

Okay.

[Nick Limone]

We managed to distill it down to a turn based, pixelated RPG where you can play as a human and it can be a compilation or it can't be.

[Justin Davis]

Okay, so it's the PS1. It's the PS1 disc that had Final Fantasy Tactics.

[Sam Claiborne]

We actually brought that one up.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. And then there was something else. Final Fantasy. Wait, there was a couple of those.

[Sam Claiborne]

We eliminated Square Enix.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, it was not Square Enix, but you're thinking of Anthology and Chronicles. The Chronicles came with Chrono Trigger.

[Justin Davis]

Right? It was Tactics and Chrono Trigger. Is that what it was?

[Nick Limone]

No, that was Final Fantasy 4 and Chrono Trigger and then Anthology was 5 and 6.

[Sam Claiborne]

They also had a 1 and 2 compilation.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, there was a 1 and 2, but 1 and 2 was on the GBA. Or was it on the PS1?

[Nick Limone]

It was on the GBA for sure. As dawn of souls. Final Fantasy 1. Dawn of Souls.

[Sam Claiborne]

Anyway, okay, this is how it was going for us.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Anyway, it was RPG maker.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, that's rude.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's Verde.

[Nick Limone]

I still think about it. There was a moment where we were showing a looping animation of Fire on screen and David was like, gilbert, please get this off of the screen. It is making me go insane.

[Sam Claiborne]

It was like showing a fire animation. You could put a tribute to a character who's just over. And we were trying to guess the sound. It was making a little fart each time, a scream.

[Damon Hatfield]

All right, Jorah, should we start this show? Okay.

[Justin Davis]

Was he just waiting on us? We were waiting on you.

[Sam Claiborne]

This is the ploy is that he tries to get all the goods before the show so you can use it for the post show. Now we have no more goofs for the show.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Nick Limone]

Get it all out of the first.

[Sam Claiborne]

It goes from game goofs into game scoop.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yep. That's rpg maker.

[Nick Limone]

Hp lovecraft's rpg maker driving damon insane.

[Sam Claiborne]

This is the sound effect they're going to choose.

[Damon Hatfield]

Like, this is the B roll he pulled up when I revealed the game. This is the B roll he pulled up.

[Justin Davis]

You're saying that like it's Gilbert's fault. This is just the game. This is rpg.

[Sam Claiborne]

Make it fade out.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. You can add a fade out.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. You're making an rpg.

[Sam Claiborne]

Don't lie.

[Nick Limone]

I do love that the graphics Just say 2020.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. My graphics are.

[Justin Davis]

Let's cook this up.

[Sam Claiborne]

21.

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